Sandra Marton - Mistresses - Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds

The ballads drifted to an end, and Regan realised that she had been waiting in the apartment for over an hour. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed that long. She put on some moody jazz, and turned up the volume.

Placing her empty glass on the bar, she yielded to nervous curiosity and practical necessity and wandered down the hall to find the bathroom. It was as luxurious as the rest of the apartment, boasting a multi-head shower and an oval sunken bath almost twice the size of the entire bathroom back at the flat. Big, fluffy towels warmed on a heated towel-rail, and to Regan’s amusement the toilet seat was also kept at a cosy temperature! Every conceivable toiletry a guest could require was thoughtfully provided, including—she discovered when she opened one of the drawers—a selection of various brands of tampons and condoms, nestled side by side in ironic juxtaposition.

She couldn’t resist peeping into the half-open doors further down the hall to discover an office, two huge single bedrooms and, at the far end, an even bigger room with a sprawling king-sized bed which looked, to Regan’s magnified awareness, as if it would sleep an army.

Most definitely the master bedroom, she decided, backing out…but not before she had noticed the black silk sheets, the tubular wooden slats on the teak bed-head and ends, unnervingly reminiscent of prison bars, and the vast mirror on the wall opposite the bed.

At least it wasn’t fixed on the ceiling! she thought as she hurried back to the bar, wondering what she would do if ‘Monsieur’ turned out to be seriously kinky.

She diluted another icy vodka with a splash of tonic. She still wasn’t entirely confident that she could handle a normal man’s basic requirements, let alone satisfy one who demanded a performance artist in bed. But Pierre had said that the apartment was designed for use by a number of corporate executives, she reminded herself, in which case the master bedroom was generic, and not the personalised domain of the current occupant.

In fact, she thought, looking around the living area with a more critical gaze, there were no personal touches that she could see in the whole apartment. Like a plush hotel suite, or a photograph in an interior design magazine, it was sterile of private clutter. Unlike a permanent residence there were no books, photographs, knick-knacks or stray possessions to give any clue to the character of the present occupier.

When she tired of mooching around she absently kicked off her shoes and curled up on the wide, squashy cushions of the couch, sipping her drink, nibbling snacks and closing her eyes to soak up the music. She had almost dozed off when, coinciding with the end of the jazz disc, Regan heard the distinctive closing clunk of a heavy door and a rumbling exchange of masculine voices.

She leapt up from the couch, almost tripping over in her haste, smoothing down her dress and then her hair, unconsciously biting on her lower lip as she looked towards the entranceway. The voices faded briefly to a murmur and then became more distinct, Pierre’s and one other…deeper and more staccato, edged with a weary impatience.

Suddenly Regan realised that she was curling her stockinged toes into the thick carpet, and she looked desperately around for her discarded high heels. She scooped them up and was hopping on one leg, still cramming the first shoe on her foot, when a living cliché came sauntering down the stairs.

He was tall, dark and handsome, wide-shouldered and lean-hipped, and he moved with the fluidity of an athlete.

Regan was stricken. She had gone from the ridiculous to the sublime in the space of a few hours!

This was going to turn out to be another nerve-shattering case of mistaken identity, she just knew it! Her whole mad plan had been doomed from the start.

He couldn’t possibly be the man she had been waiting for; he was simply too unbelievably perfect!

‘ALLOW me…’

Regan hadn’t realised that she had dropped her other shoe until he stooped to pick it up.

‘Uh, thank you…’ she faltered, still balanced like a stork on her bare foot, stunned by the impact of his appearance.

Close up, the new arrival wasn’t as classically handsome as he had first appeared. But he was certainly tall—over six feet—and his black suit and midnight-blue shirt and tie accentuated his dark colouring. His raven hair was thick and well-shaped, springing back from a slight widow’s peak to brush his collar at the back. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, she guessed, and already carrying a tiny trace of grey at his narrow temples.

There was intelligence in his gaze and cynicism in the hard cast of his features—a gambler’s face, tense and watchful but betraying little of his own thoughts.

His eyes, which she had somehow expected to be also dark, were a light, penetrating steely-grey, slightly hooded under their heavy lids, and his stern Roman nose was framed by prominent cheekbones and a granite jaw. For such an athletic-looking man his skin was surprisingly pale and fine-grained, except on his lower cheeks and upper lip where it was roughened by a blue-black growth that was well beyond a five o’clock shadow.

Regan had to look a long, long way up at him, and as he inclined his head to meet her curious gaze she noticed the tracery of scars writhing up the left side of his lean throat and licking up under his jaw: the unmistakable scars of an old burn. To leave such a permanent stamp the injury must have been serious, and agonisingly painful.

So…he was damaged too—only his scars were on the outside…

Regan’s eyes flickered down to the flimsy black shoe cupped in his large hand as she fought to reject the dangerous rush of empathy. She saw that his hands, too, bore evidence of scarring, but it was absurd to think that a man like him would ever want, or need, her sympathy.

‘I—I took them off,’ she explained breathlessly, lowering her shod foot to the floor and transferring her weight to it, going on tiptoe with the other to maintain stability.

He smiled at her redundant comment, a slow curve of his well-defined mouth that made her wobble on her uneven perch.

‘So I see,’ he murmured on a light, teasing note that was totally at odds with his air of hard-bitten cynicism and the hooded wariness of his eyes.

His stroking thumb measured the length of the delicate spike heel in his hand. ‘Were they hurting you?’

His voice was deep and rasping, the husky edge abrading her senses like velvet sandpaper.

‘No—I—I was just lying down…’

He arched his graceful brows and she was aghast to feel herself blush as she was visited with a sudden mental image of herself languishing nude on black silk sheets, like a slave girl awaiting the arrival of her lord and master.

‘On the couch, ’ she firmly emphasised, her mouth unknowingly prim.

‘Of course,’ he agreed, the quicksilver amusement in his penetrating eyes making her wonder whether he could read her skittish mind. She went hot all over. Naive she might be, but surely she wasn’t that transparent?

She tossed her head, rejecting the appalling notion, and adopted a pose of haughty confidence which came immediately under assault.

‘May I?’

Without waiting for an answer he knelt on the white carpet and encircled the ankle of her stockinged foot with lean fingers, tugging lightly to lift it from the floor.

Regan squeaked as she teetered off balance on her spindly heel, and grabbed at his shoulders to stay upright. Even through the padding of expensive fabric she could feel the shifting layers of solid muscle.

‘What are you doing? ’ she gasped, wondering if he was some kind of weird foot-fetishist. ‘Oh…’