Love Play by Rosemary Rogers (9 page)

She wouldn't deign to answer his sneering question even if she could!
Sara turned her shoulder on him after he had released her; leaving her to sink
down ungraciously into a chair.

'Paul is kind enough to let me use his office when I need it.
Unfortunately, he will not be here this afternoon. But the lunch is all ready
as I ordered it, and I am sure you will find it a little better than your
cafeteria food!'

A chilled glass of white wine appeared before her; tiny globules of
water misting its crystal surface. The hand that set it down was strong and
tanned - a few black, curling hairs growing around the wrist and forearm. He
wore a strange signet ring of gold with a raised, encrusted seal in diamonds.

Pulling her eyes away hastily, Sara gulped in a deep breath of air.

'You would not be out of breath, Signorina Delight, if you had enough
fresh air and exercise of the right kind -- and fewer late nights.' His deep
voice was without inflection, but his words were enough to goad Sara into
lifting her chin and meeting his taunting eyes head-on.

'Oh? And what right do you have to offer me advice? Or to drag me down
here without offering me a choice .. .'

'You knew very well when we parted last night that I would come for you
today - did you not? Come, Delight, let us not carry our little mating dance to
extremes! We have each made our moves and now it is your turn to come forward a
little, hmm?'

He put his long fingers on the nape of her neck, sliding them up into
her curls to keep her head from turning away from his frowning face.

Sara's eyes widened, feeling his eyes burn into her; dark coals, as they
had in her dream last night. She would never, never understand what held her
there silent and unmoving, Through her body crept the same languorous weakness
she had felt on waking this morning. Why couldn't she take her eyes away from
his face with its harsh, almost Arabic planes ro it? There was something cruel
and merciless about his face that made her want to shiver with helpless
fascination. Could he be cruel? Why was he pursuing her with the softly lethal
efficiency of a hunting leopard? What did he want with her?

Sara began to shake her head as a shiver of pure terror trickled down
her spine, and his fingers tightened slightly -but enough to hurt when she
tried to move her head again.

'Delight. . .' She saw how his eyes dwelt on her mouth and shivered
again while his voice turned slightly husky. 'You were named for your mouth
that promises just that, Why do we waste time with the games we play?'

He bent over and let his lips brush against hers with deceptive softness
while all the while she could feel what was almost the vibration of the leashed
tension of passion inside him.

It frightened her enough to push her hands against his shoulders with a
strength born of desperation.

'Stop itl Stop it at once! I'm not playing games at all! And I ... I
like to be asked first, if you please!' Belatedly remembering that she was
supposed to be Delight, and her sister would definitely have sworn under like
circumstances, Sara added strongly, 'And I'd thank you ro get the hell away
from me - and stay away!'

He had released her, but the cowardly, cowering side of Sara had noticed
that he had merely stepped back to stand with his back against the door.
Strangely enough, except for his threatening stance he did not appear to be
perturbed by her rude rejection - merely quizzical. 'Why do you say things you
do not mean?'

She shrank back as if she expected him to touch her again, but he merely
crossed his hands over his chest, continuing to watch her in a somewhat
detached sort of way.

'And why are you afraid to answer me?' His nostrils flared slightly in a
way that was somehow menacing, before he added in a softer tone, 'I think you feel
the same thing that I do, but because you are a liberated American woman you
fight against your own basic instincts. I had expected a more open, more
courageous young woman, Signorina Delight Adams! A woman more like your mother
who, with all her faults, is at least a real woman!'

If his sarcastic words had been meant to sting like whips they stung
hard enough to rouse Sara's temper - which was almost never aroused.

She erupted off the chair to take a stand right before him, hands
planted on her hips. On the mirrored wall of Paul Drury's office Sara caught a
glimpse of herself, slim to the point of skinniness, but a good figure for
jeans. Hers were tight and faded, with a short-sleeved red silk shirt (only
three buttons to this one!) tucked in. Pale in the face except for the blusher
that exaggerated the hollows beneath her cheekbones. Eyes made bigger by
make-up. With her hair tied back she looked more like an adolescent boy than a
... hadn't he said 'real woman?'

Chapter 8

Afterwards Sara was to wonder what might have happened if he hadn't
interrupted her raging tirade — couched in language she was ashamed of and
Delight would have no doubt applauded. 'Now just you listen for a change, you
conceited, arrogant, despicable . . .'

He began by hearing her out with his arms still crossed — an
insufferably bored and tolerant expression on his face. But by the time Sara
had told him a few Home Truths (oh, Nanny Staggs would have been proud of her!)
his expression had changed to one of towering rage. He reminded her very much
of a wild animal ready to pounce in order to rend and tear at its prey. But
Sara was too far gone to care any longer. She heard her voice become almost
strident and saw how his eyes looked, narrowed almost to slits as he squinted
them dangerously at her. Thin white lines of tension had appeared on either
side of that harshly cruel mouth of his, and even his nostrils seemed pinched
with fury.

When she paused for breath he said with steely softness: 'Is that all
you have against me for the moment?' prodding Sara into answering rage.

'No, it isn't, as a matter of fact!' She drained off a glass of wine to
moisten her throat. 'As a matter of fact. . .'

This time he interrupted her, his fingers sinking painfully into the
softness of her skin through the thin red shirt.

'As a matter of fact, you are drunk, and incapable of rnaking sense! Did
you not notice that I opened the second bottle of wine during your tirade?
Perhaps you did not want to - you seem overly fond of wine, and unable to
handle the quantities you choose to swallow! Stop it, now!' He shook her
roughly, with enough real force to frighten her. 'Stop behaving like a cheap,
abusive bitch I might have picked up off
 
the tinsel streets of Hollywood!'

Sara was horrified - both at herself (had she really drunk all that
wine?) and the storm of the rage she had provoked in him. All the same, she
couldn't seem to still her runaway tongue.

'I should call Security and have you thrown off the set for ... for
molesting me! You drag me here by force, insulting me all the way, and then you
. . . oh!'

He shook her again until she thought her neck would break.

'Will you be quiet? Molest you indeed - if it's rape I have in mind I
don't go to all this trouble. If that was what I desired I would have had you on
the floor of that stark little lobby the first time I ever set eyes on you! Do
you understand that? Do you understand seduction or do you prefer - a more
direct approach?'

'Stop . . .' Her voice came out slightly above a whisper that he crushed
ruthlessly into silence.

'Stop -' He echoed her mockingly with his lips hovering over hers
predatorily. 'There is only one way to stop your mouth, isn't there? And we
both know it.. .'

To the remembered cruelty of his bruising kisses there was added the
humiliation of having her body held forcibly against the hard, hurting length
of his, feeling . . . feeling everything he meant her to feel, no doubt! The
primitive terror, the wonder and the threat of the growing thrust and hardness
pressing against the inside of her thigh as she stood closely pressed against
him with his arms holding her at the waist and shoulder like iron bands.

There were some moments of pure, unreasoning terror when Sara felt as if
she was being
 
consumed, burned up by the
flame of his passion and his fury. She beat against his chest and shoulders
ineffectually, trying to reach his skin through his immaculately tailored
sports jacket. And then, after the terror came a strange kind of calm - almost
of resignation or surrender.

Give in! Delight would have! Diabolical, cynical whisper from the dark
corners of her mind. What would it feel like to hold a man against her, pulling
his arrogant head down to hers? How would his hair feel under her fingers?

With a sigh, Sara let her arms, now strangely weak like the rest of her-
will and all - slide upwards to lock about his neck. After all, the way he
kissed her robbed her of all reason . . . she didn't want to reason, only to
feel what she was feeling now. Heat and cold - fire and ice and fire again as now
her untried body moulded itself against his of its own volition.

Ohh . . . Sara! Maybe this is going to be it! Even the familiar voice in
her mind sounded ecstatic and not at all sensible.

And what might have happened if the door had not opened? There was a
comfortable sofa against one wall of the large, comfortable-look ing office
that might have been a living-room. No desk - Paul Drury didn't believe in
them.

Sara found herself filled with annoyingly contradictory emotions when
she tried, later, to analyse what had happened and how.

'My goodness! Oh, I am sorry! But I thought Paul would be expecting me
and there was no one out here . . .'

The sharp-featured redhead who stood there gaping at them through
gold-rimmed spectacles had an all-too-ramiliar face, even to Sara, who seldom
watched television. Brenda Rowan - the home screen's answer to Louella Parsons
and Hedda Hopper in their heyday. She had her n television show and a
syndicated column; and here she stood in person, making no move to leave, while
her round, brandy-coloured eyes kept darting between them.

The Duke was more composed than Sara ever possibly could have been. He
kept a firm grasp on her arm, which was
 
probably all that kept her standing there to face Brenda Rowan's
piercingly curious eyes. Sara could, with a sinking feeling of despair, see
those eyes going beyond her to the couch - cutting to the table where an
elegant lunch was laid out, uneaten - cutting to the second open bottle of
wine; empty glasses. Oh, God, what now?

"Are you a friend of Paul's? And this is Delight Adams, ofcourse .
. .' Sara found herself skimmed over cursorily as Brenda's eyes fastened on
Riccardo's saturnine face, 'Don't I know you from somewhere?'

'Perhaps!' He was all smooth politeness as he man-oeuvred Sara towards
the door he had kept her from earlier. 'But I am certainly not my friend Paul
Drury. Would you care to wait for him? I was about to take Miss Adams back to
the set.'

Brenda Rowan smiled suddenly, her mouth surprisingly wide in a
pinched-looking face. 'Oh - of course! And now I do recognise you. Is this a
new romance? Is it a secret?'

'It . . .' Sara started to say when he cut her off without seeming to,
his manner perfectly charming as he smiled at Brenda.

'It's a secret, of course. Both Delight and I need time - to sort out
our feelings.'

That got them past good old Brenda, and Sara forced herself to keep
silent until they were out of earshot.

'What did you mean by that. . . that . . .!'

He was back to cool sarcasm.

'You are not going to call what I told that nasty little woman a lie? Of
course we are sorting our ... feelings out. And you, especially, carissima,
should not let yourself be caught out too often in lies yourself, or I might
not believe anything you tell me!'

'I don't care if you do or not! And now will you please let me go?
Sara's voice shook, and she was beyond caring whether he noticed or not.

'A few minutes ago you were clinging to me! Why do you fight against
yourself?'

Goaded beyond endurance, Sara looked for words that would stop him -
keep him away from her. Delight. She was supposed to be Delight; she mustn't
forget that.

The words tumbled out as she twisted out of his grasp, staring him in
the eye. 'I ... I happen to be in love with someone - although perhaps you're
not capable of understanding what that means. I'm engaged to the man I love,
and I don't need any substitute lover!'

'Are you sure of that? You missed your lunch — so why don't we talk
about it over dinner? You seem to be a very confused young woman!'

'I won't have dinner with you — you must be insane! I'm having dinner
with someone else tonight.'

'Oh? With whom?'

He was insufferable! 'It's none of your . . .' Sara had begun when she
saw Garon Hunt, saying good-bye to his wife. Sara watched fascinated in spite
of herself. Were they friends or lovers? Or both, as rumour had it? He bent his
head to give Sally a light kiss on the tip of her nose — patted her on the
bottom as she went through the door with a laughing comment over her shoulder.

'With him? Riccardo's voice was disbelieving.

Sara flushed against her will, hoping he hadn't noticed as she said with
distant stiffness: 'I really can't see how it could possibly concern you. And
now if you don't mind . . .'

When he stood back without another word to let her pass, Sara didn't
dare look back - far too relieved at having been set free to question his
sudden acceptance. She didn't care what he thought! And after all, Garon had
only asked her out to dinner — it probably didn't mean anything except
gratitude towards Mona for giving him his first big break when she picked him
to co-star with her in Bianca.

For once, Sara was glad to see that the other two occupants of 'her'
dressing room were there when she returned. Ignoring their curious, rather
sullen looks she curled up in the one available chair and closed her eyes,
willing herself not to think. At least, not until it was five o'clock and she
had a decision to make,