painfully aware of the soft sigh of her breathing, the whisper of chiffon against her velvet skin.
She straightened up. ‘How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want special treatment?’ she said coldly. ‘I missed. It’s your turn.’
Scowling, he levered himself upright and walked stiffly around the table. His mind had been so occupied with other things he’d almost forgotten about the game, and he was surprised to see how few balls remained now. She was more skilled than he’d thought. As he leaned over the table he was aware of her picking up the small cube of chalk and rubbing it across the tip of her cue. He looked up. She was holding the cue in both hands in front of her, like a pornographic prop, and as he watched she put it by her mouth and blew softly, getting rid of the excess chalk.
It was deliberate torment.
‘I have to congratulate you. You’re quite a player.’
He spoke with lethal calm, but the careless savagery of his shot gave some hint of the choking rage inside him. The few remaining balls ricocheted violently from cushion to cushion and then stilled.
‘Thank you.’
Alejandro took a step backwards, out of the pool of light, and leaned against the wood-panelled wall. Tensing his jaw, he looked away as she stood with her back to him to take her turn. ‘It wasn’t a comment on your sporting ability.’
Inexorably he found his head moving round to look at her again. In the lamplight from above her bare skin gleamed, as smooth and flawless as thick cream. The bones of her spine showed through, making him want to run his fingers down them to where they disappeared beneath the grey satin band of her dress. She shifted her position slightly, pressing her hips against the table and adjusting her weight in the high heels.
‘No?’ Her voice was cool and detached as she parted her legs to gain better balance and stretched forward over the table. He’d thought her legs were bare, but now he could see that he’d been wrong. She was wearing stockings of the sheerest silk. Stockings with wide, lace tops which were visible as she bent forward.
Alejandro felt his breath stop and his muscles tighten, as if he’d just been tackled and brought down. Hard.
She turned back to him and her eyes were very dark. ‘What was it, then, Alejandro?’
‘I was referring more to your match technique,’ he said with quiet brutality. ‘Though the theory behind it is fatally flawed. If you think that after last time there’s even the smallest chance that I’d be interested—’
‘You bastard!’
He caught her by the wrist as she raised her hand to hit him and wrenched her arm back to her side. Her breathing was very rapid, and he could feel the rise and fall of her chest against his own. ‘Oh no,’ she breathed, her voice trembling slightly. ‘I wouldn’t think that after last time there’s any chance of that, Alejandro. Your lack of interest then was sufficiently spectacular to leave me in no doubt about that. But don’t worry,’ she went on, her emerald eyes glittering with feverish defiance, ‘I’m sure that to most people all that hugging and kissing on the pitch when you score a try just looks like the camaraderie of the game.’
His grip tightened on her wrist, and he saw her wince. ‘Be careful, Tamsin.’
She laughed, a low, breathy, mocking laugh. ‘Why? Because you don’t want—’
She didn’t get any further. In one decisive movement Alejandro had closed the small gap that separated them and brought his mouth down on hers, so that the rest of her stupid, childish taunting was lost in the wildfire of his brutal kiss.
It was like falling off a cliff and finding she could fly. The ground beneath her feet melted away. Gravity ceased to exist. There was nothing but darkness and fire, and the roar of blood in her head. His fingers dug into her shoulders, pulling her against the hardness of his body. Of his arousal.
His rigid, obvious arousal.
Oh, God …
She wasn’t aware of dropping the billiard cue, but she must have done, because suddenly her hands were sliding across the rock-hard contours of his shoulders, moving up the column of his neck to tangle into his hair. The taste of him, the scent of him, filled her—dry and masculine, earthy and clean. His mouth ground down on hers, violent, desperate, brilliant, searing his brand on her forever.
The billiard table pressed hard into her bottom and instinctively, with a hitch of her hips, she raised herself up so that she was sitting up on it, parting her thighs and pulling him into her. The bittersweet taste of blood was on her lips, metallic and warm, and his fingers bruised her skin. She didn’t care.
If he stopped now she knew she would scream.
She wriggled back on the table, grabbing the open collar of his evening shirt, pulling him with her. Suddenly she was aware of the sound of their breathing, harsh and laboured. Her whole body vibrated with want, arching towards him, opening like some exotic, fleshy flower, oozing nectar. Reality was irrelevant. The past was meaningless and the future incomprehensible. All that mattered was now, and this—the glorious incarnation of every one of her guilty, luscious teenage fantasies.
She was in the arms of Alejandro D’Arienzo, and his mouth was crushing hers, his hands holding her, sliding downwards, his thumbs caressing the underside of her breasts.
Alejandro lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were as dark as vintage cognac, glinting dully in the low light, and his mouth was full and crimson where the ferocity of their kiss had opened up the cut in his lip.
He moved his thumbs upwards, brushing them over the hardened tips of her swollen, tingling breasts. She stiffened, her head falling backwards. Instinctively, helplessly, she felt her legs wrap around his body, tightening and drawing him into her, wriggling against him as the straining peak of his arousal pushed against the damp silk of her pants.
Her mouth opened in silent bliss, her eyes were wide, dazed, and her breathing shallow as, frozen on the brink of some terrifying, tempting abyss, she stared up into his bruised face.
His bruised, cold, totally emotionless face.
Before she could move or speak he had let her go, stepping sharply away from the table where she was sprawled backwards, turning so she could no longer see his face.
‘I think we’ve proved that your cheap shots were wide of the mark, sweetheart,’ he said mockingly. ‘It’s not that I’m not interested in women, per se. It’s just that spoiled little girls who use sex as a bargaining tool don’t really do it for me. Sorry.’
Points of light danced in front of Tamsin’s eyes and for a desperate, horror-struck moment she thought she might faint. Or be sick.
She closed her eyes, fighting the feeling, focusing all of her fading energy on holding onto that small scrap of tattered dignity which would enable her to hold up her head and look him in the eye as she told him exactly what she thought about men who treated women like laboratory rats to be experimented on.
But when she opened her eyes again he was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
TAMSIN gave a low moan of despair as she looked at her reflection in the big, cruelly lit mirror.
The lighting in the ladies’ loo at Twickenham might be designed for functionality rather than flattery, but there was no doubt that the face that looked back at her was a mess. Mortuary-pale, with matching white lips, the only hint of colour came from the bluish shadows beneath her bloodshot eyes. It wasn’t a good look.
Right at that moment she would rather face a firing squad—than photographers and journalists from the sports desk of every major national and special-interest publication in the country, but she didn’t have much choice. Her father, along with members of the England management, was waiting for her, and he would expect her presentation to be seamless.
With a shaking hand she dabbed some lipstick onto her pale,