Sarah Morgan - Temporary Mistress

‘Crude?’

‘Elemental.’

‘Gangsta rap, perhaps?’

She blunted his sarcasm with a yawn. ‘Why should I think that? Was there a lot of gang activity where you grew up?’ she wondered.

‘You could say that.’ Ironic humour replaced the sardonic edge in his voice. ‘If you’re one of those people who think official trade unions are legalised gangs. As for street gangs—yeah, we lived in a fairly rough neighbourhood, but I was too busy to waste my time posturing about on the streets. Dad was a hard-line unionist with no time for slackers—a rough-asguts waterside worker who died on the job when I was twenty. Mum’s a union activist from way back. There were four of us kids and we were all expected to pull our own weight from the time we were old enough to hold down a job.’

‘You have three brothers?’ It would be no surprise if he was raised in a swamp of testosterone.

‘Sisters. I have three strong and opinionated older sisters,’ he corrected, squelching her theory about his macho origins.

‘So you’re the baby of the family.’ She smiled dreamily at a startling vision of Blake MacLeod as a chubby toddler bossed about by a trio of females. ‘Do you still see much of them?’

‘Too much. They live to complicate my life.’ His wry affection congealed into irritation. ‘Now, why don’t you give that insatiable curiosity of yours a rest and let me concentrate on my driving?’

‘Surely not difficult in a car like this,’ she scoffed, her consonants slurring slightly as a pleasant lethargy stole through her veins. ‘What kind is it, anyway?’

‘A ninety-six TVR Cerbera—a classic British sports car.’ He sounded typically male, shedding the hard-bitten cynicism for an endearingly boyish enthusiasm.

‘Really?’ Her eyelids were far too heavy to lift. She conquered another cracking yawn. ‘I bet it costs a fortune to run.’

‘You sound like my mother.’

Great! Now she reminded the most dangerously sexy man of her acquaintance of his mother ! ‘Cerbera…isn’t that some character in Greek mythology?’ she mumbled vaguely, hoping to redeem herself.

‘Cerberus is the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to Hades.’

‘Mmm…hell and wheels—now what phrase does that particular combination of words bring readily to mind?’ she teased drowsily, the leather of the padded headrest cool against her cheek as she sought a more comfortable position.

When he didn’t immediately pick up the thread of the conversation, it slipped beyond her grasp. Nora’s lightly drugged consciousness floated away with the music, weaving it into dreams, her weary body rocked deeper into the arms of Morpheus by the rumbling vibration of the car.

Her curls shivered in the breeze from the air conditioner as she slumped bonelessly in the cradle of her seat, her lips parted on a soundless sigh, her sunglasses sliding askew down her lightly freckled nose. When her companion reached out to tip them off and let them drop into her lap she didn’t stir by as much as the flicker of a lash.

Blake’s hard mouth kicked into a triumphant grin as he abruptly changed lanes and turned down a narrow side street. Snarling his way out of the prison of downtown traffic, he joined the steady flow of cars on the motorway and within half an hour was cruising on the open road.

Keeping a sharp eye out for the law, he exploited the road-hugging aerodynamics of the car as he wound up over the bush-clad Waitakere Ranges north-west of the city. Apart from the network of walking and tramping tracks in the dense native forest, the narrow dual carriageway was the only route to the isolated enclave of famously wild surf beaches on the other side of the ranges.

Blake’s fierce satisfaction at the unexpected turn of events was charged with exhilaration. The Cerbera was a challenge to handle at higher speeds—a pleasure that he rarely permitted himself—but now he had the perfect excuse to put the car through its high-performance paces. Dust kicked up at the ragged edge of the sealed surface as he hurtled towards his destination, the leafy undergrowth and graceful ferns that fringed the roadside whipping and bowing in homage to his velocity.

The leisurely trip to his beach house from his home in central Auckland usually took just over an hour, but right now he wanted to get as far as he could, as fast as he could—before his unwitting passenger awoke to the fact that she had been hijacked.

Her story was so bizarre it was probably true, but there was too much at stake for him to risk giving her the benefit of the doubt. The fact that she had been pathetically easy to manipulate into assisting in her own abduction didn’t automatically make her innocent of all charges. Unfortunately, at this point, wilful naivety could be just as damaging as malicious intent. Guilty or innocent, Nora was the equivalent of an unexploded bomb—one that it was going to be his very great pleasure to defuse…

A kick of anticipation tensed his muscles and his foot sank sharply on the accelerator. He had no doubt that once Nora recovered from her hangover her natural intelligence would reassert itself, turning her into a potentially dangerous opponent. But a fascinating one.

He glanced sideways at his dishevelled guest, deep in a trusting sleep. Far from disarming him, her vulnerability was unexpectedly arousing. Her shirt had slipped a strategic button and he could see a glimpse of smooth freckled skin above a white cotton bra, very different from the sheer black number she had flaunted last night. Perversely, he found the faux innocence of the opaque cotton even more of a turn-on.

A carnal image of Nora’s pale body splayed out against the dark leather, her restless hands restrained by the tangled black webbing of her seatbelt suddenly flashed into his mind. It was so diverting that Blake over-steered a corner and almost clipped the crumbling clay bank.

Sweating and swearing, he spun the wheel to correct his mistake, shifting in his seat to relieve the sudden constriction in his loins. He was startled by the unruly reaction of his body to his erotic flight of imagination, and distinctly unnerved. He didn’t usually indulge in fantasies of bondage and submission. His tastes were straightforward and earthy, and he had never felt possessive enough about any one woman to daydream about dominating her body and mind to the exclusion of all others.

This one was different. Unique in his experience. She had slipped under his guard with annoying ease: intrigued, amused, seduced, insulted and enraged him in swift succession. She had kicked him squarely in the ego and then had the nerve to appeal to his sympathies. As far as he and the rest of the world was concerned, Blake MacLeod had an ice-cool head and a heart to match, but all it had taken to explode that myth in his face was one ruffled brown sparrow on an emotional bender. This morning she had caused him to act on an impulse that was guaranteed to create havoc in his smoothly run life…and, to top it off, she had almost made him crash his cherished car!

NORA OPENED her eyes to see a wall of green rushing towards her.

She let out a little scream before she realised that it wasn’t the wall that was moving at breakneck speed. It wasn’t even a wall…Where there should have been the familiar concrete canyons of the city there was nothing but a blur of trees!

‘What’s happened? Where are we?’ She winced at the painful crick in her neck as she turned a bewildered face to search out Blake MacLeod’s fierce profile.

‘Nearly there.’

His thick brows were lowered in their characteristic frown, but his hard mouth was chiselled into a self-satisfied smile which rang alarm bells.