him for a while.’
Oh, wonderful. He was covering for Finn. ‘Forget it. I’ll find him myself.’
The sensation of copious eyes poring over her wild mane and crumpled clothing made her flesh crawl and she had to fight the instinct to race across the polished deck. Ironically, the door to the devil’s lair suddenly seemed very appealing and she slipped inside with a bizarre sense of relief.
The lavishness of the place was staggering, and way too gold-filigree-and-fussy for her. She might have a DNA glitch but it didn’t even suit Finn. Granted, he’d purchased the mega-yacht from some billionaire, but at least a year had passed since.
After ten minutes of being creeped out by cherub wall sconces she was standing in a corridor surrounded by more doors. It was all like a bad dream…
Moaning, purring, steamy and impassioned noises drifted from the room at the far end of the panelled hallway, licking her stomach into a slow, laborious roll.
Pound-pound went her heart as she edged further towards the sounds, her gaze locked on the source as if drawn by some powerful magnetic force.
Her hand to the handle now, a wisp of a thought passed through her brain: did she really want to catch Finn the notorious womaniser in flagrante with his recent squeeze? She had enough nightmares to contend with at the best of times. Except…she could hardly roam around here all night, could she? If he was in a drunken stupor she only had sixteen hours to clean him up, and she was not leaving this place without some answers!
Astounded at what she was about to do, she pressed her ear up against the door panel in an effort to decipher voices.
Rustle went the sheets and creak went the muffled bounce of springs, as if bodies were interlocked and undulating in an amorous embrace. Cries of rapturous passion bloomed in the air and her blood flushed hotly, madly, deeply, in an odd concoction of mortification, inquisitiveness and warmth.
Jeepers, what was wrong with her?
Focus.
Ignoring the anxious thump in her chest warning that exposure was imminent, she leaned further in and relished the cool brush of wood against her fevered flesh.
The woman, whoever she was, was clearly glorifying in what was being done to her. No subdued cries or awkward silences while she wished it were over. Just murmurs of encouragement in a deep velvet voice that made the damp softness between Serena’s legs tighten.
Not Finn. She would recognise that seductive rasp of perfect Etonian English laced with the smattering of an American drawl any day. A distinct flavour from the time he spent in the off season, presenting a hugely popular car show in the States.
Not that she liked his testosterone-and-sex-drenched tone—not at all.
Edgy, she licked her arid lips and told herself to back away before she was nabbed. So why couldn’t she move? Why did she strive to imagine what was happening behind this door? Wonder how, precisely, Mr Velvet Voice adored his lover’s body for her to reach such hedonistic heights that she became paralysed, unable to do anything but scream in wanton pleasure and abandon—?
‘Has she come yet?’
A voice, richly amused and lathered with sin, curled around her nape.
A squeak burst from her throat.
Her head shot upright.
Boom! Her heart vaulted from her chest and she pivoted clumsily, then spread herself against the door panel like strawberry jam on toast.
One look…
Oh. My. God. No!
Squeezing her eyes shut she began to pray. This is not happening. Not again. I am not the unluckiest woman alive!
‘Good evening, Miss Seraphina Scott. Come to join the party?’ he asked, with such unholy glee that she was fuelled with the urge to smack her head off the door. ‘There’s always room for one more.’
‘When…’ Oh, great—she couldn’t even breathe. And her heart—God, her heart was still on the floor. ‘When hell freezes.’
She wanted out of here. Now. Except the idea that she was acting like a pansy made her root her feet to the floor like pesky weeds and she prised her eyes wide. Only to decide being a sissy wasn’t so bad.
Leaning insolently against the polished panels, no more than two feet away, Finn St George smouldered like a banked fire and the heat spiralling through her veins burst into flames, seared through her blood. All she could think was that she must have done something atrocious in another life to deserve this.
After what he’d done, had it truly been too much to hope his mere presence would have stopped affecting her?
She hated him. Hated him! He hadn’t changed one iota. Still the most debauched, moral-less creature on two legs. And clearly he intended to go on as if he hadn’t taken a crowbar to her life and smashed it to smithereens. What had her father said? ‘He goes on like nothing’s happened…’
Over her dead body.
Seraphina. No one was allowed to call her that. No one!
‘This isn’t a social call, I assure you,’ she said, proud of her don’t-mess-with-me voice as she restrained the urge to shiver before him. ‘Any other time it would take an apocalypse to get me into this den of iniquity.’
His mouth—the very one that had been known to cause swooning and fever-pitch hysteria—kicked up into a crooked smile and one solitary indentation kissed his cheek. ‘And yet here you are.’
Here she was. It was a pity, that for a moment, she couldn’t remember why. All she could think was that that mouth of his was a loaded weapon.
‘I do seem to find you in the most…deliciously compromising situations, Seraphina.’ His prurient grin made his extraordinary eyes gleam in the dim light. ‘Listening at doors? Bad, bad girl. I ought to take you over my knee.’
Thanking her lucky stars that she wasn’t prone to blushing like a girl—because, let’s face it, she’d never been one, and the fact that this man made her feel like one was probably the greatest insult on earth—she weighed up the intelligence of answering that symphony of innuendo. Meanwhile she returned his visual full-body inspection just as blatantly. Why he insisted on going through this rigmarole every time they met was a mystery. With one arching golden brow he arrogantly put her in her place—ensuring she understood that she was a duck among swans.
Unluckily for him intimidation didn’t work on her. Not any more.
As she soaked up every inch of him she decided she didn’t understand the man’s appeal.
Obviously there had to be some basis for his being named the world’s greatest lover, an erotic legend in the racing world. But, come on, plenty of men must be good in bed—right? Plenty had sexy dimples in lean jaws. Plenty had a mouth made for sin, lips that moved sensually and invitingly and downright suggestively, and eyes the colour of—
Ohhh, who was she kidding?
Finn St George was flat-out, drop-dead insanely gorgeous—an abundance of angelic male beauty.
Thick dirty-blond hair; cut short at the back and longer at the front to fall in a tousled tumble over his brow, gave him a sexy, roguish air. And that face…
Not only did he defy nature, he literally bent the laws of physics with his intriguingly wicked mouth and that downright depraved gleam in his cerulean eyes. Eyes that had catapulted him into the hearts and fantasies of women the world over.
Between his leading-man looks and his celebrated body—currently dressed in low-slung board shorts and an unbuttoned crisp white linen shirt, showcasing his magnificent torso—he was mouth-watering, picture-perfect in every single way.
It