Satin Dreams (32 page)

Alix found what she was looking for, and whirled to face him.
 

“None of you have any damned taste!” From the distance of several feel she threw the emerald and diamond earrings at him. They bounced off his chest and fell to the carpet.
 

He didn’t pick them up. “Who the hell do you think you are to think you can talk about my grandfather that way.”
 

“I’m not your
whore
,” she screamed.
 

“Not my whore,” he said grimly. “A cheap couture-house model. What’s the difference?”
 

“If I’m cheap,” she flared, “you made me that way! You’re the only man I ever went to bed with!”
 

“That’s right.” He put the sable coat on a chair and started for her. “That part is right. You’re mine.”
 

“Get away from me! I don’t want you to touch me!” Alix expected to hear the police at her door any moment; they were certainly making enough noise. “I don’t belong to anyone. My God, that’s what I’m trying to get away from!”
 

He stopped, instantly. “You weren’t another man’s woman.” He thought it over a second time. “Yes, I’m sure. You were a virgin.”
 

“Oh—how would
you
know,” Alix shouted, “you never had one!”
 

“
What
?” His scowl was thunderous. “What do you mean by that?” Suspicion attacked him. “You haven’t had something—you can’t fake something like that. It’s not possible.”
 

When he seized her by the arms, Alix lashed out at him. She managed to catch him on the side of the face with her fist.
 

A spot of blood appeared in the corner of his mouth where her fingernail scratched him. “Just tell me what in the hell you’re trying to do to me!” he bellowed.
 

“I don’t want
anything
,” she gasped. “Go away!”
 

“Oh yes, you do.” His eyes were furious black lasers. “I’ve had you under surveillance, investigated—I can’t find out anything about you. I can’t even figure out what you want from me, damn you!”
 

“You see, you want to control me!” She pushed at him wildly. “I’m not going to be your slave!”
 

“Control? Slave?” He swung her around by the arm. “Jesus, I’ve been a slave ever since I laid eyes on you!”
 

In the abrupt silence, their eyes locked: hers wide and stunned, his black and blazing.
 

It was horrible, Alix thought, dazed. It was some sort of obsessive infatuation. It could never be love.
 

“Alix,” he said in a different tone, “I’ve been traveling since yesterday just to get here. I had to charter three planes. Don’t—” He pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair, wearily. “Don’t torment me.” Nicholas nuzzled her throat. “Please. Ah, God, I need you so much.”
 

He needed her?
 

Held tightly in his arms, breathing the scent of his skin and his faint, sweaty muskiness, Alix felt a rush of memory. Nicholas making love to her on Christmas Eve. She fought back the terrible, urgent wave of softness that threatened to engulf her.
 

“You don’t need me!” She struggled, but he was much stronger. “You just want what you bought and paid for,” she panted, trying to put the right note of scorn in her voice. “I’m your—your big Christmas present. Your security blanket to make you feel better.”
 

“What’s a security blanket?” he murmured, dropping small kisses against her throat and the side of her cheek.
 

“Your hot-water bottle, then,” she cried. “Cheap comfort, nothing real!”
 

She felt his body shake with laughter. “You don’t look like a hot-water bottle to me,” he muttered, his warm, ardent mouth on the rise of her breast.
 

“All right, then,” she exploded, “your
whore
!”
 

He stiffened, then slowly straightened up. “Alix, I’m sorry I said that.” He held her at arm’s length; under the mask of weariness his hard face was vulnerable. “You make me angry. You have a genius for it.”
 

“Your
grandfather
didn’t mind.”
 

He closed his eyes. “My grandfather is dying, Alix. I can’t do anything about him now. Except prevent—”
 

“What?”
 

He sighed. “Nothing.”
 

“You see?” Alix stood rubbing her sore arms. “I’m only a tart to you,” she said bitterly. “You’re fixated on me because you were my first, it’s great for your ego. But you still think you bought a body. You couldn’t care less about the rest!”
 

“That’s not true. You are a brave and intelligent woman. I admire you very much.”
 

“Brave?” She was incredulous. “When was I ever—”
 

“When you came to the Roman Club with the Arab boy,” he said quietly. “That was very brave.”
 

“That wasn’t brave, that was stupid! I didn’t know what I was getting into. You have no idea what I—”
 

“On the contrary,” he said flatly, “I have a very good idea. You are doing a good job holding Jackson Storm’s show together during rehearsals, smoothing things out. The whole thing is beginning to revolve around you.”
 

Alix drew a deep breath. She knew that Chris Forbes was right; Nicholas was having her watched and followed. How else could he have known about what was going on at rehearsals? Someone, probably his hired detectives, had been at the opera in spite of tight security. They’d been watching her all the time and reporting back to him.
 

He stood before her now, clenching and unclenching his hands, the only outward sign of his tenseness. Oh yes, he certainly wanted her. Whether he thought of her as something he could buy and possess didn’t really matter anymore; Alix was sick with the realization that she loved Nicholas Palliades. And she could never tell him, now, why she had picked him for a lover. He would never forgive her.
 

No matter what she did he would reach her, conquer her, with his reluctant, turbulent desire, his tenderness, his inescapable beauty.
 

She was caught in her own horrible trap.
 

When he put his arms around her, Alix didn’t struggle. His mouth found her eyes, her hair, the tip of her chin as he murmured how much he needed her, how beautiful she was, how he wanted to make love to her. “Why did you pick me,” Nicholas murmured softly in her ear, “to give the gift of your virginity? Why?”
 

It still bothered him, all the unanswered questions. “I—I just wanted to get rid of it.”
 

“That’s not the reason.” He lifted his head to look down at her, eyes narrowed. “Why?” he repeated.
 

“Why did you pick
me
?” she burst out. “You came back to the models’ area that afternoon at Mortessier’s and—”
 

“I know what I did.” He stared down at her, somber eyes cloaked by heavy lashes. “Alix,” he said suddenly, “do you know what it means to me? That I—” He hesitated. “—That I have never felt this way with a woman before?”
 

She was riddled with guilt. “Please, I don’t want to hear it.”
 

“You
are
my beautiful Christmas present,” he said, kissing her eyelids softly. “I will never forget that night. But you are not something I bought and paid for, I am not that stupid.”
 

Stupid?
She gazed up at him with fear and joy in her eyes. Sooner or later, she knew, he would find out the truth about her. She couldn’t bear to face it.
 

“Please,” she whispered, “just make love to me.” She pulled his dark head down so that she could reach his lips. “Make me forget everything.”
 

“That’s easy,” he groaned. “Ah, Alix, I always want to make love to you—so soft, so fiery. So lovely.”
 

He kissed her in a deep, drowning caress as his hands moved swiftly over her. Alix couldn’t stay still; she writhed in his touch. The sense of him, dark and beautiful, filled her with longing.
 

“Say you want me,” he whispered. He was working with one hand to free himself of his trousers, then his socks and shoes.
 

Alix clutched at him as he pressed her down against the rumpled bed. He lifted his bare, powerful body over her and settled into the gate of her thighs.
 

“Why is it I can’t stop thinking of you?” His tongue caressed her breasts, his big hands devoured her. “This week has been hell. But even in court, where I should be thinking of business, I dream of doing this, making love to you.
 

“Say you want me,” he told her softly, “as I go into you.”
 

She felt the first thrust of his hard flesh parting the yielding folds of her body and moaned. She was terrified to surrender, but there was nothing she could do about it. She loved him.
 

“Say it for me, darling,” he groaned.
 

“I want you, Nicholas,” she cried out as he stroked heavily into her and thrust again and again, rough, caressing words tumbling into her mouth.
 

The relentless pounding of his body swept Alix to the verge of a passionate wilderness. She took his strength, his raging need as she arched and met him just as violently. He held her tightly, clamped in his arms as though nothing would ever separate them. Until the world exploded into a shattering release that made her scream. Only his matching explosion touched her consciousness, as his hoarse cry tore against her lips.
 

She put her hands around him and held him, awed by his convulsions of ecstasy that were almost like pain as he poured himself into her. With a tenderness that was a revelation to her, Alix stroked his shoulders down to the quivering muscles of his back and onto the hard planes of his buttocks. She heard him grunt, his arms tightening around her.
 

Alix’s own wet, drained body stopped its trembling.
 

After a few moments Alix drifted back into the world of her familiar room, aware that her entire body was aching with the force of their lovemaking. Nicholas was still breathing heavily, in the grip of something so overwhelming that he could do no more than bury his face against her wet shoulder.
 

Heavy against her, she felt him sigh, tiredly. “Have I made you happy?” His words were muffled against her skin.
 

She clutched him, still not able to speak.
 

He lifted his dark head. Beads of perspiration hung in the long tangle of his lashes.
 

He watched her for a long moment, thoughtfully. “Who is there left to love?” he murmured against her lips. “Only you.” He sounded strangely sad. “Only me.”
 

Why was it that she knew what he meant?
 

“It will be enough,” Alix whispered, holding him tightly.
 

“Will it?” he whispered. But he sounded satisfied.
 

They drowsed in each other’s arms, caressing, touching, murmuring. In a little while Nicholas roused himself to groan, “I have to leave in a few minutes. I came to you straight from the airport.”
 

“Don’t.” Alix wrapped her arms around him. “Not yet.” She dreaded their returning to the outside world. Like this, she knew, they were safe.
 

They made love again. It was after midnight, and she knew Nicholas was tired. They were both tired. Perhaps because of it, their lovemaking was slow, dreamlike, playfully tender.
 

Nothing like it had ever happened before. And never would again, Alix was certain.
 

When she awoke, Nicholas was gone, just as he’d said. And the telephone was ringing. Alix reached over to turn on the lamp, her skin tingling with a vague sense of alarm even before she answered it.
 

The voice on the other end was Nannette’s.
 

“Mademoiselle,” the seamstress said with hoarse intensity, “you must come to the Maison at once! There’s been a fire.”
 

Nineteen

“It is that nasty Princess Jacqueline!” All Nannette’s deference had evaporated. “That little tramp has been up here in the design room at night and this one—” she shot Karim a malevolent look—”has been up here with her, smoking
kif
, when he is supposed to be the watchman. Now,” she gestured to the smoky wreckage of the fire in the atelier, “look what has happened!”
 

Still gasping, Alix leaned against the wall. She’d run from her taxi up all three flights of stairs from the Maison Louvel’s ground floor to the atelier. Somehow, she’d expected to find it still burning, even though Nannette had told her on the telephone that Karim had put out the fire before the seamstresses had arrived.