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He seemed to be looking at her very intently. Although he wasn’t physically touching her, she suddenly felt aware of an intimacy about the situation. She could almost feel his eyes moving over her face, lingering on her lips. Subconsciously she moistened them, her heart starting to thud erratically against her chest.
As his eyes moved lower she felt her breasts tighten against the satin of her dress. It was the weirdest sensation. No matter how sensibly she tried to tell herself that he wasn’t her type, her body seemed to be paying no attention whatsoever. The heat of sexual desire was curling inside her with fierce intensity. She wanted him to touch her … kiss her. In fact, more than that, he made her long for an intimacy she had never known before.
She swallowed hard and wrenched her eyes away from him. This was craziness. ‘I seem to be taking up a lot of your time.’ She hoped she didn’t sound as breathless as she felt. ‘I wonder how long it will be before the police arrive?’
‘It’s Friday night and the call wasn’t an emergency.’ He shrugged.
‘Maybe I should just go.’ She tried to think sensibly, but she knew it was panic that was driving her. Nicholas Zentenas was having the strangest effect on her and if she stayed around him she might do something she would regret. She opened her bag to take out her mobile phone and, as she did, she noticed that her keys were missing.
‘Something wrong?’ Nicholas watched impassively as she scrabbled frantically through the contents of her bag.
‘My keys aren’t here!’
‘I picked everything up from the street,’ Nicholas said calmly. ‘But I’m locked out now! And I don’t have a spare key anywhere.’
‘Well … let’s see … You can get your locks changed first thing tomorrow and in the meantime you can stay here.’ He made the offer in a nonchalant, offhand way.
She watched as he took a sip of his drink and put it down on the table beside him. ‘That’s very kind of you! But I know the hotel is full. Some of my work colleagues tried to book a room here for tonight and there was nothing available.’
He met her eyes directly. ‘I meant you could stay here in my suite.’
The quiet invitation sent her senses into overdrive.
There was a long silence and she could almost feel the crackle of electricity that flowed between them. She noticed the way his eyes moved again towards the softness of her lips and her heart thudded unsteadily. What would it feel like to share a bed with this man? To be kissed all over, have his hands touching her intimately? The question made her feel hot inside, it also made her senses do a weird flip with the intense desire to find out the answer.
Hastily she tried to rein in those feelings. Cat was a virgin. She would have liked to say that she had chosen to remain so because she was waiting for the right person to come along, but that wasn’t the real reason—the truth was far more complex than that. The truth was that no man had turned her on to the point that she’d wanted to give herself totally to him.
And the one man who had, had
turned out to be after her money—thankfully she had discovered this before giving herself to him, but it had been a close call. Now she found it hard to trust anyone.
And yet here she was, in a hotel suite at one in the morning with a total stranger, feeling more aroused by just the way he looked at her than any other man had managed with numerous kisses and caresses. What the hell was she thinking? The question seared through her. She didn’t know this man—and, although she didn’t think he was in any way connected with her father or Michael, for all she knew he could be married with four children.
‘Are you … propositioning me?’ She cautiously sought to clarify the situation and he gave her a smile that was slightly mocking.
‘I have to admit that from the moment I saw you downstairs in the ballroom I wanted you in my bed.’
The admission made her remember the way he had looked at her across that crowded room. Yes, there had been purpose in his eyes; he had watched her like a predatory male marking his quarry. She had known it at the time, had known it and been turned on by it. The realization suddenly flooded through her consciousness. Those feelings were part of the reason she had felt so afraid, part of the reason she had left the party and the hotel as if pursued by the devil himself.
He reached out a hand and touched her face. It was the most gentle of caresses, his fingers soft as they moved over the creamy smoothness of her skin. Then his hand moved lower to the sensitive cords along the side of her neck as he tipped her chin up.
His eyes raked over her face with an almost hungry possessiveness and she felt an answering pang of desire deep inside. For the first time in her life she felt like throwing caution to the wind, felt like leaning closer inviting his lips and his hands to take this feeling all the way to its ultimate conclusion. She couldn’t understand her reaction. There had been no shortage of boyfriends in her life but she had never felt anything like this before. Even with Ryan she’d had no difficulty in pulling back from making love. Deep down she had sometimes wondered if there might be something wrong with her because she could think so rationally about passion. Now this man—a man she knew nothing about—was stirring all kinds of wild feelings inside her. It was bizarre. It was also deeply worrying. She felt as if she were out of her depth.
With a strict effort of will she forced herself to break the contact with his hand and take a step back from him.
‘I don’t sleep with strangers.’ She held his gaze with difficulty, fighting the demons that were drumming against her heart, insisting she was making a big mistake here.
‘Well, then, maybe we should get to know each other … and fast.’ There was a dark teasing light in his eyes.
Most women melted when he looked at them; in fact he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had given him the brush-off. By contrast Cat held his gaze with an almost fiery determination.
He had to admit he liked that spark in her eyes and he found himself respecting her blunt rebuff.
She raised her chin a little and met his eyes firmly. ‘Are you married?’
The sudden question amused him. ‘No … not yet.’
‘You do have a partner, then?’
