Read the book: «His Most Exquisite Conquest», page 7

‘Oh, King …’ Involuntarily, she was wriggling against him, wanting even closer contact. She had never felt more wanton or more feminine.

‘Easy, darling,’ he said softly, and though she knew that the endearment might have been used with any woman he had been making love to, she was too driven by her need for him to be anything but happy to pretend that just for tonight she really meant something to him. ‘Don’t you think I feel it too?’

In fact he had never felt so hot or so hard in his entire life, King realised, with such an intense burning throb in his groin it was almost akin to pain.

He hadn’t intended this when he had come back from the clinic tonight, bearing the brunt of two men’s total disregard for each other. Or having to tell Rayne—while personally appalled at Mitch’s lack of ethics—that, legally, she had no claim against his father, and then to go on and shatter all her illusions about love and loyalty into the bargain. But it had been a hell of a day and he needed to lose himself in the pleasure of everything she was offering. And heaven help him if he was behaving like a sex-starved teenager! But this lovely woman couldn’t begin to know just how much pleasure it was going to give him to make love to her.

Claiming her mouth once more, he ground his hips against hers to show her just what she was doing to him and laughed softly into her mouth—a satisfied sound—when she gasped from the evidence of his arousal and pressed herself against his hardness in answering need.

Dragging his mouth from the drugging warmth of hers, it was only to rasp against the perfumed silk of her hair, ‘Come to bed with me.’

Her murmur of acquiescence was muffled by the depth of her wanting, but he understood.

Cupping her buttocks to lift her, he felt her warm eager legs wrap around him and, like that, somehow they made it up to his suite of rooms.

Monte Carlo was a blur of lights through the panorama of the open windows, its busy Corniche a blazing snake that led sinuously who-knew-where? Just like where making love with this man would be taking her tonight, Rayne thought distractedly, although she was in far too deep now to care.

From over his shoulder, on The Rock on the south side of the harbour, she glimpsed the palace, floodlit as a beacon against the dark velvet of the night.

Clarity against confusion. The thought rang through her brain. Like common sense against a wild, abandoned pleasure such as she had never known.

As King laid her down on the bed, she let the pleasure take her over—the excitement of him removing his clothes, the hard shadowed potency of his thrusting manhood and the heart-leaping anticipation as he came down to join her.

She reached for him at once and knew the heady thrill of touching him intimately for the first time.

‘Go easy,’ he advised raggedly and she could tell from his laboured breathing how close he was to losing control. ‘I don’t want to waste this. I want to savour every minute of these hours with you.’

That it sounded like the prelude to something final, she didn’t even want to think about. She couldn’t think anyway because, in moving away from her to remove her sandals, he was suddenly employing his tongue to trace a slow sensuous trail along each thigh.

Except that now he had found the secret parting between them and, lying there, breath held in shuddering anticipation, she almost screamed with pleasure when his teasing tongue flicked across her ripe swollen bud.

She had had just two lovers in her life, but she had never permitted such intimacy, and now she knew why no other relationship had ever been enough for her. Because there was only one man she wanted! Only one man she had ever wanted. And she knew that after tonight she would be spoiled for any other man who ever came after King.

As he drove her mindless with his mouth, her hands clutched the soft fabric of the coverlet beneath her to try and stem the tide of pleasure that was building in her. A small guttural murmur escaped her. She didn’t want to climax yet.

‘What is it? What is it you want, Rayne?’ he murmured with his lips softly brushing the soft flesh of her inner thigh. They left a slick trail of warmth where they’d touched, moist from the nectar of her body.

You! her mind clamoured, begging, silently appealing to him. It’s all I’ve ever wanted—for so long!

Too unsure of him to actually say as much, she used the language of her body to show him by reaching down to entice him back across her.

‘Ah, is that all,’ he said softly and, even in the grip of passion, she realised, there was still room for sensual teasing in his voice.

As he reached across to open the drawer of the bedside cabinet, it hit her that he was continuing to call her Rayne. Rayne, not Lorri, because Lorri, the girl he had once ignored—silly, trusting, naïve Lorri—was gone, killed off by the crumbling of everything she had trusted and believed in. By the harsh reality of life as it really was.

King’s muttered oath as he pushed closed the drawer he had been groping in suddenly woke Rayne to what was wrong.

‘Don’t you have any?’ she asked breathlessly and a little coyly, despite how far their intimacy had come.

‘I thought I did.’ He let out a frustrated sigh and then, with a wry pull of his mouth, ‘It’s been a while,’ he admitted to her.

Later, Rayne would glean some comfort from that statement. Right now, though, all she felt was frustration, agonizing and raw.

‘I’m sorry, Rayne.’ She was lying there with her hair spread like dark fire across his pillow, her beautiful body flushed from the fever-pitch he had brought her to, and which was mirrored by the febrile glitter in her slumberous eyes. ‘I should have checked.’ He swore again, quite viciously this time. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said, noticing the anguish on her lovely face. ‘Or you’ll make me lose my mind and all my principles will be shot to the winds, and I’ve no intention of putting you at risk like that.’ He meant from an unwanted pregnancy. She could see the effort it was taking for him to honour those principles he’d spoken of. His face, as he drew away from her and sat up, was ravaged by his own frustration. Even in the dim light she could see the flush that darkened the skin across his cheekbones, and his darkened jaw appeared clenched against his thwarted sexual desire. But there was a bleakness to his superb profile that made him look vulnerable and weary.

Of course, she thought, reasoning through the depths of her wanting. He had been worrying about Mitch all day …

With her heart going out to him, she wondered how she could ever have doubted that he was anything other than trustworthy, and that that integrity he was showing her now would extend to every aspect of his life. And her intuition must have recognised that for her to have still found herself so attracted to him, even when she’d wanted to believe the worst about him.

She wanted to tell him she was sorry she’d misjudged him so completely, but she was still too aroused and racked with need for him to speak. She laid tentative fingers on his forearm. ‘It’s all right,’ she assured softly, with wild impulses leaping through her from the sensation of his skin beneath her fingers. ‘We don’t need one.’

‘You’re protected?’ The disbelief that chased away some of the shadows from his face was worth a month of birthdays, Rayne thought, smiling shyly, too aroused to tell him why. That weeks ago she’d been given the Pill to correct her erratic cycle, thrown out of kilter through worrying about her mum.

‘We’ll be perfectly safe—I promise,’ she breathed, her simmering desire beginning to bubble over again just from caressing the superbly contoured muscle of his upper arm. It felt firm and solid. As solid as the rest of his body as he came down to her again, causing her to gasp from the weight and power of him, and then from a breath-catching expectancy as he gently parted her legs.

But he didn’t enter her right away. Instead, with his hot, hard flesh merely nudging at her moist softness, he treated her to a torturous game of re-arousal that had her sobbing at the ecstasy of his tormenting lips and hands until she spread her legs fan-like and raised her hips uninhibitedly to his in a frenzied and unequivocal invitation to him to take her.

And that was more than he could take, she realised, gasping and overcome by sensation when one long, hard thrust had him sinking deeply into her eager warmth.

Pushed over the limit, she started to climax at once, bucking and sobbing until she was nothing but an abandoned mass of writhing sensations, propelled to greater and greater heights by King’s driving and increasingly deeper penetration.

Her zenith when it came was a starburst of colour and spell-binding pleasure in which she felt she was being catapulted to another planet. And then the moment came when King’s own climax burst and he was flowing into her, joining her with him and to him, sending the earth spinning off its axis as they floated together—one mind and one body—in some glorious parallel universe.

When she awoke, she was alone in the big bed and the blinds were drawn up to reveal the cloudless Mediterranean blue sky.

She was in a very masculine room, with plain soft furnishings and heavy designer furniture, in contrast to the pale and more delicate fitments of her own room.

Her stomach flipped now as she remembered what had transpired, the tender spots on the most intimate places of her body an exciting reminder of a long and rapturous night.

Now, though, remembering why she had come here and all that had transpired yesterday, she wondered just how wise she had been in letting it happen.

The Claybornes had as good as destroyed her family—or at least Mitch Clayborne had, even if Grant Hardwicke had brought it on himself in incurring Mitch’s wrath by planning to run off with his wife. But Rayne’s mother wasn’t aware of that, and Rayne vowed she would do her best to keep her from ever finding out. However, where King was concerned, her mother still believed, as Rayne had, that he was just as guilty as Mitch of stealing her father’s work. So whatever would her mother say if she knew how little it had taken for her daughter to wind up in bed with King? She’d be horrified and hurt beyond belief, Rayne thought, as she would if she knew about Grant’s affair. And how could she explain to her mother that King had played no part in hurting her father, when she didn’t think Cynthia Hardwicke would even survive knowing the whole truth?

All she could do, she reasoned, was not tell her mother anything—not even let her know that she had been here.

As for Mitch Clayborne …

Turning over in bed, she let out a low groan. She didn’t think she could stand the embarrassment of ever facing him again.

She was just about to step out of bed but, hearing the door opening and realising she was entirely naked, she slipped back in, pulling the single sheet up over her breasts.

Despite her concerns, her heart leaped to see King striding in wearing a white dressing gown and leather slippers. He had combed his hair, but his unshaven jaw was even darker this morning and his tanned chest and legs contrasted deeply with the robe.

‘You slept well,’ he commented, and his smile was so warm that all her worries were in danger of melting like the winter’s last snows. ‘Hélène’s cooking breakfast, but I thought you might like a glass of orange juice to revive you,’ he said.

Thanking him, Rayne took the crystal glass and drank from it gratefully. She couldn’t believe how thirsty she was—or how hungry. Obviously making love with him had stirred her appetites, she realised, in more ways than one.

‘King … About last night,’ she began when she came up for air, hardly able to look at him after all they had shared.

‘What are you going to tell me?’ He looked at her knowingly. ‘That it shouldn’t have happened?’

‘Something like that,’ she murmured sheepishly, finishing her juice.

‘Too late, my sweet. It did.’ He sounded fatalistic as he removed the empty glass from her hand. ‘Not once—but twice—’ his mouth was pulling sensually ‘—if I remember correctly. So what excuse are you going to give me for virtually ripping off my shirt and then nearly driving me out of my mind with your wicked ways?’

The dark intensity of his eyes was making her throb in every intimate part of her that he had made his own, which meant that her ‘wicked ways’, as he’d called them, still weren’t satisfied. Because she still craved him, and even more so as she remembered every tender caress of his skilled and wonderful hands and the burning heat of his mouth on the most secret places of her body.

In a voice tremulous with desire she said, ‘I didn’t rip off your shirt.’ And because this whole scenario was too embarrassing for her she said, ‘I think I should go.’

‘Go?’ He frowned. ‘Go where? To the bathroom? Or home?’ he enquired flippantly.

‘Home, of course,’ she responded seriously. ‘It’s much too embarrassing to stay here now that Mitch knows who I am.’

‘Is that the only reason?’ he purred with sensuality curling his fantastic mouth again and, before she could answer, too ashamed to know how to respond, he said, ‘He’s expressly requested that you stay. So do I. In fact, I insist upon it.’

‘Insist?’ Rayne echoed with her rebellious nature surfacing through her unquenchable desire.

‘All right, then. I invite you to stay,’ he amended.

‘Why?’

‘Because I think you must be feeling a little overwrought and probably much too tired after … last night,’ he reminded her with his irises darkening, although he was still smiling, ‘to be in any fit state to go anywhere.’

‘I’m surprised, after all you called me yesterday—deceitful, lying, naïve—’ she took a warped pleasure in reminding him equally ‘—that you should even care.’

‘Of course I care.’

A glimmer of something deep inside her responded too eagerly to that heavily breathed statement. A throwback to her teenage years. That was all it was, she told herself chaotically.

‘You’re under my roof,’ he went on, surprising her because she’d thought it was Mitch’s house. ‘I wouldn’t want to be responsible for driving you out.’

‘Your roof?’ she enquired obliquely, while reluctantly processing the fact of his merely feeling responsible for her.

‘Does that surprise you?’

‘No.’ Nothing about him surprised her.

‘My roof. My house …’ her breath caught sharply as the mattress suddenly depressed beneath his weight ‘… and my bed.’

His voice was arousing in itself, even without the things he was saying, and she thought of those couple of lovelorn weeks she had spent in his office, listening to his voice from behind that glass partition, wondering what it would be like to hear it roughened by desire.

‘If Hélène’s getting breakfast, we don’t have time,’ she said breathlessly because he was already turning back the sheet, making her whole body scream in anticipation.

He laughed softly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, pressing his lips against her forehead, and his voice was so soft she had to close her eyes because she couldn’t deal with the depth of feeling it aroused in her, ‘I think we do.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

RAYNE decided she had to go and visit Mitch at the clinic as soon as possible, since it had all come out now, who she was and why she was there.

She didn’t feel like seeing a man who had used the terms of a signed agreement as a payback to ruin his ex-partner because, no matter how bad or naïve a businessman Grant Hardwicke had been, that was what Mitch had effectively done. But although she was still in shock over the things King had told her about her father, she still felt she owed it to Grant Hardwicke to hear the facts first-hand from Mitch himself.

At King’s insistence, Rayne allowed him to drive her to the hospital, where a handful of reporters who had learned of Mitch’s condition leaped on them like locusts as soon as they arrived at the main doors.

‘Is it true, Mr Clayborne, that this health scare of your father’s is more serious than the clinic is saying?’

‘Is there any improvement in his condition?’

‘Does this mean Clayborne shares in all areas are set to rise further with the expectation of your taking outright control?’

Questions came thick and fast, with microphones being thrust towards them, so that Rayne realised just how influential and newsworthy the Clayborne name was.

‘You’ve heard the clinic spokesman’s statement. My father’s condition is stable,’ King answered, pressing forward unperturbed, taking it in his stride. ‘I’ve nothing more to add.’

‘Mr Clayborne!’ a female journalist shouted over the jostling heads. ‘Can we deduce from your arriving here accompanied this morning …’ her gossip-hungry gaze fell pointedly on Rayne ‘… that your relationship with super-model Sophie Ringwood is well and truly over?’

Rayne gave a small gasp as a flashbulb suddenly went off in her face.

‘No comment,’ King said, his arm coming instinctively around her.

Rayne was glad of his shielding strength, turning her head into the immaculate pale jacket covering his shoulder as the camera flashed again before he hustled her inside the building.

‘I’m sorry about that.’ His face was grim as they came into the bright modern efficiency of the airy clinic. ‘It comes with the territory, I’m afraid.’

‘Naturally,’ Rayne returned, breathless from all the commotion, feeling the sudden loss of his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t think she could ever get used to living life in the spotlight as he obviously had, she thought, trying not to dwell on what that reporter had said about his super-model girlfriend as he guided her towards a waiting lift.

‘Remember he’s ill,’ King warned when she refused his offer to accompany her into Mitch’s room as they were stepping out of the lift, insisting on going in alone. ‘And it won’t do either of you any good to get into a stew.’

‘As if I would!’ she breathed. ‘Unlike your father, I do have ethics,’ she added under her breath as a passing nurse, looking interestedly at King, gave Rayne the remainder of her smile.

The stark reminder of just how attractive he was to the opposite sex, coupled with nerves over how she was going to broach the subject with Mitch, made her look flushed and uneasy as she steeled herself to enter the man’s room.

It was light and beautifully furnished, with only the bleep of a machine and other necessary equipment around the bed where Mitch was lying, propped up by pillows, reminding her that this wasn’t some luxury hotel.

‘How are you?’ she asked with genuine concern, despite everything. He looked less florid and much more relaxed than she’d seen him before.

‘No need for preliminaries, child.’ Still his impatient self, he was waving her concern aside. ‘You can see how I am. Alive! And you, I believe,’ he went on, his watery blue eyes unsettlingly direct, ‘have something you want to say to me.’

‘All right, then.’ Now she wondered why she had been worrying about exactly what she was going to say, but she should have known how much he was like King. Love them or hate them, the Clayborne men always made things easy by cutting to the chase. Always taking command. Well, like it or not. She could do that too! ‘Why did you do what you did to my father?’ she demanded with her breasts lifting rapidly under the light fabric of her flattering yet simply tailored shift. ‘I don’t care how many agreements he signed. You could have acknowledged that MiracleMed was his concept and you didn’t.’

Mitch’s mouth twisted as though he was considering how best to answer. ‘Did King tell you that?’ he enquired. ‘That I could have done the decent thing and decided not to?’

‘No. He didn’t have to,’ she murmured torturously, guessing that Mitch must have told him that yesterday, which was why King had looked so … what was it? … devastated, almost, she decided, when he had returned from here last night. But he hadn’t told her because, of course, he would have wanted to protect his father, even though deep down he must have been shocked and thoroughly appalled. She didn’t know how she knew that. She just did.

‘Oh, I know about your … wife.’ It hurt excruciatingly to say it. To have to accept that her father had been having an affair. ‘And yes, King did tell me that. But surely that wasn’t enough reason to …’ She couldn’t go on. Pain and resentment, anger and betrayal—it was all there in the anguish marring her face.

‘Have you ever been in love, Rayne?’ The man’s tone had softened as his silver head tilted to study her. ‘No, don’t answer that.’ His breath seemed dragged from him. ‘That wasn’t any excuse. But Karen was the only woman I’d loved since King’s mother deserted me—deserted both of us—for an Australian rancher. I couldn’t bear it when I saw the whole thing happening again. I was demented with anger—and jealousy.’ His voice sounded even more gravelly than usual from his emotion. ‘I figured that Grant had stolen from me—and something that no amount of money could buy—although I’ve realised since that I was half-crazed and too dim to see that she’d only married me for my money. I thought I was justified in taking something that belonged to him, but it’s haunted me all these years in having done that to a colleague and a friend and, for what it’s worth, I am truly, truly sorry.’

Feeling rooted to the spot, Rayne didn’t know what to think—to say. What could she say? she demanded of herself, hurting unbearably.

With tears burning her eyes, her emotions riding high, she did the only thing she could.

She fled.

Only to bump into something warm and solid as she rounded the corner at the end of the corridor.

‘What the …?’

King’s hands were steadying her, his eyes scrutinizing her face and, seeing the tension and the tears she was battling to control, he said merely, understandingly, ‘Come on.’

They were out of the building before she had even realised it.

The reporters were still there, eager for news of a budding romance.

King, however, shouldered his way through them, ignoring their intrusive questions until, finally, and much to Rayne’s relief, he brought her—unmolested, but feeling the worse for wear—back to the car.

‘Would you care to tell me about it?’ he invited when they were on the road again in the exclusive, quiet haven of the Lamborghini.

‘No,’ was all she said.

To her relief, he didn’t press the point. Silently, she thanked him for that.

Maybe in time she would forgive Mitchell Clayborne, she thought, sinking against the luxuriously padded pale leather upholstery. And even forgive her father. But right then all she could do was sit there with the sun filtering through the tinted windscreen, staring sightlessly out at the palm-fringed road and the glittering waves of a teal blue sea, wishing she had never come to Monte Carlo, wishing she could simply escape.

And perhaps King was wise to exactly how she was feeling, she speculated, surprised when, without a word, he took her for a long drive along the dramatically sculpted coast.

Above them, pastel-coloured houses seemed in places to cling precariously to cliff ledges among the forested mountains, while parasol pines, their branches spread with welcoming shade, grew abundantly amidst fig and date palms, interspersed with vibrant splashes of colour from the Mediterranean flowers.

She was beginning to feel better by the time he pulled onto the harbourside of an ancient port lined with a mixture of fishing boats and dinghies and exclusive yachts. A row of craft shops, galleries and cafés had been converted out of the old buildings beside the quay.

‘Watch your footing,’ he cautioned when they were out of the car, taking her hand to guide her safely past tethered ropes and crates of provisions being loaded onto vessels that amazed her with their sheer size. But it was those cool fingers around hers that left her breathless, with a sharp thrill running through her as she thought of the passion they had shared both that morning and the previous night.

His yacht was moored at one end of the ancient harbour and, after he had settled Rayne on board, leaving her brewing coffee in the well-equipped galley, King popped back to the quayside shops for some provisions.

The coffee had just brewed when Rayne heard him step back on board.

She was reaching up for two mugs in one of the modern cupboards just as he came down into the galley. His arm going around her waist made her gasp, as did the arrangement of white perfumed blooms he was holding against her breast and which were filling the air with their heady fragrance.

‘Roses!’ She laughed in breathless surprise.

‘A peace offering,’ King told her, ‘for being such an overbearing oaf—and for jumping to all the wrong conclusions.’ And when she looked enquiringly over her shoulder with a velvety eyebrow raised, he said, ‘Mitch’s previous record with a woman young enough to be his daughter resulted in devastating consequences. You couldn’t blame me for being on my guard.’

‘On your guard?’ She gave a censorious little laugh. ‘You’ve been like a prowling tiger!’

‘Because I knew you were hiding something,’ he said. ‘You confirmed that the first morning when you said Mitch had told you I was in New York, because Mitch hadn’t known. But also, I suspect, because I wanted—’ He broke off, exhaling heavily as he pulled her back against him. ‘Correction. Want you myself.’

Want. Nothing else, Rayne forewarned herself as every nerve leapt in response to the lips that were suddenly caressing the sensitive skin exposed to him by the slashed neckline of her simple shift.

‘I just didn’t want to be turned out before I was able to speak to Mitch. That’s why I didn’t tell the truth,’ she murmured with a sensuous little shudder because of what he was doing to her.

‘If you’d come to me—explained how you felt—I’d have at least looked into it,’ he told her softly against her cheek now. ‘Instead, I was left to pre-judge.’

‘Without knowing anything about me,’ she scolded gently. ‘And you still don’t know anything about me. Or very little,’ she tagged on, with colour appearing along the crest of her cheekbones as she reminded herself that after last night and this morning, physically, at least, he knew her very, very well.

‘Don’t I?’ He was smiling as though hugging some secret he wasn’t prepared to share with her. Or perhaps, she thought, he was just remembering their time in bed together too …

‘All right, so I rip men’s shirts off and then take advantage of them when I’ve got them at their most vulnerable,’ she conceded jokingly, loving the heat of his hand through the fine fabric of her dress and the warm strength of him pressing into her back.

Seriously, though, she couldn’t help thinking about how shattered he had looked when he had returned from the clinic last night, after what had been an obviously gruelling day. Shattered, not just from worrying about Mitch, but by the things Mitch must have told him. Realising he’d been wrong about her, too, probably hadn’t helped lessen the load.

‘If that was taking advantage of me, then I can’t wait for the next time,’ he drawled, and pretended to double up when she gave him a gentle nudge in the ribs with her elbow.

‘You’re right. Enough of this or we’ll starve,’ he said, laughing, as she took the flowers and stood them in the centre of the dining table that curved around its seating area next to the galley. ‘And then I do have an hour or so’s work to do,’ he apologised. ‘But first …’

She hadn’t realised it until then, but in his other hand he had been clutching the strap of a square insulated cooler, which he lifted up now onto the counter beside the cooker.

‘Oysters in Madeira with cheese sauce for starters,’ he told her, opening the bag and looking very pleased with himself. ‘Fresh tuna steak—to be seared, of course—with salad and crusty bread and fresh raspberries and passion fruit coulis to follow.’

‘Goodness!’ Rayne laughed, realising she’d been expecting something far less exotic. ‘When you go to town—you go to town!’

But of course he would, she thought, watching those long deft hands unpacking the carefully selected items. A man like Kingsley Clayborne would never do things by half measures.

‘Oysters and passion fruit? Aren’t oysters supposed to be an aphrodisiac?’ she remembered with a sidelong provocative glance up at him. ‘As for passion fruit … what sort of afternoon are you planning?’

‘If you keep looking at me like that, not a very productive one,’ he responded with a feral smile.

‘And don’t tell me …’ she laughed again, thinking how wonderful it was to feel so at ease with him ‘… Clayborne’s shares will drop like a stone and the whole global workforce will be on the dole because the company’s CEO stopped to enjoy himself for a while.’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ he replied dryly, although there was a hint of seriousness in his voice that made her realise how hard he worked and how dedicated he was in what he did, which helped provide a living for so many thousands of people across the globe.

‘So how did you come by all this stuff for such a gourmet meal?’ Rayne asked. After all, he hadn’t been gone that long.

‘The owner of that restaurant over there …’ this with a sideways toss of his head towards the quayside ‘… is a very good friend of mine. I rang him earlier and told him to expect me.’

‘You …’ dark horse, she finished silently, warmed by the knowledge that he’d been planning all this even before they had left the clinic. Probably even the roses too.

She couldn’t remember much of what they talked about during the meal, which they ate out on the lower deck under the awning. Their conversation was light and casual and surprisingly easy. Then afterwards, with the dishwasher humming away in the galley and King working in the salon on his laptop, she lazed on the upper deck in her burgundy satin bra and panties because she didn’t have her bikini with her.