PENNY JORDAN - Rules Of The Game

No! her mind shied away, and she wondered furiously if Gavin had known. For some reason she had visualised the model as blond and boyish, a beach-boy personified; not this dark-haired, golden-eyed predator whose face was as classically flawless in its way as her cousin’s, and whose eyes moved automatically over her body, assessingly, insolently, she told herself angrily when his glance came to rest on the heaving thrust of her breasts.

‘We’re wasting valuable time,’ she told him in a clipped voice trying not to betray her inner agitation. They were two professionals for heaven’s sake, hired to do a job, and here she was, mooning over him like some crazed adolescent. ‘The screen’s over there,’ she gestured to it again. ‘I hope it’s warm enough for you.’ He was dressed in jeans and a cotton shirt, open at the throat, and she had to drag her eyes away from the tawny vee of flesh exposed. Gavin had turned up the heat before he left, saying impishly, ‘we don’t want our bronzed hero covered in goosebumps, do we?’

When he didn’t move, Vanessa frowned. He was studying her with lazy insolence, tinged with curiosity as though she were something outside his normal experience. It couldn’t be embarrassment that held him immobile. She doubted that she had ever seen any man less likely to suffer from embarrassment. Far from it. He probably got a kick from knowing that millions of women would be drooling over his naked form, she thought waspishly, trying to ignore the tiny voice that demanded to know how she knew they would drool.

When he didn’t make a move Vanessa said crossly, trying to hide her nervous tension. ‘You are aware that these shots are to be in the nude aren’t you? Gavin did tell you?’ She looked pointedly at the small set. ‘I’ve put the stuff out already, we haven’t got much time, so—–’

Before she could protest he strolled over to the set and picked up the suntan cream, an amused smile curving his mouth. His bottom lip was full, and just for a moment she wondered what it would be like to feel its hard warmth against her own. She realised that while she had been daydreaming he must have said something because he had moved away from the ‘set’ and was studying the portraits on the wall. He glanced from them to her and said suavely, ‘Quite a change. When did you decide you preferred being behind the camera to being in front of it? From these …’ he tapped the portraits, ‘I would have thought you had already found your forte.’

‘Please hurry up and get undressed,’ Vanessa snapped, too on edge to correct him and tell him that she wasn’t Nadia.

‘So impatient,’ his golden glance mocked her, encompassing her flushed face, and the sparkling anger of her sapphire eyes, ‘and so very flattering. Women are seldom so direct!’ His eyes continued to mock her, and Vanessa had to clench her fingers into her palms to prevent herself from snapping a hostile retort. ‘Okay,’ he drawled when he saw her expression. ‘I get the message.’ He picked up a board carrying the slogan the company were using to launch the product and his eyebrows rose, laughter gleaming in the amber depths of his eyes, before he strolled across to the screen.

Vanessa busied herself checking her Nikon, steadily refusing to admit the increasing tension building up inside her, trying to blot out the brief rustling of clothes.

‘Ready?’ He walked towards her as nonchalantly as though he were still wearing his jeans and shirt instead of only … With a tremendous effort of will Vanessa dragged her eyes away from his lithe body, telling herself she was a coward for being relieved that he had not dispensed with his clothing entirely, but had retained a pair of very brief briefs. His body was tanned and supple, his ribcage and stomach hard and flat. His body struck her as being that of an athlete rather than a man who spent hours in the gym building unflatteringly overdeveloped muscles. Rich colour stung her face as he drawled, ‘Where exactly do you want me?’ And she sensed that he was amused by her embarrassment. Stifling it, she pointed to the small ‘beach’ watching professionally as he sat down on it.

The set was designed for a reclining shot and she suppressed a sigh as she asked him stiltedly to move. She had worked with several male models but he was the most physically over-powering she had ever come into contact with—and the least professional … He seemed to have little or no idea of what was expected of him, and when she complained for the third time about his pose, he said lazily, ‘Well then you’d better come over here and show me exactly what you do want.’

The spotlights were hot, but they alone were not responsible for the prickles of perspiration she could feel breaking out on her skin as she directed his movements. At one point her breasts were on a level with his eyes and although her body was perfectly respectably concealed by the clothes she was wearing his glance seemed to strip that protection away, her face and body hot with colour as she tried to deny her physical response to his scrutiny. As he moved in obedience to her commands, his forearm brushed against her breasts. She stepped back instinctively almost overbalancing, forced to witness the amusement in his eyes—amusement which darkened to something else—something alien and half frightening as he witnessed her immediate rejection of their physical intimacy.

‘Beautiful and clever,’ he murmured softly, ‘the dove fleeing from the hawk, not knowing that her very flight promotes his pursuit, unlike you, who I am sure knows very well what effect she has on the male sex.’ Vanessa started to protest, the words stifled in her throat as he reached out carelessly and unbuttoned the top of Gavin’s shirt exposing the pale curves of her breasts, one lean, brown finger tracing a lazy path down from where the pulse thudded at the base of her throat to the valley between her breasts. ‘Your skin is so pale and soft, an enticement to any man to taste and touch it. Is that why you keep it this colour? Because you know that when a man looks at you, so pale and fragile, he can’t help visualising your body beneath his own? Pale and beautiful like the moon, but not as cold one trusts?’ There was amusement in his voice, as though the words he was saying to her were perfectly common-place.

‘And you, I suppose, are the sun,’ she snapped back at him, disturbed by the effect he was having on her, by the liberty he had taken without her doing a thing to stop him.

‘Is that how you see me?’ His teeth were white against the dark tan of his face, his eyes a shower of gold as he smiled at her.

‘Very symbolic, don’t you think?’ Somehow he had moved and his fingers were at her nape, propelling her slowly towards him. ‘I think of you as the moon, and you think of me as the sun. If those two planets were ever to come together, the effect would be cataclysmic, wouldn’t you say?’ His voice was light, but his eyes … Vanessa shuddered as she read the message so explicitly portrayed in his eyes, and knew that he was already anticipating making love to her, and quite unashamedly letting her know it. This man is dangerous an inner voice warned her. Like the sun he will burn and destroy you if you get too close, and her skin as he had said was pale, far too pale for her to risk being scorched by any sun-god.

She jerked away from him, resisting the pressure of the fingers playing against her nape, and overbalancing. To support herself she flung out her hands, grasping the nearest solid object, recoiling when she realised it was his shoulder, his skin warm beneath her tense fingers, his body relaying a thousand differing and yet similar sensations to hers. So gradually that she was barely aware of it, her fingers uncoiled, their touch a gently feminine caress, her eyes registering her bemused and conflicting emotions. The brief, searing contact of a warm male mouth against the pulse beating so desperately at the base of her throat, made her jerk back, her eyes widening in dismay. He laughed, softly, deep in his throat.