CHAPTER SIX
SHE HAD WORKED like someone possessed from the minute she had closed the door of the guest wing behind her, focusing all her energy on what had to be achieved and deliberately leaving nothing to spare that might trap her with the ghosts Jay’s accusation had raised.
But they were still there, pushing against the tight lid of the coffin she had sealed them into like the undead, denied true oblivion and existing in a half world that made them desperate to escape. And it was Jay’s words to her that had fed them and given them the strength to try to overpower her.
She looked down at her laptop and at the work she had just completed. Images of room layouts lay printed off and neatly stacked to one side of the laptop—rooms with walls painted in traditionally made paint in subtly different but toning shades of white. In the main she’d opted for modern, stylish furniture in black, chrome and natural wood, accenting the rooms with fabrics in colour palettes that went from acid lemon and lime through to hot sizzling pinks and reds, and from cool greys and blues through to creams and browns. Modern lighting and the use of mirrors opened up the smaller spaces and highlighted features. It was, Keira knew, probably the most complex portfolio she had ever produced at such short notice.
It was late—nearly three o’clock in the morning. She ought to go to bed, but she knew she wasn’t relaxed enough to sleep.
Outside, the courtyard garden was bathed in the light from the almost full moon. Keira got up and opened the door that led to it.
The night air was softly warm, without the stifling heat that would come later in the year at the height of summer.
A mosaic-tiled path led to a square pool in the centre of the garden, and surrounded it, and Keira paused to look down at it, studying it more closely.
* * *
Jay couldn’t sleep.
He threw back the bedclothes and stood up. He should have followed his initial feeling and brought in another designer—preferably one who was male.
He walked over to the high-arched windows of his room, which he’d left open to the fresh air. Beyond them was an enclosed balcony that ran the whole length of the suite of rooms that had belonged to the Maharaja for whom this palace had originally been built.
This was the only place in the palace from which it was possible to look down not only into his own private courtyard garden but also into that attached to the old women’s quarters. Naturally only the Maharaja himself had been allowed to look on the beauty of his wives and concubines. For any other man to do so would have been an offence for which at one time he would have had to pay with his sight and probably his life.
Now no modern man would dream of thinking that no one else should look upon the face of a woman with whom he was involved. A woman was a human being of equal status, not a possession, and the very idea was barbaric—and yet within every man there was still a fierce need to keep to himself the woman he desired, and an equally fierce anger when that need was crossed.
As his had been earlier, when he had seen the way the young shop boy had looked at Keira and the way she had smiled back at him?
That was ridiculous. She meant nothing to him. Just because she had aroused him physically... He stepped out onto the veranda and frowned as he saw a movement in the women’s courtyard.
Keira. What was she doing out there at three o’clock in the morning? And why was she crouching on the ground?
Snakes sometimes slid into these gardens.
It only took him a handful of seconds to pull on his underwear and a pair of jeans. The tiles beneath his bare feet still held the warmth of the day’s sun as he padded down the private staircase that led into the courtyards. It wasn’t until he had opened the gate between his own courtyard and the women’s courtyard that Jay realised that what had brought him here had been an age-old in-built male protective concern, which he had not even realised he possessed until now, and which if he had known he possessed, he would not have thought would be activated by or for Keira...
* * *
The sight of Jay walking towards her through the shadows was so unexpected that it shocked Keira into immobility for a few seconds, before she struggled to her feet. His terse, ‘What are you doing?’ didn’t help.
‘I wanted a closer look at the pattern on these tiles,’ she told him, indicating the tiles forming the narrow footpath. ‘And if you’ve come to find out if I’ve finished the layouts you wanted, then the answer is yes. At least in draft form. They’ll be on your desk before you leave tomorrow.’
The words were a staccato burst of edgy defensiveness that fell away into sharp silence when Jay stepped out of the shadows. Automatically she looked at him, and then couldn’t look away, her breath locking in her throat, her stomach tightening in response to what she could see. His torso and his feet were bare, as though... as though he had been in bed. Naked? Why was she thinking that? He could just have been relaxing. But something told her that Jay wasn’t the kind of man who relaxed by taking off his clothes and lounging around semi-nude.
‘If they’re ready I may as well have them now,’ Jay told her.
‘I was going to polish them a bit more.’
‘There’s no need. It’s understood that these are preliminary drafts. If I have them now it will give me more time to consider them. I’ll walk back with you and collect them.’
Keira wished she hadn’t said anything about the layouts. She’d wanted to look them over again before handing them to him, but now if she refused to let him take them he was bound to think that she’d been boasting, and that they weren’t finished at all.
‘Very well,’ she agreed.
She’d closed her door when she came out. As they approached it Jay stepped in front of her—intending, she realised too late, to open the door for her. But the practical whys and wherefores of how she had come to be touching him hardly mattered. Because when she’d reached out to stop herself from colliding with him he had reached out too, and now his hand was on her shoulder, and her senses were filled by the feel of his warm flesh beneath her hand and the scent of his skin in her nostrils.
She could have moved away. She certainly should have done so. But instead she was looking up at him, and he was looking back at her. A dangerous tension stretched the silence. Her fingers curled into his arm, the breath shuddering from her lungs.
Danger crackled through her senses like static electricity. Abruptly she removed her hand from his arm, but it was too late. Without knowing that she was doing so she had moved closer to him, as though in mute invitation, and he had responded to that invitation.
She had thought that people only kissed like this in films—briefly, testing, tasting. Two people who were both trying desperately not to give in to the fierce undertow of a desire that neither of them really wanted, only to be swamped by it as their lips met and they were overwhelmed by a hunger that leapt from nerve-ending to nerve-ending, binding them together as their mouths and hands and bodies meshed, plundered and pleaded.
It was like being possessed by a universal force that could not be controlled, Keira thought dizzily, her lips clinging to Jay’s. His hand was spread across the back of her head beneath her hair, keeping her mouth close to his own whilst his tongue probed the soft willingness of her mouth, possessing it in the same way that her desire for him was possessing her.
Each intimacy between them only fed her desire for more, as though some powerful spell had been cast upon her ability to resist what was happening to her.
The hunger he had unleashed within her was enslaving her. He was enslaving her, Keira realised as she tried desperately to pull back from the chasm awaiting her and the darkness she knew it held. Only to fail when Jay touched her breast, cupping it within the hold of his hand so that her nipple rose tightly and eagerly to press against his flesh. Keira knew that it was her own response that had incited the explicitly erotic pluck of his fingertips against her nipple as he teased it into an even more blatantly hungry demand for more.
It was like being savaged by two opposing forces. No—it was like being fought over by them, Keira thought frantically. The one surging through her, taking her up to the heights of sexual excitement and need, and the other dragging her down to that place when the demons of her childhood lay in wait for her. Between them they could so easily tear her apart and destroy her. She must stop this. But she couldn’t.
Jay was kissing the side of her neck, sending wild, wanton shivers of irreversible arousal racking her. She could hear herself moaning as she collapsed into him, letting him take the weight of her body, letting him know without words of her need for him to possess it and her completely.
He was hard and ready against her softness. Automatically she reached down between them to touch him, driven now by nature, which guided her movements so that her fingertips fluttered helplessly against the thick hard ridge of his erection.
His smothered groan into her skin followed by the sharply sexual nip of his teeth would have been enough to melt any resistance she might have had, even without the sudden fierce sweep of his free hand down the length of her body, pressing her into him before closing on the soft curve of her buttock.
She was lost, Keira admitted to herself. There could be no going back from this.
In the moonlight she could see the darkness of Jay’s hand against her top. As though it was happening in slow motion she watched as his fingers curled into the fabric and pulled it away from her breast. Her heart was thumping slowly and heavily as she silently willed him not to stop, but instead to hurry, hurry... Because the need inside her could not be contained for much longer.
As though he had sensed that need Jay bent his head, taking her nipple into his mouth with fierce impatience and drawing on it, so that she could feel the sharp pangs of her own desire seizing her whole body, causing it to convulse with longing.
She was his. Jay could sense her body open to his, could already imagine what it would be like when she closed down on him as her orgasm possessed her and took him to his own pleasure. Just thinking about it made him ache so badly. Jay’s hand went to the fastening of his jeans. He wanted her so much, was so out of control with longing for her that he doubted he would have time to make it to the bed, never mind anything else.
Anything else? What the hell was happening to him? Jay never allowed himself to be out of control, and he certainly never had unprotected sex. But he had been about to do so.
Had been.
At first when Jay pushed her away Keira couldn’t understand or accept what was happening. She cried out in protest, her eyes wild with longing and incomprehension, until she was jerked back to reality by the stillness of Jay’s stance and the look she saw in his eyes before he turned on his heel and walked away from her.
Shame, her familiar and hated companion, slid its dark shadow next to her and smiled its mocking triumph at her.
Somehow Keira managed to stumble inside her room, where she showered in darkness, unable to bear the sight of her own body. Her mother and her great-aunt had been right about her after all.
After an hour of lying rigidly in her bed, unable to sleep, she got up and switched on her laptop. But for once her work did not bring its normal comfort, pushing everything and everyone else out of her thoughts. Instead images of Jay—his face, his eyes, his hands—came between her and the screen to torment her.
It was close to dawn when she eventually fell into an exhausted and troubled sleep.
* * *
It was just gone six in the morning. Jay was showered and dressed and drinking the tea his manservant had brought him. The morning sun was bathing everything in primrose-gold light, the clear blue of the sky on the horizon turning darker where it met the pink walls of the buildings.
He could admire the city’s beauty, but he could not feel entirely a part of it, Jay acknowledged. His self-imposed exile had broadened his horizons too much. The city would always hold a very special place in his heart, but he did not envy his elder brother his inheritance or his position. The status of second son—second best, as his father’s mistress had so often taunted him in the past—brought with it a freedom Rao could never have, and in a variety of different ways. He had lost count of the number of approaches he had received in recent years from families desperate to secure him as a husband for their daughters, but unlike Rao he did not have to marry and secure the succession. He was free to remain free, and that was exactly what he intended to do.
He would be leaving within the hour by helicopter to his private jet and his journey to Mumbai.
On the table in front of him were Keira’s plans. He had ordered a servant to retrieve them from her room. There were a couple of points he wanted to query with her before he left. The excellence of what she had done had caught him off guard. Like his loss of control and his reaction to her last night?
He had not lost control. Maybe not completely, but the extent to which he had come dangerously close to doing so had been a first for him. Irritated by the mocking tone of his inner voice, Jay put down his teacup.
The courtyard beneath his window looked so tranquil this morning it was hard to imagine that last night it had contained so much dark passion. A passion instigated by her, when she had taken that inviting step towards him. Maybe—but it was an invitation he could have refused.
He looked at his watch. It was still early, but there were a couple of questions he needed to ask Keira about her plans before he left.
As he stepped outside, the morning sunlight burnished the olive warmth of his skin, throwing into relief the strength of his facial bone structure.
The door to Keira’s quarters opened easily. Jay could hear the quiet hum of her laptop and smell the scent of her sleep and her skin. Through the open doorway he could see the bed, and Keira herself, lying on top of it and quite obviously still asleep.
Jay turned back to the door, only to stop and turn again, to walk slowly towards the bed as through drawn there against his will.
Keira was lying on her side, clad in a pair of pyjamas that looked more suitable in design for a girl than a woman, and he could see quite clearly the tracks of her dried tears on her face, below telltale mascara smudges.
She’d been crying? Because of him?
Deep down within himself Jay could feel something, a sensation of emotional tightness and tension, as though something was breaking apart to reveal something else so sensitive and raw that he couldn’t bear to feel it.
What was it? Compassion? Pity? Regret? Why should he feel pain for her vulnerability and her tears?
Angry with himself, Jay turned away from the bed and left as silently as he had arrived.
Women used their tears in exactly the same way as they used their bodies: to get what they wanted. He wasn’t about to be taken in by such tactics.
* * *
Jay had gone and she was safe. Because without his presence she could not be tormented and tempted as she had been last night.
But Jay would come back, and when he did...
When he did things would be different, Keira promised herself grimly. She would have found a way to protect herself from her own weakness. It wasn’t her pride that was insisting that she did that. Given the chance, she’d have preferred to run from what Jay aroused in her rather than battle with it. But she simply did not have that freedom. Her contract tied her to the work she had taken on and through that to Jay, and she was not in a position to risk the financial implications of breaking that contract.