Back in the Lion's Den (11 page)

A brave and honourable one, she thought, otherwise he wouldn’t have shown such a strong sense of responsibility towards his weaker and reckless younger brother. And not just with those dogs, but in everything, she decided, her feeling for him ballooning inside her until it almost hurt keeping it to herself.

But she had to, she resolved grittily, guessing that he probably wouldn’t welcome what he might think was a love-struck, clingy female in his bed any more than she intended to allow herself to become one. She understood now though why he’d threatened to take Daisy from her in the past, and why he’d vetoed the thought of any other man stepping into her life, and subsequently into Daisy’s, when he’d had a stepfather as cold and brutal as he’d had.

Wanting to heal him more than she could ever express in words, and touching him in the most intimate place, she watched with darkened eyes as his face was scored almost with pain and his jaw clamped tightly as he groaned his need of her.

Made bold by his response, and the realisation of her strong yet reluctant love for him, she pleasured him then in the way she had wanted to please him since that first morning she’d woken up in his bed, driving him wild for her until he finally lost control and surrendered to the power of her femininity.

T
HE
days that followed were halcyon ones for Sienna. She was living in a fragile bubble of happiness, she realised, which, like all bubbles, was by its very nature designed not to last.

Foolishly, though—and she knew she was being foolish—she allowed herself to enjoy the ecstatic feeling that she was floating on a cloud, buoyed up by Conan’s insatiable need of her and hers for him, and kept there by the all-consuming fire of their lovemaking.

He could be excitingly passionate, she was discovering, when they had been made to wait to satisfy their intensifying and increasing appetite for each other because of the presence of Daisy and Avril, or simply because of the pressing demands of Conan’s work. Unable to wait another second to satisfy their screaming hunger for each other, content that Daisy was safely preoccupied with Claudette or his mother, they would slink away like guilty lovers to some quiet area of his private beach, or out to the yacht he kept in the bay. There he would make hard and urgent love to her—just as her body demanded it—without any waiting or prolonged foreplay, driving her crazy with the knowledge that he wanted her with every breath of the passion with which she wanted him, and with shattering orgasms that left them both slick with sweat and gasping at the driving urgency with which he had taken her.

And then there were those other times, in the still of the night, between the sensuous satin of his sheets, when the rest of the world evaporated, when he would drive her delirious
for him with a slow, calculated expertise that had her shuddering and sobbing for release. Then he would show her the true meaning of the phrase “sexual prowess” by bringing her to orgasm after multi-orgasm, before he finally allowed his amazing control to snap and lost himself in the hot and exquisite fulfilment her body offered.

Sienna would emerge the following morning, unable to conceal the glow in her cheeks, or the way her eyes were glittering like brilliant sapphires after a night of unparallelled rapture, her spirits high, her mood buoyant, while she ached for his lips and his hands on her body again with a craving that only making love with him could temporarily slake.

Conan, on the other hand, managed to appear remarkably unaffected—especially when they were in the company of other people. While meeting the pressing demands of his highflying day-to-day business, or joining her and Avril for a drink on the terrace, or even inviting Sienna to accompany him for a meal out with colleagues, he stayed appropriately and yet amazingly aloof. Until he glanced across at her from behind his mother’s chair or across a crowded table, and then the message in his eyes ignited a flame that would make molten heat pool in her loins and keep her on fire for him—sometimes for hours—until it culminated, as it always did on those occasions, in one of the hottest and most basic of couplings that was all the more thrilling for having been denied.

How they managed to keep their drastically altered relationship from Daisy and Avril and everyone else in the house—with the exception perhaps of Claudette—Sienna wasn’t sure, except that Conan had enough discretion for both of them. He made no attempt to touch her if any of the others were around, or only in the most casual of ways. Like when helping her in and out of the dinghy when they had a family day out on the yacht, or giving her a hand up from the shingle where they had been playing with Daisy. And if Claudette alone wondered why there were two damp towels slung down on the base of his power shower, or two depressions on the pillows
on his enormous bed, or even that the bronze leather surface of the desk she was polishing smelled of a sultry feminine perfume when the sun touched it, then she was obviously paid too highly—or, more probably, respected her employer too much—to disclose his very private affair.

Because it
was
an affair. Sienna wasn’t so completely swept away not to realise that. After all, if she had been setting her sights on marriage—which she certainly wasn’t, she assured herself—what could a girl like her ever hope to offer a man like him?

And when it ended, as it surely would, she accepted—when her euphoria was dampened by the thought of what she had got herself into, how awkward would it be remaining in touch with him—as she would have to, she realised, now that she had agreed to bring Daisy to see her father’s family as regularly as her job would allow? It was something pointed out to her rather surprisingly, and not in so many words, by Avril one afternoon, when Sienna was helping her cut some blooms from the villa’s magnificent white roses bushes.

‘I hope you’ve thought about what you’re doing, Sienna.’ The caution was so sudden and yet so patently clear that Sienna looked up quickly from what she was doing and felt one of the vicious thorns prick her finger. ‘I hope you have,’ Avril emphasised. ‘For all our sakes.’

Sienna turned away so that her mother-in-law wouldn’t see the colour that washed up into her cheeks, sucking hard on her wound. The blood was bitter in her mouth—as bitter as the meaning behind Avril’s warning.

‘I won’t do anything that will ever stop you seeing Daisy again,’ Sienna promised, though a little shakily. Because wasn’t she doing exactly that? she berated herself, noticing how much better Avril was looking than when Sienna had first come here, despite the anxiety that was still lining her somewhat gaunt features. The woman had more colour in her cheeks these days, and she was getting stronger by the day, taking on more adventurous tasks without getting breathless,
which was thanks in part to the regime of gentle exercise that Sienna had set out for her, but mainly, she suspected, because Avril was enjoying a new sense of purpose in being able to focus on her little granddaughter. Did she want to jeopardise all that through her own selfishness?

She was being a fool. She knew she was—had been telling herself since that night when she’d gone down to the kitchen looking for Shadow and found him with Conan, before she’d gone willingly into his arms and let him take her to bed. Hadn’t she been advising herself day after day—when she managed to find some rational moment after he’d gone out and she could think with a clearer head—that she must call a halt to what was happening between them before it got out of hand? But she couldn’t, she thought, ashamed of having to admit how weak she was where he was concerned. It was already out of hand.

Part of her had been half in love with him for a long time, she accepted now, although she hadn’t realised it until that night. The night she’d discovered how unhappy his childhood had been, and she had opened up to him with everything that was caring and feminine in her when she’d realised just how cruel his stepfather had been and how isolated and undervalued he must have felt.

But if he hadn’t then he might not have been so determined to make a success of himself, she thought, aching for the little boy who had felt like such an outcast, so underrated and alone. It was his childhood, most certainly, that must have contributed to that determination and to the steel-edged strength of his character, although he probably owed some of it to the young pilot who had fathered him, rather than Avril, who tended to let life ride roughshod over her, Sienna decided, thinking of the father who had never known Conan existed. But it had flawed him too, as his mother had already pointed out.

He didn’t allow anyone close to him. So what right did she have to assume that one day he might—and that it would be
her, she wondered dispiritedly, when she wasn’t even ready to make another commitment herself? None, she told herself bluntly. Yet in spite of the talking to she kept giving herself, and the things Avril had just said, she couldn’t help nursing the hope of a woman already lost to love, even while wondering how she could possibly have got herself into such a mess.

They spent the last afternoon of Sienna’s time in the South of France making love in Conan’s enormous bed, because Avril had taken Daisy to a children’s fête in one of the neighbouring villages. Sienna had wanted to go with her daughter, thinking that the energetic four-year-old might prove too much of a handful for Conan’s mother. But the little girl had protested, telling her very importantly that she was taking her grandmother all by herself—which Avril had been quick to second—and with Conan’s chauffeur driving them to the fête, and Claudette going along to take the strain off the older woman, Sienna had reluctantly given in.

Now, tender in the aftermath of lovemaking, she was lounging naked on top of the duvet, supported by pillows and one arm behind her head, smiling as the bedroom door opened and Conan came in with a tray.

Having made love across lunchtime, and for the past couple of hours since, they were both famished, and Sienna had welcomed his suggestion of bringing something up from the kitchen. She could already smell the fresh crusty bread, and noticed, with her mouth watering, the white and gold wedges of the various cheeses he’d selected under a glass dome as he set the tray down on the table he’d already placed beside the bed. With his casual long-sleeved white shirt—tucked loosely into his pale chinos—gaping virtually to the waist, he looked the stuff of every woman’s fantasy, and Sienna couldn’t take her eyes off that tantalising swathe of bronzed, hair-roughened flesh while he was lifting the dome off the cheeses, any more than she could ignore the musky scent that emanated
from him, and the scent of loving which still hung heavily in the room.

‘Now.’ He was tapping one of the cheese wedges with the curved end of the knife. ‘What will you have?’

‘You,’ she breathed, her eyelids heavy from the sensual bonds which held her captive, finding it extremely erotic being naked when he was already dressed.

‘You’re decadent,’ he murmured, his eyes glinting as he handed her one of the glasses of red wine he had brought up, his heated gaze roaming approvingly over her body.

‘No. I’m not,’ she countered, her excitement building just at the way he was looking at her. ‘If I am, then it’s your fault. Every little wicked thing I do, you’re responsible for.’ Taking a sip of the dark, full-bodied wine, she let the base of the tall glass rest on the dip between her tender, betraying breasts. ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Conan Ryder?’

He thought about what she’d said about his brother’s interest in her waning, and wondered how any man could not want her. He could feel his urges rising again, but there were things that needed to be said.

‘Don’t do that.’

With her chin resting just above her chest, the glass tilted forward towards her, she was drawing her tongue suggestively around the rim of the glass while sweeping him a look of pure provocation.

‘Why not?’ Her smile teased, but she was all wide-eyed innocence as she did it again.

‘Because if you don’t stop it then I’m going to do something I’ll be very ashamed of.’

‘Like sending me back to bed with no dinner?’ She giggled and slid down the bed, fully aware of the way what she was saying and doing was turning him on. ‘Isn’t that what you do with naughty girls who misbehave?’

‘Sienna …’

Ignoring him, she wriggled further down the bed, with the base of the glass still pressed against the valley between
her breasts, moving her hips so wantonly that the wine came precariously close to slopping out of the glass. ‘Oops!’

‘If you spill that …’ Conan’s voice warned of some delicious repercussions.

‘Oh, dear!’ She bit her lower lip in mock contrition. ‘And it would be all over your nice clean sheets too.’

She gasped as the glass was suddenly whisked out of her hand.

‘Sienna … we have to talk.’

His voice held all the gravity of something extremely serious. Like a doctor telling you there was no more room to hope. She heard it, but didn’t want to acknowledge it—any more than she wanted to acknowledge that same seriousness mirrored in his eyes.

‘We
are
talking,’ she breathed tremulously, dark lashes pressed against the wells of her eyes so that she couldn’t see that look of finality that was oh, so obvious in his eyes.

Tomorrow they would be flying back. What else was he going to tell her except that the holiday romance was over? No, not quite that—because it hadn’t been a romance, had it? It had been the uncontrolled and desperate need of one man and one woman to do the most fundamental thing nature demanded of them. And if nature had had its way she would have been pregnant by him dozens of times over, she thought shamefully, except he had always been careful to take precautions.

As he was doing now, she realised, her senses leaping in wild anticipation, because her provocation had ultimately proved too much for him. She didn’t need to open her eyes to recognise the sliding of the drawer in the bedside cabinet, and the familiar urgency of him ripping off his clothes.

It was quick and hot and hard, as once again she obeyed nature’s demands in her hopeless, insatiable craving for him, taking him into her with her legs clenched tightly around his taut hard waist, her fingers locking with his on either side of the pillow high above her head.

When it was over she collapsed beneath him, gasping from the shuddering contractions that had had her crying out with an emotion that had been almost too much to contain.

Now, as he came down on top of her, breathing as heavily as she was, he pressed his lips against the satin slope of her shoulder. After a few moments, in a voice roughened by passion, he advised thickly, ‘Don’t fall in love with me, Sienna.’

She had, she thought hectically, wondering if he had guessed—and wincing a little as he withdrew from her, as so much loving by him today had made her tender. He was after all experienced enough to recognise when a woman’s responses were for real.

Why not?
she wanted to demand, just for the sheer hell of it. As if she didn’t know! Men like him didn’t fall for girls like her. And if the beautiful and sophisticated women that he usually mixed with couldn’t penetrate that hard veneer, what hope did a girl of her humble background have of succeeding?

Feigning nonchalance, she uttered, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ She even managed a painful little smile.

‘I mean it,’ Sienna.’ He didn’t even look at her as he got up from the bed. ‘If you do, you’ll only get hurt.’