Back in the Lion's Den (8 page)

‘Where do you think the money came from for your fancy house, Sienna? For a large part of his investments? The backup? The loans?’

‘But I thought—’

‘You thought what? What you’ve always thought?’ He tossed the hanger down on a chair and started shrugging out of his jacket. ‘That I left my own brother to stew?’

‘But Niall said—’

‘I’m well aware of what Niall must have said. And, yes, all
right. That’s how it must have looked,’ he accepted, retrieving the hanger. ‘As though I was a heartless bastard.’

Which was exactly what Niall had called him, Sienna remembered.

‘Then why did he say it if it wasn’t true?’ Niall might have had his shortcomings, but he certainly hadn’t been a liar, she thought, watching him hanging up his jacket.

‘Because I did refuse him.’ He was closing the wardrobe door. ‘Later.’

‘Why?’

‘You won’t like it, Sienna.’

She watched him move over to the table and drop his keys down beside the bouquet Daisy had given her. ‘Because of me?’

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His silence made it all too plain.

‘I was sick of funding your lifestyle because Niall didn’t have the gumption to control it. Any more than he had the commitment or the dedication for directorship.’

‘That isn’t true! I never asked him for anything! The car. The clothes. Every expensive gift he bought me!’ Nothing had been too good for her, she remembered, with a surge of painful emotion pressing heavily against her chest, although she’d tried to dissuade him from spending so much, concerned about the cost. ‘Niall worked hard,’ she reminded Conan, because his brother
had
always been working. Using that unique Ryder charm on clients to secure deals. Striving to make himself as rich and respected and as successful as Conan was. Sometimes, she thought now, it had been almost painful watching him. ‘He worked
hard,
’ she reiterated. ‘You know he did!

‘But he spent more than he earned, Sienna.’

‘So you decided to pull the plug? Because you thought I was the one spending it all?’

From the anguish scoring her face, he was almost willing to believe that she was telling him the truth. That she really
didn’t have a clue what had been going on. But whether she had or not, it didn’t alter the fact that she was still a cheat …

‘When I did have a change of heart and decided to throw him a lifeline he wouldn’t even speak to me,’ he informed her, the memory eating at him. Because however different their lives had been, or how diverse their characters, there had been an unbreakable bond between them, forged out of Niall’s eternal yet unconscious need for guidance, and out of his own responsibility as the elder brother to see that he got it. ‘I tried again—several times—even ringing him when he wouldn’t see me, but he cut me dead on every occasion. Told me he’d sorted it out for himself.’

Which he had, Sienna thought. By mortgaging a house which, she was staggered to realise now, Conan had paid for. By securing extortionately priced loans she’d suddenly found herself responsible for. And for what? she wondered bitterly.

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ she murmured distantly, clinging to the bundle of clothes she was holding like a shield. ‘Three years ago?’

‘What would it have achieved, Sienna?’ he enquired resignedly. ‘Absolution for myself at the expense of my brother’s reputation?’ The brother he’d always felt duty-bound to protect—from himself, if nothing else, he thought grimly. He had recognised his brother’s weakness even from an early age. ‘Especially when his grieving widow had only just emerged from another man’s bed?’

Wearily, she said, ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘No, of course not.’ He laughed humourlessly, refusing to believe her. Just as he had three years ago. Although he was unburdening himself, she thought, without any problem! ‘Apart from which,’ he went on, ‘I didn’t think Niall would have considered I was doing him any favours by telling his wife just how much financial support his brother had given him.’

‘Then why are you telling me now?’

He was moving towards her with a purposefully predatory
stride, stopping only when he was breath-catching inches away from her. ‘I think you know why.’

Yes, I do!
she thought, weakened by his nearness, by his unmistakable scent that did things to her like no other man’s had ever done, and by the mesmerising gold of his eyes.

Directed only by his will, she allowed him to take the small bundle of clothes she was clutching and drop them onto the chair, his eyes never leaving hers. She wondered if he could hear the way her heart was banging against her ribcage.

Her breath shuddered through her at those galvanising fingers against the nape of her neck. His hand curled around her, drawing her closer, and with her breath coming shallowly, she closed her eyes, her head dropping back of its own volition, her mouth tilted upwards to his.

His kiss was light, gentle, considered, bearing none of the demanding hunger he had shown in the pool. But his tenderness was torment and, made brave by the way he had treated her last night, and by the unbelievable things she had just learned about him, she slid her arms around his neck with a little murmur of acquiescence, wanting this as she had never wanted anything in her life.

He responded with an iron-strong arm around her middle, pulling her against the whipcord strength of his body.

Her own actions had loosened the belt of the bulky robe. She wasn’t aware of it until his hand slid inside the parting garment, and she gave a throaty gasp as, with both hands sliding down to her hips, he pulled her against the rock-hard thrust of his masculinity.

The friction of his clothes was an aphrodisiac against her bare flesh, bringing her wriggling against him in involuntary provocation as each movement opened up a sensual heaven.

Her breasts were begging for his attention, their swollen peaks tightening into hard buds. With a small whimper she thrust them out to him in mindless invitation, flaunting her femininity before him with all the shamelessness of an abandoned nymph.

With the proficiency of a master, he read her body’s silent language, drawing his tongue teasingly down the silken valley between her aching breasts, and chuckling softly at her stifled little groan of need.

One hand sliding under each breast, he cupped them as if they were prize roses, making her wait as he studied them with those darkly penetrating eyes, making her ache for him, making her silently beg.

Very gently he dipped his head to suckle first on one and then the other, tasting each sensitive tip before exploring the pink halo around it with his tongue.

His breath was unbearably sensual as it fanned the burning tip of each pale mound, increasing her pleasure with the cooling dew of his saliva, his actions slow and studied, exquisitely arousing, excruciatingly erotic.

Only it wasn’t enough …

Sensations shuddered through her, sending shock-waves of pure pleasure right down to the aching heart of her femininity, the sensual message they carried clear and unequivocal.

She wanted him! Wanted him as she had never wanted any man. Wanted to be in bed with him as she had been last night—only without restraint and without the barrier of any clothes between them.

He didn’t like her. But she would
make
him like her, she vowed to her own shocked consciousness, although that didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. Driven by her need, she ground her hips sensuously against the hard structure of his and heard him groan with the agony of his own need.

Her hands were running over the fine silk of his shirt, exploring the warm contours of his chest, his flanks, and the hard straining muscles of his back.

She wanted to be naked with him. To feel his body slick and hot against hers. But as she started pulling awkwardly at the front of the immaculate shirt he slammed his hand over hers, holding it flat against his chest.

She could hear the thunder of his heart beneath her fingers, and there were slashes of dark colour along the sculpted lines of his cheeks. His eyelids were heavy, his eyes darkened by desire, but with a soft chuckle that was at odds with the raggedness of his breathing, he murmured, ‘You aren’t well enough for this.’

He was lifting her up, carrying her over to the big bed just as he had done last night. Only now, as she reached out to him, lying with her body unashamedly exposed to him by the gaping robe, it was only his dark-fringed eyes that caressed her supple nakedness, before he straightened and moved away from the bed.

A small moan of disappointment escaped her.

She couldn’t believe it! He was picking up the phone on the bedside unit.

How could he be making a phone call at a time like this? she wondered through a mire of frustration, even if he
did
think he was being considerate in calling a halt to their lovemaking? Had he only been teasing her? Setting her alight only to douse the fire he had ignited with his disciplined self-control? And if so, why? Because he didn’t like her? she thought despairingly. Because of what she still couldn’t convince him she hadn’t done?

‘Yes, it’s me,’ she heard him say into the mouthpiece of what she realised then was the internal phone. ‘Keep Daisy with you for a while, will you?’ The phone pinged as he dropped it back onto its rest.

Aching with frustration, an arm flung out across the bedspread, her aroused body given added voluptuousness by the gaping robe, Sienna still couldn’t believe it as she watched him stride across the room without so much as a glance in her direction—until, with a wild leap of her pulse, she heard him locking the door.

‘Now …’ he murmured, his mouth taking on an excitingly sensual twist as he turned back to where she was lying. ‘Are you going to convince me that you are?’

C
OMING
back across the room, Conan could feel his arousal straining against his trousers.

If Sienna was trying to test his restraint, he observed grimly, she was doing a very good job!

She was lying on her back with her legs drawn up to one side, with his robe covering only her arms and part of one shoulder like a pale frame for the soft lines and curves of her delicious body.

He guessed she was well aware of how tempting she looked. And if she wasn’t, then she was certainly going to find out, he resolved, with a hard excitement throbbing through the lower half of his anatomy.

He allowed himself to take in the visual spectacle of all she was offering him. Skin like silk, from her lovely face and that natural complexion—paler today than it usually was—right down to her tantalisingly pink-tipped toes.

Her breasts were rising and falling sharply as he came and stood over her, their equally tantalising pink crests still swollen from his ministrations.

He restrained the strongest urge to spread his hands across them. Going for the erogenous zones first never had been his style, and he had never been a man to rush things if he could help it. Besides, he enjoyed the art of titillation and reward. It heightened experience, and in the lifetime of his sexual maturity he had never had any complaints.

Her breathing seemed to quicken as his gaze slid down her body.

Surprisingly embarrassed, she made to draw her legs up further, and gave a little murmur—a token of protest—as he took a slender foot in each hand to swivel her round, pulling her gently towards him with her legs a little way off the bed so that he could position himself standing between them.

Her body was so enticing that the throbbing in his loins became almost unbearable. Her waist was remarkably slim beneath those proportionately full breasts, her hips an inviting cradle above the apex of her thighs and the dark downy hair covering the very centre of her.

The silky triangle drew his gaze to the slick, secret haven of her femininity, and he allowed his eyes to linger there for a few moments before lifting his eyes to hers again and enjoying the flush of colour he could see staining her cheeks.

When she moved to pull the robe together he laughed and, bending over her, caught her hands, holding them fast in one of his so that he could continue his inspection, aware from her soft groan and her slumberous blue eyes that she was as aroused as he was.

Had his brother wanted her like this? Been driven mad by that body and that treacherously seductive mouth? he wondered, sliding his forefinger across its lower lip, feeling its inner warmth as her mouth parted to admit him, cushioning him—mimicking that ultimate act. Just as anticipating her surrender was driving
him
insane with wanting now?

Had
he
wanted her this much then too? Three? Four? Five years ago? he asked himself almost savagely, his mood incongruous with his actions as he drew his moistened finger with considered gentleness down the silken valley between her breasts. Was that why he had kept his distance from her? Why he hadn’t wanted to believe Niall when he’d told him he suspected her of having an affair?

The purposefulness with which he pulled off his tie, tossing it aside before unbuttoning his shirt, reflected the grim
path his thoughts had taken. Because the discovery that she was, and that she’d just been using his brother, had at the time rocked him like a tidal wave—especially in view of what had happened to Niall.

But now, as she reached for him, he realised he was just as much in danger of succumbing to her charms as his younger brother had been. Except that he was harder than Niall and far, far more experienced. Experienced enough never to let that happen. Because she was his now by tacit assent, to do whatever he liked with.

Which was to take her and take her until she screamed with the pleasure of it, he realised, hating himself even as his body hardened in scorching response to the thought of having her pleading and begging for him to end the pleasurable torture as he drove them both beyond ecstasy—before he walked away from her without batting an eyelid, letting her know exactly how it felt to be used.

Dragging his shirt down over his shoulders, Sienna allowed him to help her. Her fingers were clumsy—too eager—and fleetingly she wondered how the more sophisticated women of his acquaintance—and especially the likes of Petra Flax—would behave.

But the velvet-sheathed steel of his body drove her negative thoughts from her mind. He was with her, wasn’t he? And even if this summer was all there was ever going to be with him she could accept that, couldn’t she? A casual affair? People did. Other women she knew did it all the time.

‘Conan …’ She breathed his name like a reverent prayer, exalted by the way it felt on her lips, by being able to use it in such a way, like a coveted possession, something only granted to the favoured few.

Although probably more than a few, she thought with a mental grimace as she considered how many women might have sobbed out their pleasure on this same big bed. But she didn’t want to dwell on that.

She wanted to explore him, and she used her hands and her
lips to make her intentions known, luxuriating in the strength of him as her teeth lightly grazed over the hard, undulating contours of a sinewy arm, and her fingers revelled in the pelt of hair that shadowed his deep bronzed chest.

‘Turn over,’ she breathed, thrilled and a bit over-awed by his glorious masculinity.

He laughed softly, doing as she asked.

She looked at him as he lay on his back with his eyes closed, his lashes thick and dark against the wells of his eyes, his hard mouth curving slightly, sensually relaxed.

Delicately she touched the tip of her tongue to his chest, letting it burn a trail over the dark line of hair that went down and down and disappeared under the waistband of his trousers, her senses imbued with his musky scent, the sound of his quickened breathing, and the salty taste of his skin.

‘Are you going to take them off?’ she suggested. Her hands were dealing with the buttons at his waist, her eyes bright with devilish excitement.

‘I was hoping you were,’ he drawled, his smile equally wicked.

Was he?

A little skein of excitement began unravelling inside of her.

He was hers to do with as she wanted. This big, important man with hidden depths to his character such as she hadn’t realised until last night—and then again with that startling revelation this morning. She felt like a kid who had just been given a pomegranate and wasn’t really sure what to do with it. Which was crazy, she thought, when she had been married for two and a half years! But then Niall had never encouraged her to take any initiative in their lovemaking. He’d always wanted to be in control, setting the pace and the rhythm. He’d wanted her submissive as he’d lost himself in her body. Idolising. Adoring. Dominating her …

Shaking the memory away, she slipped the zip down over the bulging fabric with surprisingly trembling fingers, as nervous as a schoolgirl on her first date.

‘Do you usually let your women undress you?’ she enquired, not wanting to imagine anyone else doing what she was doing to him, although she couldn’t help it. Somehow she couldn’t see Petra Flax feeling as gauche and awkward as she felt.

‘That’s none of your business,’ he remonstrated softly, smiling at her cheekiness.

No, it wasn’t, she thought, approving of him not telling her. He would be as discreet about his bedroom adventures as he was about the rest of his personal life.

‘You’re going to have to help me,’ she said shyly.

‘Really?’ He was lying indolently on his back, and his face was a study in desire, from his heavy-lidded eyes and the flush staining the dark olive of his skin, to his full lower lip that was curling almost mockingly now. ‘You disappoint me,’ he said, before making quick work of dispensing with the hampering garment—and although Sienna knew he was only joking she felt his wry amusement like a shaming reprimand.

‘Lie back,’ she ordered, her heart fluttering nervously in her chest.

He was wearing little more than a black pouch that scarcely contained his manhood.

Sienna ran her hand lovingly across it, letting her palm size the dark bulk that was the most intimate part of his body. She gave him a self-satisfied smile, getting her own back when she heard the pleasurable groan that came from deep in his throat.

‘I’ll teach you to laugh at me,’ she breathed, enjoying this sensual game with him that was thrilling and unexplored and totally new to her.

‘Please do,’ he murmured, his sexy mouth curling with wry anticipation, although his eyes were closed and his forehead crumpled in almost pained compliance.

Conan compliant! She almost laughed at the incongruity of it. Like a sleeping lion more like! she thought, considering the strength and power that could spring into action in a second,
and a small frisson sizzled through her at the realisation that it was only the power of what she was doing to him that was keeping him still.

When she pulled down the last barrier—the only thing separating her from him—she closed her eyes and let her nervous hands caress him. He felt so hot and hard.

Emboldened by his groans of pleasure, she bent her head to taste him.

At the first touch of her mouth he shuddered violently against her, the power of his body arousing her in such a way as she’d never known she could be aroused from doing this to a man. Gently she used her breath to fan him, as he had done so expertly to her earlier across her aching breasts.

But, untutored in such a highly intimate game, she let her nerves get the better of her, and suddenly unready, feeling grossly inept with a man of such sexual prowess, she was murmuring like a fool before she could stop herself, ‘I’ve never done this before.’ She couldn’t even look at him as she said it. She had never wanted to, she admitted to herself, feeling the dark clouds of her inadequacy threatening her, just as they had in her marriage. Not once, she remembered. Not until now …

She heard his breath shiver through him.

‘Look at me,’ he ordered deeply.

The eyes that met his when she raised herself up seemed guarded and … What? Conan wondered. Embarrassed? he considered, surprised. There was no doubt in his mind that she was telling him the truth.

So her previous sexual exploits, even in her marriage, hadn’t included such adventurous intimacies, he realised with increasing surprise. Even though adultery had.

His grim acceptance of that, despite her continual denial, still couldn’t diminish the rather chauvinistic pleasure of knowing that there was at least something left that he could teach her. But not today …

Her slender hand was resting on the flat plane of his abdomen.

Reaching down and clasping it in the lean strength of his, he said tonelessly, ‘Maybe now isn’t the time.’

A thin line appeared between finely shaped eyebrows.

Maybe it never would be, Sienna thought, wondering if her failure to please him meant he wouldn’t want such an unsophisticated female in his bed again.

Desperate to do something that would keep him there, she marked a trail of butterfly kisses over the firm bed of his abdomen, her tongue lightly following where her lips had caressed, drawing a map of his body from his waist, down over his hip, from the sleekness of his skin to a thin, rough protrusion of flesh …

She sat up, staring at the jagged maroon line that ran diagonally across the outer side of his right thigh.

‘Where did you get that scar?’ Scars, she amended silently, noticing now that there were some smaller ones further up along his hipbone.

She could feel the tension that was suddenly flexing his powerful body, as though he had taken a breath and forgotten to let it out.

‘Let’s just say I had a difference of opinion with one of our canine friends,’ he said dispassionately, releasing air from his lungs again.

‘A difference …? You mean these are dog bites? How? When?’ Sienna asked, horrified, running cool fingers caressingly across his flesh as though she could erase whatever had caused them.

‘I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been—and I paid the price for it.’ Twice over, he remembered grimly. He didn’t know what had been worse. The violent attack by that savage Doberman, or his stepfather’s … A curtain came down over his thoughts, swiftly blotting out the memory. ‘It was a long time ago.’

A long time ago, and yet he still bore the scars both mentally and physically, he reflected, quietly seething. And the reminder of that time, along with a sudden conscience-pricking
thought as to what he was doing with his brother’s little tramp of a widow, acted like a dousing of icy water over his skin.

‘Conan …?’

As he lay there for a moment, trying to regain his zeal, her soft, enquiring whisper was all it took to pull him back.

And why not? he asked himself ruthlessly, moving as swiftly as a cat, hauling her up against him, before rolling them both so that she was lying beneath him. If anyone could help him wipe out his past then she could, he thought. Surprising though it was, she had the power in her small slender body and her contesting little opinions to excite him like no other woman had ever done.

She gave a deep moan of pleasure at the weight of him above her, her mouth as insistent as his as it parted for him in a mutual blending of searching tongues.

Her skin was soft and damp as he blazed a trail of urgent kisses down over her throat to the invitingly soft mounds of her breasts. He wanted to pour out his pent-up emotions against them. Take solace in the warm haven of her femininity. But how could a girl like her sympathise with the torments of his childhood? Or understand the demons that were riding him now?

She gave a soft whimper as though she was hurting and he raised himself up on his elbows. She was lying against the pillow, her beautiful eyes dark with desire, but her tousled hair was damp where it kinked around her temples, and there was an unnaturally high flush to the fine translucency of her cheeks.

What was he
doing?
he demanded of himself—though for a different reason this time. She looked all in, he thought. Exhausted, fragile, racked by her physical urges—totally unaware that, for him, this whole thing was little more than an act of revenge. To make her pay for how she had treated his brother and to salve his own conscience, if he was honest with himself, for his own contribution to his brother’s reckless behaviour.
She was unscrupulous, it was true, but she still wasn’t well—and he couldn’t use her like that.