that there wasn’t a single thing he didn’t know about her! Pink-cheeked, she realised that his incisive gaze had finished sweeping her and was now fixed on her mouth. She felt her lips starting to part, as though they were longing for his kiss. Hurriedly she closed them, her face still burning.
His eyes were a shade of intense dark blue, his skin tanned, his hair so dark brown that it was almost black. His profile was that of a Greek god and, as though that wasn’t enough, Suzy was forced to acknowledge that he had about him that indefinable air that whispered into the female ear sex. And not just any old kind of sex either, but dream-breaking, heart-stopping, mind-blowing wonderful sex! In fact the kind of sex…
Somehow she managed to get her wayward thoughts under control just in time to hear Jeff telling her curtly, ‘You’re going to have to distract the Colonel’s attention whilst I get my picture.’
‘What?’ Suzy asked, anxiously scanning the crowd packed tightly around the Prince.
‘Where…where is he…?’
‘Over there—next to the Prince and the Secretary of State.’
Wildly Suzy looked from the photographer’s face to the man he had just indicated. The man. Her man…
‘But…but you said he was a colonel. He isn’t in uniform.’ She was stammering like an idiot—behaving like a woman who had fallen passionately in love! Now she knew that she was crazy.
‘Uniform?’ Jeff’s voice was impatient, contemptuous of her ignorance. ‘No, of course he isn’t in uniform. He isn’t in the Army any more. Where have you been? He works on his own, freelance, providing a bespoke protection service for those who need it. Not that he needs to work. He’s independently wealthy and well connected; his father was the younger son of an old county family, and his mother was American. He’s ex-Eton. Cut his teeth in Northern Ireland and got made up to Major, then was decorated for service above and beyond the call of duty in Bosnia—that’s when he got his next promotion. Like I just said, he isn’t in the Army any more but he still does the dangerous stuff—acting as a personal bodyguard. He’s in great demand on the “I’m an important person and I need a top-class protection service” circuit. Visiting politicians and heads of state, et cetera.’
All this had been relayed to Suzy in a grim whisper, but now suddenly Jeff exclaimed excitedly, ‘Look at that! Get that picture and I won’t ever need to work again. Yes, you stay right there, baby,’ he crooned to himself, before commanding Suzy, ‘Come on! You’ll have to distract the Colonel so that I can get this shot.’
‘What? What am I supposed to do?’ Suzy asked anxiously, and she looked to where the Colonel was standing casually in front of the two men, screening them from interruption.
Jeff gave her an exasperated look. ‘Why the hell did they land me with you instead of someone who knows the ropes? I’ve heard that Roy has only taken you on as a favour, and because he likes your legs—he probably interviewed you imagining what they’d look like wrapped around him.’
Suzy struggled not to let Jeff see how upset she was by his comments. Her boss’s openly sexual and often crude remarks to her were just one of the reasons why she was becoming increasingly unhappy about her job.
‘You’re a woman, aren’t you? Go over there and do what comes naturally!’ Jeff grunted, before pushing his way through the crowd, leaving Suzy to follow him.
Do what comes naturally! Oh, yes, she could quite easily do what came naturally with Colonel Soames…A thrill of dangerous emotion spiked through Suzy as she looked into the face of the man who was now standing right in front of her. He was, Suzy acknowledged, quite definitely the sexiest man she had ever seen. Those broad shoulders, that handsome face!
She was beginning to feel seriously alarmed by her reactions to him! Her friend Kate was always scolding her, telling her she didn’t get out enough, and now Suzy thought she might be right. To be affected like this, to react like this simply at the sight of one specific man…She closed her eyes, willing herself to be sensible, and then opened them again.
What was it about a man in a dinner suit? What was it about this man in a dinner suit? Well, for one thing he was wearing his with an unselfconscious ease that said he was used to doing so, and for another it fitted him somehow as though it were a part of him. What had he looked like in his dress uniform? In combats? A tiny shudder ripped through her.
And as for that tan and those teeth…teeth that she was sure gleamed nearly as white as his shirtfront! And she was sure there were real muscles beneath all that tailoring as well.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jeff glowering at her. A little uncomfortably Suzy took a deep breath and stepped forward, a muddled plan of action forming inside her head. A smile of recognition at the Colonel then a brief apology for having mistaken him for someone else. A few seconds’ work, but long enough, she hoped, for Jeff to get his picture.
Gritting her teeth against the knowledge that this kind of behaviour was quite definitely not her style, Suzy ignored the nervous churning of her stomach and stepped forward.
And then stopped! One step was all she had taken—so how come she now had her nose virtually against the Colonel’s pristine white shirt? How had he moved without her being aware that he was doing so? When had he moved? Suzy wondered frantically. In less than a blink of the eye he had somehow gone from standing a couple of yards away to being right in front of her.
Suzy’s sensitive nostrils started to quiver as she breathed in a discreet hint of cologne, underwritten by something very male and subtle that sent her self-control crashing into chaos.
He reached out and took hold of her arm, his grip firm and compelling. Suzy could feel her blood beating up around his encircling fingers as her body reacted to his hold.
Like someone lost in a trance she looked up at him. An instinct deeper than any thought or action seemed to have taken control of her, and she was powerless to do anything other than give in to it. The navy blue gaze fastened on her own. Her heart jerked against the wall of her chest, and the polite social apology she had been about to make died unspoken on her lips.
In a haze of dizzying desire Suzy felt her gaze slide like melting ice cream from the heat of his eyes to the curve of his mouth. Her whole body was galvanised by a series of tiny tremors and she exhaled on a small, soft, female sigh of wanton pleasure.
Without knowing what she was doing she lifted her free hand to trace the hard, firm line of his mouth—to see if the flesh there felt as erotic as it looked. But then her hand dropped to her side as another even more pleasurable way of conducting her survey struck her.
She had to reach up on her tiptoes in order to press her mouth to his, but the hand holding her arm seemed somehow to aid and balance her. The busy hum of conversation in the room faded as her lips made the discovery that just touching his mouth with her own was opening a door for her into a whole new world.
Blind and deaf to everything and everyone else around her, Suzy made a soft sound of pleasure deep in her throat. An aching whisper of female recognition.
Closing her eyes, she leaned into the male body, waiting hungrily for the Colonel to return the pressure of her lips, to part them with the swift, hard thrust of his tongue, to share with her the devouring intensity of need and longing that surged through her.
As she sighed her pleasure and hunger against his mouth she felt its pressure, his kiss heart-joltingly male. One of his hands slid firmly into the thick softness of her red-gold curls whilst the other pressed into the small of her back, urging her body closer to his own!
Suzy knew she was not very sexually experienced, and what was happening to her now was way out of her league! The way his mouth was moving on hers—firm, warm, knowing—the way his tongue-tip was laving the eager softness of her lips, was rewriting the logbook of her sexual history and adding a whole new chapter to it!
Lost in the rapture of what was happening to her, Suzy pressed closer, caught up in a cloud of hormone-drenched fantasy.
This