even with him she had been shy and reserved, and yet here was this contemptuous stranger, teaching her that her body was capable of a treachery she had never dreamed existed, because, despite her own horror and abhorrence, physically she had responded to him, and they both knew it.
When he released her, satisfaction gleamed in the steel-grey depths of his eyes, and childishly Genista rubbed the back of her hand against her mouth as though by doing so she could obliterate the memory of his touch. Where his hand had touched her breast it seemed to throb with an aroused awareness which awakened some deeply primitive core she had not known she possessed.
‘My place or yours?’
The crude question brought her abruptly back to reality.
‘Neither,’ she said coldly. ‘I meant what I said, Luke. I don’t want you.’
‘But I want you,’ he said silkily, ‘and you seem to have forgotton that this time I have the upper hand. You aren’t surrounded by your friends this time, Genista. We’re all alone here and there’s no one to stop me forcing you into my car and taking you back to my apartment—and I will do if I have to, make no mistake about that.’
‘You’d force me, merely to appease your masculine pride?’ A little of her disgust must have showed in her voice, because for a second she saw something flicker in his eyes, and then they hardened.
‘Why not? It might be quite an experience.’
‘Meaning you don’t normally have to use force, I suppose?’ she said bitterly. She was feeling badly frightened, but she wasn’t going to let it show.
‘Not normally,’ Luke agreed urbanely, but there was a tightening of his mouth that warned her that he was annoyed. ‘As I say, it might be quite an experience—for me. I doubt if you would enjoy it very much. Not even an experienced woman enjoys being raped.’
Raped? Genista stared at him.
‘I’ll report you to the police,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Rape is a criminal offence. You’ll be thrown into prison …’
‘No way,’ Luke told her cruelly, shaking his head. ‘Do you think after the way you were behaving at the party that any jury would believe you weren’t willing?—and I’d make sure they knew all about it. You were leading me on. How old are you? Twenty-four? Twenty-three? Old enough to have had several previous lovers. That never goes down well in court.’
It was a nightmare, Genista thought unsteadily. This simple could not be happening, but it was, and if she didn’t go with Luke willingly now she was quite sure that he would put his threats to good effect. Rape! The word shivered horrifyingly through her. Several previous lovers, Luke had said. She bit back a hysterical laugh. She hadn’t even had one—Richard had seen to that! She took a deep breath, her mind working overtime as she tried to find a means of escape. She could always run, but Luke would soon overtake her. Her brief contact with his body had shown her that he was lean and well muscled, more than a match for her!
‘Well?’
‘I’ll come with you.’ She took a deep breath and tried to relax her tensed muscles. ‘But it must be my flat.’
She could feel him looking at her, trying to read her mind. She held her breath, hoping he could not guess what she had in mind.
‘Very well,’ he agreed slowly. ‘Give me your doorkey. As a sign of good faith,’ he mocked. ‘I’m not having any doors slammed in my face this time, Genista, either metaphorically or actually.’
With shaking hands she opened her bag and removed her key. He took it in silence, his fingers biting painfully into her arm as he led the way back to his car.
It was a sleek dark red Maserati. Luke was obviously not short of money, Genista reflected as he opened the passenger door and waited until she was seated before closing it.
‘Don’t bother trying to open the door. I’ve locked it,’ he told her sardonically, before walking round the car and sliding in beside her.
The confining interior of the car heightened her feeling of alarm. The upholstery was cream hide, the smell mingling with the sharply masculine fragrance of Luke’s cologne. It was a masculine car, driven by a very masculine man, she thought, watching him change gear smoothly. The lights changed and they moved off with a smooth roar.
‘Where do you live?’
She gave him directions automatically. If she hesitated and he took her to his own flat she dared not think of the consequences. What had started out as a simple exercise to show him that he simply could not have whatever he wanted, just because he wanted it, had turned into a nightmare of alarming proportions. The revenge Luke wanted to mete out in payment for the way she had humiliated him was something she could not endure, and would not have to endure if she was lucky. The hands resting lightly in her lap tensed, and she crossed her fingers childishly, uttering a silent prayer that the commissionaire of her apartment block would be in the foyer when they drove up.
She felt rather than saw the way Luke’s eyebrows rose when she indicated that he should stop. The apartments had their own underground car park, but she wasn’t going to direct him into that. Instead she let him pull up outside the discreetly expensive block, waiting passively for him to help her out of the car.
‘You live here?’
The sharp enquiry heightened her fear.
‘Yes.’ She had bought her apartment when she first came to London. In many ways it had been a mistake, because the other occupants were mainly middle-aged couples, and apart from the occasional ‘Good morning’ or comments about the weather they had not exchanged any conversation.
The foyer was brightly lit from within, George sitting solidly behind his desk, and Genista felt a little of the tension drain out of her. He recognised her straight away, and started to smile as she walked in. Taking her courage in both hands, Genista turned to Luke, a false smile pinned to her lips.
‘Thank you so much for a wonderful evening,’ she told him, hoping that her voice did not sound as artificial to George as it did to her. ‘I’ll say goodnight now.’
For a moment she thought he was going to force a showdown. She could feel George watching them, and wondered feverishly if she should have pretended that he was accosting her in some way, and then just when she felt sure that her gamble had not paid off, she heard him say smoothly,
‘Goodnight, Genista.’ His hand slid from her arm to her wrist, lifting her fingers to his lips and touching them with a panache that was making George goggle. ‘You must think of our parting not as an end, but as a beginning.’
Genista could tell that George thought he was witnessing the tender beginning of a love affair, but beneath the lightly drawled words and the soft look she sensed an implied threat. Luke was warning her that he still intended to have his revenge!
Only when she was quite sure that the Maserati had pulled away did she turn towards the commissionaire, her voice shaky with released tension.
‘George, I seem to have misplaced my key,’ she told him. ‘Would you be an angel and let me in? I think I’d better have the lock changed as well. You can’t be too careful these days.’
‘I’ll see to it myself tomorrow, miss, if you like,’ George offered. ‘I’ll
