Lacybourne Manor (20 page)

“Bed play?” His voice was
amused.

She sat up again and twisted
around and Colin pulled away to avoid her crashing into him,
settling on his back.

“Colin! This is serious!” she
exclaimed, looking down at him.

“
I’m taking it seriously.
It’s
my
two months.”

“I’ll make it up to you in
May,” she offered.

“
If you want this, I’ll
take
all
of May and three weeks in June.”

Sibyl gasped.

“That’s another,” she stopped
to calculate it, “entire month!” she finished.

“Yes it is. And I’ll want to
see you sometime during those two weeks in April.”

“That’s not possible and that’s
not fair,” she returned sharply and a little desperately.

“That’s the only offer on the
table,” Colin retorted firmly.

She realised she’d
started shaking and this wasn’t a good kind of shaking or the
scared or melancholy king, it was the
angry
kind.

He was
heartless.

She didn’t think she could to
it for another month. Not that “it” was that bad. In fact “it” was
mind-bogglingly, earth-shatteringly good. One could even say it was
otherworldly good.

And it was the best she’d ever
had.

By far.

Although, she hadn’t had
that much but
this
was something else. It made her toes curl just
thinking about it.

How she could not really like
him (at all) and still find him so amazingly attractive was beyond
her. Though, she had to admit, sex with Colin was simply
unbelievable.

But he’d still paid for it,
which still made her his whore, which made her hate herself, so
much, she could hardly bear it.

She plopped back on the pillows
and closed her eyes again.

She had no choice and she hated
that even more than she hated herself at that moment (which was
saying something).

“Fine,” she snapped the word
out so curtly it sounded like half a syllable.

“Nice to see you give in
gracefully.”

She opened her eyes to see him
looming over her.

His eyes were no longer warm
but instead they were hard and glittering.

Even obviously angry, he was so
damned handsome, she felt her breath catch even as she felt her
temper unravel.

She had been wrong; Colin in
her bedroom wasn’t laughable. It was seductive. He was so out of
place he looked like a conquering avenger, enjoying the spoils of
victory.

Which he was, in a
way.
She
was spoils.

“Perhaps I should remind you
what you’re giving in to.” This was said in a smooth, even tone
that she was realising was his
very-angry-but-controlling-it-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth voice.

His hand was under the covers,
the warmth of it sliding across her ribs, down her belly making her
muscles contract lusciously along its path.

In the face of his tone, she
felt like throwing caution to the wind, one could say she’d had
enough, “Trust me, I remember.”

“It certainly doesn’t seem like
it to me.”

She turned toward him quickly,
dislodging his hand, wanting him to understand (if he had it in
him) at the same time as she completely lost her rather formidable
temper.

“What do you want me to say?
That it was good? Yes, it was good!”

He didn’t seem to like being
interrupted in his task, his strong hands found her hips and he
fell to his back, taking her with him.

She wasn’t finished, however,
and she pressed her hands against his chest to lift herself which
he allowed.

Slightly.

When he stopped allowing it by
wrapping his arms around her, one tight at her waist, one forearm
pressing up her spine, Sibyl kept talking. “Bottom line, you paid
for me and that doesn’t feel good but I need the money. So I have
no choice, you’re right, a deal’s a deal. But I love my parents and
I’m not going to tell them I have to drop everything to go be some
man’s whore. And you’ve given me no other options. So, if I’m a
little pouty in the face of all of that, you’ll just have to get
over it!”

His eyes, already hard, turned
to stone.

“I have another rule,” was his
response to this diatribe and, in a belated act of
self-preservation, she pressed her hands against his chest to pull
further away but his arm at her waist tightened and his hand slid
up her spine until his fingers wrapped around the back of her neck
and forced her to descend until she was but an inch away from his
face. “If you call yourself my whore again, it becomes four
months.”

Caution was not in the wind;
caution was twirling around in a tornado.

“I’m your whore,” she repeated
stubbornly.

“Do it again and it’s five
months.”

“I’m… your… whore,” Sibyl
gritted out between clenched teeth and Colin whipped her around to
her back, him on top, and pried her legs apart with his knee. When
he did, she goaded, “That’s it, Colin, prove me right.”

His hips settled between her
legs but instead of doing what he’d started, he snarled, “Christ,
you’re the most annoying woman I’ve ever met.”

“
And you are the most
heartless man
I’ve
ever met,” she returned.

They stared at each other and,
even though they’d barely moved, both were breathing heavily.

Sibyl had the bizarre desire to
scratch his eyes out and throw her arms around him and say she was
sorry, both at the same time.

“You’re mine for five months,”
he bit out, eyes blazing, face hard.

Gone was the desire to say she
was sorry. Instead, she just glared.

“Is that understood?” he
asked.

She continued to glare.

What would he do if she said
no?

She really didn’t want to find
out. Therefore, she nodded but she did it while still glaring.

Colin wasn’t finished. “And
Sibyl, I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. Is that
clear?”

She bit her bottom lip so hard,
she tasted blood.

She wanted to say it, just
because he hated it. Just because she needed to remind herself that
it was true. Just because it made her feel she had a modicum of
power, even though it was simply to goad him, even though she lost
more every time the words left her mouth.

She counted to ten and
struggled for control.

Then
she nodded.

She was already in enough
trouble as it was, all of her own doing and she hated that too.

“I’ll be back tonight at the
same time,” he declared and then he was gone, shoving her off his
body angrily, he left the bed and stalked, naked, out of the
room.

The moment she lost sight of
him, Mallory loped in and woofed.

“
Well,
that
didn’t go very well,” she whispered to her dog
brokenly.

And then, for what had to be
the hundredth time in a week and a half, she cried.

It was then she realised
that she’d agreed to five months of Colin and not only that,
he
wanted
five months of
her
.

And she didn’t know what to
make of that at all.

* * * * *

Colin was still furious with
Sibyl when he parked in front of her house that evening.

He was angry because he didn’t
like hearing her call herself a whore, in fact, he loathed it. Even
though, for all intents and purposes, that was what she was, he
vastly preferred not thinking about it and he certainly wasn’t
going to allow her to throw it in his face.

It annoyed the hell out
of him that
she
took his fifty thousand pounds and managed to
make
him
feel guilty about it.

And he didn’t like that, in
listening to her affectionate but obviously frustrated phone
conversation with her mother, he became even more intrigued at the
puzzle that was Sibyl.

Not to mention, he had the
bizarre desire to meet her mother.

He didn’t like that she’d
announced she “needed the money” which made him wonder what the
money was for in the first place. She didn’t appear to lead a life
of luxury and didn’t look or act the sort of woman who aspired to
it. So, why did she need it?

He further didn’t like that
after only one (albeit satisfyingly active) night, he, apparently,
couldn’t get enough of her. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her
and her incredible body all day. Even so, she wanted nothing to do
with him and he had to take further advantage in order to force her
to spend more time with him.

This
, particularly, was a concept
with which Colin was unfamiliar and he detested it.

What he did like was that he’d
succeeded in securing three more months of last night out of her
very poorly controlled temper.

He wasn’t entirely up on the
code of practice of con artists and mercenaries, but he couldn’t
imagine it included throwing enough attitude at your mark to make
them want to toss you screaming from a window.

But Colin wasn’t about to argue
with something that worked in his favour.

He knocked on the door and,
within five seconds, heard Mallory careening towards it. Colin also
knew when the dog arrived because he heard the loud thud and saw
the door shake when the dog smashed into it.

This was so ridiculous, and
humorous, it nearly made Colin smile.

However, he was so annoyed, he
did not.

“
Mallory! You’ll give
yourself a head injury!” He heard Sibyl shout and, again, he nearly
smiled. The dog was a menace (to himself) and Sibyl’s affectionate
acceptance of it was one of the many pieces of what Colin
considered Sibyl’s mystery. An mystery he spent a great deal of his
day attempting, and failing, to solve.

The door swung open and she
stood there not made up like last night but wearing a pair of tan
cowboy boots, brown tweed trousers, a cream, long-sleeved,
scoop-necked t-shirt, some kind of elaborate silver necklace,
complicated, dangling silver earrings and her shining hair was
tumbling about her face.

And she was just as stunning as
she was in the magnificently sexy silk camisole and dramatic makeup
of the night before

He looked at her carefully and
couldn’t read her mood, her eyes were simply hazel.

“I’ll need a key,” he said by
way of greeting.

What he wanted to do was scoop
her in his arms and carry her up to her bed but he felt the need to
control himself, felt the inexplicable need to control the
situation in its entirety which included controlling Sibyl. He felt
unprecedentedly out-of-control when it came to Sibyl and he wasn’t
used to that.

At all.

And he didn’t like that
either.

She stood, her hand on the
door, regarding him warily. Then she nodded.

Then something perverse,
something that didn’t even feel a part of him drove him to make
that demand, “And I expect you to greet me with a kiss when you see
me.”

Her mouth parted slightly in
surprise and she hesitated a moment as mutiny played about her face
and the hazel started to shift to the warning shade of green. Then
she leaned forward and brushed her lips against his.

Before she could pull away, the
devil that was controlling him made him say, “I know you can do
better than that.”

Her head came up with a snap
and he watched in grim fascination as her eyes, in the soft
illumination from the lamps lit in the house, lost all hint of
hazel and became blazing green.

Something about that pleased
and irritated him at the same time.

She moved into him, her body
touching his slightly then more as one hand came up to rest on his
chest and the other hand slid into the hair at his nape. She tipped
her head back and pressed her lips against his, he felt them open
and he opened his in response. Then the tip of her tongue came out
softly and touched his own.

He felt heat sweep through him
at the touch of her tongue but before his arms could close around
her, she ended the kiss and moved her head away.

Her hands still on him, her
voice managing to be both warm and cold, she asked, “Is that
better?”

In answer, he ordered, “Get
your coat.”

She blinked at his sudden
change, her hands falling away. “What?”

“Your coat,” he repeated.

He hadn’t even crossed the
threshold. Nevertheless, she stepped away and grabbed a
scarlet-coloured trench coat from a peg by the door and pulled it
on. As she did, Colin turned on his heel and walked to his car.

He heard the dull thud of the
heels of her cowboy boots as she rushed to catch up to him.

“Where are we going?” she
asked.

He didn’t stop as he strode
purposefully to the car and jerked open the passenger side door to
help her inside.

“Dinner,” he answered
curtly.

They didn’t say another word
until after they were seated at the seafront restaurant in Clevedon
and he ordered a gin and tonic. She ordered the extraordinary drink
of vodka lemonade with a dash of lime cordial, a maraschino cherry
and ended this litany with the instruction, “And lots of ice.”

Then she smiled at the waiter
and Colin felt his chest seize.

She’d never, not once, smiled
at him, except that very first moment where their eyes met in the
storm while she was acting out Beatrice’s portrait.

Her smile, he noted in a
vaguely dazed way, was arresting, sensational and the waiter nearly
tripped over himself in a rush to do her bidding.

When her gaze slid to Colin’s
he glared at her and didn’t know why. He knew he was still furious
but why her smile would cause such a spectacular reaction made no
sense to him.