valiantly tried to remove spilled sauce from where it had landed on the tablecloth by Rafiq’s plate. Her hand had been trembling, the heat from her cheeks hot enough to heat his own cheek as she leant across him. ‘You just can’t get the staff these days. Melanie is more used to feeding chickens than people.’
He smiled at the memory, though it was more like a grimace. Melanie had fed him a lot that weekend. She’d fed his mind and his senses by being everywhere he’d happened to be. Her perfume had lingered in his bedroom whenever he’d walked back into it after she’d been there tidying the bed; her shyly lowered eyes had followed him whenever she’d had the misfortune to be serving food. If they’d met on the stairs she’d blush like mad and scurry hastily away from him; if they’d brushed arms or shoulders she’d jump like a startled kitten and refuse, though he’d tried, to utter a single word to him. Nods and shakes had been all he’d got for his trouble.
Nods and shakes that had almost driven him out of his mind.
‘Come on, querida. Forgive me and let us put this behind us. Carlos is not expecting fidelity from me and I—’
With a flick of the hand he cut the connection. Melanie lifted her face. ‘You didn’t speak a single word,’ she said, almost accusingly.
‘No words were required,’ he drawled lazily, and smiled the kind of smile that made her feel threatened and edgy and eager to get out of here.
‘About William,’ she said firmly, ‘I think I should start by—’
‘Lunch,’ he inserted.
‘Lunch?’ Melanie offered him a perfectly blank stare.
He offered a smile to her. ‘I think we will take this conversation away from the business environment and place it in a more…congenial setting.’
‘But you have another appointment waiting outside!’
His answer to that was to reach out and pick up the other phone. Several smooth words spoken in Arabic and as far as Melanie was concerned the problem of his next appointment had been consigned to the archives. The phone went back on its rest.
‘Problem solved,’ he murmured with lying smoothness.
‘I really do prefer to deal with this right here.’ It was almost a desperate little plea.
‘Oh, come.’ He stood up. ‘Here I am attempting to show you my human side by offering to listen to you, and you throw this gesture back in my face?’
If he thought listening to her talk over lunch was going to be pleasant then he was in for a surprise, Melanie thought ruefully. And why did she feel as if she’d just come face to face with a slippery snake?
She watched him warily as he walked around the marble slab. The dig about his human side hadn’t passed her by either, nor the fact that in the space of a one-way conversation with his mobile phone his whole manner towards her had taken a complete reversal. He arrived at the side of her chair. The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand on end. He was waiting for her to give in and stand up, but her eyes were level with a certain part of his anatomy and what she could see happening there sent a wave of shocked heat sweeping down her front.
This had nothing to do with lunch, or talking, or even him showing his human side! It was to do with sex. Let-me-rumble-you-on-the-nearest-bed kind of sex—for old times’ sake.
‘Stop this, Rafiq,’ she uttered tensely.
‘Stop what?’
‘You know what!’ Jumping up, she took an anxious step back. The chair was in the way, the marble desk blocking any other form of escape. ‘Let me pass,’ she insisted.
‘Of course.’ He took a step sideways.
Flustered beyond daring to think, Melanie went to slither between him and the desk. His hand snaked out, caught her by the waist to bring her to a standstill. It was the first time he’d touched her in eight long years and it turned her senses into live wires that forced her to draw in a sharp breath.
He laughed huskily. ‘Sure you want to go?’
She lifted her face to spit out her answer at him. Eyes clashed with eyes, hot and elemental. She parted her lips on a shivering gasp. Rafiq dipped his dark head and covered them. She fell into his kiss like a suicidal lemming.
What shocked Rafiq more was that he did the same thing himself. He had no idea where it all came from. One minute he was toying with her just for the hell of it, the next he was locked into hottest, darkest, most sexually arousing kiss he had ever experienced in his life! He could feel every quivering inch of her as if they were already naked. Her perfume filled his head, and the desperate little groans she was making as she tried to fight what was happening and knew she did not stand a chance vibrated in every one of his nerve cells.
Melanie the harlot, he thought grimly as she arched compulsively then hungrily deepened the kiss. Well…why not? he asked himself as the anger still burning within the desire gave him the excuse to do what he liked. The desk was convenient. All it would take was a lift of his arm and he could be enjoying her on a slab of cold marble. Sex in a mausoleum, he thought grimly, sacrificial and pagan. It suited him very well.
A sound beyond the door infiltrated the madness. With a tug Melanie managed to separate their mouths, then took a jerky step back. Shocked and shaken by the whole experience, she slumped weakly against the edge of the marble and gasped like a sprinter while trying to clear the dizzy fog from her head.
‘What made you do that?’ she choked out when she could manage to say anything.
He laughed—harshly—as if she’d just told a really bad joke. But the really bad joke was the way he was standing there calmly fastening shirt buttons she must have unfastened! Horrified, she looked down, and saw her jacket was hanging open revealing her skimpy black lace bra. Pure vanity had made her decide to wear nothing else beneath the jacket, so as not to spoil its smooth line. But now she had to deal with the mortifying knowledge that he knew she had come here only half-dressed!
As if she was begging for it. She shuddered. She could almost hear him saying those derisory words out loud. Why not? She had fallen into that kiss like a love-racked teenager.
Her skin was flushed, her nipples hard. ‘I don’t believe this is happening,’ she breathed shakily, while urgently redoing buttons with numb fingers and wishing she couldn’t still feel his hands on her body.
‘You should not have come here, Melanie,’ Rafiq said grimly.
‘I didn’t come here for this!’ she cried.
‘Take my advice and get out of here.’ Turning, he strode back round the desk. ‘And if you have any sense at all you will not attempt to come back.’
Melanie nodded in complete agreement, tried swallowing down the lump in her throat and tried to stand without the aid of the desk. It didn’t happen. Her legs refused to support her. It was the final humiliation and she had to put a trembling hand up to cover her burning eyes.
He was a ruthless, heartless, arrogant devil. How could she have let herself forget all of that?
But she hadn’t forgotten it. She’d merely shelved it in a box marked, Has had time to change.
‘I
