Gemini Heat (7 page)

As he sat down beside her, a primal womanish fear made her cower over-so-slightly away, and this made him smile. With a slick, almost reptilian swiftness, his long hand whipped out and cupped her feverish cheek.

'You're so exciting, sweet Dee,' he murmured, leaning forward and feathering her lips with his. It was a chaste kiss, almost nothing, yet in the heart of it his tongue moved delicately on her skin. 'I'd like to spend the day with you. Keep you aroused for hours and hours. Play with this hot little body ... his fingertip slid from her face and cruised down over her jaw to her throat. . . until you beg for me. But alas, I've a meeting in ten minutes which I'll have to attend, even though I'm still excited.' Taking her shaking hand in his, he laid it against his erection, straining in the containment of his underwear. Even to her, and through his clothes, he felt warm - a great hard mass that pulsed and throbbed even as she held him.

He made a throaty sound as she unconsciously caressed him. Had this strong bar of flesh been inside her? she wondered, frantic at not truly knowing. She'd dreamed of it, yes, but it could've been just that. A dream.

With obvious reluctance, he removed her hand from his body and rose gracefully to his feet. 'Later, my gorgeous Dee,' he said, his voice intimate even though he was already withdrawing from her orbit. 'I have to go now.'

Her distress must have shown on her face, she realised, because with a look of almost compassion, he stepped close again, took up the hand that had held him and dusted her fingers with a kiss.

'Take the rest of the day off. Go home, relax, and I'll collect you tonight at eight.' And then he was moving again, going, leaving her with little apparent regret. For all it seemed to cost him, they could've just finished a discussion on staff performance statistics - which was what she'd been expecting before he'd taken hold of her life and turned it on its head. 'Wear something stylish, Dee. Dress to impress. I know just the place to take you.' With that, and no other word of farewell, he was gone - leaving the long airy room without once looking back in her direction.

Stunned, she sat on the warm leather settee for minute after minute after minute. Jake's secretary would come in to investigate soon, wondering why Delia was still here when her boss had gone.

And yet the gigantic question still plagued her. Had he or hadn't he? He'd touched her, pleasured her, sucked her even . . . But had he been
in
her? She tried and tried to remember.

It wasn't until she finally rose to her feet that she received a conclusive answer. When she straightened up and twitched at her lapels and smoothed down her skirt, she felt a slight but very telling sensation. The physical evidence.

As she walked slowly towards the door and the sexless world of office normality, a thin skein of her fluid trickled out from beneath the soft, loose leg of her camiknickers.

'Damn you, Jake! Damn you!' she whispered, both hating the man and already missing him.

Chapter Three

The Gemini Game

eana! Where the hell are you? I know you haven't gone to work!'

At the sound of her sister's angry voice, Deana sank down beneath the surface of her tepid bath and submerged her head to shut out both the voice and the prospect of facing its implications.

But when she popped up again, her streaming hair clinging to her face and neck, the sounds of a sibling on the warpath were still there and getting louder.

She knows! thought Deana climbing from the cooling water and wrapping her nude body in a towel. Somehow she knows about Jake . . . God, I hope he's not someone important at work!

Deana dried herself slowly for a number of reasons. The first was that even though it couldn't be much later than midday, it was already too hot for hectic activity. The second was to give herself time to frame what she could say to Delia. The third was because the action of the towel on her naked skin reminded her of Jake and the way he'd touched her and taken her. And even though his disappearance had been as intensely infuriating as it had been sudden, she couldn't stop reliving what had happened with him!

She'd never had sex quite like it, but it was certainly

a kind she would've liked more of. If I'd been able to get it, she observed silently - as irate knuckles rapped at the locked bathroom door.

'Deana!'

'Yes?'

'I know you're in there! Get dressed and come out at once!'

Narrow, tapping heels receded furiously across parquet flooring outside and by the time Deana had tucked her towel into a makeshift sarong, then unlocked the door and poked her head out, Delia - the righteous avenger - had gone.

When she padded gingerly into the lounge, Deana got something of a surprise. Her sister, always a cautious drinker and never one to partake during the daytime, was corkscrewing open some white wine. Two glasses stood on the coffee table - one in front of the couch and one in front of the armchair - and Deana got the impression that a summit conference was about to begin.

'Sit down, Deana.' Delia's voice was calm as she poured out the wine, but Deana wasn't fooled. Sister dear was well het up about something - the more reasonable she sounded the worse it usually boded.

The wine, for once, did not make Deana relax. This was cheap and cheerful stuff she was sipping, but it still made her think of the brew that she'd drunk last night, the cool smooth nectar that had softened her up for Jake.

'How was the exhibition?' enquired Delia ominously. 'Anything unusual happen?'

For half a second Deana considered lying, but realised just as quickly it was useless. She and Delia weren't the uncanny type of twins who could mind-read, but they were certainly close enough to tell when one another were fibbing.

'Er . . . Yes, there was something actually. A man. I met this man.'

'You "met" a man?' It didn't take all that many words to condemn her. And as she looked into the face that was so magically like her own - yet in many ways so different - Deana knew she would have to tell all.

'It was more than that . . .' Taking a deep breath, then a deeper drink of her wine, she slowly and haltingly began.

As she outlined the extraordinary events on the balcony, she didn't dare look at her sister. Instead she studied her glass like a crystal ball, and in its several times refilled depths, she saw the dark, almost samurai face of Jake. Her handsome, outrageous, insatiable Jake.

'So,' promoted Delia when Deana finally dried up. 'This man you let fuck you? And you think he might be part-oriental . . .'

'Yes,' whispered Deana, as shocked by her sister's language as by anything. Delia never ever used the 'f' word.

'Well, that's rather a coincidence, Deana . . .' Delia topped up her own glass, drank from it, then piling on the tension, paused to kick off her shoes and unfasten the buttons of her jacket.

For an instant, Deana was surprised by her sister's rather glamorous underwear. Then she forgot it again as Delia continued her deadly calm discourse.

'Yes, it's very odd indeed. I met a half oriental man this morning. One Jackson Kazuto de Guile.
]. K.
de Guile, that is. "Jake", as he likes to be called.' Delia's glass went down onto the coffee table. Very carefully. Very precisely. 'He's my boss, Deana, and you dropped your knickers for him twenty minutes after you met him. What the bloody hell were you playing at? I asked you to keep a low profile!'

'You also said there'd be no-one from your section there, so it didn't matter that you'd given your ticket away!' Deana felt indignant herself now. If Delia was going to take on about this, she had to understand it was partially her own fault. If she'd had the good sense to attend the exhibition herself instead of going out with Mr Yukky Russell, the whole situation wouldn't have arisen.

Suddenly, Deana felt almost queazy. If Delia
had
gone to the art gallery,
she'd
have been the one on the balcony with Jake! 'What ifs' and consequences began to stack up like cards, and on top of them all was the realisation that Delia
had
now met Jake.

'What did he say? Did you tell him? What did he say about us being twins?' said Deana.

'Not much. No. Nothing.'

'What are you on about, Delia? What do you mean?' The dizzy feeling came back and Deana gulped down more wine, trying to wash away her forebodings.

'Just what I said.' Delia's voice was odd; she sounded as confused and disorientated as Deana felt. 'He didn't say a very great deal. And because I didn't get chance to tell him we were twins, he doesn't know.'

The bottle was empty now, so Deana twisted a corner of her towel nervously instead of drinking, aware that although the heat was steadily increasing, she suddenly felt cold and shivery.

'So he thinks it was
you
he had last night?'

'Yes.'

'Delia
Ferraro?'

'He calls us "Dee".'

'And did he . . . Was he?'

How to ask? What to ask? A man had come into her life last night and changed her in a way she was hard pressed to describe. She'd been given a glimpse of a whole new sensuality and then had it snatched away just as quickly. But now there was a chance again. A backwards-about-chance, fraught with complications and pitfalls.

'What did he say about the sex?' Deana blurted out at last.

Delia's face was a picture. In spite of everything, Deana's fingers itched for a pencil to capture such a subtle combination of emotions. Her sister was confused, yes, but also full of excitement, mischief and wonder. Her anger was still there, but fading now; replaced by a curious complicity.

'Well,' Delia said at last, 'he's a man of action, isn't he? Not words . . .'

Deana felt her own emotions surge and swirl and rise up to choke her. 'The randy bastard!' she cried. 'He's had you, too, hasn't he?.' She couldn't properly tell whether she felt jealousy or admiration. And if it was admiration, was it for this potent, beautiful, philandering de Guile? Or was it for her cautious, self-possessed sister, who'd done something utterly disgraceful at last? Good grief, it was only just after midday. They'd have to have done it at the office!

Suddenly the two Ferraros were hugging each other and sobbing in a huge, cathartic release of tension. Firing garbled questions at each other, still faintly, mutually jealous, but more than anything, excited. They'd shared boyfriends in their teens, and played tricks on those boys, swapped places without telling them. They'd made up their own private game and seen just how long a swain could be hoodwinked into believing there was just one girl . . .

But this was the first time in their adult life that they'd shared a man - and the first time
ever
that they'd both had that same man as a lover. To Deana it felt like a bizarre but strangely apposite rite of passage.

'What are we going to do?' she asked when they'd settled down and - in an unprecendented move for her - Delia had shucked off her severe jacket and was curled up on the sofa with her skirt all scrunched and her bosom half revealed by an extravagant yellow silk camisole.

'I don't quite know,' replied Delia, absentmindedly fiddling with a shoulder strap, 'but whatever we do, we've got to make a decision by tonight.'

'Why?'

'Jake's coming to collect "Dee" at eight.'

'Oh hell!'

'Quite!'

'You want him as much as I do, don't you?' Deana said quietly, knowing she didn't really have to ask. The twin sitting with her was a brand new Delia, a vibrant, sensual Delia quite different to the suppressed and single-minded girl who'd been stifled by the awful Russell.

'Yes ... I'd like to say "take him and good luck". But I can't Deana, I just can't!'

'Neither can I, love. So there's only one thing for it . . .'

'Oh, Deana, we haven't done it since we were fifteen!'

'It's the only way. Do you have a coin?'

As she watched her sister reach for her bag, open her purse and take out a ten pence piece, Deana was shaking. She mimed 'heads' but couldn't tell whether she wanted it to come up or not.

With a deftness that Deana envied, Delia tossed the coin, caught it neatly, then exposed the face. 'The Gemini Game. Round One. Deana Ferraro to play,' she said with a shrug and a half-envious, half-relieved grin. 'Come on, we'd better sort you out something to wear. He said dress to impress, Deana love, and I don't think you've a single impressive item in your whole wardrobe!'

'Bloody cheek!' replied Deana affectionately, jumping to her feet and following her sister from the room. It was a matter of taste, she supposed, but for once, and for the purpose of going out with one Jackson Kazuto de Guile, she knew that Delia was most probably right . . .

At ten to eight, Deana's senses were turbo-charged, and even though Delia said she did look impressive, to her own eyes she wasn't so sure.

From their combined wardrobes - and cosmetic resources - the two Ferraros had created an accumulated persona called 'Dee'. A woman who was both wild and smooth, and who - with luck - could fell any man on earth. Even half-Japanese billionaires with a penchant for quickie sex.