CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS THREE days since Keira had last seen Jay—three days in which she had had time to focus on her work and rebalance her own sense of self.
Where another woman might have found it galling and humiliating to have a man walk away, having started to make love to her, Keira could only feel relieved that Jay had done so. She had been given a second chance to protect herself from her own weakness, and for that she could only be profoundly grateful.
But being grateful wasn’t doing anything to ease the ache that had woken her from her sleep last night—and the night before, and the night before that. Keira stared grimly at her laptop screen, battling determinedly to will away such potentially dangerous thoughts. Was this the way her mother had felt about the married man she had once told Keira was her father, whose desertion she claimed had pushed her into the arms of a series of other men?
But then her mother had told her so many different stories, changing with her mood and her need for the drugs on which she’d been dependent. Keira pushed her laptop away from her with an awkward panic-stricken movement that betrayed what she was feeling.
She was not like her mother. She was her own self—an individual who had the power of authority and choice over what she did. No man could make her choose to want him against her will. No man—but what about her own emotions? Emotions? What Jay had aroused within her had nothing to do with emotions. Her desire for him had been sexual, that was all. Nothing more. That was impossible. Just like desiring him in the first place had also been impossible?
Keira’s panic increased. She got up and went to the window, but looking down into the courtyard was a mistake. It might be bathed in sunlight now, but inside her head she could still picture it shadowed by moonlight, with Jay’s body and her own shadowed along with it. In those shadows they had touched and kissed, and she had—but, no—she must not think of that.
She had an appointment in half an hour, to meet up with the fabric merchant, who had telephoned her to tell her that her samples had arrived. He had offered to bring them to the palace, but Keira had told him that she would go to him.
She had fallen in love with the city, and readily used any excuse to see more of it. She felt so at home here, so at peace—or rather she would have if she hadn’t been dreading Jay’s return.
The city had been laid out in a geometric grid of streets and squares. From the main square, opposite the palace, a network of narrow pedestrian streets branched out from the straight ceremonial main road that led to the city’s main gates, along which in previous centuries the formal processions of maharajas and other dignitaries had passed.
It was these streets, with their stalls and artisan workshops, that fascinated Keira even more than the elegant palaces of the rich. Behind them lay the bavelis, the townhouses of the city’s original eminent citizens, each of them an individual work of art in its own right.
As always, the rich mingling of scents and sounds absorbed Keira’s attention. The sound of temple bells mingled with the laughter of children and the urgent cries of shopkeepers wanting to sell their merchandise.
Knowing she had time in hand, Keira made a detour from her destination that took her past the bazaar, famous for selling rose, almond, saffron and vetiver-flavoured sherbets. In the flower market workers were busy weaving garlands and making floral offerings for templegoers, and when she cut through the jewellery quarter of the bazaar Keira had to force herself not to be tempted to linger outside the shops of the lac bangle sellers.
These were the sights and sounds of Jay’s home—the place where he had been born, the place where his family had ruled for so many generations. Where his family still ruled. Jay wasn’t merely a successful and wealthy entrepreneur, he was also a member of one of India’s royal families. His brother was the Maharaja. It was no wonder that he had that air of arrogance and pride about him. No wonder that he believed he could command others to his will.
But it wasn’t the command of his royal status that she feared. Rather, it was the command of his essential sensuality—and he would have had that no matter what rank he had been born to, she suspected.
The merchant greeted her with great ceremony, bowing his head so much that Keira momentarily feared for the fate of his ornate turban. His daughter-in-law brought them tea, her sweet, shy smile echoing those of her children. She looked outstandingly pretty in her crimson and blue embroidered ghaghara gathered skirt, her odhni tucked into the waist of her skirt. She pulled the odhni round to drape it modestly over her head, her movements delicate and graceful, her hands and feet carefully patterned with henna.
When Keira saw the fabrics the merchant was spreading out on the floor in front of her she felt her heart skip a beat in delight. She studied the samples that were so excellently in tune with her own ideas, combining as they did tradition with a certain stylish modern twist.
‘My cousin would like to invite you to visit his factory, so that you can see more of their work,’ the merchant told her.
‘Go to his town?’ Keira queried excitedly ‘Oh, yes. I would love to.’
‘My cousin has a new designer, a man from your own country. He would like you to meet him so that you can discuss your requirements with him.’
Before Keira left the shop it was arranged that the merchant would contact his cousin, accepting his invitation on her behalf, whilst Keira would make arrangements via Jay’s servants for a car and a driver to be put at her disposal to take her to the fabric town.
If when Jay returned she had proper samples of the fabrics she wanted to use, having consulted directly with the designer and producer, it would surely prove to him that whilst he had been away she had been far too busy working to have any time to waste on thinking about him.
Keira was still desperately trying to convince herself that it was India itself that was responsible for the overwhelming of her defences: India, with its potent mystery and sensuality that thrummed in the air and filled the senses, stealing away reality and resistance. It was India that was responsible for the fact that she lay awake in her bed at night, trying to deny the ache spreading through her in slow waves of heat and need. India that somehow, like a magician, conjured up those unwanted and forbidden images inside her head, created those secret private mental films in which she and Jay lay together, their naked bodies veiled only by the sheer voile bed-hangings enclosing them in their own intimate world.
Yes, it was India that had the power to touch her senses and break through her defences. Not Jay himself, Keira reassured herself.
* * *
Mumbai was its normal highly charged cosmopolitan self, Jay acknowledged. With meetings overrunning into cocktail and dinner parties that went on into the early hours of the morning as the socialites of the city mingled with its movers and shakers.
Tonight he was dining with a fellow entrepreneur, an Indian in his early fifties, originally educated in England, who had returned to Mumbai to take over a family business. Amongst the guests was a Bollywood actress who was currently trying to engage Jay’s interest in something more intimate than dinner table conversation by asking him if he had yet visited the city’s latest exclusive nightclub.
She was very beautiful, with the kind of figure that could make a grown man cry, and her fingertips rested lightly on Jay’s suit-clad arm as she leaned closer to him to envelop him in a cloud of scent. Her movements were designed to be sensual and discreetly erotic, but for some reason they failed to stir his pulses. Her scent wasn’t the scent he wanted to breathe in, her eyes weren’t amber but dark brown, and whilst her touch did nothing whatsoever for him, he only had to think about Keira’s touch for his body to react.
What nonsense was this? That one woman could quite easily be replaced by another was Jay’s personal mantra—one he adhered to strictly. Jay moved restlessly in his chair, oblivious to the disappointment of his companion as she recognised his lack of interest in her. There was only one explanation he was willing to accept for Keira’s unwanted intrusion into his thoughts, and that was quite simply that he ached for her because he had not brought their intimacy to its natural conclusion. If he had done so then he would not still be wanting her. That was all there was to it. Nothing more. Nothing more at all.
Jay was still repeating those words to himself several hours later, as he lay alone and sleepless in his bed in his hotel suite, the business documents he had intended to study left ignored on the bedside table.
Keira.
Jay closed his eyes, only realising his mistake when immediately his memory furnished him with a mental image of her in which her eyes burned dark gold with desire for him and her breath came in swift, unsteady little gasps of escalating arousal.
His own heartbeat picked up, hammering its message of need through his body.
He had been a fool not to take what had been on offer. She had probably had condoms to hand—women like her were always prepared.
The Bollywood actress had insisted on writing down her mobile number for him. He had two more days in Mumbai—could spend longer there if he chose. Longer? Since when did it take more than one night in bed with any woman to satisfy his desire for her? Wasn’t that why he had grown bored with the ritual of pretending to have to seduce a woman who had already made it plain that she was up for sex with him, taking her shopping for the present she had made it clear she expected, then finding that, like a tiger fed on tame game instead of having to hunt, his belly was full in the sexual sense, but his appetite was somehow not satisfied. It was no wonder that he had actually welcomed the celibacy that had become his only sleeping partner these last few months.
And wasn’t it in reality that very celibacy that was responsible for the white heat of his desire for Keira?
Keira. His thoughts had turned full circle, and his body now ached like hell. Jay threw back the bedcovers. Picking up the documents from the bedside table, he strode naked to the desk. He pulled on a robe and switched on his laptop, and proceeded to do what he could to blot Keira out of his thoughts by engrossing himself in some work...
* * *
‘Oh, I love this toile,’ Keira enthused as she studied the fabric sample in front of her, with its design of Indian palaces, monkeys, elephants and howdas printed in traditional single colours against the creamy white of the cotton background.
‘I designed it myself,’ Alex Jardine told her with a smile. ‘I had some original copperplate rollers for toile fabric I was lucky enough to pick up in an antique market in France years ago, and when I showed them to Arjun, here, and explained what I wanted to do, he was able to find me a craftsman to copy the rollers for us so we could create this toile. It’s one of four we’ve been experimenting with: two traditional, of which this is one, and two very contemporary designs.’
Keira nodded her head, fascinated by the designs.
‘We’re experimenting at the moment with charcoal, to black-dye the modern toile and give it a more edgy look,’ he continued.
From the moment she had stepped into the fabric factory Keira had felt as though she had stepped into her own private Aladdin’s cave. Bolts of fabrics of every hue imaginable were stacked to the ceiling, mouthwatering acid sherbet colours, rich traditional colours of crimson ruby, jade and emerald embellished with gold thread, sea and sky colours, and even pale creamy naturals. Her senses had fed on them as greedily as a child let loose in a sweet shop, and now she was every bit as giddy and dizzy as that child might have been, from consuming too many additives. She was on a high with the sheer intensity of her own rush of delight. And that delight was compounded by her sense of having met someone so much in tune with her own way of thinking in Alex.
At first sight she had felt slightly put off by him. Over six foot tall, with thick curly hair that reached down to his shoulders, he was dressed in white linen trousers, a loose linen shirt and with his feet bare. His voice was a languid ‘okay yah’ upper crust London drawl, and Keira had felt initially that there was rather too much of the faux hippie about him—so much so, in fact, that it was almost a theatrical affectation.
But then he had shown her his fabrics, his large hands as tender on them as though they were small children, his voice softening as he told her about their provenance and his own desire to keep his designs true to tradition whilst bringing in something unique and modern that was still ‘of India’, and Keira had been entranced and captivated.
‘I am hoping that we’ll be able to design something that has a bit of a Bollywood twist to it, but Arjun, here, thinks I’m being over-confident.’ Alex laughed as he smiled at the factory owner.
‘I just love what you’re doing,’ Keira told him. ‘And if it was up to me I’d be buying up everything for this new venture, but I don’t have that authority.’
‘We can supply you with samples and you can show them to His Highness Prince Jayesh,’ the factory owner was assuring her eagerly.
‘Arjun won’t let you leave until he’s heaped you with samples,’ Alex warned her, with a warm smile, reaching out to pluck a stray thread of cotton that had attached itself to the sleeve of her top as the factory owner hurried away for more samples.
Keira smiled back at him, unaware of the fact that Jay had just walked into the building and was standing watching the byplay between them with a glacier cold look in his eyes.
It was Alex who saw Jay first, his own gaze sharpening in recognition of what he could see in Jay’s eyes as he strode towards them.
‘There’s a very angry-looking alpha male heading this way,’ he told Keira drolly. ‘And he looks very much as though he thinks I’ve been trespassing on his private property.’
‘What?’ Puzzled, Keira turned round and then gave a small ‘oh’ of mixed comprehension and surprise as Jay bore down on them, her stomach churning out its message of acute physical awareness of him as her heart pounded erratically.
He was wearing light linen, apparently oblivious to the heat in the factory, with no sign of perspiration dampening his skin in the way Keira knew it was dampening her own—although she could see the dark shadow along his jaw where he needed to shave. It gave him an extra edge of raw masculinity that touched her own femaleness as directly as though he himself had touched her—very intimately.
A giddy, nerve-tingling feeling had somehow taken hold of her, reminiscent of the way she felt after drinking champagne. Bubbles of sensation fizzed through her veins, heightening her awareness of him and her sensitivity to him. Her gaze was somehow drawn to his face, and refused to be moved. It was as though she had been possessed by the greed of a hedonist with an insatiable appetite, Keira decided shakily, unable to stop herself from visually gorging herself on the pleasure of looking at him.
Jay—here! What an extraordinary coincidence that he should have business here himself. Not that he looked at all pleased to have found her here, she noticed.
‘Jay,’ she greeted him weakly. ‘You’ve come back early from Mumbai. I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve just seen the most wonderful fabrics. You’re going to love them, I know...’ She was gabbling like an idiot, unable to stop herself as she plucked sample after sample from the pile Arjun had just returned with, wafting them before Jay’s totally immobile gaze.
He hadn’t spoken or moved, hadn’t so much as acknowledged her in any way, and yet he filled her senses. All she could see, all she knew, was him.
‘You must meet Alex,’ Keira gabbled on. ‘He’s got the most wonderful ideas—’
She broke off as she physically felt the increase in tension, as clearly as though someone had actually tightened the air and removed oxygen from it. Jay’s lips had thinned, his gaze icing over her before being directed past her to Alex.
‘Arjun’s got all the samples Keira and I have discussed,’ Keira heard Alex saying easily. ‘But you’ll want to check them out for yourself, and as Keira knows I’m open to whatever input she wants to give me. Next time you come to visit, if you let me know beforehand, Keira, I’ll book you into that boutique hotel I was telling you about and we can do dinner,’ Alex offered, giving Keira another smile. ‘And then I’ll have time to show you what I can really do.’
When he winked at her and grinned, Keira couldn’t help but laugh. Alex was a tease, but harmless, and she didn’t in any way object to his mild social flirting, knowing it for what it was—which was nothing more than something to oil the wheels of business.
She would have liked to stay a bit longer, to share her enthusiasm and excitement for what she had seen with Jay, but he was making it very plain that he was not in the mood to look at fabrics and was clearly waiting to leave. He was also making it very obvious that he was expecting her to leave with him. Presumably he had completed his own business, whatever it had been, and so Keira thanked Arjun and allowed Jay to escort her out of the factory, whilst two young boys carried her precious samples over to the car and handed them to her driver.
However, when Keira made to follow them to her car, Jay stopped her.
‘You’re travelling back with me,’ he told her abruptly.
She could have objected—perhaps she should have objected, given his dictatorial manner—but for some reason she remained strangely silent. Not because she actually wanted to travel back with him, of course, Keira insisted to herself as Jay opened the passenger door of his Mercedes and then stood beside it, waiting for her to get inside more in the manner of a gaoler than anything else. Keira winced when he closed the door with a definite thud.
It was late in the day and the town was busy with traffic, filling its narrow streets. All too conscious of the hazards presented by small children darting out into the road, plus old people, cyclists, bullock carts, the highly decorated trucks that were so much a part of India’s road culture, not to mention stray cows and other cars, Keira didn’t venture to speak for fear of distracting Jay’s attention from his driving.
Once clear of the town, though, when Jay himself made no attempt to engage her in conversation, Keira found that despite the oppressive atmosphere caused by his silence she didn’t feel brave enough to break it.
With the sun setting over the dusty plain she focused instead on the view beyond the window, and she couldn’t stop herself from exclaiming aloud in delight when they passed a herd of camels being made ready to travel as they took advantage of the evening coolness.
‘We’re so close to the desert that I’d love to take the opportunity to see the annual Cattle Fair,’ she told Jay enthusiastically. ‘Have you seen it?’ she asked him.
‘Of course,’ Jay told her shortly.
Of course he would have. This was his country, after all, Keira reminded herself. His manner was so European that she tended to forget that at times.
It made her feel uncomfortable and on edge to recognise that just the fact of seeing Jay when she hadn’t expected to do so had had such a dramatic effect on her mood, changing her from an in-control businesswoman into someone whose every reaction was controlled by her awareness of him: a smile from him sent her heart soaring upwards, and a frown had it plunging downwards.
No one had affected her like this before, and knowing that he could and did made her feel on edge and vulnerable. She wanted to reject completely the pull he had on her senses, and yet at the same time she was drawn helplessly to check over and over again the intensity of it—like a moth drawn to the light that would ultimately destroy it, she thought with a small shiver, witnessing the helpless suicide of the soft-winged creatures as they flew into the beam of the car’s headlights, switched on now that darkness had fallen.
The lights of the city broke the stark emptiness of the plain as they drove closer to it.
Jay was still struggling within himself to justify his intense and uncharacteristic reaction to the fact that Keira had been absent from the palace on his return.
That he had automatically expected she would be there and had been so infuriated when she was not had been bad enough, but he might have dismissed those feelings as being caused by the ongoing sexual challenge she represented to him. However, explaining his own sense of aloneness and the emptiness of the building without her in it was something else again, and something for which he could not find any logical reason.
In short, it had infuriated him to return and find her gone. It had infuriated him even more to have to admit to his own reaction to her absence. And it had infuriated him most of all to have to endure his own inner sense of desolation and the emptiness of the palace without her.
Why on earth should the absence of one woman—a woman he barely knew—affect him to such an extent that he had been driven to set out in pursuit of her? It was simply not logical. And it was most definitely not acceptable.
Jay considered himself to be a man who had overcome the human weakness of being held hostage to emotion. Everything he did was governed and motivated by reason and rationality. Of course he permitted himself to be pleased when his goals and objectives were achieved, but it was a controlled and disciplined satisfaction. Not for Jay the pantomiming, posturing foolishness of the type who found it necessary to trumpet their success to the world in ridiculous displays of conspicuous consumption, which invariably involved magnums of champagne, flashy models and equally flashy so-called ‘boys’ toys’.
Yes, he had celebrated his successes—with a carefully chosen piece of art, or an addition to his worldwide property portfolio, and always a generous anonymous donation to those charities he supported. These were charities in the main that provided for orphaned children in the poorest of the world’s countries, but this was a private matter.
What he had experienced today came dangerously close to challenging everything he believed about himself. That must not be allowed to happen. The enormity of what it might mean was too much. It wasn’t the intimacy he had witnessed between Keira and her fellow countryman that had affected him. Rather it was his anger at her behaviour and the effect it might have on his own business reputation. Indians placed a great deal of importance on good moral behaviour, and he had no wish to see the reputation of his business tarnished by Keira’s flirtatious and unprofessional manner. That was the cause of his anger, and it was perfectly logical. It had nothing whatsoever to do with emotion—and certainly not an emotion like jealousy.
They had reached the palace car park. Without a word to Keira Jay stopped the car, got out, and then went round to open the passenger door for her.
They were back inside the palace before Keira could find the courage to break the crushing silence Jay had imposed, telling him brightly, ‘I’d better go and thank my driver, and retrieve the samples...’
‘Wait,’ Jay demanded curtly. ‘There’s something I wish to discuss with you first. We’ll go to my office,’ he told her, gesturing towards the stairs.
Whatever he wanted to say to her it wasn’t going to be something she wanted to hear, Keira recognised as she took in the grim set of his mouth and the way he distanced himself from her as they walked up the stairs.
Once they were inside his office Jay closed the door with the same controlled ferocity with which he had closed the car door earlier, the small but definite thud of that closure causing Keira’s heart to jolt uneasily into her ribs.
Keira could sense that a storm was brewing as clearly as though she had seen thunderclouds building up and growling ominously on the horizon. It swept into the room without warning or ceremony, feeding on the oxygen in the air and leaving her chest tight as she struggled to breathe in the air that was left.
When Jay spoke, his words were like sheet lightning, slicing through the stifling silence.
‘You had no business travelling so far out of the city without advising me of your plans beforehand.’
‘You weren’t here, and—’
‘And you couldn’t wait?’ Jay challenged her coldly.
Keira gulped in air, bewildered by his anger.
‘You were the one who introduced me to the fabric merchant so that I could obtain some samples,’ she reminded him.
‘The merchant, yes. But I most certainly did not suggest that you, a woman on your own, should travel anywhere unescorted, and that once having done so—’
‘I was not unescorted,’ Keira protested. ‘I was with my driver. I’d gone there on business to—’
‘To flirt with one of your own countrymen?’
‘No!’
‘Yes. Since that is most certainly what you were doing when I saw you.’
‘What? That’s ridiculous,’ Keira defended herself.
‘But you knew that he would be there?’ Jay queried.
‘Well, yes,’ Keira admitted. ‘But—’
‘And immediately you knew that, you decided to go and check him out?’
‘No! This is crazy. It was the fabric merchant who suggested that I might want to meet the designer and see his work at first hand.’
‘Was it? Or did you suggest it yourself? Was it his work you wanted to inspect at first hand or the man himself? A fellow European...’
What he was insinuating was as insulting as it was incorrect, Keira thought angrily.
‘I went to check out fabric—Indian fabric. Not a European man, or indeed any kind of man,’ Keira told him fiercely. ‘I’m not interested in checking out men.’
Too late she realised her mistake. The look Jay slanted her was as steely sharp as a new blade.
‘No? That’s not the impression you’ve been giving me,’ he taunted her.
Another minute and he’d be reminding her of her response to him. Keira tensed herself inwardly for the expected verbal blow, but to her relief instead he accused her coldly.
‘You were flirting with him—you can’t deny that.’
Relief washed through her, chilling the heat of her earlier anger.
‘Yes, I can—and I do.’
Ignoring her protest, Jay insisted grimly, ‘Admit it. You were coming on to him so hard that you were oblivious to anyone and everything else—not that he was objecting. He was as eager to get you into his bed as you were to be there. That was patently obvious.’
‘That is not true, and I was not coming on to him,’ Keira denied truthfully again. ‘We were simply both being polite to one another.’ She was getting her courage back now that she had escaped the humiliation of him reminding her how passionately she responded to him. ‘Good manners are a highly valued trait in Indian society—something that Indian children are taught at their mother’s knee. As I should have thought you would know.’
The silence was suddenly alive with the kind of danger that brought up the small hairs on the back of her neck.
‘So you maintain that you were simply being polite, do you?’
‘Yes,’ Keira insisted.
‘By offering yourself to him?’
‘I was not doing that.’
‘Yes, you were. Just like you’ve been offering yourself to me from the first moment we met.’
‘That’s not true!’ Keira had had enough. She had to get out of this room and away from this man.
Shaking her head, she made for the door—only Jay got there ahead of her, barring her way with his body so that she virtually ran full-tilt into him.
She could feel the heat of his breath on her skin and the bite of his fingers into her upper arms. Her only means of escape was to close her eyes and try desperately to shut down her senses. But it was too late. Jay was swinging her round to imprison her against the wall, his mouth plundering hers. It was pointless trying to resist when her own body was in revolt and had turned traitor on her, joining Jay instead and offering itself up to him.
How could she want such an emotionally humiliating intimacy? How could she not reject the hot pouring tide of a sensuality she knew to be corrupted with the poison of contempt and lust? How could she moan and soften within the hardness of Jay’s hold, seeking to give all of herself up to him?
She didn’t know. But then she was past knowing anything other than the intensity of her need for Jay.
Her own arms were wrapped tightly around him now, her breasts sensitised by the movement of her body against his. Inside her head she could already see his hands covering their nakedness, feel the fierce tug of his mouth against her nipples.
She shuddered violently in reaction to her own thoughts. A sharp spike of shock pierced through her, only to be overwhelmed by a fresh wave of aching longing as Jay pressed her even more closely to him, his hands moving up over her body to her breasts, cupping them, urging them free of their covering. Lamplight stroked the pale alabaster of her skin, latticed with the darker shadows of Jay’s hands, and her nipples were desire-engorged and tight as she pressed into the cup of his palms. Just the simple act of his palms brushing against their tenderness was enough to make Keira shudder with need.
She couldn’t bear there to be any barriers between them. She wanted his hands on her body. She wanted the freedom to explore and caress his body. She wanted to touch and taste him, know him and know his knowing of her, his full possession of her. Those feelings were like a form of madness in her blood that she couldn’t withstand. They filled her head with images of them together and turned her body into an aching mass of yearning nerve-endings and willing flesh, created only for this man and this moment.
He felt hard and erect, ready for her in the same openly sexual way in which she knew her own body was ready for him. She could feel the damp softness between her legs, and the quick fierce pulse that went with it. She wanted desperately for him to touch her there, for him to caress her there. A small moan bubbled in her throat, followed by a shuddering gasp in acknowledgement of his accuracy in reading her mind when his hand dropped from her breast to her belly and then slid lower over her thigh, beneath her skirt, his fingers probing the edge of her thin silky knickers.
His kiss matched the intimate possession of his fingers. The very fact that the deliberate thrust of his tongue was more demanding than the delicate questing of the fingertip he rubbed against the wetness of her clitoris told her more clearly than any words that he was holding back—just as her own shudder of response and acceptance told him that she was eager to answer that demand.
But instead of taking things further Jay’s mouth left hers, to move slowly along her jaw and towards her ear.
Keira didn’t know which she wanted most...what he was doing or what he had been doing. Just the whisper of his breath...his lips against her skin...was sending her crazy.
Not that he was exactly immune to the reaction he was arousing in her either, by the way he was gripping her hips and pulling her tightly against his body, Keira recognised, with a fierce thrill of female pleasure.
Now it was her turn to groan aloud with delight as his hand moved back up her body and cupped her breast. Just the feel of his thumb tip rubbing sensuously across her tight aching nipple made her moan out loud.
She had to bite on her bottom lip to stop herself from begging him to take off her top and expose her breast to his gaze, his touch, to the hot hard caress of his mouth.
Frantically she tensed her muscles, squeezing her thighs together as she felt a surge of longing rocket through her.
As though he guessed what was happening to her Jay cupped her hip, his fingers kneading her rhythmically. She was leaning fully against the wall now, whilst Jay’s hands caressed every inch of her, making her quiver from head to foot in open longing.
Was this something he had learned from the Kama Sutra?
When he took her hand and placed it against his own body she almost sobbed with pleasure. Her hands were long and slender, but the hard swollen length of him extended beyond her outstretched fingertips. Keira closed her eyes, pleasure a dark velvet blanket of sensuality behind her closed eyelids. She ached as though she had a fever for the feel of him inside her. She had had no idea there could be desire like this—instant, immediate, hot and hungry, a need that burned everything else into oblivion and drove a person on relentlessly until it was sated.
No doubt if Jay knew the truth about her he would think her very unworldly not to have experienced something like this before. Unlike him!
How many times...? How many women...? That thought burned through her in a hot agony of molten jealousy that stabbed through her, stiffening her body into rigid rejection of what she was feeling and thinking.
Abruptly she was shocked back into reality, her desire chilling into sick self-disgust. What was she thinking of? How could she be behaving like this when she knew...?
Panic twisted and speared inside her.
She had to get away from him—now. Before it was too late and she became one of those women, a woman like her mother, who loved the wrong man and made the wrong choices.
Loved...
Keira started to tremble violently with reaction. Jay’s hands were still on her body but she pushed them away, taking him by surprise and opening the door before he could stop her.
Once free of his office she started to walk faster, finally breaking into a run so that by the time she had reached the sanctuary of her room her heart was thudding against her chest wall. From exertion, or from the fear she had brought from Jay’s office with her? The fear that she might be falling in love with him.
Keira sank down onto her bed, her head in her hands.
* * *
Jay could feel beads of sweat forming on his skin and then chilling as he fought to regain his self-control. He could hear the sound of his own breathing, shallow and strained, whilst his heart thudded and pounded accusingly against his ribs. His body ached and raged against its denial, but Jay was more concerned with his inability to control his emotions rather than any inability to control his flesh.
How could it have happened? How could he have allowed his physical desire for a woman to lead him into the kind of behaviour he had exhibited today? Pursuing her, burning up with fury because he had seen her smiling at another man, wanting to physically stamp his possession on her and deny that same opportunity to any other man.
Jay strode across the room and threw open the shutters to let in the night air. But nothing could rid his senses of the scent of Keira, and of his own arousal. They clung together, wrapped around one another as though they belonged together, filling his head with tormenting images. How could they belong together?
Sex was an act that took place between two separate people who returned to that separateness. If Keira hadn’t run from him he would have taken her to bed...
But she had, ignoring both her own arousal and his. And she had been aroused. Jay knew that. He moved awkwardly, forced to tense his body against the still far too potent memory of how she had reacted when he had touched her, her lips clinging to his, her nipples swelling tightly into his palm, her sex soft and wet.
Irritably Jay speedily shut down the too easily conjured up mental pleasure his senses were giving him. He was a fool if he couldn’t recognise that a good part of the reason he wanted her was the fact that she was playing a game that meant he couldn’t have her. A game in which she offered and then withdrew that offer. A game that was one of the oldest in the world.
He took a deep breath of the cool air. It was totally illogical that he should continue to want her, knowing what she was. But a feeling he didn’t want to admit to twisted his belly. Jealousy? Savagely he dismissed the mocking inner voice he didn’t want to hear. It was impossible for him to feel jealous. Jealousy was an emotion, and he simply did not ‘do’ emotions. Not ever—not with anyone.
If he had any sense he would terminate her contract immediately and send her back to England with a compensation payment. He would negotiate with her to buy her designs and put a new team in place to put them into practice. That way if, by some impossible to imagine chance, he had somehow become vulnerable to some kind of hitherto never experienced male folly, then it would be brought to a swift end.
Yes, that was what he must do. Just as soon as he got back from Mumbai.