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Dear heaven! she groaned inwardly as her body instinctively curved against his chest, her lips parted softly, invitingly. She had to get away. Stop him. But his hand tracing her spine and the soft trail of his lips down her throat and around to her ear, his tongue licking around the soft whorls, sent shimmering arrows of delight through every nerve m her body.
'You and I don't need anything so antiquated as marriage, little one, or the romantic lies of undying love. Your body needs mine now.' He eased back. 'Look at your breasts, full and aching.' She glanced down as he rasped, "The same as I am full and aching.' He hugged her to him. 'Here? Or the bedroom?' he whispered throatly against her ear. 'I'm easy, but I can't wait much longer.' His body surged against hers once more.
He was easy! he had said. God, what did that make her? Saffron thought in horror, struggling to regain her senses. She hated him and yet she had responded like a sex-starved fool.
She shoved him hard in the chest, not caring what he thought, too horrified by her turbulent emotions to hide the disgust she felt. Catching him off guard, he fell back, lost his balance and ended up on the floor.
Saffron might have found the stunned look on his face amusing at any other time, but right now she was too frustrated and furious. She scrambled to her feet, hauling her dress back on, and snarled, 'You might be easy but I'm not, Mr Statis. Hell will freeze over before I share your bed.' And, with a last contemptuous glance at his sprawled body, she took off at a run for the door.
'What the hell. . .? Wait, Saffron!'
He must be out of his tiny mind if he thought she was going to wait for him, Saffron thought, ignoring his shout, but suddenly she was grabbed from behind and swung round. Without giving her time to catch her breath, a bristling, angry, near-naked Alex was dragging her back to the sofa and flinging her down.
'Don't you manhandle me,' she cried, green eyes leaping with rage.
'Manhandle? I could bloody murder you, you little tease! What was that exhibition al about?' Alex demanded harshly, his eyes narrowed on her red face.
'I—' She almost told him how she really felt. Wild, irrational anger at Alex and, if she was honest, at herself almost made her tell the truth. How much she hated him. . . But she stopped herself just in time. Ales was clever. If she told him she would be out of a job, minus her salary, with any hope of getting revenge on the swine out of the window for good. Thinking fast, she said the one thing she thought might just work. 'I've never. . .' She lowered her lashes over her glittering green eyes, hoping she looked demure. 'I'm still a virgin.'
'You're what?3
'You heard,' she murmured, still not looking at him. She sensed him move towards where she sat, and felt the depression of the sofa as he sat down beside her.
"That's unbelievable; you're twenty-five. . . How on earth has a beautiful woman like you not been caught before now?' The incredulity in his voice was unmistakable.
'I'm not caught now,' she snapped back, and could have bitten her tongue at her hasty response.
'No?' Alex prompted softly, watching her with narrowed eyes.
'No,' she said with a shake of her head, her stormy gage meeting him.
"Then I imagined your complete capitulation just now?' Alex's mouth assumed a cynical twist. 'Give me some credit. Saffron; I'm thirty-nine years old, not a young boy, and I have great difficulty in believing in your innocence, however bashfully you proclaim your virginity.'
The steadiness of her gaze told him exactly what she thought of his cynical tone. 'That's your problem, not mine. ' She got to her feet. "Anna will be needing me; I have to go.'
'What about my needs?' he drawled, his dark eyes gleaming with amusement. 'We are here alone; why not finish what we started?'
'No way.' Her eves brushe
d over his near-nude, lounging form and she despised herself because, for a moment, she was tempted.
'Oh, there is a way,' Alex said silkily as he stepped into his trousers and pulled on his shirt. Draping his jacket over one shoulder, he added, 'Your way—marriage. But I'm not such a fool.'
'Shame, but that's my only offer,' she snapped.
'Jewels, furs, a villa in Greece. You would find me a very generous lover, Saffron. Think about it. I'll give you twenty-four hours to reconsider.'
Saffron should have been delighted that she was getting to him, but instead all she felt was fear. 'You don't believe in love and marriage,' she reminded him curtly. 'I do.'
Five minutes later, sitting in the passenger seat of Alex's elegant car, his dark, brooding presence intimidating as they sped through the streets of London, she had a horrible conviction that, it was an enormous mistake to try and seek revenge from a man like Ales Statis.
'Anna, I seed to ask you something and I want an honest answer,' Saffron said. Her employer was lying face down on the bed, and could cot see the grim expression on her face, for which Saffron was grateful. After the fiasco of her dinner date with Alex, she had Iain awake for hours, going over in her head everything he had said since arriving in London., and she recalled Alex's comment about his mother always trawling for a wife for him.
'Yes, what is it?' Anna asked lethargically.
'Your son told me yesterday that you had a habit of. . .' There was no other way of asking except directly. 'Well, he said you turn up with a companion every summer on the flimsiest of pretexts, trying to get hita married off.'
Anna chuckled. 'I may have done once or twice. Surely you can't blame me for trying? God knows I would like some grandchildren before I die, and I'm not getting any younger; neither is Alex, come to that. He is very shortly going to be past his sell-by date, as I have told him frequently.'
