Fortune in the Stars (8 page)

'Dominic, you're hurting me!'

'Yes, and I shall go on doing so until I get a reply,' he
informed her quietly.

'Just who the hell do you think you are?' she demanded,
wincing with pain as her frantic struggles resulted in a bruising
increase of pressure from his fingers. 'Dominic…let go of
me, for heaven's sake!'

'Where is Lexy?'

'I've already
told
you,' she
shrieked, terrified. 'I don't know where she is!'

'I don't believe you.'

'Dominic, you'll just
have
to
believe me,' she croaked, his chillingly expressionless tones
terrifying her even more than the violence of his hold on her.
'Brotherly concern is one thing, but for heaven's sake, Dominic, Lexy's
twenty-three
!' Her
words ended on a shriek of pure fear as he shook her with savage force.

'I'm beginning to wonder whether you know her at all,' he
raged, his eyes black with fury. 'Anyone who knows her knows that if
Lexy says "I'll probably see you around six", they discount the
"probably" and the "around"…that she'll be there on the dot
of six because that's the way she is, always has been and always will
be!'

'Yes, I know that, but…' But what? Penny
couldn't argue with a single word he had hurled at her.

'But what?' he demanded, the unrelenting pressure of his
fingers making her feel slightly queasy from pain.

'Dominic, you're hurting me… I can't think
straight,' she pleaded hoarsely.

He eased his hold a barely perceptible fraction.

'Apart from her obsession about time-keeping, my sister
also happens to be an exceptionally wealthy woman in her own right,' he
rasped.

'What on earth has that got to do with anything?'
exclaimed Penny, then gave a sudden groan of incredulity. 'Dominic, you
can't be suggesting someone would
kidnap
her, or
anything as crazy as that?'

'There's nothing in the least crazy about it. Anyone that
way inclined would be justified in considering it worthwhile,' he
replied tonelessly. 'There are also other, easier ways of relieving the
wealthy of their money… Or have you forgotten what happened
to your friend Erica?'

'Erica? But that was drugs,' croaked Penny, her blood
running cold.

'Yes. And how those involved must have rued the day their
goose took an accidental overdose and thus put paid to their endless
supply of golden eggs,' he stated grimly, his grip on her suddenly
easing.

'Dominic, please…you've got to stop thinking
along these dreadful lines,' Penny pleaded, guilt swamping her. 'I had
no idea you'd start thinking like this—'

'Otherwise you wouldn't have lied to me?' he enquired, a
chill softness to his words.

'I didn't lie, I…' She took a deep breath,
knowing she had to do something to stop him torturing himself as he
was. 'I'm pretty sure there's a new man in Lexy's life.' She gave a
shiver of fear as she felt his body tense. 'Someone pretty special,
judging by how secretive she's being about him.

'Why didn't you mention this before?' he demanded icily.

'Because… I've just told you,' she protested
disjointedly. 'She doesn't want anyone to know about—'

'What's this man's name?'

'I don't know.'

'You're lying, Penny,' he whispered with soft menace. 'Did
she specifically ask you not to mention him to me?'

'No… I…she just didn't seem to want
anyone
to know,' she stammered.

'So you thought it best not to tell me, either?'

She nodded, that soft menace still in his voice making
words impossible.

'And you think my sister might be in love?'

Again she nodded.

'Well, just let's hope, for your sake, that's the way it
is,' he said, suddenly jerking her against the length of him. 'And
now—what about us, Penny?' he mocked. 'Are you still kidding
yourself you're going to remain technically faithful to poor
what's-his-name, or are you prepared to have a stab at making all my
dreams come true?'

Penny's head was still reeling from trying to cope with
both his sudden action and his utterly confusing switch to another
subject entirely.

'If that's your idea of a joke, I don't find it
particularly funny,' she eventually managed, though only just, thanks
to the painful thuddings of her heart—a relentless tom-tom of
a beat he couldn't possibly be unaware of given the suffocating
closeness of their bodies.

'Of course you don't,' he whispered, his hands sliding
slowly down her body to the hollow of her back. 'But you find it
exciting, though, don't you, Penny?' he coaxed huskily as his hands
slid further, his fingers splaying against the firm curve of her
buttocks.

Mesmerised, she could only shake her head in futile denial
of the powerful blasts of excitement surging through her.

'You're lying again, Penny,' Dominic chided, his soft
chuckle turning to a sharp groan of desire as the sensuous play of his
hands drew her body against the sudden potent arousal of his.

'Please, Dominic,' she whispered distractedly, her every
sense responding with intoxicated abandon to the unequivocal message of
his body.

'With pleasure,' he breathed, his mouth for an instant
gentle on hers before parting it with a bruising savagery that denied
all knowledge of gentleness.

For one stunned instant she was passive in his arms, then
she was fighting him with all the strength she possessed—her
fists trying to pummel on the chest against which they were trapped,
her body twisting frantically for escape from the manacing strength of
his. Yet even as she fought she was responding to the allure of him,
her every sense being assailed by an impossible mixture of razor-sharp
excitement and softly melting langour.

'No!' she cried out in panic as those plundering lips
relinquished hers to burn their hot-breathed trail of devastation
against her throat. 'Dominic, please!' she begged, her hands rising to
tug frantically in his hair as the sharpness of his teeth grazed
against her flesh.

It was as his hands reached up to cover hers and force
them from his head that his mouth suddenly became gentle, anointing
where his passion had punished with the soft moistness of its caress.

'Do I frighten you, Penny?' he asked hoarsely, his eyes
dark enigmatic pools as he raised his head.

Yet the small
frisson
of fear both
his words and the expression in his eyes initiated in her became
transformed to tremulous shivers of excitement as his mouth once again
took possession of hers. And the arms he had placed round his neck
tightened in welcome even as she sensed the bruising savagery of his
first kiss straining to break through the delicate veneer of tenderness
he now applied to this second. And though the swollen rawness of the
lips against which his now beguiled should have been further cause for
caution, it was the trembling, aching sweetness with which that kiss
filled her that left her completely without defence.

Her hands began their own caressing when his impatiently
freed her blouse to slip beneath it and caress against her skin. And
this time, when his mouth unleashed the full ferocity of his need on
hers, she met him unflinchingly, her arms tightening around his neck as
though to trap him forever to her.

'This gets better every time,' he groaned dazedly against
her lips. 'But you know where it has to lead?'

Her answer was in the uninhibited seeking of her mouth
against his.

'You do know, don't you, Penny?' he persisted, drawing his
head from hers.

There was a cold, glittering darkness in the eyes now
peering down into hers, yet it was to the blatant heat of desire in the
taut body enslaving hers that she responded.

'Yes… I know,' she whispered, impatiently
drawing his head back to hers.

It was in that moment their breaths mingled before their
lips finally met that she felt his resistance.

'But not now, my sweet seductress…not right
now.'

'But why not?' she exclaimed, the words of protest winging
from her of their own volition even as she became aware of the sudden
tension stilling him.

His body returned to life as he inhaled slowly and deeply,
then the sensation of his chest expanding against her—as
though part of her own body—was gone as his hands reached up
and caught hers by the wrists, then drew her arms from around him in a
gesture of total rejection.

'Because, for one thing, lunch awaits,' he replied, the
calculated coldness in the voice that had seconds before whispered with
the fire of passion freezing her to stunned incomprehension. 'And, for
another, you've yet to tell me the name of this new man in my sister's
life.'

It was the sharp pain of his momentarily tightening grasp
on her wrists before releasing them that brought the first tentative
stir to her frozen senses. She took a step back from him, her eyes huge
with bemusement as part of her still refused to accept what was
happening. Then, when bemusement became horror, her mind stalled its
acceptance of reality by resorting to dreams of the miracle that could
turn back the clock and erase what it balked at facing.

Then there was nothing but the slow burn of humiliation
seeping its sluggish way throughout her.

'Only the coldest and most calculating of monsters could
do what you've just done,' she croaked, her mouth like sandpaper.

'Really?' he drawled, his eyes narrowed and watchful.

'Really! To pretend passion…just to get a name
out of me…'

'If it weren't so ludicrously naive, your assessment of my
acting skills would be rather flattering,' he murmured in that same
coldly drawling voice. 'But unfortunately the physical manifestations
of desire aren't something a man can summon up to order. Or, to put it
crudely—'

'Oh, I'm sure you can put it very crudely,' lashed out
Penny, the anger now smouldering within her the only thing holding her
together as a devastating trembling began racking her body. 'But you
needn't bother.'

His acquiescent shrug was in direct contrast to the harsh,
humourless laugh it accompanied. 'Judging by your accusation, I feel I
should bother… But rather than offend your sensibilities,
I'll put it another way.'

There was no way she could have anticipated his next move,
and by the time her outraged mind had digested what he had done his
hands had returned to his sides, having already reached out and cupped
her breasts, each thumb having lightly caressed against the rigid peaks
outlined sharply beneath the soft material of her blouse.

'You see, it works both ways,' he murmured, as though
explaining the workings of a toy to a child. 'Granted, the female body
doesn't signal its desire quite as flamboyantly as that of the
male…but it sure as hell does it, wouldn't you agree?'

For several seconds Penny fought to keep her mouth shut,
for once aware that had she opened it nothing more than a rage of
gibberish would have come from it. She was completely
trapped—in unfamiliar surroundings in a completely strange
country, in a lie enforced on her by friendship and in her ludicrous,
totally inexplicable physical entrapment by a man whom she positively
loathed!

And then, as though by a miracle, her head suddenly
cleared, replacing anger and humiliation with giddy elation…
She could always leave!

Her shoulders squared perceptibly as she faced him, and
she almost managed a smile.

'There's cheese salad for lunch, which your sensitive
tastebuds will no doubt reject in disgust. And there's bread warming in
the oven—though I dare say that's done to a cinder by now.'
She turned on her heel and marched through the door.

She was tempted to dance a small jig on her way to her
room, but was still too giddy from relief to risk it.

Yes, she was taking the coward's way out, but she didn't
care. She had come close—within a whisker, to be perfectly
honest—of making the most colossal fool of herself, and now
she was making her escape. Perhaps Lexy was right after all about Leos
throwing a mental wobbly over being made to look foolish, she conceded
indulgently as she entered her room—this one certainly didn't
take at all kindly to it.

She got down a case and opened it up, then froze, her
smile faltering to a tense grimace. Lexy! If Lexy wasn't around she
would have nowhere to stay, and furthermore the rest of her clothes
were at Lexy's place and it would probably be freezing in London by now!

'What exactly do you think you're doing?'

She swung round to find Dominic lounging in the doorway,
an expression of irritation on his handsome features.

'I'm leaving.'

'Really? And where were you planning on going?'

'Back to London, of course,' she snapped, opening a drawer
and removing clothes from it. Lexy was bound to have turned up by the
time she got back, she told herself, choosing to ignore the niggling
inner voice immediately querying such unfounded confidence.

'I see… You plan swimming down to Palma, do
you?'

Penny swung round, flinging the clothes in her hands down
on the bed.

'What's that supposed to mean?' she demanded, furious with
herself for responding with a sharp stab of alarm to his taunting words.

'Well, you can't possibly drive,' he murmured, his tone
oozing reasonableness. 'There are rockfalls and God only knows what
else blocking the road between here and Pollensa, and then there are
several areas of severe flooding further south… Didn't you
know?'

'Of course I didn't know!' she wailed, flopping down on to
the bed in despair. 'The weather's been atrocious, but…' She
broke off with a hopeless shrug.

'Come along and have some lunch—'

'I don't want any lunch!' she hissed, on the verge of
tears with frustration and disappointment. Was nothing in her life ever
going to go smoothly again?