Mistress: Hired for the Billionaire's Pleasure (6 page)

It was the dream, perhaps, that had brought it all back. This was the piece she had played that horrible night at Carlos’s apartment in Vienna, when he had forced himself on her for the first time. They had been engaged for about three weeks, and, coming back from dinner in a restaurant, her mother had pleaded a headache and gone straight to the hotel. There had been no question of arguing when Carlos had suggested she went with him to his beautiful penthouse for a nightcap, and she had done as she was told without demur. Just as she always had.

Until…

Until later. When she had felt his hands, damp and insistent, sliding up beneath her blouse as she’d played the Chopin. And then she had protested and fought with all her strength.

A sob escaped her.

Just at that moment she felt warm hands on her shoulders, sliding down her chilled arms to cradle her from behind. Letting out a cry, she stumbled to her feet, desperate to get away as her mind, made irrational by the terrible memories, made instant, impossible connections. Stepping away from the piano stool, she whirled round, adrenalin giving her movements an intense energy.

Orlando stepped back, holding up his hands. His face was entirely in shadow.

‘It’s you’ she whispered, relief coursing through her. ‘It’s
you.
’

‘Who did you think?’

She shook her head, looking away, feeling suddenly foolish and ashamed. Ashamed of the person Carlos had turned her into. ‘I wasn’t thinking properly…I was just…frightened. Of the dark. Does that sound stupid?’

He gave a low, mirthless laugh. ‘No. Not at all.’ He took a step towards her, into a square of moonlight falling through the huge windows, and it painted silver streaks in his black hair and shimmered on the hard planes of his lean face. ‘You were crying.’

‘Yes…It’s ridiculous, but you were right. I totally lack courage in everything. I’m afraid all the time…’

She stopped as he reached out and lifted her right hand in his. Mesmerised, she watched as he looked down at it with his strange intense stare, turning it palm upwards and unfolding her fingers with a sweep of his thumb, as if he were spreading the petals of a flower. And then he placed his own damaged, bandaged hand over hers, and Rachel closed her eyes, unable to control the series of seismic shocks that juddered up her arm and into some locked-up, secret part of her. Her hands had always been her way of expressing herself, through the music that they created, but never had they brought her this kind of feeling. She felt as if she held a tornado.

‘That’s OK,’ he said bleakly. ‘It’s OK to be afraid. It’s how you deal with it that matters.’

Looking downwards, he could see the paleness of her skin against his. In the moonlight she was so white, like porcelain, and he found himself wondering whether, given the colour of her hair, she also had freckles that he couldn’t see. He wanted to raise her hand to his lips, to feel the coolness of her flesh against his face and breathe in the clean, young scent of her. He let his bandaged hand fall to his side, but somehow his other hand remained pressed against hers, palm to palm. Her fingers were almost as long as his, though finer. But as they meshed with his he could feel their incredible strength.

She moved towards him until she could almost feel the electric current crackling in the small space that separated them.

‘But I’m tired of being afraid. I want to be brave.’

She sounded both wistful and angry, and the words seemed to resonate in the charged air for a second. Then, her eyes never leaving his, she moved closer, closing the gap between their tense bodies, and stood on tiptoe to brush her lips against his in a gossamer-light kiss.

‘Show me how to be brave,’ she murmured.

His answer was a low curse as he captured her trembling mouth with a kiss of ferocious intensity. The miracle of his touch on Rachel’s skin seared a path of purifying fire through the confusion and revulsion Carlos’s touch had left in its wake. Suddenly, in the arms of this man, everything that had scared and confused her seemed so simple and so beautiful. One hand was still holding his, their fingers locked, but she lifted the other to his face, feeling the hard planes of his stubble-roughened cheek beneath her palm, feeling the leanness of his jaw as he kissed her with a passion and purpose that made the past irrelevant. His hand was in the small of her back, moving upwards and coming to rest between her shoulderblades, holding her against him with a touch so light it was almost as if he was afraid to crush her.

‘Rachel…No.’

Orlando pulled away, his fingers still entwined with Rachel’s, until he was holding her at arm’s length. He knew he was a hair’s breadth from surrendering control, but the lure of oblivion was incredibly powerful. To be, for a few blissful minutes, the man he used to be—powerful, capable, in command, omnipotent.

But he wouldn’t use her for that.

‘Please…’

She had her face tilted up to his, so that he could feel the warmth of her sweet breath fanning his cheek. She was shivering, and he could hear the yearning in her voice.

‘You don’t need this.’

With monumental self-control he turned, running a hand through his hair as his gut twisted with desire and agonising frustration. He felt as if he had been kicked repeatedly in the stomach.

‘I do. Oh, God, Orlando, you don’t know how much I need this. Please…’ She was almost sobbing with longing.

He didn’t turn, feeling his hands clench into fists, until the pain in his lacerated fingers provided a welcome distraction from his tortured conscience.

The last thing he wanted was a relationship, complications…companionship, for God’s sake. He wanted to be left alone with his suffering and his pain.

But, sweet Lord above, he wanted her. Wanted to lose himself in her. Now. Right now.

Silently she had slipped through the shadows to stand in front of him, a pale, trembling moon goddess. He stared straight ahead, but in the moonlight he could see the silvery glisten of tears on her cheeks.

‘
I need you.
’

Her whispered words broke down his last defence. With a moan of despair he gathered her into his arms and brought his mouth down onto her soft lips, feeling as well as hearing her answering moan of relieved surrender.

He could feel the frenzied pounding of her heart inside her shaking body. She seemed so scared, so vulnerable and needy, that his arms tightened around her, cradling her against the hard length of his body in an instinctive effort to warm and protect her. It felt so good. Her hands cupped his face, then slid to twine around his neck, her strong fingers massaging the base of his skull, pushing him downward, deepening the kiss, until his head was filled with nothing but the taste of her and the feel of her slender young body beneath the silky nightdress.

Reality melted away, and with it the demons and black dogs of despair. There was nothing now but darkness—a blissful darkness that only accentuated the powerful, miraculous sensations that were exploding inside him. Lifting his mouth from Rachel’s, he buried his face in her fragrant hair.

‘If we don’t stop this now, I won’t be able to.’

‘Good.’

Her voice was low and fierce.
Carnal,
he thought, at the very moment when he felt her hands at his waist, slipping beneath his shirt and moving over the taut flesh of his stomach. All further thought became impossible.

Rachel felt his shuddering exhalation of breath in her hair as her trembling fingers fumbled with his belt. She was no longer shivering with cold, but with excitement. With heat.

At the beginning her overwhelming need had been to have the stain of Carlos’s touch washed from her skin, but at that moment she couldn’t have said who Carlos was. There was no thought in her head but Orlando, and she needed nothing but the feeling of his hands on her waist, his lips against her hair, her ear, her neck…

His thumbs swept upwards over the quivering skin of her midriff to run along the sharp ridges of her ribs. She was lost inside his kiss, but felt him gently pushing her backwards as her hands finally released the top button of his trousers and slid downwards. And then the silence was broken by a discordant clash of notes as her bottom came to rest on the piano keyboard. She was tearing at the buttons of his shirt now, her mouth never leaving his as her hands hungrily sought the warmth of his skin, pushing the fabric down over his massive shoulders, feeling them bunch and flex under her questing fingers.

He was so huge. So powerful. Dazedly, she tore her mouth from his.

‘I want to see you,’ she whispered.

He looked down at her,
into
her. His face was utterly unreadable. The moonlight bleached his skin to an unearthly white, so that he looked like the ghost of some heroic centurion. Only the rise and fall of his broad chest and the dark glitter of his eyes gave away the fact that he was real.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ she murmured in wonder.

He didn’t smile. With an expression of intense concentration he moved towards her again, and caught hold of the hem of her nightdress in his hands, drawing it slowly upwards over her head until she stood in front of him, spread against the piano, completely naked. His head jerked backwards as his hands slid upwards over the flat of her stomach, her arching ribs.

‘So are you.’

The intensity of his voice sent a pulse of liquid need crashing through her, which was nothing to the deranging impulses that sizzled through her central nervous system as he cupped her breasts in his hands, shifting her weight backwards onto the piano. With another decadent, dissonant chord, she opened her legs and pulled him towards her.

It wasn’t Chopin. It was a million times sweeter.

Their mouths found each other, and then he was lifting her, swinging her into his arms and carrying her across the room. For a second he lifted his mouth from hers, negotiating a path between the low mirrored table and the sofas, and then he lowered her gently to the floor.

She gasped as she felt soft, warm fur against her bare skin, twining her fingers luxuriously into it as she raised herself up and let her head fall backwards, arching her back as his lips traced a path of bliss down the column of her throat. She caught the back of his head, pulling him downwards, harder, until they were both lying in the thick fur, their mouths devouring each other, bruising, biting, tasting.

No moonlight penetrated their dark intimacy. The world was reduced to the sensations of the flesh. Abandoning his strait-jacket of self-control, Orlando was lost in the feel of her hair in his hands, her lips on his neck. She smelled of roses, the warm smell of summer and purity and beauty, and as he entered her it was like regaining paradise.

She was exquisite. He heard her soft, throaty gasp and felt her clutch at his back, her strong fingers pressing into his skin, urging him deeper, demanding all of him, as she raised her legs and wrapped them around his waist, gripping him, cherishing him. And then her hands were cupping his face, imprisoning it millimetres from her own as her mouth captured his again, and he felt it open in a cry of high, primeval release.

She stiffened, and for a second was completely still, before he felt her shudder with ecstasy in his arms. It was too much. Helplessly he plunged headlong into blissful release, and as he did so the relentless, smothering blackness in his head was lit up with dazzling explosions of red and green and gold.

‘Does that mean I’ve died and gone to heaven?’

Orlando stirred, rolling over to face her and propping himself up on one elbow. He could hear the smile in her words and wished he could look into her face. He wanted to kiss the corners of that smile and make it fade into something more intense and abstract as his lips moved further down her body. He wanted to see if that astonishing passion of hers lit up her eyes, made her skin glow…

But he couldn’t.

‘I doubt it, if I’m here too,’ he said harshly. There was no peace and light in the place
he
inhabited.

‘Don’t say that,’ she whispered softly. ‘You saved me today. For that, if nothing else, you’ve earned your place in heaven.’

She pulled him down beside her again, sweeping her arm upwards in a wide arc, and then he understood. Remembered. He’d forgotten the carved plasterwork on the ceiling above them, and how at night the charcoal-grey-painted background seemed to recede into the darkness, making the angels depicted there come alive. He’d loved it as a child. But he’d stopped looking at it long before he’d stopped being able to see it.

‘Look,’ she murmured. ‘They’re so beautiful. I can’t imagine that heaven could be any better than this, can you?’

Orlando sighed. Of course he saw nothing. The colours that had filled his head as he’d exploded inside her had faded, leaving a deeper darkness—like an empty winter sky after the fireworks were all finished.

‘I can’t imagine heaven exists at all,’ he said with quiet brutality. There was no such thing as eternal bliss. All joy was fleeting, and came at a price. He had allowed himself this wonderful, unexpected release. But now it was over, and it was time to retreat to the safety of his walls of ice and steel.

In the velvet darkness he felt her hand against his face and tensed against the tenderness in her touch.

‘Oh, Orlando, were you always so cynical?’

‘No.’

‘What happened? Was it Felix?’

He caught her hand, enclosing it in his, feeling the bones and sinews beneath the soft skin—feeling both her fragility and her incredible, surprising strength.

‘Maybe.’ The injustice that his brother’s life—a useful, courageous life—had been extinguished while he was left to struggle on endlessly in a worthless one. That had made him cynical. ‘There were other things too.’

‘Tell me,’ she breathed.

He dropped a kiss into her palm, curling her long fingers around it as if he were saying goodbye.

‘No.’ He got up in one lithe movement and reached for his clothes. ‘There’s nothing to tell. I lost something, that’s all. Something I took for granted. And now I miss it. All the bloody time.’

Especially now. Especially right this moment, when I would give anything to be able to see you
…

He turned away and, suddenly aware of how cold it was, reached up onto the high marble mantelpiece to feel for a box of matches. The kindling in the fireplace caught straight away and he straightened up, watching the small, brave flicker of flame take hold of the darkness.

Behind him, Rachel sat up slowly, tucking her knees up in front of her and resting her chin on them. ‘You told me that it’s OK to be afraid—that it’s how you deal with it that counts.’

Orlando said nothing.

‘I think the same could be said of loss. You can’t change it. But you can deal with it.’

He gave a low, bitter laugh. ‘You think so?’

His coldness took her by surprise. Suddenly she was aware that she was naked, and she felt foolish and exposed. It was as if the closeness that they had just shared had never existed. The barriers had gone back up.

‘I’m sorry…I don’t know anything about it. I’m a pianist, not a psychologist,’ she muttered, getting up and looking around for her discarded nightdress.

He turned slowly round to face her, moonlight silvering his devastating, chilly face, firelight gilding his massive shoulders. Once again she was reminded of some gladiatorial warrior from mythology, and she wondered what had hurt him so badly. What—or whom.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were a pianist before? I didn’t understand about your hands—I thought you were being vain.’

He heard her soft exhalation. ‘I don’t know…maybe I thought you’d know. Some people do, you know—recognise me. Carlos’s PR people did a huge poster campaign for my first CD.’

And in that instant, in a flash as bright, as dazzling as the glowing colours he’d seen earlier, he saw in his mind’s eye the girl in the picture that day outside Andrew Parkes’ office. Realisation hit him like the lash of a whip—sudden and shocking.

‘I’m a philistine,’ he said bluntly, turning back to the fire. ‘I hardly ever leave this place—I’m far too wrapped up in work. The last time I attended a musical recital was in the officers’ mess; it featured songs that I hope you’ve never heard, and it ended with the piano having petrol poured over it and being set alight.’

Rachel gasped. ‘No! Why?’

‘It’s an RAF tradition. It happens every year.’

‘But that’s terrible! How could you bear to do it?’

He looked into the flames. ‘It’s just a piano,’ he said simply, and the implications of his words seemed to drift and settle in the moonlit room.

‘You’re right. I forget. Sometimes I feel like it’s my only friend.’ She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and made an attempt at a laugh. ‘In fact, let’s face it, it is my only friend. I think it really hit me this afternoon, when I was all alone in that room, waiting to be taken to the church, that the only good relationship I’ve ever had in my life has been with the piano.’

Her loneliness was palpable. Orlando was struck by the irony: he had spent the last year brutally trying to shut out the outside world, while this girl was reaching out to it. He felt the ice around his frozen heart crack open a little.

‘What brought you here? To a tiny place in the middle of nowhere like Easton?’ He had to make an effort to keep the frustration out of his voice, but he needed to ask the question. Why had fate brought her here, to scrape the tender flesh off scars that were still healing, still hurting?

She sank back down onto the fur rug and pulled her knees up again, wrapping her arms protectively around them. ‘Carlos’s PR people found The Old Rectory, and thought it would be the perfect place for the wedding. Very English, very quietly grand—which all fitted in with the brand they created for me. They took out a six-month lease on it, but until the day before yesterday I’d never seen it. It could have been anywhere.’

The fire stretched long fingers of warmth into the room and painted her skin in peach and gold. Orlando had heard about the brain compensating for what the eye couldn’t see, but until now he had never experienced it, or believed it was possible. But in that instant he could picture vividly the sadness in her amber eyes, the gentle swell of her upper lip, her delicate chin.

She got up slowly and walked towards him, her head bent so that the firelight made her hair glow like vintage cognac. Standing beside him, she pressed a hand against his chest, over his heart.

‘I’m so glad it wasn’t anywhere else,’ she said with quiet ferocity. ‘I’m so glad it was here.’

He took a deep breath and very gently moved her hand, turning away to spare her from reading the truth on his face; the selfish, hateful truth that he wished she’d never come into his life and smashed up the fragments he’d been painstakingly piecing together again. But then his attention was suddenly drawn away from her to a movement beyond, in the clear periphery of his vision. He walked towards the window, where the piano stood bathed in blue light.

Behind him Rachel stood, washed in fire-gold and spilling out warmth and softness. In front of him was a featureless wasteland of white.

He felt his lips twitch into a smile of irony as the symbolism hit him.

‘It’s snowing.’

‘Oh…’ She came to stand beside him, staring out in wonder at the enchanted garden. Snow already lay like icing on the clipped box spheres, making them look like fat cupcakes, and it had turned the bare branches of the trees into elaborate confections of spun sugar which sparkled in the moonlight. It was like a scene from
The Nutcracker
ballet. ‘It’s lovely…you’re so lucky to live in such a gorgeous place…’

He smiled, and it was as cold and beautiful as the silvered winter garden in front of them. Goosebumps rose on her arms and a shiver rippled through her.

‘Let’s just say it’s rather wasted on me.’

He stooped to pick up her nightdress from where it had been thrown, down by the piano, and untangled it, holding it out ready to slip over her head. Obedient as a child, she raised her arms, suddenly feeling very, very tired.

‘What time is it?’

‘After three.’

She stifled a yawn as it suddenly occurred to her that he had still been dressed when he’d found her. ‘But you were still up…’

‘Working. And checking over the arrangements for tomorrow.’

‘What’s happening tomorrow?

He took her hand, pulling her gently towards the door. ‘The annual Easton Ball, to mark the end of the shooting season. It’s an old tradition.’

‘Oh, how lovely…’ Rachel’s drowsy mind was instantly filled with pictures of ladies in beautiful swirling dresses, men in black tie…Orlando in black tie…

Orlando gave a dry laugh. ‘Lovely? No. I can assure you it’ll be like the seventh circle of hell. The estate still makes a large part of its revenue from pheasant shooting, mainly by organising shooting parties for groups from big corporations and finance houses in London, and they all come down here solely to prove how macho they are. Tomorrow night the house’ll be full of drunken City boys determined to down as much champagne as possible and impress everyone with their lord-of-the-manor credentials.’

‘And you have to organise this thing?’

They were out in the darkened hallway now. The snow had changed everything, making the shadows blue and giving the air a muffled sense of suspended time. Rachel faltered, flinching as her feet touched the ice-cold marble tiles, and in an instant Orlando had scooped her up into his arms and was carrying her towards the stairs. Her eyes were on a level with his. They were narrow, slanting, impenetrable.

‘Not really. I employ caterers and a party planner, and my extremely capable housekeeper does the rest.’

Above her, Winterton ancestors scowled down through the ages and through the darkness as they passed

‘It must be horrible to have your house overrun with strangers.’

‘It’s the first time I’ll have done it on my own.’ For two years Arabella had taken over the job, with obsessive attention to detail, and she had organised lavish themed occasions that had looked marvelous on the pages of
Hello!
but had intimidated the Easton locals deeply. ‘Last year it was cancelled because it was right after Felix’s death.’

Safe in his arms, Rachel let her head fall against his shoulder. She could feel the steady, soothing beat of his heart against her ribs and looked up, seeing the strong lines of his jaw, the sinuous column of his throat. Emotion she was too tired to analyse solidified in her chest.

‘It’ll be hard without him,’ she murmured.

‘Yes.’ Briefly he glanced down at her, and smiled. ‘Though the year before he caused an awful lot of trouble by disappearing upstairs with the wife of a hedge fund manager. I had to give the guy a crate of vintage port to keep the peace. At least I won’t have that to worry about this year.’

Rachel felt a small stab of surprise. ‘Really? I imagined Felix would be like you, but you must have been very different.’

‘No. We were as bad as each other. It’s just that as the oldest I always had the most to lose.’

They were at the top of the stairs now. No moonlight penetrated the courtyard beneath the windows, and the corridor was in deep shadow. Rachel’s head fell back onto Orlando’s chest. He stared straight ahead, trying not to think about how good she felt in his arms, how right.

Because it wasn’t right. It was impossible.

‘Don’t you ever turn the light on?’

‘I don’t need to. I’ve lived here all my life. I know my way around this house with my eyes closed.’

That, after all, was one of the reasons he’d come back.

In the bedroom he laid her on the bed and folded the covers over her, then stood back abruptly, his arms falling to his sides. Already they felt empty.

Turning to go, he had ruthlessly to suppress the masochistic part of his brain that was at that moment taunting him with thoughts of how it would feel to lie down beside her and hold her against him through the freezing hours of darkness, to wake up with his cheek against her hair and know that that red, vibrant, living blaze of colour would be the first thing he would see.

One night…just one night…

The agonising irony of the situation hit him like a punch in the ribs, momentarily winding him. He wanted her. He wanted her and the terrible thing was that having her just now had made him want her all the more.

How very optimistic of him to think that once would be enough.

But he’d had his chance to be open and he hadn’t taken it, and his punishment was knowing that everything that had just happened between them was based on a lie. He’d deceived her into thinking he was something and someone he could never be. The person she’d just made such glorious, abandoned love to was the old Orlando Winterton. The one who had died a year ago.