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  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 did
n’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.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HER head on one side, Keira carefully studied the newly painted walls of the show house. She had chosen the paint from over a dozen different samples, all of which had been applied in square patches to the wall so that she could assess the effect on the room’s light and size.

  ‘Yes,’ she told the waiting painter with a pleased smile. ‘That’s perfect.’

  Someone else might not consider it worthwhile on such a tight schedule to spend time finding exactly the right shade of off-white, but to Keira such niceties were an essential part of the way she worked. The right paint would provide the foundations of her scheme, and thus in her opinion was vitally important. Combining both Jay’s wishes and Alex’s advice, she had sourced her paint locally, and the supplier had been marvellously patient about fine-tuning the pigment to get the shade she wanted.

  The painter was smiling broadly himself now, a huge watermelon grin stretching across his face as he promised her that he would have the paint mixed and delivered to her ready for the decorators to start work in the morning.

  It was a month since the evening she had fled—not just from Jay, but more tellingly from her own response to him—to spend virtually the whole night curled up on her bed, agonising over what she should do.

  The discovery in the morning that Jay had returned to Mumbai had given her a breathing space that had enabled her to think logically and practically about her situation and her options. She had reasoned that financially she could not afford to break her contract, whilst emotionally and sexually she could not afford to mirror her mother’s folly in falling in love with the wrong man and going to bed with him.

  Jay inhabited a world in which the super-rich called nowhere home. It was unlikely that their paths would ever cross again once she had finished her work here. Reasonably, therefore, all she had to do was keep her distance from him until life put an even greater distance between them. Once it had she could ache all she wanted for him, in the secure knowledge that all she could do was ache. Better to burn with unappeased longing than to be destroyed be the acid corrosion of shame and self-disgust.

  And anyway, now she was alert to her own danger she had herself properly under control, Keira assured herself firmly.

  Really? So why, then, was her stomach now twisting itself in knots just because she could see Jay walking towards her?

  He was here, and her world had tilted on its axis. But she could act naturally and keep things on a professional footing, Keira decided, and she told him briskly, ‘Jamil has been very patient with me, and we’ve finally got the right paint colour. The decorators should be able to start work tomorrow, and by the time they’ve finished the furniture and soft furnishings should be starting to arrive.’

  Jay nodded his head.

  ‘You haven’t given me a decision yet on the toile fabric I discussed with you,’ Keira reminded him. ‘So if you’ve got time…’

  ‘You mean your fellow countryman’s designs?’ Jay stopped her.

  ‘Yes,’ Keira agreed, telling him enthusiastically, ‘I thought his contemporary designs were fun and quirky and would appeal to buyers—especially if we move away from the traditional French colours into something more dramatic and modern. Black on hot pink or bright yellow would make a real statement if we used it on cushions, for instance.’

  ‘And of course if I agree to buy your countryman’s designs then naturally he’s going to want to show his gratitude—probably in a private suite at that hotel he was discussing with you.’ The sardonic tone of Jay’s voice coupled with the innuendo of his words made Keira’s heart plummet downwards.

  ‘That is grossly unfair and insulting,’ she told him furiously. ‘There is only one reason I would ever recommend anyone to a client, and that is because, in my professional opinion, they or their product are right for the job. That is the way I do business. You, of course, may have other methods.’

  ‘You dare to accuse me of your own low moral standards?’

  Jay looked so angry as he took a step towards her and stood almost menacingly over her, filling the air with the heat of his fury, that Keira wasn’t sure what would have happened if the site manager hadn’t come and interrupted them, explaining that there were some papers he needed Jay to sign.

  The sooner this commission was completed and she could end her association with Jay the better, Keira told herself fiercely.

  She had an appointment to meet with one of the manufacturers who was providing some of the furniture for the show homes tomorrow. His factory was several hours’ drive away, in a small town close to the border of the desert. Remembering what had happened when she had gone to visit the fabric factory, this time Keira had sent a message first to Jay, explaining what she intended to do and requesting his approval. He had not said anything about it just now.

  Keira’s heart slid heavily into her ribs. It was no use trying to lie to herself. Each time she saw him she might promise herself that this time she would not permit herself to endure that surge of sick, aching need that made her long to be in his arms even though she knew that that was the worst place she could ever be, but she knew that in reality it was a promise she would never be able to keep.

  Take today. It was just over four weeks since she had last seen him—four weeks, two days and ten minutes, to be exact. Well, twenty minutes if she counted the extra ten minutes she had spent concealed behind the fretwork of the latticed jails, designed to keep the women of the harem from public view whilst enabling them to look down into the street below, watching Jay walk away from the palace.

  Four weeks during which she had resolutely focused on her work, filling every heartbeat of time with a feverish busyness designed to deny her the ability to give in to the temptation to think about Jay. She had even taken to reading books on Indian culture and crafts when she went to bed, until her eyes became too heavy to stay open.

  And yet earlier today, the minute she had looked up and seen him, every rule she had made to protect herself had been ignored and forgotten.

  It had taken his insulting remark about Alex to force her to recognise reality.

  In that regard at least she was most certainly not her mother’s daughter, Keira recognised tiredly. She felt no quickening of her senses at all where other men were concerned.

  Which made her danger greater rather than less. Loving the wrong man could be every bit as destructive as loving too many wrong men—especially when that wrong man was a man like Jay.

  Jay leaned against one of the pillars supporting the vaulted ceiling of the palace’s main reception room. The walls and the pillars were decorated with a traditional form of plasterwork that had been hand polished with a piece of agate, to create a marble finish, but of course that finish was a fake, false—just like Keira. Did she really think he had been deceived by that protest of hers about her fabric designer friend?

  Jay paced the room restlessly. He had gone to Mumbai to escape from the ache of wanting her that being here with her gave him. He had even sworn that he would ease that ache in the arms of the actress who had been so delighted to hear from him. So why hadn’t he done exactly that? And why had he cut short his visit and returned here ahead of schedule?

  He wasn’t going to answer that question. Why should he, when he had so many far more important matters to
concern himself with?

  Keira’s heart sank as she stood in the main entrance hall to the palace. Her driver had just brought her the unwelcome news that he was not going to be driving her to her appointment but that instead Jay was going to take her, and that he would join her shortly.

  Up above her was the gallery she had just walked along, which separated the main part of the palace from the women’s quarters, where once they had lived in Purdah.

  Purdah! The concealment of a woman’s face and body from the eyes of all men except those of her immediate family. To some a protection, but to others a form of imprisonment. As a Western woman the very thought of enduring Purdah was beyond comprehension.

  But wasn’t the reality that what she herself was enduring, and had endured for most of her life, was in its own way an inner form of Purdah, imposed on her by her own fears? Her Purdah meant that her emotions and desires must always remain hidden away, denied the light of day for her own protection.

  Keira tensed as she heard Jay’s now familiar footsteps crossing the hallway.

  ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  How formal he sounded—and looked, Keira thought, contrasting his immaculate appearance in a perfectly fitting lightweight neutral-coloured suit worn over a pale blue shirt with her own jeans and shirt. But then she had dressed for the bumpy, dusty ride she had been anticipating. Her driver tended to keep the windows of the car open rather than use the air-conditioning, so that he could engage in conversation with other drivers.

  They were in the car before Jay spoke to her again.

  ‘Remind me again what the purpose of your visit to this manufacturer is?’

  The sarcastic tone of his voice made Keira wish even more that he had not chosen to accompany her.

  ‘I want to see the finished furniture before it is delivered, to make sure that it will work. He’s making some special shelving units for the larger properties. They’re to go into the studies and the children’s rooms, and I wanted to see how he’s getting on with them. If my idea works I thought they could be adapted to various age groups if they were given different paint finishes. I also wanted to make sure that he understands that all the paint used must be lead-free. I’m trying where possible to ensure that all the raw materials used come from sustainable sources. Green issues are just as big here in India with the middle classes as they are in Europe, of course.’