Julia James - The Dark Side of Desire

‘Your father made it clear you were supposed to be “nice” to me—’

‘Yes.’

‘And so, without him, you’d never have had an affair with me? You would have been totally, totally indifferent to me?’

‘Yes—’

‘ Liar ,’ Leon said softly. ‘If you had met me, with no connection to your father, I’ll tell you what you would have done, Flavia.’ He stepped towards her, cupped his hands around her face, and she could feel her skin flush with heat. ‘ This …’ he said.

His kiss was soft. As soft as velvet. His lips caressed hers and she could feel her limbs dissolve, feel her heart leap, her mouth open to his, her arms wind around him, clinging to his strong, hard body.

JULIA JAMESlives in England with her family. Harlequin Mills & Boon ®were the first ‘grown-up’ books she read as a teenager, alongside Georgette Heyer and Daphne du Maurier, and she’s been reading them ever since. Julia adores the English and Celtic countryside, in all its seasons, and is fascinated by all things historical, from castles to cottages. She also has a special love for the Mediterranean—’The most perfect landscape after England!’—and considers both ideal settings for romance stories. In between writing she enjoys walking, gardening, needlework, baking extremely gooey cakes and trying to stay fit!

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The Dark Side

of Desire

Julia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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LEON MARANZ lifted a glass of champagne from the server standing just inside the entrance to the large, crowded first floor salon of the exclusive Regent’s Park apartment that he’d just been shown into by one of the household staff and surveyed the scene before him. It was the type of social gathering he was very familiar with. A cocktail party in one of London’s premier residences, ITS guests, however disparate, unified by one common factor.

Wealth.

A great deal of it.

A casual flick of Leon’s opaque eyes could tell him that, simply by seeing the unbroken sea of designer outfits the women were wearing, let alone the glint of precious gems at their throats, ears and wrists. The women uniformly had a look about them of pampered, sleek felines, and the men were also uniformly alike in their projection of self-assurance and self-worth in the eyes of the world.

Leon’s mouth tightened infinitesimally. That projection was not always a guarantee of the solidity of the worth behind it. Probingly, his dark eyes lanced through the throng, seeking its target. Alistair Lassiter’s back was turned to the entrance of the salon, but Leon recognised him instantly. Recognised, too, what he wanted to see. Probably invisible to the rest of the guests, but not to him: a discernible tension in his stance. For a moment longer he held his gaze. Then, his assessing surveillance done, he lifted his glass of champagne to his mouth. But even as he did so he stilled.

A woman was looking at him.

She was nowhere near Alistair Lassiter, but Leon could see her at the periphery of his vision. Every finely tuned antenna told him she was levelling a stare at him that had an intensity about it that demonstrated she had no idea he was aware of her scrutiny. But Leon had been on the receiving end of female interest for close on two decades—even long before he had made the fortune which he knew, cynically, was high prime attraction for women these days. Far and away more attractive to them than the six-foot frame and strong, saturnine looks that had been his appeal when young and impoverished. Years of enjoying all that beautiful females had to offer meant he knew when a woman was looking at him.

And this one was most definitely looking at him.

He took a mouthful of champagne, turning his head slightly as he did so, to move the woman into the central frame of his vision.

She was in the English style, with a fine-boned face, oval, contoured with a delicate, narrow nose and wide, clear eyes. Her chestnut hair was drawn off her face into a chignon that would have looked severe on any woman less beautiful, just as her indigo raw silk cocktail dress would have looked plain on a woman with a less than perfect body. But this woman’s body was indeed perfect: slender waist, gently rounded hips and, Leon could see, despite the modest décolletage, generous breasts. The bracelet sleeves of her cocktail frock showed the length of her forearms, and her elegant hands were cupping a glass of mineral water. The hem of her dress skimmed a little way above knee length, displaying long, slender legs lengthened by high heels.

The total impact was, despite the severity of her style—or perhaps because of it—stunning, making every other woman present appear overdressed and flawed. Leon felt anticipation fizz through him. Against all his expectations, the evening ahead was clearly not going to be only about business after all …

He narrowed his eyes and let his gaze rest on her, acknowledging what she made him feel. The flare of desire …

His gaze swept back up to her face, intercepting her scrutiny, ready to make eye contact and register his interest in her, to start to move towards her.

And immediately the shutters came down over her face.

It was like a mask forming over her features. An icy mask that froze her expression.

Froze him out. Blanked him completely. She was looking straight through him as if he were not there, as if he did not exist … as if he were not even the barest part of her universe.

Abruptly, she moved away, turning her back on him. Emotion spiked through him—one he had not felt for a long, long time. For one more moment his gaze continued to hold. Then he moved purposefully forward into the throng.

Flavia forced a polite smile to her lips, as if paying attention to whatever it was that was being discussed. She had more on her mind than making polite conversation to her father’s guests here tonight. A lot more.

She didn’t want to be here, in her father’s opulent Regent’s Park apartment. The hypocrisy of it nauseated her—playing the pampered daughter of a lavishly indulgent millionaire when both she and her father knew that that was bitterly far from the truth.

What did she care for this stupid cocktail party? For standing around looking expensively ornamental in this over-decorated apartment, designed only to impress and show off her father’s wealth? It was awash with glass and chrome and the ostentatious, tasteless extravagance of gold fittings and showy furniture, conspicuous statement pieces, and she could never feel anything but a total alien here.

She wanted to be home! Home in the heart of rural Dorset, deep in the countryside. Home in the grey-stoned Georgian house that she loved so much, with its square frontage and sash windows, filled with furniture that had aged with the house where she had grown up, roaming the fields and the woods all around, cycling the narrow hedged lanes, rambling far and wide—but always, always, coming home. Home to the grandparents she’d adored, who had raised her after the tragically early death of her mother, to be enveloped in their loving arms.