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‘Don’t tempt me,’ she heard him saying softly to her. ‘Just don’t tempt me, Lucianna.’
Don’t tempt him to what? she wondered shakily as his hand dropped from her arm as though her skin had burned him. Don’t tempt him to wring her neck, probably, she decided unhappily, forced to increase her stride to try to keep up with him as he strode down the street.
Scowling darkly, she flirted momentarily with the idea of telling him that she had changed her mind and that she didn’t want or need his help after all, but then she remembered the triumphant mockery she had heard in Felicity’s voice when she had told her about John’s fax and the slanting-eyed come-hither look she had given Jake, the same look Lucianna had seen her giving John on several previous occasions, and her head lifted and her spine straightened.
Jake, who had turned to wait for her to catch up with him, watched her discreetly.
She looked for all the world like a youthful teenager, her slender body encased in oversized clothes, but she wasn’t a child, she was an adult, a woman. A woman whose most basic instincts had been aroused by the threat of losing her man.
Her man. Jake’s frown returned as he turned abruptly away from Lucianna. The task he had taken on was fraught with innumerable perils, not the least of which was the fact that he might succeed and that Lucianna would get her way—and her man.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘WHAT are you looking at?’ Lucianna demanded of Jake as he paused on the corner of the street they were entering to watch something, or rather someone. When Lucianna realised she flushed and gave a rather self-conscious, ‘Oh,’ as she saw the girl Jake had obviously been admiring come sauntering into view.
Like Lucianna she was dressed in jeans, and like her she also had tawny-coloured long hair, but that was where the resemblance between them ended.
Whereas Lucianna’s hair was tied back uncompromisingly this girl’s was worn loose and slightly messy, giving the impression that she had been doing something far too pleasurable to waste time grooming her hair before coming out, and she had obviously also neglected to put on any proper underwear beneath the neatly fitting cream stretch jeans she was wearing, Lucianna decided scathingly as she saw Jake’s glance move from the other girl’s face to her body.
There might not be anything openly tarty about the girl’s appearance, Lucianna acknowledged, but there was still definitely an air about her and about the way she was dressed that somehow suggested even to Lucianna’s inexperienced eye that she was a person who enjoyed her own sexuality.
‘Typical.’ Lucianna couldn’t quite stop herself from saying this disparagingly as she saw the small, teasing look the girl gave Jake before turning away and strolling across the road—or rather sashaying across the road, Lucianna acknowledged—if that wasn’t too old-fashioned a word to use for the provocatively swaying movement of the girl’s pert bottom.
‘Jealous?’ Jake asked her mockingly.
‘Certainly not,’ Lucianna told him scathingly, adding pithily, ‘And I wouldn’t dream of coming out without my…not wearing any underwear…’
‘Not wearing…?’ Jake was frowning slightly as he turned to give the girl another brief look, but when he turned back towards her Lucianna could see that he was struggling not to laugh.
‘You really do need educating, don’t you?’ he told her with a grin that made him suddenly look much younger and made her equally suddenly wonder why she was finding it such a struggle to fill her lungs properly with air.
‘If being educated means dressing like a…like that, then I’d rather stay the way I am,’ she began crossly, but Jake shook his head.
Still laughing, he told her, ‘You’re wrong, you know. She’s more than likely wearing a string of some type underneath her jeans, and—’
‘A string…?’
‘Yes, you know, an item of underwear…an item of female underwear…that is commonly worn beneath fitted clothing to prevent the unforgivable fashion solecism of VPL…’
‘VPL…?’ Lucianna repeated in irritation.
‘Visible panty line,’ Jake explained patiently.
‘I know what it means,’ Lucianna told him. She might not be fashion-conscious, but she did read her sister-in-law’s magazines and she knew perfectly well what he meant. Her anger was directed not so much at him for teasing her but at herself for giving him the opportunity to do so.
‘I take it that it isn’t an item of underwear you favour?’ Jake said to her as they continued to walk down the street.
‘My underwear is not something I intend to discuss with you,’ Lucianna told him frostily.
‘Pity,’ Jake returned, his voice suddenly crisply ominous, ‘because, much as it pains me to say it, the male of the species, still at heart being the un-newmanish creature that he is, is still very much influenced and intrigued by women’s underwear, let’s be honest, is perhaps still regrettably prone to making character and personality judgements on a woman based on her choice of underwear and his idea of what he personally finds exciting and e
rotic…’
‘If you’re talking about stockings and suspenders…’ Lucianna began warily. She had heard more than enough about the allure and potential of such garments from her brothers during the years they were growing up to have been put off wearing them for life.
‘Amongst other things,’ Jake agreed. ‘Personally, what I find erotic is the knowledge that a woman cares enough for herself and for me to want the act of undressing her to become a sensually special appetiser to our loveplay…Rather like the anticipation and buzz one gets from unwrapping an enticingly wrapped present…’
‘Oh, you would see a woman like that…as a thing…a toy…a…a present…’ Lucianna told him furiously. ‘Well, for your information, I would rather die than present myself like that…than humiliate and degrade myself like that…’
