The Only One Read online

  Balsebar too seemed taken aback. He stopped growling and stared at him. Man and dog seemed to enter some silent male communication from which she was excluded, much to Brooke’s frustration.

  ‘Look, this has gone far enough,’ she said tensely. ‘Despite the outsize ego you possess which seems to lead you to believe you can simply walk in here and buy me, I’m really not interested in you—or your money.’

  ‘No?’ The slate eyes derided her. ‘That wasn’t how I heard it this afternoon.’

  ‘That was this afternoon. This is tonight….’

  ‘Second thoughts? Or perhaps you simply want to be coaxed.’ The cynical twist to his mouth made Brooke wonder how many other women he had put the question to.

  ‘You want to believe there’s more to it than merely sex, is that it? You’re “not that kind of woman”.’ The savagery in his voice as he mimicked the words, sliced through her. ‘I know all about the kind of woman you are,’ he told her roughly, ‘the kind who likes to play by the rules on the surface but who breaks them underneath it; the kind of woman who marries into the “right set” but who isn’t above entertaining herself with someone from outside it, discreetly, of course. Oh yes, I know all about your kind of women—innate snobs who’d die rather than admit they can feel lust for a man of lower class; a man who doesn’t play the game by their rules; who can’t trace his ancestors back for half a dozen generations and who wasn’t educated at the right schools….’

  ‘No….’ Brooke was genuinely horrified by his accusations. She knew exactly the sort of snobbery he referred to—she had seen it in action and to be given the label of the type of woman she most abhorred made her feel almost tainted.

  ‘No? Then make good the promise you gave me,’ he told her sardonically. One hand left her arm, his finger curling round her throat, his thumb lifting her chin, so that he could look into her eyes. ‘Or do you want me to make it good for you, is that it?’

  ‘All I want you to do is to leave here.’ Brooke was more shaken than she wanted to admit. There was something about the rough abrasion of his hand against her skin that her body reacted to. It took an effort of will to drag her eyes from his face, and as she saw the shuttered contemptuous anger fill his eyes panic seized her. She struggled wildly to pull away from him, distantly conscious of Balsebar’s warning bark, and the sudden flurry of black-and-gold fur as his teeth bit into the soft leather.

  She heard Adam curse as he released her, staggering back under the weight of the dog. Never had she been more grateful for Balsebar’s protection, she thought dizzily, mentally acknowledging that she had only herself to blame for her present predicament. She should never have allowed her own antagonism to reach the point where she had felt compelled to strike a blow for her own sex; the whole episode was rebounding badly on her. Half expecting to hear Adam demanding that she call off her guard dog, she was stunned to see him reach round and prise the dog’s jaws out of his jacket. Balsebar was as surprised as her, especially when lean fingers closed firmly round his muzzle.

  ‘I think the remainder of our discussion is best conducted without this animal’s interference.’ Adam told her grittily, and yet there was no cruelty or anger in the way he grasped the dog’s collar or manoeuvred him into the kitchen, firmly closing the door against any further intrusion.

  ‘Now,’ he said pleasantly, when he had completed his task. His eyes weren’t grey, they were a devilish, dangerous black, Brooke thought dismally, watching him advance towards her and yet totally unable to do a single thing to evade him.

  ‘Where were we?’

  ‘I was just telling you that I wanted you to leave.’

  ‘So you were, and I was just about to tell you that I always get what I’ve paid for,’ he told her less pleasantly, indicating the cheque he had placed on her coffee table. ‘This …’ he picked it up and waved it tauntingly in front of her, ‘entitles me to certain….’

  Before he could continue Brooke wrenched the cheque from his fingers and tore it to pieces, flinging the scraps of paper on the fire.

  ‘Now will you leave,’ she demanded, knowing that her cheeks were flushed with temper, and her eyes glittering with the fear she could feel inching through her, driving out her normal composure.

  ‘We made a bargain,’ Adam reminded her softly, ‘and I intend to make sure we both adhere to it.’

  ‘You can’t want me now, not knowing that I don’t want you,’ Brooke protested making a last desperate stand and measuring the distance between them. She was standing between Adam and the stairs; perhaps if she made a bolt for it, she could lock herself in the bathroom and sit it out until he decided to give up and leave. Undignified but….

  ‘Since I was never under that illusion in the first place, I don’t see why. You sold yourself to me,’ he reminded her. ‘Or is that something else you’ve conveniently forgotton?’

  It was the look in his eyes that did it, panicking her into a wild headlong flight up the stairs, which she knew that she had lost when she heard him behind her. He grabbed her just as she reached the landing, his breathing still under control where hers was rapid and erratic. By some misfortune he had caught her just outside her bedroom door—it stood open, the old-fashioned half tester bed plainly in view.

  ‘Well, well, how convenient,’ he drawled, following her dismayed glance.’

  Despite her height he picked her up as though she were a doll, kicking the door closed with one foot, and advancing towards the bed.

  Having expected to be flung down on it, it came as a surprise to Brooke to find herself standing upright, Adam’s fingers manacling her wrists.

  ‘Well now,’ he drawled softly, ‘there are two ways of doing this. You can admit defeat—gracefully and charmingly as befits a lady …’ his voice lingered insolently over the noun, ‘or we can indulge in a little of the rough and tumble it seems so many of you ladies enjoy—a relic of the days when that was the way your ancestors won their rich brides perhaps? Which is it to be?’

  He looked so controlled and indifferent, standing there watching her, that Brooke could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  ‘Either way it will be rape,’ she told him coldly. Too late now to bitterly regret her foolhardiness. Who was this man anyway? Her blood chilled as she remembered news stories of women abused and then murdered. Was this man….

  The sound of his laughter as it filled the room, warm and genuine, threw her, stopping her terror-stricken thoughts in their tracks.

  ‘A nice try my dear, but hardly applicable.’ One hand unclasped her wrist, his thumb running slightly and tormentingly over the soft fullness of her bottom lip.

  ‘You have the most sensuously inviting mouth I’ve ever seen, and I wanted to feel it beneath mine, sweet and hot, the moment I set eyes on you. You’re no young girl just out of school to plead innocence and ignorance. You know exactly what you do to me when you look at me with those green-gold eyes.’

  ‘Rape …’ he laughed again. ‘It might be worth calling your bluff.’

  He said it so with so much calm self-assurance that something inside Brooke snapped. Like all the others he couldn’t see beyond her looks; didn’t want to see beyond them. Just for a moment she wanted to hurt him as painfully as he had just hurt her.

  ‘Well, Brooke, which is it to be?’ His voice was soft, mesmeric almost, his thumb probing the closed line of her lips, its roughness oddly pleasant against her smooth skin. His other hand was travelling up her arm, his thumb tracing the line of the blue vein that pulsed against her skin. Anger and despair mingled in an explosive reaction. Brooke opened her mouth, her teeth snapping defensively against his thumb. Just in time he realised what she intended to do and drew back.

  This time when his eyes darkened she was in no doubts about the emotions she saw mirrored there. Anger and a desire so intense that it stunned her. This time she was flat on her back, fighting for breath and for freedom as the weight of his body kept her there, precious little finesse in his actions as he
r angora jumper was pushed up to reveal the soft thrust of her breasts in her cream silk bra. The delicate cups were pushed aside as cavalierly as her jumper had been.

  ‘Very well, if this is the way you want it’

  She opened her mouth to protest and then closed it quickly sucking air into her deprived lungs, torn between humiliated shock and a tearing, searing pleasure that invaded her body when Adam opened his mouth over the centre of one rounded breast and tugged impatiently at the soft pink crest.

  Her body’s response was electrically immediate. No one had ever touched her so intimately, and intermingled with a bitter fury that he should dare to do so was an undeniable physical response. Her body had gone rigid with the shock of his intimacy, her mind spiralling wildly out of her control as she fought to marshall her defences, but before she could utter a word Adam was releasing her, pulling her into a sitting position and matter-of-factly straightening her clothes, the sudden about-face stunning her.

  ‘Well, well,’ he drawled when he had finished. ‘You are a surprise package, aren’t you?’

  ‘Am I?’ Brooke’s chin tilted belligerently. Now that Adam was no longer touching her a little of her courage filtered back.

  ‘Well, there can’t be many virgins of your age still left,’ he told her mockingly. ‘You must be in your mid-twenties, and when one takes into consideration all your many physical attributes….’ His glance slid insolently over her body, resting for several seconds on the soft curve of her breasts. Remembering how he had caressed them only minutes before Brooke felt her face go a deep and unhideable scarlet.

  ‘You’re not gay are you?’

  The matter-of-fact question stunned her into fresh silence, and then he started to laugh again, further adding to her humiliation. ‘No, something tells me that you’re not, so that doesn’t leave us with many alternatives does it? Are you going to tell me why, or are we going to sit here all night playing guessing games until I find out,’ he asked her pleasantly.

  This can’t really be happening, was Brooke’s first thought. She had expected him to be furiously angry when she rejected him, which he had been, but this unexpected turn of events totally flummoxed her.

  ‘Why should you want to know?’ She was dismayed to hear herself sounding like a sulky, petulant adolescent.

  ‘Oh for a variety of reasons, including the very natural Curiosity of any man who a woman chooses as her first lover.’

  Once she had assimilated the implications of his remark Brooke flushed angrily again.

  ‘I did not choose you as my lover,’ she stormed back at him. ‘You made totally false suppositions about me which led you to believe that I was sexually available—at a price,’ she finished bitterly.

  ‘And you did nothing to deny those suppositions,’ he reminded her calmly, adding, ‘and something tells me that I’m far from being the first male to make them. Is that the reason you’re still a virgin?’

  He was far too astute Brooke recognised on a wave of trepidation. Far, far too astute.

  ‘You can hardly blame them you know,’ he added grinning at her. ‘That mouth …’ he traced the outline of it with his thumb before she could retreat out of range, ‘in fact everything about you, possesses an earthy sensuality that can’t help but turn men on.’

  ‘Looks, is that all your sex concern themselves with?’ Brooke derided angrily, ‘Don’t bother to answer,’ she told him. ‘I already know the answer….’

  ‘And because of that you’re waiting for Prince Charming to turn up? The perfect lover who you will fall blissfully in love with and live with happily ever after?’

  ‘I don’t believe in love—at least not that variety,’ Brooke told him coldly. ‘Friendship is more important to a relationship than sexual desire—it lasts longer too. My parents were friends first and lovers second.’

  ‘How very cynical,’ Adam derided gently.

  ‘No, just practical,’ was Brooke’s heated response. ‘You see I’ve seen what happens to women when they believe they’ve fallen in love and I don’t want that for me. If I ever marry I want a husband who respects me as a person, someone who’ll never treat me as a second-class citizen, a physical convenience who he’ll tire of and want to discard the moment I’m no longer young and attractive enough to swell his ego. I’d like you to go now,’ she added lamely, knowing that she had told him more about herself in ten short minutes than she had told other people in almost a life time. ‘I’m sorry about … about leading you on….’

  ‘Mmm … why did you?’

  ‘I didn’t like your attitude,’ Brooke told him honestly. ‘I resented your assumption that I was available to you provided you were willing to pay. When I share the act of love with a man it will be because it is something that we both want; not merely because either of us wants to satisfy a brief sexual need.’

  She felt him tense as he studied her through narrowed silver-grey eyes that carefully blanked off whatever he might be feeling.

  ‘Well, Brooke Beauclere, tonight I think we’ve both learned something we didn’t know before, don’t you?’ He leaned forward, smiling with faint malice as she edged away from him. ‘No need to look at me like that, virgins, no matter how appealing, aren’t quite my line, but just to add to your education and to reward myself for my forbearance.’ His mouth brushed hers, the brief contact electrifying. She had been kissed before, many times, but never like this Brooke acknowledged meltingly as his mouth continued to explore and tease hers, firm, masculine lips tracing the tremulous outlines of the mouth she was unable to keep still.

  When the roughly persuasive stroke of his tongue was added to the sensual torment, something seemed to unfurl inside her. White teeth nipped erotically at the full lower curve of her mouth, Adam’s tongue making full use of the advantage her silent gasp gave him to invade beyond the barrier of her teeth.

  Sensations so unexpectedly pleasurable that they stunned her jammed all the warning signals of her brain, her hands going instinctively to Adam’s shoulders, her body barely registering the fact that he was pushing her back against her bed, or that his hand was caressing the full warmth of her breast, his thumb and finger teasing the burgeoning hardness of her nipple.

  Heat seemed to envelop her body; a heat so intense and unexpected that she trembled with the force of it. When Adam released her, for several seconds she could do no more than stare blankly up at him, unable to understand how he could have conjured up a response from the body that had hitherto obeyed her every command.

  ‘I like that,’ he told her softly, still smiling. ‘I like knowing that I can make you respond to me, and that no man has ever touched you or kissed you the way I was just doing. They haven’t, have they Brooke?’

  She wanted to deny his arrogantly self-assured claim; to tell him that just because she was a virgin it didn’t mean she had no sexual experience at all, but caution intervened. Adam had more than enough experience to know when she was lying; her almost adolescent reaction to him was hardly that of an experienced woman; and she doubted that he would be very impressed by the inept fumblings of her early teenage years, dismissing them with the same mocking contempt that he would use to decimate her lies, if she was foolish enough to speak them.

  ‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘but it won’t happen again, Adam. I don’t want to see you again….’

  ‘You haven’t been asked,’ he reminded her tauntingly, adding. ‘I can let myself out. Sleep well won’t you?’

  He had been gone for over ten minutes before Brooke could rouse herself sufficiently to go down and let Balsebar out of the kitchen. The dog was patently aggrieved, almost as though it was her fault he had been incarcerated there in the first place. Which in a way it was Brooke admitted, opening the back door to let him out. In the cool darkness of the autumn evening her skin heated betrayingly—thank goodness she was never likely to see Adam Henderson again she reflected, as Balsebar emerged from the garden and followed her inside. She wouldn’t let herself think about what mig
ht have happened if he hadn’t recognised her virginal inexperience. His mood hadn’t been kind when he had manhandled her into the bedroom and she shivered, recognising that he could be a very dangerous enemy if he chose to be. But not her enemy; not anything in her life except an error of judgment she had made which had had potentially embarrassing repercussions. Know your own limitations my girl, she chided herself as she locked the back door … don’t jump into deep water like that again. Now it was difficult to conjure up the feeling of antagonism that had urged her to confront him in the first place; in fact the entire episode, from meeting him to his leavetaking tonight, already seemed to be part of a dream; totally unreal and inappropriate to her normal everyday life.

  Forget him, she urged herself as she prepared for bed. Forget him, and concentrate on how you’re going to support yourself from now on.

  The Lodge was hers outright and she had a bank balance of some few thousand pounds. That her solicitor thought she was mad to donate what was left of the purchase money from Abbot’s Meade to the local children’s hospital she knew quite well, but they were doing research there on all forms of children’s cancer and from the conversations with her uncle’s doctor Brooke knew how badly they needed extra funds. She could get herself a job; she was old enough and intelligent enough to support herself, unlike those poor children. A job … she sighed … she would have to start looking round, although she suspected that Sam was right when he said that a secretary of her calibre was hardly likely to find a suitable position locally.

  Not even to herself was she prepared to admit that she might be using her mental busyness concerning her lack of employment to cover deeper and even more disturbing thoughts. That Adam Henderson had affected her as no man had ever done before, she could not deny, but she certainly wasn’t prepared to admit that there was anything especially significant in the fact that he had done so; it had simply been a question of fate running with him and against her, and she doubted that he was ever likely to have exactly that dynamic effect on her ever again.