Double Dealing (13 page)

“Open yourself for me, witch. Let me know all there is to
know about you.”

She obeyed, moaning his name again and again as he stroked
the
petaled
, inner reaches of her desire. Her hands
locked in his hair, urging him to her, but he held back from the final union.

“Gabriel, please,” she whispered impulsively, “I can’t bear
any more.” With all her strength she tugged at the mass of his shoulders,
trying to pull him onto and into her body.

Gabriel gloried in the words of her passionate surrender, exploring
the dampening heat between her legs with wonder. She wasn’t playing any games.
There was no artifice in this. Samantha was aching for him, wooing him with the
primitive demands of her womanhood. The scent of her body was rich and
compelling. He felt at once trapped in her power and magnificently in control
of this elusive creature under him.

This woman was his and his alone tonight. The knowledge pounded
in his brain and in his loins. He would take her completely, lose himself in
her, fill her totally. He felt an irresistible need to imprint himself so
thoroughly on her senses that she would never be able to look at another man.

And then be could wait no longer. More roughly than he
intended, he pulled her legs apart and lowered himself down onto her until he
was poised at the flowering entrance of her body.

“Gabriel!”

He surged fiercely forward, sheathing himself in the thick,
tight velvet folds of her. He felt the shock of his entry ripple through her
body and heard the soft gasp of startled wonder at the back of her throat.

Gabriel halted at once, his face tight with the conflicting emotions
of passion and concern. “Honey, are you all right? Have I hurt you, sweetheart?”

“Hurt me? No,” she managed, clutching at his heavy shoulders.
“Oh, don’t stop, Gabriel, please,” she sighed. “Don’t stop now.”

The concern faded from the tight lines at the corner of his
mouth, and he lowered himself heavily to her breast with a muttered groan of
desire. Then he was thrusting with a slow, steady rhythm that made Samantha overwhelmingly
aware that the solidness of him extended to every part of his body.

The crescendo of his lovemaking mounted, becoming an
irresistible spiral of sensation that grabbed at her senses and pulled them
headfirst into the final vortex.

Samantha was overwhelmed at the moment her climax took her.
Unaware of how deeply her nails raked his back or how tightly her legs wrapped
his surging hips, she instinctively sought to bring him into her completely and
found herself exploding around him.

Gabriel experienced a purely masculine thrill of satisfaction
as he felt the small, internal convulsions shake her. He managed to raise his
head so that he could glimpse the sweep of emotion across her face, and then he
drank the echo of her cry from her parted lips.

Before he had even swallowed the sound, his own pulsating
need erupted. He clenched one hand violently into the flesh of her buttocks,
holding her in place while he fed her the full force of his passion.

The tumult seemed endless, and then it began to fade,
leaving the pair on the bed in a tangle of perspiration-dampened arms and legs.
Languorously Samantha clung to the man who made love like an angel or a devil,
she couldn’t decide which. She didn’t care if the night around them never
ended. She wanted to know the pleasant, satisfying heaviness of him spread along
her body for as long as possible. The present seemed quite perfect in that
moment; the past and future totally forgotten.

When she opened her eyes at last, it was to find Gabriel
watching her with an expression of lazy satisfaction that was very male. The
look on his face helped bring back reality.

“You seem very pleased with yourself,” she murmured, trying
to decide exactly how she should be feeling. Stupid? Wanton? Marvelously
abandoned? Pleased? What in hell had she done by going to bed with this man?
All her sound reasoning dissolved into insignificance as she tried to adjust to
the new status of her relationship with Gabriel Sinclair. But her body was too
relaxed, her senses too sated to think about it properly just now. She needed a
little time.

“I’m only pleased with myself if you are,” he told her simply,
leaning down to brush her full mouth with his own. “Only if you are.”

In spite of herself, Samantha relented, a smile gentling her
features. “You must know I am.” It was the truth, and there was no reason not
to be honest about it. She couldn’t be anything less than honest at the moment,
anyway. Her natural defenses were down, unable to maintain themselves in the
warm aftermath of his lovemaking.

“What are you thinking about?” Gabriel demanded abruptly,
twisting his fingers in her hair and holding her head so that she had to face
him on the pillow. “And don’t tell me it’s business!”

“Ah, but it was, in a way,” she murmured sleepily.

“S-s-
shi
–”

“Don’t say that!” she protested, hushing his mouth with the
tips of her fingers.

“I can’t. I never could. Not when I really needed to. When I’m
angry or tense enough to make use of it, I’m usually too angry or too tense to
get the word out in one piece! What are you laughing at, witch?”

“You, of course. Who else would I be laughing at?”

He let that pass. “Were you really thinking about business?”

She said slowly, “In a way.” How could she begin to put her
fears and hesitations into words? She didn’t have to. Gabriel did it for her.

“You’re worrying about having an affair with a man with whom
you’re trying to do business, aren’t you?” he challenged softly. “Afraid that I’ll
somehow get the idea you’re trying to buy my cooperation?”

She felt the heat in her face as he baldly stated the basic
problem. “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea, Gabriel,” she began in a
remote little voice.

“Don’t worry,” he told her roughly, “I won’t. I know damn
good and well you don’t make a habit of doing business like this!”

Her eyes widened slightly at the absolute certainty in his
words. “What makes you so sure?” she whispered starkly.

His glance traveled from one end of her body to the other,
noting each salient feature as if she were a new possession he was intent on
enjoying. “I’m not sure I can explain,” he admitted. How could he put into words
the way he saw her? Too complex, too soft, too intelligent, and just plain too
passionate to involve herself in meaningless affairs. “You’d be a different
sort of woman if you’d been conducting business that way for the past few
years,” he said finally. “And then there was the physical part…. “

“The physical part!” she exclaimed. “You mean I didn’t
demonstrate sufficient expertise?” The gold in her tortoiseshell eyes flamed
abruptly.

Gabriel answered with a quirking smile, extending his hand
so that the pad of his thumb grazed lightly over her nipple. “That’s not what I
meant at all. It’s just that I had the impression it’s been a hell of a long
time since you’ve been to bed with a man. You were like a coiled spring, honey.
How long has it been, sweetheart?”

“That’s not a gentlemanly question, Gabriel!”

It’s been months for me,” he said simply, “several.”

She flushed, surprised at the confession. It wasn’t the kind
of thing most men would admit to so readily. It didn’t fit with a strong, macho
image. “It has?”

“Umm. And what’s more, I probably would have plodded along
in happy celibacy for quite a while longer if you hadn’t appeared on the scene.
Samantha, I can’t even remember wanting a woman as badly as I wanted you
tonight!”

“Oh, Gabriel,” she breathed, wondering for the hundredth time
why he kept managing to take her off guard.

“You don’t have to look so delighted with the news,” he
chided.

She smiled dreamily. “Well, you’re not the only one who’s
been plodding along in happy celibacy. But for me it’s been about three years.”

“Three years!” He looked startled.

“I didn’t realize what I’d been missing.” That much was the
truth. “It was never this good before.” And that was also the truth. The
literal truth. She’d never known anything as all-consuming and as totally
satisfying as Gabriel’s embrace.

“And was it worth waiting for?” he prodded, watching her
expression as if deeply fascinated by it.

“I don’t think I ever really knew what true seduction was
until tonight,” she whispered with a candor that shocked her. “You are a very
thorough man, Gabriel Sinclair.”

“Only because I wanted you so thoroughly and completely,” he
growled, his mouth closing over hers in renewing passion.

Samantha had a fleeting recollection of having imagined that
Gabriel would make love by the book. But if he did, it was a book he, himself,
had written.

Samantha awoke to sunlight and a blindingly clear
realization of her own stupidity. She sat up in bed, instinctively clutching
the sheet, and turned to stare down at the man who slept beside her. Gabriel’s
dark hair was rakishly tousled, the first time she’d ever seen it anything but
neatly combed. The white sheet foamed at his waist as he lay magnificently
sprawled like a contented hunting cat on his stomach. Some angel!

What a fool she had been, Samantha told herself in rising
self-disgust. What an absolute idiot! What in the world had possessed her? No,
scratch that question. It was only too starkly clear in her brain what, or
rather who, had possessed her.

Possessed. The word sent her edging hurriedly off the bed,
out the door, and down the hallway to the bedroom she should have stayed in
last night. Once inside she closed the door, violently aware of her own nakedness,
and then gave vent to the anger which was suddenly seething in her. Her closed
fist struck the side of her leg in impotent fury.

“Damn! Damn!
Damn
!”

She had traded whatever small edge she’d held for a night of
passion.

Now the night was over, and she was left with the intuitive,
devastating knowledge that she was no longer in full control of the situation.
Months of planning and working and research had hung in the balance, with success
depending entirely on how well she handled Gabriel Sinclair. And she’d
undoubtedly blown the whole deal within twenty-four hours of coming face to
face with the man.

Good God! Was she fated to forever go about making an
absolute fool of herself where men were concerned? She could envision Vera
Maitland’s pitying expression only too well. Thank heaven her mother hadn’t
known about her plans!

“Samantha Maitland, you are an idiot!” she hissed at herself
in the mirror, the gold in her eyes glittering with the force of her feelings. How
could she possibly restore her sense of being the one in charge, the one who
was controlling and manipulating the situation after her physical surrender last
night?

Surrender.

That was as bad a word as possessed. Both of them were words
which had never even had much of a place in her vocabulary until last night.
They were words she’d never used to describe the act of going to bed with a
man, words her mother would have despised as hangovers from the Dark Ages.
Women today didn’t surrender to men, not intelligent, independent, thinking
women. They might choose to share an evening of mutual pleasure, or they might
let themselves relax physically with a man. They might even decide to explore a
mutual passion with a man. But they didn’t do something archaic and primitive
like
surrender
to their partners!

Samantha knew all about sex. She had been taught to view it
from a proper perspective long before she’d had any personal interest in the
subject. Vera had seen to it that her daughter grew up with a healthy, balanced
understanding of the simple biological function. At its best, sex was a
mutually agreeable experience to be kept in its proper place. Even during the
excitement of the affair with Drew Buchanan, Samantha had never lost her
perspective on the subject of sex. It could be boring or fun, exciting or dull,
passionate or prosaic.

It was not an act of surrender on the part of the woman.

She turned away from the mirror, too disgusted with her own
image to continue berating herself in front of it. How could she possibly put
last night into a proper perspective? She hadn’t hopped into bed with a man for
an evening of fun and games. She hadn’t even gone to bed anticipating a night
of pleasure to be casually shared with a man who interested her physically.

She had given herself to Gabriel, completely, and if she
hadn’t known intellectually that it wasn’t possible, she would have said
irrevocably. Talk about archaic female thought processes!

In the cold light of dawn she could still feel the way her
body had been tuned to his. Her muscles even ached a little from the remembered
demands of his passionate strength. And to think she had imagined him as an unimaginative
lover! He had taken her by storm.

But what really mattered, Samantha told herself grimly as
she shoved open the door which led to the bathroom, was that Gabriel had known
just how total her surrender had been. Even as she’d fled his bedroom a few minutes
ago, she had been aware of the satisfaction and contentment which had etched
every line of his relaxed body. And she could still hear the words of claiming and
possession he had whispered to her during the night.

“Shit!”

He might not be able to say it, but she certainly could, and
the elemental word certainly fit her mood. Samantha slammed into the shower,
yanking the tap with such force that the water hit her body like a waterfall.

Talk about giving away the psychological edge! How in hell
could she possibly restore the balance of power in the relationship? How could
she put matters between herself and Gabriel back on a business footing after
last night? He would wake up with the knowledge that he was now completely in
control of the situation.