Pride & Consequence Omnibus (10 page)

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.

CHAPTER EIGHT

H
ER
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.’

Jay had been driving fast, but now he had slowed down to allow
for the leisurely progress of several camel carts.

‘I see. And can I be confident that this designer is not
another of your countrymen, looking for what you are so obviously eager to
give?’

He was hateful, horrible, making accusations without any
justification to back them up. Except that in his arms she
had
been eager to give, hadn’t she? And she could hardly tell him
that he was the first, the last and the only man to whom she had wanted to give
herself. Even if she did he wouldn’t believe her, and if he ever got to know
about her background and her mother, he’d think he had even more reason for his
accusations.

‘I am not the one who controls what you do or don’t think,’ was
the only thing she could think of to say to him to show her feelings about his
comment.

But it was no use. He swooped on her words as swiftly as a
predatory bird of prey to the lure—so much so, in fact, that she could almost
feel the verbal bite of his sharp talons as he countered, ‘But you are the one
whose behaviour gives rise to my thoughts.’

Keira had had enough.

‘If you choose to think that a simple lighthearted exchange of
words between a man and a woman is tantamount to an offer of sex then I feel
sorry for you—or rather I feel sorry for the women who are the victims of your
prejudice, should they happen to indulge in what they think is lighthearted
conversation with you.’

‘Your sex does not indulge in lighthearted conversation. It
plans the course of its words with military precision—from the minute a woman
makes an approach to a man to the minute he hands over to her the reward she has
already decided he will give her in exchange for the pleasure of her
company.’

‘That is just cynical and unfair. There may be some women who
do do that, but—’

‘Some women—of which you are one, as we both already know.’

Keira knew there was nothing she could say that would make him
accept that he was wrong about her. And why should she care if he did? What
benefit would it be to her? It would simply make her even more vulnerable to
him. At least this way she had his contempt of her to strengthen her
determination not to allow her feelings for him to betray her.

* * *

The furniture factory was outside a small, dusty and
very busy town on the caravan route where the plain met the desert.

Henna painters sat cross-legged on the roadside, hoping for
passing custom; up ahead of them a farmer was unloading cackling chickens onto a
stall ready to sell, whilst hot food was already on sale at another stall,
filling the air with the scent of spices and cinnamon. A group of temple
musicians walked past, their brightly coloured turbans contrasting with their
white clothes.

‘The factory is over there,’ she told Jay, pointing in the
direction of a two-storey building set apart from the others.

The desert heat hit Keira the minute she stepped out of the
air-conditioned car. It was post-monsoon now, and she couldn’t imagine what it
must be like in the oppressive heat before the rains came.

The air was sharp with the smell of glue and paint, stinging
her nostrils and making her catch her breath.

Their arrival had obviously been noticed, because the door to
the factory owner’s office had opened and the owner himself was hurrying towards
them. Keira saw the anxious look he gave Jay, and felt sorry for him. Jay was an
extraordinarily formidable man, especially when his mouth was compressed and he
was frowning, as he was doing now.

‘Hello, Mr Singh,’ Keira greeted the factory owner. ‘Please let
me introduce His Highness Prince Jayesh to you.’