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He had decided that the simplest way to cope with the disruptive influence on his peace of mind that was Anna Randall was to remove himself from the situation. Less a retreat and more a strategic withdrawal.
Immersed in his private physical combat seeking the level of exhaustion that would give him some relief, he didn’t reach relief but at least a workable explanation for the situation. He did not deal with celibacy well and Anna Randall had arrived right in the middle of a dry spell. His first inkling that there was a storm raging anywhere but in his head was when the lights went out.
Cursing at the interruption, he removed his ear plugs and waited, with the sweat cooling on his overheated body, for the emergency generator to kick in. It didn’t.
Locating his phone and then a towel, he headed for the shower, catching his breath as he stepped into the unheated stream of water, which, while not his choice, was probably not such a bad thing. It took the edge off the frustration that had robbed him of sleep, but it didn’t make the face, the voice and the body that had robbed him of peace of mind vanish.
Retrieving his shorts but leaving the sweat-stained vest on the floor, he hooked the towel over his shoulders to catch the drips from his saturated hair and gave the lights one more try before he walked past the glass-fronted lift and made his way up to the ground floor using the spiral flights of stone steps, their surface worn by the generations of feet that had used them before him.
At the top of the stairs he gestured to the dogs who were silently shadowing him and after throwing him a canine look of reproach—they had been hoping to sleep on his bed—they peeled away, heading towards the kitchens and their beds.
The storm was still raging; he could feel the static of electricity in the heavy air. Even though the rain had not begun to fall yet, he accepted it would be suicidal to venture out to check out the backup generator, which was housed—rather impractically, he had always thought—in a building that was hidden by a bank of tall cypresses. One had fallen last year and just missed the roof.
He wondered as he made his way to the back staircase that led to his private apartments what other damage might have been sustained to the buildings. Having been born in a land that was exposed more than most to raw nature, he felt a certain affinity with the extremes of nature the mountains here offered.
He was halfway along the corridor when above the rain, which had just begun to fall and was lashing against the windows, he heard the tinkling sound of a piano chord.
The incongruous sound froze him in his tracks.
He knew where the only piano in the place was located, but why anyone would be in the ballroom at this time of night eluded him.
Perhaps, he mused, one of the ghosts he had heard so much about but never seen was out and about. It was not white apparitions rattling their chains that had troubled Soren’s sleep. He had hoped his own ghosts would be laid to rest after he had exposed Tor; he should have known that life was never that clear-cut.
There was no music coming from the ballroom, but light was leaking into the darkness through the half-open doors.
Soren slid his phone into the pocket of his shorts and stepped inside his trainers, making no sound on the floor.
The sight that met him stopped him in his tracks; his chest lifted as he breathed in sharply. The light he had seen came from the candles all along one wall...a remnant of a photo shoot his grandfather had given permission for the previous month.
To Soren’s annoyance and the staff’s great inconvenience the place had been invaded by a famous photographer he’d thought was long dead, an incredible number of people who it seemed were required for a fashion shoot, and the models themselves, beautiful women who posed in very little clothes that cost an impossible amount of money. The candles were meant to lend atmosphere but had apparently not been moody enough.
They had been extinguished and left.
They were burning now and so was he.
The flames flared and the vaulted ceiling reflected back the light, leaving the checked pattern of the floor flickering on the walls.
He barely registered these details. He had hardly breathed since he had walked into the room, not once his eyes had focused on the supple figure who, arms crossed over her chest like some sort of sacrifice, was swirling around the floor in circular patterns. Her eyes were closed, her slim, vulnerable neck extended, her hair a silk cloud down her back as she moved to the music in her head.
Wind found its way through the invisible cracks in the ancient stone window frames, making the candles flame and dance and causing the silk slip that ended mid-calf to flutter, drawing even tighter against her body and clinging like a second skin to the lovely line of her legs and the tight roundness of her behind. She suddenly spread her arms wide, causing one thin strap to slip down the smooth curve of her shoulder, the action revealing her high pert breasts, the nipples pushing through the thin fabric.
Fire slid in a steady pumping stream through his body. Something moved in his chest—it felt like fingers closing around his beating heart. He couldn’t breathe.
If he took another step, if he crossed that line, Soren knew there would be no going back. She was who she was, that could never change, and she didn’t know who he was.
Hekneweverything inside him told him that if he took that fatal step there would be consequences to pay, but from the first moment he had set eyes on her he had wanted her...wanted her in a way that had nothing to do with logic or sanity. He ached for her in his bones.
It was as if she had set fire to some primal instinct in him, Soren thought as he watched her twirl. He had never seen anything as beautiful and desirable as the dancing figure. Her beauty touched him and the desire overwhelmed him absolutely, wiping his mind clear of any thought other than possession. There was no space left for reasoned thought; its absence left just instinct and blind, relentless hunger.
Enemy, lover, the words had no meaning; nothing had meaning but the need pounding through him.
He might well regret this tomorrow, but he could not think beyond the here and now, and the need to possess her had his heart pumping a steady stream of logic-defying lust through his body.
‘May I have this dance?’
Anna, who had heard nothing but the sound of the music in her head, gasped and fell off the balls of her feet with a bump.
‘Soren!’ She had just been imagining she was in his arms and now he was here, unless she’d gone mad, which was a distinct possibility. The clash of dream with reality in the form of flesh and blood... She lost the thread of her thoughts as her eyes did a head-to-toe-and-back-again survey.
