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‘N-no—’ Nora casually shifted her weight to disguise the tentative placement of her foot on the stair behind her.
‘You were jealous,’ he accused softly.
‘No!’ She instinctively protected her battle-scarred heart.
He straightened to his full height, half-naked…all man. ‘Oh, yes—and so you decided to spike my guns by showing me up as a two-timing bastard with a secret taste for bold brassy tarts!’
He was still using that exquisitely calm voice, but Nora was no longer deceived. He was watching her like a hawk.
‘FYI: Hayley and I have never been intimately involved,’ he said quietly. ‘She likes to play hostess for Scotty, but I stopped accepting invitations to social events with them when I realised that she was using them to persuade herself and others that we were a lot more than friends. I’ve been trying to discourage her without being offensive to her or to Scotty, but subtlety hasn’t worked, and lately she’s been verging on the obsessive.’
Conscious of his coiled tension, Nora hastened to repair the damage she had wrought. ‘I—I lost my temper. I’m sorry. I hope it won’t damage your relationship with Sir Prescott. If you like, I—I can go to him and explain—’
He stretched out his arm, placing his left hand flat on the bannister, parallel with the first step. ‘Why don’t you come down here and explain it to me first?’ he invited with silky menace.
Nora licked her lips, her nerves stretched like piano wire, her breasts budding against the white cotton at the look in his eyes.
His nostrils flared, as if he had caught the alluring scent of her helpless excitement. He smiled.
‘Come on, Babycakes, what’s taking you so long?’ he mocked.
Her nerve broke and she started to swivel on to her back foot. Her only warning was the green flash in his eyes a heartbeat before he exploded up the stairs, two at a time. She screamed and turned to run, managing to make three steps before she felt his fingers grab at her flying leg, slither down her calf and latch around her ankle. Clinging to the rail, she twisted her body and kicked out, all thoughts of modesty forgotten, and felt a connection with hard muscle, heard his curse, and was free to stumble up to the landing, where she dodged nimbly behind the tall stone-fired pottery urn.
Blake, hot on her heels, backhanded it casually out of the way and Nora gave another small scream as it crashed against the wall and spun around on the floor, spilling dried stalks across the small stretch of carpet between them.
They stared at each other across the debris, motionless, panting.
‘You could have broken that,’ Nora scolded piously.
His eyes flamed with unholy delight. ‘Spank me!’ He grinned and launched himself across the scattered flowers to snatch at the trailing edge of the white shirt.
Nora squeaked and skipped backwards, batting it out of his fingers. Seizing the bannister rail and whirling around, she vaulted herself up on to the next flight of stairs. They seemed to stretch for ever and Nora was already oxygen-depleted, her heart pumping furiously. Blake was stronger, but she was lighter and jet-powered by such a delicious terror that she managed to keep ahead of him for several breathless moments, until a mistimed step had her stumbling and this time when his hand clamped around her ankle, he wasn’t letting go. His upward momentum carried his body up and over the back of hers, toppling her forward on to her knees, her hands still desperately clinging to the vertical rails supporting the bannister as he flattened her against the stair-treads and she felt in danger of becoming a human toboggan.
‘Get off me, you oaf!’ she gasped as the carpeted ridges bit into her squirming thighs.
‘Hell-cat!’ He let go her flailing ankle to grab her wriggling hips, his knees straddling hers, the heat of his heaving chest burning through the back of the shirt, the zip of his jeans pressing against her bottom. ‘That’s no way to talk to your lover!’
‘Thug!’ she said, trying to buck him off.
‘Spitfire!’ he groaned, and she realised the hardness against her bottom wasn’t his metallic zip, it was what was behind it.
‘Deviant!’ she spat. ‘Do you get turned on fighting helpless women?’
‘Helpless? You nearly unmanned me with your kicks, you virago!’
‘Well, I obviously didn’t succeed, did I?’ she said, pulling on the balusters to try and lever her body out from under him.
An insufferably arrogant chuckle fanned down the back of her neck as he merely caged her more closely with his arms and legs. ‘If you wanted to turn me off you shouldn’t have come prancing out in only my shirt, offering to play kinky games.’
‘I said I was sorry—’ she panted, the breath whooshing from her lungs. Somehow one of his hands had insinuated itself underneath her trapped body, sliding between the gaping buttons of the shirt and finding her breasts, suspended like firm, ripe fruit from her arched torso. He palmed each warm swaying mound in turn, thumbing the little stiff crests and enjoying her thready squeaks of unconvincing protest.
‘Don’t be sorry—this time you created exactly the right kind of trouble,’ he murmured, rhythmically nudging her with his hips as his fingers trailed down to her quivering stomach to rim her belly button. ‘I think this lesson in humility was just what Hayley needed to shock her out of her delusion that I’m hers for the asking—’He broke off as his fingers ran into an unexpected barrier.
‘Well, well…not as wicked as you pretend to be, are you…?’ He withdrew his hand to flip up the tail of the shirt and splay his hand over her exposed panties. ‘Why, it’s Mr Rabbit!’ he exclaimed in deep tones of fond recognition, smoothing the printed cotton fabric over the plump curve of her blushing bottom. ‘And look, there’s a Mrs Rabbit, too, both primly dressed in their Sunday best. But bunnies are notorious for their lack of restraint. I wonder what naughtiness the pair of them get up to down here when the lights are out….’ He stroked with his finger where Nora knew no bunnies frolicked, and she jerked violently.
‘Blake…’
‘Yes, Nora?’ He leaned over her again, his mouth hot on the straining cords of her neck, the sharp prickle of his dark-blooming beard an exciting contrast to his warm wet tongue, his playful humour evaporating as his blind touch worked up under the band of elastic at the top of her thigh to slide against her c
