Jacqueline Baird - Paper Marriages

Panicking, she glanced wildly around and, spotting her sweater, she grabbed it and, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, tried to stand up, but a heavy arm curved around her waist and dragged her back against his broad chest.

‘Where do you think you are going, Penny?’ Solo levered himself up into a sitting position while keeping a firm hold on Penny. ‘We need to talk, cara .’

Talk! She almost laughed out loud on the edge of hysteria. But, keeping her back determinedly to him, she managed to say steadily, ‘I think it would be better if I got dressed first.’

Solo grinned smugly down at her bent head, his arm tightening around her midriff, his hand splayed under one luscious breast. He hadn’t felt this good in years. Who was he kidding? He had never felt this good, ever!

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, his voice gruff with inexplicable emotion. Lifting his hand, he ran his fingers through the tumbled mass of her silken hair in a gentle gesture. Revealing the perfection of her delicate profile. She was shy, and now he knew why.

Solo considered himself broad-minded, a man of the world—he had to be with his parentage, he thought with a tinge of cynicism. He had never been the sort of man who was bothered about his female companions’ past affairs. His only rule was monogamy for as long as a relationship lasted. He never asked about past lovers, and by the same token never told.

He let his fingers trail down the long length of Penny’s blonde hair, loving the silken feel, the warmth of her small body against his chest, and he had to admit, on a purely primitive level, it gave him incredible satisfaction to know he was her first and only lover. She had rejected him once, but not any more…

‘Yes. But do you mind?’ Penny said, grasping long fingers that were edging ever closer to her breast, and trying to prise the arm from around her waist. ‘You have had your fun, now let me go.’

Solo’s arm tightened fractionally. She was doing it again… rejecting him. His silver eyes turned cold grey, and he withdrew his arm from her waist. ‘Certainly.’ And to Penny’s surprise she was free.

Not daring to look at Solo, she scrambled off the bed and pulled her sweater over her head, not caring about underwear, and, finding her jeans on the floor, she quickly pulled them on.

‘Why the rush to dress, Penny? I have seen a naked lady before, and I already know every intimate inch of you,’ Solo prompted mockingly.

‘Thank you for reminding me,’ she said with icily polite sarcasm, incensed by his mockery. In her fragile state, she needed reminding she was one of a legion like a hole in the head…

Then she made the mistake of turning to look at him. He was lounging against the headboard of the bed, like some great, smug god of mythology, totally unfazed by his nudity. His magnificent olive toned body made her feel weak all over again. No man had the right to look so damn sexy.

‘So polite.’ Solo casually slid off the bed and pulled on his boxer shorts and walked towards her. ‘But, sex aside, we still need to talk about this place.’

Sex. That was all it was to him, Penny thought bitterly, the most momentous, mind-blowing experience of her life, and it was nothing to him. He stood there in black shorts, tall and powerful with the arrogance of a man who had complete conviction in his mastery over the female of the species, his slate-grey eyes staring blandly down at her. Suddenly, amid the chaos of all the emotional highs and lows storming through her brain, the one overriding emotion was anger.

‘Why, you no-good, lecherous pig, you deliberately seduced me!’ She waved a hand at the horrendous fake-leopardskin-covered bed. ‘In that bed, and you dare stand there half naked and say we need to talk, as though it was a flaming board meeting.’

Solo reached out and dragged her hard against him, and plundered her mouth in a deep kiss. Penny tried to bite him, but it was a mistake, it gave him easy access to her mouth, and in moments her slender arms were wrapped around his neck, her slender body arching into his in helpless response. To her utter humiliation Solo grasped her hands from his neck and placed them firmly by her sides before stepping back.

‘No more talk of seduction, Penny, we both know it’s a lie.’ His deep voice held a cynical edge ‘Your come- on was just that. A come-on.’

Shamed by her instant surrender, she looked at him, the pull of sexual awareness impossible to deny, and something tugged at the edges of her memory. Oh, no! She silently groaned. Earlier she had smiled and said, ‘Come on,’ but he had never let her finish. Did he really think she had asked him to make love to her? In the next half-hour she had her answer.

‘Wait while I dress and we will continue our business discussion over a drink.’ Solo’s cold, mocking eyes flicked over her tense body and to where her small hands curled into fists at her sides before he added. ‘A whisky should hit the spot. It does not look as if anything else is on offer, except maybe a slap on the face,’ and he had the gall to laugh at her gasp of outrage.

‘I’m going to have a shower. I’ll meet you downstairs.’ Penny spun on her heel and marched out of the room, blinking rapidly to keep the tears of anger and humiliation at bay, and silently cursing the arrogant devil under her breath as she headed for her bedroom and locked the door behind her.

Her anger lasted until she had a shower, and stepped from the tiny en suite back into the room she had slept in all her life. She glanced at the cuddly toys arranged on top of a chest of drawers, oddly at variance with the opposite side of the room where a long desk took up all one wall, with her computer in the middle, and shelves of books above.

Suddenly the catastrophic events of the past two days hit her like a punch in the stomach. Her body aching in places she’d never known was possible, she sat down on the narrow bed and stared around. Her home was no longer hers to keep. James would never know the idyllic childhood she had enjoyed, the timeless sense of belonging. She wrapped her arms around her middle and, doubled over, she finally let the tears fall. How long she sat silently sobbing she had no idea until a knock on the door made her hiccup.

She heard the handle turn, and was glad she had locked the door. Quickly she rubbed her wet cheeks with a shaking hand. The last thing she needed was for Solo to find her red-eyed from weeping and naked but for a towel in a bedroom. She shuddered—whether in fear or remembered pleasure, she refused to acknowledge.

‘If you are not downstairs in five minutes, I’ll break the door down.’

‘Yes, all right,’ she snapped back, the cold determination of his tone telling her he meant it. Rising to her feet, she dashed into the bathroom and splashed her face and eyes with cold water. Returning to the bedroom, she withdrew clean bra and briefs from a drawer and a fine blue sweater, and slipped them on.

Solo Maffeiano was right about one thing, she admitted with brutal realism. Sex aside, she did have to talk to him. She stepped into her jeans and eased them up her legs.

Crossing to the mirrored dressing table, she snapped the fastener at her waist, and took a minute to brush her hair back behind her ears. She didn’t appear any different, she thought in surprise. Without make-up and with her hair loose, she still looked like a teenager. It was the bane of her life, and why very few people took her seriously. Well, that was about to change as far as Solo Maffeiano was concerned…

Penny pushed her feet into a pair of mules, then opened the bedroom door, a light of steely determination in her green eyes. It lasted until she walked into the kitchen and found Solo leaning against the bench, two cups and saucers arranged before him, and waiting for the coffee to percolate.