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Still grinning as he imagined some of the descriptions she might have had in mind for him, he wasn’t prepared for the hourglass figure that took his breath away for a few shocking seconds. This was not what he had expected. He had expected frumpy, slightly overweight...someone who could perhaps do with shedding a few pounds. Was it because his expectations had been so wildly at variance with the voluptuous curves on offer now that he felt the sudden thrust of painful response? Or had his diet of thin, leggy models left him vulnerable to the sort of curvy, full-breasted figure that had once haunted his testosterone-fuelled teenage dreams?
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught his mother watching him and he stopped staring to move and stand behind Violet so that he could rest both his hands on her shoulders.
From this position, he felt no guilt in appreciating the bounty of her generous breasts. She was small in stature and a positive innocent compared to the hardened, worldly, sophisticated women he dated. She didn’t have a clue how to play the games that eventually led to the bedroom. He thought that if she did know them, then she would refuse to play them. So the lush sexiness of her body was all the more of a turn-on. Standing behind her, he could barely drag his eyes away from her gorgeous figure.
It wasn’t going to do. This wasn’t about attraction or sex. This was an arrangement and he didn’t need it to be complicated because his testosterone levels had decided to act up.
He pulled over the other spare chair and sat next to her because staring down at her was proving to be too much of an unwelcome distraction.
His mother had launched into fond reminiscing about his childhood. Halting her in mid-stream would have been as impossible as trying to climb Everest in flip flops, so he allowed her to chatter away for as long as she wanted. He hadn’t seen her so animated since she had been diagnosed and, besides, as long as she was chatting, she wasn’t asking too many detailed questions. Eventually he looked at his watch and gave a little cough to indicate departure time. He would have to admit that Violet had done well. She had certainly shown keen interest in every anecdote his mother had told and had been suitably encouraging in her remarks, whilst managing to keep them brief. Watching her out of the corner of his eye, he could appreciate what he had failed to previously when he had been too busy putting his plan into action and laying down the rules and boundary lines. She was a naturally warm, empathetic person. It was what had driven her to come and see him in defence of her sister when she must have been scared witless. It was what made her smile with genuine warmth at his mother as she triumphantly reached the punchline of her story involving him, two friends and a bag of frogs.
‘We really should be going, Mother. You mustn’t over tire yourself.’
‘Life will be very limited for me if I can’t get excited and I can’t get too tired, darling. Besides, there are so many questions I want to ask you both...’
Violet sneaked a surreptitious glance at Damien’s hard, chiselled profile and the memory of that kiss snaked through her, bringing vibrant colour to her cheeks. Of course he hadn’t been turned on. As he had made abundantly clear on more than one occasion, he dated supermodels. She had been chosen to play a part because she was at his mercy and because she wasn’t a supermodel. He had kissed her like that in order to achieve something and it had worked.
It filled her with shame that she had been turned on. She cringed in horror at the realisation that she had wanted the kiss to go on...and on...and on... She wondered where her pride had gone when she could be held to ransom by a man she loathed to do something of which she heartily disapproved and yet, with a single touch, find her willpower reduced to rubble.
‘Damien’s barely told me anything about how you two met... He said that it was a couple of months ago...but that he didn’t want to say anything for fear of jeopardising the relationship...’
‘Did he?’ Violet glanced across, eyebrows raised. ‘I didn’t realise that you felt so...vulnerable...’ Her voice was sugary-sweet.
Damien rested his hand over hers and idly stroked her thumb, which sent her pulses racing all over again, but, with his mother’s eyes on them, what could she do but to carry on smiling?
‘It’s a lovable trait, isn’t it? Darling?’ he murmured, looking her straight in the eyes and reaching to cup the nape of her neck with his hand, where he proceeded to sift his fingers through her hair.
‘So how did you meet?’ Eleanor asked with avid curiosity.
‘Darling—’ Damien continued to caress her until every part of her body was tingling in hateful response ‘—why don’t you tell my mother all about our...romantic first meeting...?’
‘It really wasn’t that romantic.’ Violet tried to shift away from the attentions of his hand, which was something of a mistake as he promptly decided to switch focus from her hair to her thigh. ‘Actually, when I first met your son, I thought he was rude, arrogant and overbearing...’
Damien responded by squeezing her thigh gently with his big hand in subtle warning.
‘He...er...came to the school for a...er...meeting with our head of Home Economics...’ The pressure on her thigh was ever more insistent but, instead of turning her off, it was having the opposite effect. How on earth could her body be so wilful? When had that ever happened? She felt faint with a dark, forbidden excitement that went against every grain of common sense and reason. She wanted to squeeze her thighs tightly shut to stifle her liquid response but was scared that if she did he would duly take note and know exactly what was going on with her rebellious body. He was, after all, nothing like the guys she knew. He was a man of the world and, even on short acquaintance, she suspected that he was as knowledgeable and intimate with the workings of the female mind as it was possible for any man to be. The thought of him second-guessing that she found him sexually attractive was mortifying.
‘Do you remember how bossy you were with poor Miss Taylor?’ she asked, scoring points wherever she could find them and trying hard to ignore what his hand was doing to her. Out of sight of his mother’s eyes because of the positioning of the chairs, his roaming hand came to rest on her thigh just below the apex where her legs met. When she thought of how that hand would feel just there, were it against bare skin, were he able to brush the downy hair with his fingers, her brain went into instant meltdown.
‘We all got the impression that you were terribly important—too important to be time wasting at a school because the CEO couldn’t make it... I’ll admit, Mrs Carver, that my first impressions of your son were that he was a tad on the arrogant, conceited, bossy side...thoroughly unbearable, if you want the truth...’
‘And yet you couldn’t tear your eyes away from me,’ Damien murmured in quick retaliation. He smiled and leaned across to feather a kiss on the corner of her mouth, making sure to keep his hand just where it was. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice when you thought I wasn’t looking...’
‘Ditto,’ Violet muttered in feeble response because what else could she do, short of launching into a scathing attack on everything she had decided was awful about him?
‘So true.’ Damien allowed himself the luxury of looking at her with lazy, speculative eyes. ‘And how could I ever have guessed that underneath your shapeless clothes was the figure of a sex goddess...?’
Violet went bright red. Was he joking? Continuing with their subtle duel of words which carried an undertone that his mother would not have clocked? Was he laughing at her? What else? she wondered, hot and flustered under the scrutiny of his deep blue eyes. She kept her gaze pointedly averted, looking at his mother with a smile that was beginning to make her jaws ache, but every inch of her was tuned in to Damien’s attention, which was focused all on her. One hundred per cent of it. She could feel it as powerfully as if a branding iron had been held to her bare skin.
‘Hardly a sex goddess... There’s no need to tell lies...’ she mumbled with an embarrassed laugh, while trying to play half of the loving couple by awkwardly leaning towards him and at the same time taking the opportunity to snap her legs firmly shut on a hand that was getting a little too inquisitive for her liking.
‘You’re just what my son needs, Violet,’ Eleanor confided with satisfaction. ‘All those girls he’s spent years going out with... I expect you have a potted history of Damien’s past...?’
‘Mother, please. There’s no need to go down that road. Violet is very much in the loop when it comes to knowing exactly the sort of women I’ve dated in the past...aren’t you, darling...?’
‘And I find it as strange as you do, Mrs Carver, that someone as intelligent as your son could have been attracted to girls with nothing between their ears. Because that’s what you’ve said, haven’t you, dearest? I’m sure they were very pretty but I’ve never understood how you could ever have found it a challenge to go out with a mannequin...?’
