At No Man's Command Page 6

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Was.’

  She moved away from the cabinet to go back to the piano. She closed the lid over the keys like someone closing a conversation...or a coffin. A shiver scuttled over the back of James’s neck like the legs of a spooked spider. ‘He’s dead,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She gave a shrug but he couldn’t decide if it was a ‘thank you’ or ‘I don’t need your sympathy’ one.

  ‘Who was he?’

  Her eyes met his but there was no sign of anything resembling emotion. A curtain was drawn. A shutter was down. ‘He was a friend I had once. A childhood friend.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Her gaze moved away again. ‘Do you play a musical instrument?’

  The swift change of subject alerted him to an undercurrent of emotion she seemed at great pains to conceal. He was intrigued by her shadow self. The side he had seen last night when she had sprung up from that sofa with her fists at the ready. The side of her he briefly glimpsed while she sat playing her music. She was capable of deep feeling. No one who wrote music like that could possibly be cold and indifferent, without feeling and depth. But, rather than push her, he decided to leave it. For now.

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t inherit my mother’s musical ability. I’m sure it was a bitter disappointment to her. I think she would’ve liked me to be a virtuoso of some sort.’

  She pushed the hood back off her cloud of tousled hair to face him levelly. ‘Your father was wrong to make her give up her career.’

  James studied her expression for a moment. ‘She told you about that?’

  She pressed her lips together as if regretting having spoken. ‘I don’t think she’s disappointed you didn’t pursue music as a career. She’s very proud of your work, as any decent parent should be. You’re good at what you do. Brilliant, actually. Everyone raves about your designs. They’re so innovative.’

  He gave her a wry look. ‘A compliment from the cynical Aiesha Adams. Well, I’ll be damned.’

  ‘Make the most of it. It won’t happen again.’

  She moved past him to leave but he captured her arm on the way past. He hadn’t consciously realised he was going to touch her until he felt his fingers wrap around her slim arm. Even through the soft velour of her tracksuit sleeve he could feel the snap-crackle-pop shock of his touch on her.

  She glowered at him. ‘If you want the other eye to match your right one then keep on doing what you’re doing.’

  ‘What am I doing?’

  ‘You’re touching me.’

  He kept his gaze locked on her fiery one as his thumb found the thud of her pulse. ‘I thought you liked being touched by me. I thought that was your plan. To seduce me.’

  She pulled back from his hold but his fingers tightened. So did his groin. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  Her game plan had changed. She was back-pedalling after coming on so strong. He had got too close. Seen a part of her she didn’t want to reveal. He had never met a more fascinating person. She was all smoke and mirrors. Secrets and cover-ups. It made him want her all the more. She was unpredictable. Mysterious. Captivating.

  He moved in closer, breathing in the exotic gardenia-like flowery scent of her, watching as her black pupils in that stormy sea of grey grew wider. Her nostrils flared as if she, too, were breathing in his smell like a she wolf did a mate. Primal need overruled his common sense. His body blanked out the warnings of his mind like a master switch turning off a source of power, rerouting it to where it was needed the most. Blood flowed thick and strong to his groin. He felt it surging there in a hot turgid tide that no sandbag of rationality was ever going to withstand.

  He hadn’t realised it would be so hard to fight it. To deny it. To ignore it. His desire for her had smouldered in his blood and body for so long it took nothing but a look or touch to set it raging. ‘You don’t like it when someone else is in control, do you?’ he said. ‘You like to drum up the action but you don’t like being on the receiving end of it. That’s way too submissive for you, isn’t it?’

  She continued to glare at him but every now and again her gaze would flick down to his mouth as if remembering how it had felt to have it fused with her own. The tip of her tongue passed over her lips, leaving them moist and shimmering. She could have moved away if she wanted to. He had deliberately relaxed his hold; his fingers were barely more than a loose bracelet around her wrist.

  He brought his head down and heard the sharp intake of her breath as his mouth came down to hover above hers. Their breaths mingled. Her pulse raced beneath his fingers. His skyrocketed. ‘You know I want you,’ he said.

  ‘So?’ Her voice lacked its usual sassy edge. It sounded thready. Uncertain. As if she had somehow drifted out of her depth and wasn’t sure how to get back to safety. But even so her body swayed towards his like a fragment of metal being pulled by a magnet.

  He brushed his bottom lip against her top one, a teasing nudge. A come-and-play-with-me invitation. ‘So maybe it’s time I did something about it.’

  ‘Enter a monastery.’

  He smiled against her lower lip. ‘There’s a thought.’

  ‘If you kiss me you’re a dead man.’

  ‘So shoot me,’ he said, and covered her mouth with his.

  CHAPTER SIX

  OF COURSE AIESHA didn’t kill him. She didn’t even pull away. She opened her mouth to the first hot commanding probe of his tongue and let the lust that smouldered between them run free. It was like the flare of a struck match following a trail of fuel. It licked along at breakneck speed, consuming everything along its way. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t in control any more. She needed this—needed him—like she needed air to breathe.

  His mouth plundered hers, deeply, erotically, thoroughly. His tongue tangled with hers, playfully and then purposefully. Demanding hers to submit to his. She whimpered at his masterful command; he had taken control of her mouth and there was nothing she could do but respond. The thrill of his kiss made her body shiver with delight. Her senses went into a tailspin. Her heart jumped and leapt and sprinted. Her breathing became laboured as she tried to keep up with the madcap pace of his untrammelled passion.

  His hands weren’t content to hold her by the hips this time. This time they were everywhere. Her hair, the small of her back to press her close against his erection, then cupping her breasts, then tugging at her clothes as she tugged and pulled at his.

  She gasped as his hand uncovered her breast. His hand was still cold from being outdoors, but it didn’t matter as her body was sizzling hot. She was burning up with molten heat. She could feel it coursing through her body like a red-hot tide.

  His thumb rolled over her nipple, back and forth, round and round, making her flesh pucker and tighten and every nerve wriggle and leap in rapture. So few men knew how to handle a woman’s breast. He did. Not too hard. Not too soft. He seemed to read her body, gauging its needs like a maestro did a temperamental instrument. The strings of her desire buried deep in her body tightened, hummed and sang.

  His mouth left hers to suckle on her breast, drawing her nipple deep into his mouth, his tongue rolling and circling, rolling and circling while her legs all but folded beneath her. He switched to her other breast, lavishing it with the same wickedly arousing attention.

  He moved to the underside of her breast where the skin was supersensitive. No one had ever kissed her there before. No one had ever moved their lips on her with such careful and gentle attention. His lips moved over her skin like a fine sable brush moving over a priceless work of art.

  He came back to her mouth, sweeping her away again on a hot, drugging kiss. That was why he was so bewitching. He could be so gentle and yet so passionate. Her body responded with deep clamouring longing, her insides squeezing and contracting with ple
asure at the thought of him finally giving in to his desire for her. He was not trying to disguise it. He was not trying to deny it. He was giving it full rein and it was exactly like a bolting horse—fast, furious and unstoppable.

  But she wasn’t letting him have it all his own way. She got his belt out of his trouser lugs and unzipped him in a matter of seconds, taking the hot, hard, pulsing heat of him in her hands, stroking him, caressing every inch of his potent length until he was oozing with pre-ejaculatory fluid.

  He gave an agonised groan. ‘You’re killing me.’

  She sent him a sultry smile. ‘Told you you’re a dead man.’

  He sucked in a harsh-sounding breath and pulled her hands away, holding them in a steely grip that made her insides contort with restless need at the latent strength he possessed. ‘No. Wait. Not like this.’

  Was he having second thoughts? Pulling away from her intellectually as well as physically? Rejecting her? Aiesha kept her tone light and teasing even though disappointment stalked her. ‘You’re not frightened of a little carpet burn, are you?’

  His dark blue eyes searched hers for a moment. ‘I want you so badly I’d lie on a bed of sizzling hot coals or nails. Or both.’

  ‘But?’ Her heart sank a little further. ‘There’s a but coming, isn’t there?’

  His fingers loosened around her wrists, his thumbs moving over the backs of her hands in a slow, stroking motion, his eyes still holding hers. ‘I never have sex outside of a formal relationship.’

  ‘No one-night stands?’

  ‘No.’

  Somehow it didn’t surprise her. He would always colour between the lines. There was no hint of rebel in him. He was cautious by nature, sensible. He led rather than followed. He controlled rather than being swayed by impulse. He didn’t have to look back on all the wrong choices he had made. He probably slept through each night without a single niggle of doubt or self-recrimination to disturb him.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ she said. Loneliness. Emptiness. ‘Think of the money you’d have saved on dates if you just got the deed done on the first night.’

  He kept holding her hands. Kept holding her gaze in that studied way of his that made her feel he was seeing through the brash layers of bolshiness to the sensitive and wounded girl within. Aiesha would have squirmed but she was too well trained. Years spent hiding her feelings had made her a master at keeping the facade intact. She might have lapsed last night while he found her sleeping, but the front was up again and it was staying up.

  ‘I like to get to know a person before I have sex with them,’ he said.

  Aiesha gave him a bold smile. ‘Hi, I’m Aiesha. I’m twenty-five, almost twenty-six, and I’m a Vegas lounge singer. Well, I was until a few days ago. I’m currently unemployed.’

  ‘How did you end up working in Vegas?’

  She could feel her smile faltering and worked hard to keep it in shape. She wasn’t going to tell him she had followed a dream only to have it blow away on the Nevada dust. The audition she had thought would be her big break had turned out to be for a job in a lingerie bar. Playing the piano in her underwear wasn’t her thing, nor was doing erotic dance tricks on a stripper’s pole to eke out tips from gawping men, but by then her money had been running too low to fly back to London. She had taken the lounge-singer job instead, hoping it would be a springboard to getting noticed as a serious musician. But she’d soon found out no one cared a jot who was behind the piano as long as it got played. ‘I liked the party atmosphere. And the weather. It was a change from cold and wet and dismal London.’

  He studied her for another long moment, his expression hard to read. ‘Favourite colour?’

  ‘It’s a toss-up between pink and blue. I can never decide.’

  The left side of his mouth kicked up half a centimetre. ‘Best friend?’

  Aiesha looked at him numbly. ‘Um...pass.’

  His half smile was quickly replaced with a frown. ‘Are you saying you don’t have a best friend?’

  ‘I have friends.’ None that I trust. ‘I just don’t have a best one.’ Not any more.

  ‘How do you like to spend your spare time?’

  Aiesha made sure she didn’t have spare time. Any breaks she took were packed with activity. Spare time allowed thoughts to creep in and ghosts from the past to haunt her. But then, relaxing wasn’t something she had learned as a child. Hypervigilance was the setting her brain was jammed on. Watching out for danger, keeping alert to exploitation, always on guard against attack. Nope, it didn’t make for a chilled-out personality. ‘Hey, don’t I get to ask you some questions?’ she said.

  ‘Not until I’ve asked mine.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’ She threw in a pout for good measure. ‘You’re getting a head start.’

  He smiled that half smile again as he pushed her bottom lip back in with the tip of his finger, like someone closing a drawer. ‘Answer the question.’

  Aiesha’s lip tingled where he’d touched it. Tingled and burned. Ached. ‘I hang out.’

  ‘Hang out where?’

  She gave a negligent shrug. ‘The gym. The pool. The barre.’

  His brows met over his nose. ‘The bar?’

  Aiesha rolled her eyes. ‘Not that sort of bar. I do a ballet class. It’s really good for posture and balance.’

  His frown hadn’t quite gone away but it wasn’t one of disapproval, more one of intrigue. Maybe even a little respect. ‘Where’d you go on your last holiday?’

  ‘San Diego.’

  ‘Who’d you go with?’

  She hesitated for a brief second. ‘I...I went alone. It’s a pain having to travel with other people. They always want to see stuff you aren’t interested in. I like being able to do what I want when I want.’

  His eyes moved between each of hers for a lengthy pause. ‘What happened in Vegas?’

  Aiesha gave him a bored look. ‘You don’t need me to tell you. You read about it, didn’t you? Everyone on the planet read it.’

  ‘I want you to tell me your version of events.’

  She looked at their joined hands, the way his tanned fingers contrasted with her paler ones. He had strong hands, artistic and clever. Hands that were trustworthy and honest. Clean hands.

  Aiesha pulled out of his hold. ‘He didn’t tell me he was married.’ The shame washed over her again. The fact that she hadn’t recognised Antony made her feel foolish and naïve. That she’d allowed him to kiss her, to touch her, to get close to her shamed her. The fact that she’d gone up to his room made her feel ill. ‘He wasn’t wearing a ring. I had no idea he was married until his wife texted me.’

  ‘How long were you involved with him?’

  ‘Not long...’

  ‘How long?’

  She hugged her arms close to her body. ‘I had dinner with him a couple of times after my shift. And no, contrary to what the press said, I didn’t sleep with him.’ But she’d been about to, which made her feel even more of a fool.

  ‘The press showed you leaving his room,’ James said.

  Aiesha bristled when she thought of how Antony had allowed everyone to think she was the one who had done something wrong. In the past she would have relished being cast as the bad guy. During her adolescence she had planted herself in the middle of scandal after scandal, actively seeking negative press, the more outrageous the better. To her disordered way of thinking, it showed the world someone was interested in her.

  But it was different now.

  Over the last few months she had been planning her exit-Vegas strategy. She had become increasingly disenchanted with the life she was living. She lived and worked in one of the busiest and most fun places in the world and yet not a day went past when she didn’t feel lonely and isolated and bored.

  She was tired of the negativity
associated with her image. Her tell-all interview about Clifford Challender had come back to bite her as the press had unearthed her history as a home-wrecker.

  Now Antony had destroyed her attempt to make a fresh start. He had cast himself as the victim, the poor, misunderstood husband reeled in by an opportunistic seductress. But calling him out for a liar—even if anyone would’ve believed her, given her track record—would have hurt his wife and two school-age children. She had decided to disappear and let the dust settle instead.

  ‘I went up to his room, but while I was in the bathroom I got a text message from his wife,’ she said. ‘I came out and told him what I thought of him and left.’

  ‘That was a lucky shot for the press.’

  ‘His wife tipped them off. She knew where he was and who he was with. The press did the rest.’

  James was still frowning. ‘You do realise by running away the way you did it made you look guilty?’

  Aiesha shrugged again. ‘It suited me to get out of Vegas.’

  ‘But what will you do now?’

  She gave him a worldly look. ‘Find myself a sugar daddy or a rich husband. What else?’

  A flicker of annoyance passed over his face. ‘Be serious.’

  ‘I am being serious.’ She stepped closer and tiptoed her fingers down his chest. ‘How about it, James? You fancy hiring me full-time as your wife? I’ll give good value for money. You can do whatever you want with me—’ she smiled her tartiest smile ‘—for the right price.’

  He captured her hand, holding it in a firm grip. ‘I know what you’re doing.’

  Aiesha brushed her pelvis against his. This was much better. This was the language she was used to. Sex was much easier to handle than emotional intimacy. He already thought her an outrageous tart. The entire world thought it...and to some degree the world was right. She had been flirtatious and provocative to get where she was, even though she no longer wanted to be there. Why not make the most of his bad opinion of her?

  ‘What am I doing, posh boy?’

  His jaw flickered with a pulse as if his self-control was only just holding. But she could see the naked flare of lust in his dark blue gaze. ‘You’re hiding behind that sex-kitten mask you like wearing. It’s not who you are. It’s just a game you play.’