in London, after all, and considered herself to be relatively streetwise. But in London she would never have been eating on her own, or been in a situation which would have made her so vulnerable.
She was uncomfortably aware of the diners at the two other tables, young couples with children, getting up and leaving, whilst the raucous behaviour of the men around her became even more unpleasant.
Although she hadn’t finished her meal, Petra recognised that it was impossible for her to stay. The newcomers were making no attempt to order a meal and instead were becoming even more disorderly. A bread roll flew past her head, quickly followed by another as two men on tables either side of her began to hurl them at one another.
‘First to get one down her dress gets a free round!’ one of the men sang out.
Petra had had enough.
As calmly as she could she stood up, but to her horror, instead of allowing her to walk past them, the men immediately surrounded her, making openly sexually suggestive comments both to her and about her to one another that made Petra’s throat and face burn with disgust and anger.
She could see that the restaurant manager was on the telephone, and the mâitre d’ was doing his best to assist her, begging the men to step back otherwise he would have to ask them to leave.
‘Going to pick one of us, are you, sweetheart?’ the most obnoxious of the gang smirked at Petra. ‘Or shall we choose for you? Which one is going to be first, lads?’ he demanded, turning to his friends.
The mâitre d’ intervened, protesting, ‘Please, gentlemen, I must ask you to leave—’
‘We aren’t going anywhere, mate,’ Petra’s tormentor told him drunkenly.
‘Oh, but I think you are…’
The coolly incisive sound of Blaize’s voice cut through the loud-mouthed vulgarities like tempered steel slicing into flaccid flesh, his appearance shocking Petra even more than it obviously did the gang.
Instinctively she turned towards him, her expression betraying both her disbelief and her fear.
‘In fact, I think I can safely say that not only are you going to leave the restaurant, you are going to leave the country as well.’
One of the gang started to laugh.
‘Come off it, mate. You can’t make us do anything! There’s only one of you and a dozen or us, and besides… we’re here for the races, see.’
‘The restaurant manager has already summoned the police,’ Blaize informed them coolly. ‘There is a law in this country against men harassing women, and in Zuran laws are reinforced.’
Petra could hear sounds of new arrivals outside the restaurant, and it was obvious so could the gang.
Suddenly they began to look a lot less sure of themselves. Blaize was holding out his hand to her. Shakily Petra pushed her way past the men and went to his side, just as the restaurant door opened and several stern-looking uniformed police officers came in.
‘Come on,’ Blaize instructed Petra, taking hold of her arm. ‘Let’s get out of here…’
Petra was only too glad to do so. And only too glad of the protection of his firm grasp on her arm as he ushered her back to her hotel.
She could see the grim look on his face, and the way that his mouth had compressed, somehow making him look very austere and stern.
Once they were inside the hotel, Petra thought she saw him give a small curt nod in the direction of the guest relations desk and the clerk seated there, but as he bustled her towards the lift she decided that she must have imagined it.
As the lift moved upward, Petra expelled a small shaky sigh of relief.
‘You don’t know how pleased I was to see you—’ she began, but Blaize stopped her, his expression forbiddingly grim.
‘What the hell where you doing?’ he demanded furiously. ‘Why didn’t you leave? Surely you must have realised…’
The unexpected harshness of his attack coupled with its unfairness shocked her into silence.
The lift stopped and they both got out. Her legs, Petra discovered, were trembling and she felt slightly sick.
Outside her suite, she tried to open her bag to find her key card, but her fingers were shaking so much she dropped it. As she bent down to retrieve it Blaize beat her to it, picking up her bag and opening it. Absently Petra noticed how tiny it looked in his hands. He had well-groomed nails, immaculately clean, and his fingers were long and lean. The fleshy pad just below his thumb mesmerised her, and she couldn’t stop staring at it.
Distantly a part of her recognised that she was probably in shock, but that knowledge was too far away and vague for her to really comprehend it. Instead she simply accepted it gratefully as a rational explanation for the tremors that were now beginning to visibly shake her body, and the tight, aching pain that was locking her throat and preventing her from defending herself.
‘Do you realise what could have happened if the manager hadn’t…?’
‘I tried to leave,’ Petra told him, suddenly managing to speak. ‘But they wouldn’t let me.’
They were in the suite and the door was closed. Her shock suddenly accelerated out of the distance and ricocheted towards her. Tears flooded her eyes and her body shook violently.
‘Petra!’
Now the anger she could hear in Blaize’s voice sounded different.
‘Petra!’
As he repeated her name he made a sound, somewhere between a groan and a growl and then suddenly he was holding her in his arms.
Valiantly Petra forced back her tears. She could feel Blaize’s hand stroking her hair. Tilting back her head, she looked up at him, and kept on looking, drowning in the molten mercury glow of his eyes as her lips parted and her head fell aback against his supporting arm.
‘Petra…’
As he lowered his head she could feel the warmth of his breath tantalising the quivering readiness of her lips. She had wanted this… him… from the moment she had walked into her room the previous day and seen him lying on her bed, she acknowledged dizzily, as she breathed in and felt the hard pressure of his mouth against her own.
Passion! It was just a word! How could it possibly convey all that she was feeling, all she was experiencing—every nuance of sensation and emotion that burned and ached through her as his mouth moved over her own, taking her deeper and deeper into a world of dark velvet forbidden pleasure?
There was nothing to warn her when the protective inner barriers she had erected against him came tumbling down—no flash of insight, no mental alarm call, no frantic conscience voice. Nothing to impede the delirious intoxication of her senses running wild, her body clamouring for the freedom to express its longings!
She could feel his lips moving against her mouth and then her ear as he spoke to her warningly. ‘You’re in shock, Petra, and this isn’t—’
Frantically
