InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Husband Hunters ❯ The vengeful husband 3 ( Chapter 14 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THIS STORY, OR THE CHARACTERS. The story belong to Lynne Graham, and the characters belong to Rumiko Takashi .I'm not gaining absolutely nothing with this story.
Chapter Three.
Shiori was spending the night with Dai in the gatehouse. Returning to the folly to nervously await Kouga's arrival, Ayame caught an unsought glimpse of her reflection in the giant mirror in the echoing hall...
And suddenly she was wishing she had spent money she could ill afford on a new outfit. The brown dress hung loose round her hips and flapped to an indeterminate length below her knees. The ruffled neckline, once chosen to conceal the embarrassing smallness of her breasts, looked fussy and old-fashioned. She was much more comfortable in trousers— never had had much luck in choosing clothes that flattered her slight and diminutive frame...
And in the back of her wardrobe the green designer evening dress which had been Kagome's wedding present three years earlier still hung, complete with shoes and delicate little beaded bag. Kagome, no longer a friend and always rather too reserved and too confident of her feminine attraction for Ayame to feel quite comfortable in her radius. As for the dress, Ayame hadn't looked near it once since her return from Venice. She needed no reminder of that night of explosive passion in a stranger's arms. Yet somehow she still hadn't been able to bring herself to dispose of that exquisite gown which had lent her the miraculous illusion of beauty for a few brief hours.
The Victorian bell-pull shrieked complaint in the piercing silence, springing Ayame out of a past that still felt all too recent and all too wounding. In haste, she yanked open the heavy door. There she stopped dead at the sight of Kouga, her witch-green eyes widening to their fullest extent in unconcealed surprise.
He was wearing a supremely elegant black dinner jacket when she hadn't dared even to ask if he possessed such an article. And there he stood, proud black head high, strong dark face assured, one lean brown hand negligently thrust into the pocket of narrow black trousers to tighten them over his lean hips and long powerful thighs, his beautifully tailored jacket parted to reveal a pristine white pleated dress shirt. He looked so incredibly sophisticated and gorgeous he stole the breath from Ayame 's convulsing throat.
“Gosh, you hired evening dress,” she mumbled, relocating her vocal cords with difficulty.
Kouga ran brilliant dark eyes over her, a distinct frown line drawing together his ebony brows. “possibly i'm slightly over-dressed for the occasion?”
“No...No...Not at all.” never more self-conscious than when her personal appearance was under scrutiny, Ayame flushed to the roots of her hair. Her attention abruptly fell on the glossy scarlet Porsche sitting parked beside the ancient land rover which was her only means of transport. “Where on earth did you get that car?” she gasped helplessly.
“It's on loan.”
Slowly, Ayame shook her curly red head. It would be madness to turn up in an expensive car and give a false impression of Kouga 's standing in the world. Sumiko would ask five hundred questions and soon penetrate the truth. Then Kouga, who could only have borrowed the car for her benefit—and she couldn't help but be touched by that realization —would end up feeling cut off. “I would really love to roar up in the Porsche, but it would be wiser to use the land rover,” she told him in some disappointment.
“Dio mio... you are joking, of course.” Kouga surveyed the rusting and battered four-wheel drive with outright incredulity. “it's a wreck.”
Ayame opened the door of the land rover. “I do know what I’m talking about, Kouga,” she warned. “If we show up in the Porsche, my stepmother will get entirely the wrong idea and decide that you're loaded. If we're anything less than honest, we'll both be left sitting with egg on our faces. We want to blend in, not create comment, and that car must be worth about thirty thousand—“
“Seventy.”
“Seventy thousand pounds?” Ayame broke in, her disbelief writ large in her shaken face.
“And some change,” Kouga completed drily.
“Wish I had a friend willing to trust me with a car like that! We’ll park the land rover out on the road and run away from it fast,”
Ayame promised, worriedly examining her watch and then climbing into the driver's seat to forestall further argument. “I’d let you drive, but this old girl has a number of idiosyncrasies which might irritate you.”
“This is ridiculous,” Kouga swung into the tatty passenger seat with pronounced reluctance, his classic profile hard as a granite cliff in winter.
As she stole a second glance at that hawkish masculine profile, Ayame found herself thinking that he had a kind of heathcliffish rough edge when he was angry.
And he was definitely angry, and she didn't mind in the slightest. It made him seem far more human. Posh cars and men and their egos, she reflected with sudden good cheer. Even she understood that basic connection. “Believe me, you're about to cause enough of a stir tonight. You’re very good-looking...”
“Am I really?” Kouga prompted rather flatly.
“Oh, come on, no false modesty. I bet you've been breaking hearts from the edge of the cradle!” Ayame riposted with a rueful sound of amusement.
“You’re very frank.”
“In that garb you look like you just strolled in off a movie set,” Ayame reeled off, trying to work herself up to giving the little speech she had planned. “Do you think you could contrive to act like you're keen on me tonight? No...No, don't say anything,” she urged with a distinctly embarrassed laugh. “It’s just that nobody can smell a rat faster than Sumiko or Akane, and you are not at all what they are primed to expect.”
“What are they expecting?”
“Some ordinary boring guy who works in a bank.”
“Where do you get the idea that bankers are boring?”
“My bank manager could bore for Britain. Every time I walk into his office, he acts like I’m there to steal from him. That man is just such a pessimist,” Ayame rattled on, grateful to have got over the hint about him acting keen without further discussion. It was so unbelievably embarrassing to have to ask a man to put on such pretence.
“When he tells me the size of my overdraft, he even reads out the pence owing to make me squirm—'
“You have an overdraft?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. The day we get married, I will have some really good news for my bank manager...at least I hope he thinks its good news, and loosens the purse-strings a little.” she shot him an apprehensive glance, wishing she hadn't allowed nervous tension to tempt her into such dangerous candor.
“Don’t worry, if the worst comes to the worst, I could always sell something to keep the bank quiet. I made a commitment to you and I won't let you down.”
“I’m impressed. Tell me, have you thought of a cover story for this evening?” Kouga enquired with some satire.
“cover story?”
“Where and how we met, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Of course,” she said in some surprise. “We’ll say we met in London. I haven't been there in over a year, but they're not likely to know that. I want to give the impression that we've plunged into one of those sudden whirlwind romances and then, when we split up, nobody will be the slightest bit surprised.”
“I see you're wearing a ring.”
“It’s on loan, like your Porsche. We can't act engaged without a ring.” Ayame had borrowed the diamond dress ring from Dia for the evening, and her finger had been crooked ever since it went on because it was a size too big and she was totally terrified of losing it.
“Don’t you think you ought to fill me in on a few background details on your family? My younger sister is the only close relative I have,” he revealed. “She’s a student.”
“Oh...right. My stepmother, Sumiko, was first married to a wealthy businessman with one foot in the grave. They had a daughter, Akane, who's a model,” she shared. “Sumiko married my father for social position; he married her in the hope of having a son. Dad was always very tight with money, but Sumiko and Akane could squeeze juice out of a dehydrated lemon. He was extremely generous to them. That’s one of the reasons the estate is in such a mess...I inherited the mess and a load of death duties.”
“Very succinct,” Kouga responded with a slight catch in his voice.
“Sumiko and Akane are frantic snobs. They spend the summer in Truro and the rest of the year in their London apartment. Sumiko doesn't like me but she loves throwing parties, and she is very, very conscious of what other people think.”
“Are you?”
'Good heavens, no, as an unmarried mother, I can hardly afford to be!”
“I think I should at least know the name of the father of your child,” Kouga remarked. The silence in the car became electric. Ayame accelerated down the road, small hands clenching the steering wheel tightly. “On that point, I’m afraid I’ve never gratified anyone's curiosity,” she said stiffly, and after that uncompromising snub the silence lasted all the way to Truro.
Some distance from her stepmother's large detached home, which was set within its own landscaped grounds on the outskirts of town, Ayame nudged her vehicle into a space. And only with difficulty they walked up the sweeping drive and Ayame’s heart sank as she took in the number of cars already parked. “I think there's going to be a lot more people here than I was led to expect. If anyone asks too many probing questions, pretend your English is lousy,” she advised nervously.
“I believe I will cope.” Kouga curved a confident hand over her tense spine. Her flesh tingled below the thin fabric of her dress and she shivered. He bent his glossy dark head down almost to her level, quite a feat with the difference in their heights. The faint scent of some citrus-based lotion flared Ayame’s sensitive nostrils. Her breath tripping in her throat, she collided with deep, dark flashing eyes and her stomach turned a shaken somersault in reaction.
“Per meraviglia...” Kouga breathed with deflating cool and impatience. “Will you at least smile as if you're happy? And stop hunching your shoulders like that. walk tall!” plunged back to harsh reality with a jolt, her color considerably heightened,
Ayame might have made a pithy retort had not Sumiko's housekeeper swept open the door for their entrance. and entrance it certainly was. Sumiko and Akane were in the hall, chatting in a group. Their eyes flew to Ayame, and then straight past her to the tall, spectacularly noticeable male by her side. Her stepmother and her stepsister stilled in astonishment and simply stared. suddenly Ayame was wickedly amused. Kouga was undeniably presentable. How unexpectedly sweet it was to surprise the two women whose constant criticisms and cutting comments had made her teenage years such a misery. retaining that light hold on her, Kouga carried her forward.
“Ayame... Kouga,” Sumiko said rather stiltedly.
After waiting in vain for Ayame to make an introduction, Kouga advanced a hand and murmured calmly, “Kouga Wolf, Mrs. Uno...I’m delighted to meet you at last.”
“Sumiko, please,” her stepmother gushed.
Akane hovered in a revealing little slip dress, her beautiful face etched with a rigid smile while her pale blue eyes ran over Kouga as if he was a large piece of her own lost property.
“I’m surprised...you don't look remotely like Houjo,' she remarked.” I was so sure you'd be horsy and hearty. Ayame always did go for the outdoor type.”
“Houjo?” Kouga queried.
“Oh, dear, I do hope I haven't been indiscreet,” Akane murmured with a little moue of fake dismay. “Sorry, but I naturally assumed you would know that Ayame was engaged once before—“
“Left at the altar too. A ghastly business altogether. That’s why it's so wonderful to see you happy now, Ayame!” Sumiko continued.
Ayame cringed as if her dress had fallen off in public, unable to look anywhere near Kouga to see how he was reacting to this humiliating information. Her stepmother took advantage of her disconcertion to rest a welcoming hand on Kouga’s sleeve and neatly impose herself between them.
“Oh, do let us see the ring,” Akane trilled.
Ayame extended her hand. An insincere chorus of compliments followed. They moved into a large reception room which was filled to the gills with chattering, elegantly dressed people. Sumiko turned to address Kouga in a confidential aside. “I’m really hoping that marriage will give Ayame something more to think about than that pile of bricks and mortar she's so obsessively attached to. What do you think of Uno's folly, Kouga?'
“It’s Ayame’s home and of obvious historic interest—“
“But such a dreadful ceaseless drain on one's financial resources, and a simply huge responsibility. You’ll soon find that out,” Sumiko warned him feelingly. “Worry drove my poor husband to an early death. It’s always the same with these old families. Land-rich, cash-poor. Taro was almost as stubborn as Ayame, but I don't think he ever dreamt that she would go to such nonsensical lengths to try and hang on to the estate—“
“I don't think we need to discuss this right now,” Ayame broke in tautly.
“It has to be said, darling, and your fiancé is part of the family now,” her stepmother pointed out loftily. “After all, I’m only thinking of your future, and Kouga does have a right to know what he's getting into. No doubt you've given him a very rosy picture, and really that's not very fair—“
“Not at all. I have an excellent understanding of how matters stand on the estate,” Kouga inserted with smiling calm as he eased away from the older woman and extended a hand to Ayame, closing long fingers over hers to tug her close again, as if he couldn't quite bear to be physically separated from her.
“That’s right. You work in the financial field,” Akane commented with a look of amusement. “I can hardly believe you're only a bank clerk...”
“Neither can I. Ayame...what have you been telling this family of yours?” Kouga scolded with a husky laugh of amusement. “Pressure of work persuaded me to take what you might call a sabbatical here in the UK. Meeting Ayame, a woman so very much after my own heart, was a quite unexpected bonus.'
“How on earth did you meet?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you...” Kouga responded in a teasing undertone.
“Feel free,” Ayame encouraged, already staggered by the ease with which he was entertaining and dealing with Sumiko and Akane. Yet he had been so very, very quiet with her. But then why was she surprised at that? Her soft mouth tightened. Here he was with two lovely, admiring women hanging on his very word; quite naturally he was opening up and no longer either bored or impatient.
'Ok. It happened in London. She reversed into my car and then got out and shouted at me. I really appreciate a woman with that much nerve!” Kouga divulged playfully, and Ayame’s bright head flew up in shock. “You do every thing behind the wheel at such frantic speed, don't you, cara mia? I wanted to strangle her, and then I wanted to kiss her...”
“Which did you do?” Ayame heard herself prompt, unnerved by his sheer inventiveness.
“I believe some things should remain private...” to accompany that low-pitched and sensually suggestive murmur, Kouga ran a long brown forefinger along her delicate jawbone in a glancing caress.
Ayame gazed up at him, all hot pink and overpowered, every muscle in her slender length tensing. Her tender flesh stung in the wake of that easy touch, leaving her maddeningly, insanely aware of his powerful masculinity.
“To think I used to believe my little stepsister was painfully shy,” Akane breathed, fascinated against her will by this show of intimacy.
“Hardly, when she's already the mother of a noisy toddler,” Sumiko put in cuttingly. “do you like children, Kouga?'
“I adore them,” he drawled, with positive fervor.
“How wonderful,” Sumiko said rather weakly, having shot her last bitchy bolt and found him impregnable. “Let me introduce you to our guests, Kouga. Don’t be so possessive, Ayame. Do let go of the poor man for a second.”
Ayame yanked her hand from Kouga’s sleeve. She hadn't even realized she had been hanging onto him. Feeling slightly disorientated, she watched as he deftly reached for the glasses of champagne offered by one of the catering staff.
She studied those lean brown hands, the beautifully shaped long fingers and polished nails. She recalled the smoothness of that fingertip dancing along her oversensitive jawbone, sending tiny little tremors down her rigid spine with an innate sensuality that mesmerized. And for the shocking space of one crashing heartbeat, as she met those astonishing dark golden eyes in concert, there had been nobody and nothing else in the room for her.
“You’re not making much effort, are you?” Kouga gritted in her ear.
“I never challenge Sumiko if I can help it,” she whispered back. “She fights back with my most embarrassing moments. I learnt that lesson years ago.”
“Strange...you didn't strike me as a woman who lies down to get kicked.”
Ayame flinched at that damning retaliation. “Excuse me,” she muttered, and hurried off into the cool of the less crowded hall.
“You won't hold onto that guy for ten seconds,” a sharp voice forecast nastily from the rear. “I can't think what he imagines he sees in you, but he'll soon find out he's made a big mistake.”
Ayame swung round to face her stepsister. “Time will no doubt tell.”
“Kouga 's not even your type,” Akane snapped resentfully. “How long do you think you're likely to hold off the opposition? He doesn't look dirt-poor to me either. I know clothes, and what he's wearing did not come out of any charity shop.”
“Kouga likes to dress well.” Ayame shrugged.
“A peacock with a dull little peahen fluttering in his wake?” Akane sneered. “He’ll soon be out looking for more excitement. No, if there's one thing I’m convinced of now that I’ve seen him, it's that he's playing a double game. It has to be the British passport he's after...why else would he be marrying you?”
Why else? Ayame repeated inwardly as Akane stalked off again. What a huge laugh Sumiko and Akane would have were they ever to discover that Kouga was no more than a somewhat unusual paid employee, prepared to act out a masquerade for six months. And every word her stepsister had spoken was painfully true. In the normal way of things a male of Kouga’s ilk would not have looked at her twice.
“Ayame...” Kouga was poised several feet away, a slanting smile for show on his beautiful mouth and exasperation glittering in his deep-set dark eyes. “I wondered where you had got to.”
He could act. Dear heaven, but he could act; Ayame found herself acknowledging over the next few hours. He kept her beside him, dragged her into the conversation and paid her every possible attention. Yet increasingly Ayame became more occupied in watching and listening to him.
In vain did she strive to recapture the image of the far from chatty male in motorbike leathers. For Kouga Wolf appeared to be a chameleon. With the donning of that dinner jacket, he appeared to have slid effortlessly into a new persona.
Now she saw a male possessed of a startling degree of sophistication and supremely at his ease in social company. He was adroit at sidestepping too personal enquiries. He was cool as ice, extremely witty and, she began to think, almost frighteningly clever. And other people were equally impressed. He gathered a crowd. Far from blending in, Kouga commanded attention.
At one in the morning, he walked her into the conservatory, where several couples were dancing, and complained, “you've been incredibly quiet.”
“And you're surprised?” Ayame stared up at him and stepped back. In the dim light, his lean, dark face had a saturnine quality. Brilliant eyes raked over her as keen and sharp as laser beams. “You’re like Jekyll and Hyde. I feel like I don't know you at all—“
“You don't,” Kouga agreed.
“And yet you don't quite fit in here either,” she murmured uncertainly, speaking her thoughts out loud and yet unable to properly put them together. “You stand out too much somehow.”
“That’s your imagination talking,” Kouga asserted with a smoky laugh as he encircled her with his arms.
He curved his palm to the base of her spine and drew her close. Her breasts rubbed against his shirt-front. A current of heat darted through her and she felt her nipples spring into murderously tight and prominent buds. She went rigid with discomfiture. “Relax,” he urged from above her head. “Sumiko is watching. We’re supposed to be lovers, not strangers...”
The indefinable scent of him engulfed her. Clean and warm and very male. She quivered, struggling to loosen her taut muscles and shamefully aware of every slight movement of his big, powerful body. She wanted to sink in to the hard masculinity of him, but she held herself back, and in so doing missed a step. To compensate, he had to bring her even closer.
“I’m not a great dancer,” she muttered in a mortified apology.
“dio mio... you move like air in my arms,” he countered.
And in his arms, amazingly, she did, absorb as one into the animal grace and natural rhythm with which he whirled her round the floor. It was like flying, she thought dreamily, and the reflection could only rekindle a fairy tale memory of dancing on a balcony high above the Grand Canal in Venice. No wrong steps, no awkwardness, no need even for conversation—just the sheer joy of moving in perfect synchronization with the music.
“You dance like a dream,” she whispered breathlessly in the split second after the music stopped, and she found herself as someone unwilling to awake from that dream, plastered as surely as melted cheese on toast to every abrasive angle of his lean, hard body.
Somehow her arms had crept up round his neck, and her fingers were flirting deliciously with his thick silky black hair. Unnaturally still now, she gazed up at him, green eyes huge pools of growing confusion. Dear heaven, those eyes of his. Even semi-screened with luxuriant black lashes, their impact was animal direct and splintering sensual.
As his arrogant dark head lowered, her breath feathered in her throat. But she was still stunned when he actually kissed her. He parted her lips with his and took her soft mouth with a driving, hungry assurance that blistered through every shocked atom of her being with the efficiency of a lightning bolt. In the very act of detaching her fingers from his hair she clung instead, clung to stay upright, vaguely attached to planet earth even though she was no longer aware of its existence.
Heat engulfed her sensation-starved body, swelling her breasts, pinching her nipples into distended prominence and sending a flash-flood of fire cascading down between her quivering thighs. As his tongue searched out the yielding tender sensitivity of her mouth, raw excitement scorched to such heights inside her she was convinced she was burning alive.
Kouga lifted his hips from hers, surveyed her blitzed expression and dealt her a curiously hard but amused look. “Time to leave,” he informed her lazily. “I believe we've played our part well enough to satisfy.”
As Kouga spun her under the shelter of one seemingly possessive arm and walked her off the floor, Ayame was in shock. Her legs no longer felt as if they belonged to the rest of her, and she was still struggling to breath at a normal rate. In the aftermath of that passionate kiss she was a prey to conflicting and powerful reactions, the craziest of which was the momentary insane conviction that Kouga and Shiori’s father could only be one and the same man!
Oh, dear heaven, how could she have forgotten herself to that extent? And the answer came back. He kissed like Shiori’s father. Earthquake-force seduction. Smooth as glass. Going for the kill like a hit man, faster on his feet than a jump-jet. She was devastated by the completeness of her own surrender, and utterly dumbfounded by that weird sense of the familiar which afflicted her, that crazy paranoiac sense of deja vu...
For her Venetian lover had known nothing about her and could never have discovered her identity. Her secrecy that night had been more than a game she'd played to tantalize. She had been honestly afraid that reality would destroy the magic. After all, he had been attracted by a woman who didn't really exist. And his uninterest in further contact had been more than adequately proven when he'd left her standing on the Ponte Della Guerra the following day!
Yet only he and Kouga had ever had such an effect on her, awakening a shameless brand of instant overpowering lust that sent every nerve-ending and hormone into overdrive and paid not the slightest heed to self-control or moral restraint. She breathed in deep to steady herself.
Maybe all Italian men learned to kiss like that in their teens, she told herself grimly. Maybe she was just a complete push-over for Italian men—at least those of the tall, dark, well-built and sensationally desirable variety. Maybe living like a nun and refusing to recognize that she might have physical needs had made her a degradingly easy mark for any male with the right sensual technique.
But what was technique without chemistry? She asked herself doggedly. It was pathetic for her to try and deny one minute longer that she was wildly, dangerously attracted to Kouga Wolf. For what pride had refused to face head-on, her own body had just proved with mortifying eagerness.
As Kouga thanked her stepmother for the party, Sumiko gave Ayame’s hot cheeks a frozen look while Akane surveyed her stepsister as if she had just witnessed a poor, defenseless man being brutally attacked by a sexually starved woman. Ayame’s farewells were incoherent and brief.
The night air hit her like a rejuvenating bucket of cold water. “We’ve played our part well enough to satisfy,” Kouga had said, only minutes earlier. At that recollection Ayame now paled and stiffened, as if she had been slapped in the face.
Naturally that kiss had simply been part of the masquerade. He had been acting. Acting as if he was attracted to her, in love with her, on the very brink of marrying her. Oh, dear heaven, had he guessed? Did he for one moment suspect that she hadn't been acting? How much could a man tell from one kiss? As kisses went, her response had been downright encouraging. Her self-respect cowered at that acknowledgement.
“That went off ok,” Kouga drawled with distinct satisfaction.
“yes, you were marvelous,” Ayame agreed, struggling to sound breezy, approving and grateful, and instead sounding as if each individual word had been wrenched from her at gun-point. “The kiss was a real bull's-eye clincher too. Strikes me you could make a fortune as a gigolo!”
With a forced laugh, she trod ahead of him, valiantly fighting to control her growing sense of writhing mortification “Say that again”
Stalking rigid-backed down the pavement, Ayame slung another not very convincing laugh over her shoulder. “Well, you've got everything going for you in that line,” she told him with determined humor. “The look, the charm, the patter, the screen-kiss technique. If I was some fading lonely lady with nothing but my money to keep me warm, I would've been swept off my feet in there!”
Without warning, a shockingly powerful hand linked forcibly with hers and pulled her round to face him again. Startled, Ayame looked up and clashed with blazing golden eyes as enervating as a ten-ton truck bearing down on her shrinking length.
“porca miseria!” Kouga growled in outrage. “You compare me to a gigolo?” genuinely taken aback by that reaction, Ayame gawped at him. And then the penny dropped. Considering the monetary aspect of their private arrangement, her lack of tact now left her stricken. “Oh, no, I never thought... I mean, I really didn't mean—“
“That I am a man who would sell himself for money?” Kouga incised in a raw tone that told her he took himself very seriously.
Ayame was so appalled by her own thoughtlessness that her hand fluttered up between them to pluck apologetically at his lapel and then smooth it down again. “Kouga... honestly, I was just trying to be funny—“
“Ha...ha,” Kouga breathed crushingly. “Give me the car keys.”
“The—?”
“You’ve had too much champagne.”
Ayame had had only a single glass. But out of guilt over her undiplomatic tongue, she handed over the keys. He swung into the driver's seat.
“You’ll need directions.”
“I have total recall of our death-defying journey here.”
She let that comment on her driving ability go unchallenged. She did drive pretty fast. And in three days' time they needed to get married. There was now some source of relief in the awareness that the marriage would be a fake. He had no sense of humor and a filthy temper. Even worse, he brooded. She stole a covert glance at his hard, dark chiseled profile...but, gosh, he still looked spectacular! In the moonlight, she averted her attention from him, torn with shame at that betraying response. Deep in the pit of her taut belly, she felt a surge of guilty heat, and was appalled by the immediacy of that reaction. He reminded her of Shiori's father...was that the problem?
She shook her head and studied her tightly linked hands, but although she tried to fight off those painful memories, they began flooding back...
When Houjo had changed his mind about marrying her-three years earlier, Ayame had ended up taking their honeymoon trip solo. Of course it had been dismal. Blind to the glorious sights, she had wandered round Venice as if she was homeless, while she struggled to cope with the pain of Houjo's rejection.
Then, one morning, she had witnessed a pair of youthful lovers having a stand-up row in the piazza san Marco. The sultry brunette had flung something at her boyfriend. As the thick gilded card had fluttered to rest at Ayame’s feet the fiery lovers had stalked off in opposite directions. And Ayame had found herself in unexpected possession of an invite to a masked ball at one of the wonderful palaces on the Grand Canal.
Two days later, she had finally rebelled against her boredom and her loneliness. She had purchased a mask and had donned that magical green evening dress. She had felt transformed, excitingly different and feminine. In those days she hadn't owned contact lenses, and since her spectacles combined with her long mane of hair had seemed to give her the dowdy look of an earnest swot she had taken them off, choosing to embrace myopia instead. She had had a cold too, so she had generously dosed herself up with a cold remedy. Unfortunately she hadn't read the warning on the packaging not to take any alcohol with the medication...
When she had seen the vast palazzo ablaze with golden light she had almost lost her nerve, but a crush of important guests had arrived at the same time, forcing her to move ahead of them and pass over her invitation. She had climbed the vast sweeping staircase of gilded brass and marble. By the time she'd entered the superb mirrored ballroom, filled with exquisitely dressed crowds of beautiful people awash with glittering jewels, her nerve had been failing fast. At any minute she had feared exposure as a gatecrasher, sneaking in where she had no right to be.
After hovering, trying desperately hard not to look conspicuous in her solitary state, she had slowly edged her path round to the fluttering curtains on the far side of the huge room and slid through them to find herself out on a big stone balcony. One secure step removed from the festivities, she had watched the glamorous guests mingle and dance— or at least she had watched them as closely as her shortsightedness allowed.
When an unmasked male figure in a white jacket had strolled out onto the balcony with a tray bearing a single glass, to address her in Italian, she'd quite naturally assumed he was a waiter.
“Grazie,” she said, striving to appear as if she was just taking the air after a dance or two, and draining the glass with appropriate thirsty fervor. But he spoke again.
“I don't speak Italian—“
“That was spanish,” he imparted gently in English. “I thought you might be Spanish. That dress worn with such vibrant coloring as yours is dramatic”
In the lingering silence of her disinterested shrug, he remarked, “you appear to be alone.” not easily disconcerted, he lounged lazily back against the stone balustrade, the tray abandoned.
“I was” she pointed out thinly. “And I like being alone”
He inclined his dark head back, his features a complete blur at that distance, only his pale jacket clearly visible to her in the darkness as he stared at her. In a bolshy mood, she stared back, nose in the air, head imperiously high. All of a sudden she was sick to death of being pushed around by people and forced to fulfill their expectations. Her solo trip to Venice had been her first true rebellion, and so far she could not comfort herself with the belief that she had done much with the opportunity.
“You’re prickly.”
“No, that was rude,” Ayame contradicted ruefully, “outright, bloody rudeness.”
'is that an apology?' he enquired.
“No, I believe I was clarifying my point. And haven't you got any more drinks to ferry around?” she prompted hopefully.
He stilled, wide shoulders tautening, and then unexpectedly he laughed a shiveringly sensual sound that sent a curious ripple down her taut spine. “Not at present.” his easy humor shamed her into a blush. “I’m not in a very good mood.”
“I will change that.”
“Not could, but will,” she noted out loud. “you’re very sure of yourself.”
“Aren’t you?”
In that instant, her own sheer lack of self-confidence flailed her with shamed bitterness, and she threw her head back with desperate pride and a tiny smile of wry amusement. “Always,” she murmured steadily then. “Always.”
He moved forward, and as an arrow of light from the great chandeliers in the ballroom fell on him she saw an indistinct image of the hard, bitingly attractive angles of his strong bone structure, the gleam of his thick black hair, the brilliance of his dark eyes. and her heart skipped a startled beat.
“Dance with me,” he urged softly.
And Ayame laughed with undeniable appreciation. Only she could gatecrash a high society ball and end up being chatted up by one of the waiters. “Aren’t you scared that someone will see you and you'll lose your job?”
“Not if we remain out here...”
“Just one dance and then I’ll leave.”
“the entertainment doesn't meet with your approval?” he probed as he slid her into his arms, his entire approach so subtle, so smooth that she was surprised to find herself there, and then flattered by the sensation of being held as if she were fashioned of the most fragile and delicate spun glass.
“It’s suffocatingly formal, and tonight I feel like something different,” she mused with perfect truth. “Indeed, tonight I feel just a little wild...”
“Please don't let me inhibit you,” he murmured.
And Ayame burst out laughing again.
“Who did you come here with tonight?” he queried.
“Nobody...I’m a gatecrasher,” she confided daringly.
“A gatecrasher?”
“You sound shocked...”
“Security is usually very tight at the palazzo d'oro.”
“Not if you enter just in front of a party who require a great deal of attentive bowing and scraping.”
“You must've had an invitation?”
“It landed at my feet in the piazza san Marco. A beautiful brunette flung it at her boyfriend. I thought you asked me to dance,” she complained, since they had yet to move. “Are you now planning to have me thrown out?”
“Not just at present,” he confided, folding her closer and staring down at her with narrowed eyes. “You are a very unusual woman.”
“Very,” Ayame agreed, liking that tag, which hinted at a certain distinction.
“And your name?”
“No names, no pack drill,” she sighed. “Ships that pass and all that—“
“I want to board...”
“No can do. I am not my name...my name wasn't even chosen with me in mind,” she admitted with repressed bitterness, for Ayame had always been a male name in her family.
“And I want to be someone else tonight.”
“Very unusual and very infuriating,” he breathed.
“I am a woman who is very, very sure of herself, and a woman of that stature is certain to infuriate,” she returned playfully, leaning in to his big powerful body and smiling up at him, set free by anonymity to be whatever she wanted to be.
And so they danced, high above the Grand Canal, all the lights glittering magically in her eyes until she closed them and just drifted in a wonderful dreamy haze...
Chapter Three.
Shiori was spending the night with Dai in the gatehouse. Returning to the folly to nervously await Kouga's arrival, Ayame caught an unsought glimpse of her reflection in the giant mirror in the echoing hall...
And suddenly she was wishing she had spent money she could ill afford on a new outfit. The brown dress hung loose round her hips and flapped to an indeterminate length below her knees. The ruffled neckline, once chosen to conceal the embarrassing smallness of her breasts, looked fussy and old-fashioned. She was much more comfortable in trousers— never had had much luck in choosing clothes that flattered her slight and diminutive frame...
And in the back of her wardrobe the green designer evening dress which had been Kagome's wedding present three years earlier still hung, complete with shoes and delicate little beaded bag. Kagome, no longer a friend and always rather too reserved and too confident of her feminine attraction for Ayame to feel quite comfortable in her radius. As for the dress, Ayame hadn't looked near it once since her return from Venice. She needed no reminder of that night of explosive passion in a stranger's arms. Yet somehow she still hadn't been able to bring herself to dispose of that exquisite gown which had lent her the miraculous illusion of beauty for a few brief hours.
The Victorian bell-pull shrieked complaint in the piercing silence, springing Ayame out of a past that still felt all too recent and all too wounding. In haste, she yanked open the heavy door. There she stopped dead at the sight of Kouga, her witch-green eyes widening to their fullest extent in unconcealed surprise.
He was wearing a supremely elegant black dinner jacket when she hadn't dared even to ask if he possessed such an article. And there he stood, proud black head high, strong dark face assured, one lean brown hand negligently thrust into the pocket of narrow black trousers to tighten them over his lean hips and long powerful thighs, his beautifully tailored jacket parted to reveal a pristine white pleated dress shirt. He looked so incredibly sophisticated and gorgeous he stole the breath from Ayame 's convulsing throat.
“Gosh, you hired evening dress,” she mumbled, relocating her vocal cords with difficulty.
Kouga ran brilliant dark eyes over her, a distinct frown line drawing together his ebony brows. “possibly i'm slightly over-dressed for the occasion?”
“No...No...Not at all.” never more self-conscious than when her personal appearance was under scrutiny, Ayame flushed to the roots of her hair. Her attention abruptly fell on the glossy scarlet Porsche sitting parked beside the ancient land rover which was her only means of transport. “Where on earth did you get that car?” she gasped helplessly.
“It's on loan.”
Slowly, Ayame shook her curly red head. It would be madness to turn up in an expensive car and give a false impression of Kouga 's standing in the world. Sumiko would ask five hundred questions and soon penetrate the truth. Then Kouga, who could only have borrowed the car for her benefit—and she couldn't help but be touched by that realization —would end up feeling cut off. “I would really love to roar up in the Porsche, but it would be wiser to use the land rover,” she told him in some disappointment.
“Dio mio... you are joking, of course.” Kouga surveyed the rusting and battered four-wheel drive with outright incredulity. “it's a wreck.”
Ayame opened the door of the land rover. “I do know what I’m talking about, Kouga,” she warned. “If we show up in the Porsche, my stepmother will get entirely the wrong idea and decide that you're loaded. If we're anything less than honest, we'll both be left sitting with egg on our faces. We want to blend in, not create comment, and that car must be worth about thirty thousand—“
“Seventy.”
“Seventy thousand pounds?” Ayame broke in, her disbelief writ large in her shaken face.
“And some change,” Kouga completed drily.
“Wish I had a friend willing to trust me with a car like that! We’ll park the land rover out on the road and run away from it fast,”
Ayame promised, worriedly examining her watch and then climbing into the driver's seat to forestall further argument. “I’d let you drive, but this old girl has a number of idiosyncrasies which might irritate you.”
“This is ridiculous,” Kouga swung into the tatty passenger seat with pronounced reluctance, his classic profile hard as a granite cliff in winter.
As she stole a second glance at that hawkish masculine profile, Ayame found herself thinking that he had a kind of heathcliffish rough edge when he was angry.
And he was definitely angry, and she didn't mind in the slightest. It made him seem far more human. Posh cars and men and their egos, she reflected with sudden good cheer. Even she understood that basic connection. “Believe me, you're about to cause enough of a stir tonight. You’re very good-looking...”
“Am I really?” Kouga prompted rather flatly.
“Oh, come on, no false modesty. I bet you've been breaking hearts from the edge of the cradle!” Ayame riposted with a rueful sound of amusement.
“You’re very frank.”
“In that garb you look like you just strolled in off a movie set,” Ayame reeled off, trying to work herself up to giving the little speech she had planned. “Do you think you could contrive to act like you're keen on me tonight? No...No, don't say anything,” she urged with a distinctly embarrassed laugh. “It’s just that nobody can smell a rat faster than Sumiko or Akane, and you are not at all what they are primed to expect.”
“What are they expecting?”
“Some ordinary boring guy who works in a bank.”
“Where do you get the idea that bankers are boring?”
“My bank manager could bore for Britain. Every time I walk into his office, he acts like I’m there to steal from him. That man is just such a pessimist,” Ayame rattled on, grateful to have got over the hint about him acting keen without further discussion. It was so unbelievably embarrassing to have to ask a man to put on such pretence.
“When he tells me the size of my overdraft, he even reads out the pence owing to make me squirm—'
“You have an overdraft?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. The day we get married, I will have some really good news for my bank manager...at least I hope he thinks its good news, and loosens the purse-strings a little.” she shot him an apprehensive glance, wishing she hadn't allowed nervous tension to tempt her into such dangerous candor.
“Don’t worry, if the worst comes to the worst, I could always sell something to keep the bank quiet. I made a commitment to you and I won't let you down.”
“I’m impressed. Tell me, have you thought of a cover story for this evening?” Kouga enquired with some satire.
“cover story?”
“Where and how we met, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Of course,” she said in some surprise. “We’ll say we met in London. I haven't been there in over a year, but they're not likely to know that. I want to give the impression that we've plunged into one of those sudden whirlwind romances and then, when we split up, nobody will be the slightest bit surprised.”
“I see you're wearing a ring.”
“It’s on loan, like your Porsche. We can't act engaged without a ring.” Ayame had borrowed the diamond dress ring from Dia for the evening, and her finger had been crooked ever since it went on because it was a size too big and she was totally terrified of losing it.
“Don’t you think you ought to fill me in on a few background details on your family? My younger sister is the only close relative I have,” he revealed. “She’s a student.”
“Oh...right. My stepmother, Sumiko, was first married to a wealthy businessman with one foot in the grave. They had a daughter, Akane, who's a model,” she shared. “Sumiko married my father for social position; he married her in the hope of having a son. Dad was always very tight with money, but Sumiko and Akane could squeeze juice out of a dehydrated lemon. He was extremely generous to them. That’s one of the reasons the estate is in such a mess...I inherited the mess and a load of death duties.”
“Very succinct,” Kouga responded with a slight catch in his voice.
“Sumiko and Akane are frantic snobs. They spend the summer in Truro and the rest of the year in their London apartment. Sumiko doesn't like me but she loves throwing parties, and she is very, very conscious of what other people think.”
“Are you?”
'Good heavens, no, as an unmarried mother, I can hardly afford to be!”
“I think I should at least know the name of the father of your child,” Kouga remarked. The silence in the car became electric. Ayame accelerated down the road, small hands clenching the steering wheel tightly. “On that point, I’m afraid I’ve never gratified anyone's curiosity,” she said stiffly, and after that uncompromising snub the silence lasted all the way to Truro.
Some distance from her stepmother's large detached home, which was set within its own landscaped grounds on the outskirts of town, Ayame nudged her vehicle into a space. And only with difficulty they walked up the sweeping drive and Ayame’s heart sank as she took in the number of cars already parked. “I think there's going to be a lot more people here than I was led to expect. If anyone asks too many probing questions, pretend your English is lousy,” she advised nervously.
“I believe I will cope.” Kouga curved a confident hand over her tense spine. Her flesh tingled below the thin fabric of her dress and she shivered. He bent his glossy dark head down almost to her level, quite a feat with the difference in their heights. The faint scent of some citrus-based lotion flared Ayame’s sensitive nostrils. Her breath tripping in her throat, she collided with deep, dark flashing eyes and her stomach turned a shaken somersault in reaction.
“Per meraviglia...” Kouga breathed with deflating cool and impatience. “Will you at least smile as if you're happy? And stop hunching your shoulders like that. walk tall!” plunged back to harsh reality with a jolt, her color considerably heightened,
Ayame might have made a pithy retort had not Sumiko's housekeeper swept open the door for their entrance. and entrance it certainly was. Sumiko and Akane were in the hall, chatting in a group. Their eyes flew to Ayame, and then straight past her to the tall, spectacularly noticeable male by her side. Her stepmother and her stepsister stilled in astonishment and simply stared. suddenly Ayame was wickedly amused. Kouga was undeniably presentable. How unexpectedly sweet it was to surprise the two women whose constant criticisms and cutting comments had made her teenage years such a misery. retaining that light hold on her, Kouga carried her forward.
“Ayame... Kouga,” Sumiko said rather stiltedly.
After waiting in vain for Ayame to make an introduction, Kouga advanced a hand and murmured calmly, “Kouga Wolf, Mrs. Uno...I’m delighted to meet you at last.”
“Sumiko, please,” her stepmother gushed.
Akane hovered in a revealing little slip dress, her beautiful face etched with a rigid smile while her pale blue eyes ran over Kouga as if he was a large piece of her own lost property.
“I’m surprised...you don't look remotely like Houjo,' she remarked.” I was so sure you'd be horsy and hearty. Ayame always did go for the outdoor type.”
“Houjo?” Kouga queried.
“Oh, dear, I do hope I haven't been indiscreet,” Akane murmured with a little moue of fake dismay. “Sorry, but I naturally assumed you would know that Ayame was engaged once before—“
“Left at the altar too. A ghastly business altogether. That’s why it's so wonderful to see you happy now, Ayame!” Sumiko continued.
Ayame cringed as if her dress had fallen off in public, unable to look anywhere near Kouga to see how he was reacting to this humiliating information. Her stepmother took advantage of her disconcertion to rest a welcoming hand on Kouga’s sleeve and neatly impose herself between them.
“Oh, do let us see the ring,” Akane trilled.
Ayame extended her hand. An insincere chorus of compliments followed. They moved into a large reception room which was filled to the gills with chattering, elegantly dressed people. Sumiko turned to address Kouga in a confidential aside. “I’m really hoping that marriage will give Ayame something more to think about than that pile of bricks and mortar she's so obsessively attached to. What do you think of Uno's folly, Kouga?'
“It’s Ayame’s home and of obvious historic interest—“
“But such a dreadful ceaseless drain on one's financial resources, and a simply huge responsibility. You’ll soon find that out,” Sumiko warned him feelingly. “Worry drove my poor husband to an early death. It’s always the same with these old families. Land-rich, cash-poor. Taro was almost as stubborn as Ayame, but I don't think he ever dreamt that she would go to such nonsensical lengths to try and hang on to the estate—“
“I don't think we need to discuss this right now,” Ayame broke in tautly.
“It has to be said, darling, and your fiancé is part of the family now,” her stepmother pointed out loftily. “After all, I’m only thinking of your future, and Kouga does have a right to know what he's getting into. No doubt you've given him a very rosy picture, and really that's not very fair—“
“Not at all. I have an excellent understanding of how matters stand on the estate,” Kouga inserted with smiling calm as he eased away from the older woman and extended a hand to Ayame, closing long fingers over hers to tug her close again, as if he couldn't quite bear to be physically separated from her.
“That’s right. You work in the financial field,” Akane commented with a look of amusement. “I can hardly believe you're only a bank clerk...”
“Neither can I. Ayame...what have you been telling this family of yours?” Kouga scolded with a husky laugh of amusement. “Pressure of work persuaded me to take what you might call a sabbatical here in the UK. Meeting Ayame, a woman so very much after my own heart, was a quite unexpected bonus.'
“How on earth did you meet?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you...” Kouga responded in a teasing undertone.
“Feel free,” Ayame encouraged, already staggered by the ease with which he was entertaining and dealing with Sumiko and Akane. Yet he had been so very, very quiet with her. But then why was she surprised at that? Her soft mouth tightened. Here he was with two lovely, admiring women hanging on his very word; quite naturally he was opening up and no longer either bored or impatient.
'Ok. It happened in London. She reversed into my car and then got out and shouted at me. I really appreciate a woman with that much nerve!” Kouga divulged playfully, and Ayame’s bright head flew up in shock. “You do every thing behind the wheel at such frantic speed, don't you, cara mia? I wanted to strangle her, and then I wanted to kiss her...”
“Which did you do?” Ayame heard herself prompt, unnerved by his sheer inventiveness.
“I believe some things should remain private...” to accompany that low-pitched and sensually suggestive murmur, Kouga ran a long brown forefinger along her delicate jawbone in a glancing caress.
Ayame gazed up at him, all hot pink and overpowered, every muscle in her slender length tensing. Her tender flesh stung in the wake of that easy touch, leaving her maddeningly, insanely aware of his powerful masculinity.
“To think I used to believe my little stepsister was painfully shy,” Akane breathed, fascinated against her will by this show of intimacy.
“Hardly, when she's already the mother of a noisy toddler,” Sumiko put in cuttingly. “do you like children, Kouga?'
“I adore them,” he drawled, with positive fervor.
“How wonderful,” Sumiko said rather weakly, having shot her last bitchy bolt and found him impregnable. “Let me introduce you to our guests, Kouga. Don’t be so possessive, Ayame. Do let go of the poor man for a second.”
Ayame yanked her hand from Kouga’s sleeve. She hadn't even realized she had been hanging onto him. Feeling slightly disorientated, she watched as he deftly reached for the glasses of champagne offered by one of the catering staff.
She studied those lean brown hands, the beautifully shaped long fingers and polished nails. She recalled the smoothness of that fingertip dancing along her oversensitive jawbone, sending tiny little tremors down her rigid spine with an innate sensuality that mesmerized. And for the shocking space of one crashing heartbeat, as she met those astonishing dark golden eyes in concert, there had been nobody and nothing else in the room for her.
“You’re not making much effort, are you?” Kouga gritted in her ear.
“I never challenge Sumiko if I can help it,” she whispered back. “She fights back with my most embarrassing moments. I learnt that lesson years ago.”
“Strange...you didn't strike me as a woman who lies down to get kicked.”
Ayame flinched at that damning retaliation. “Excuse me,” she muttered, and hurried off into the cool of the less crowded hall.
“You won't hold onto that guy for ten seconds,” a sharp voice forecast nastily from the rear. “I can't think what he imagines he sees in you, but he'll soon find out he's made a big mistake.”
Ayame swung round to face her stepsister. “Time will no doubt tell.”
“Kouga 's not even your type,” Akane snapped resentfully. “How long do you think you're likely to hold off the opposition? He doesn't look dirt-poor to me either. I know clothes, and what he's wearing did not come out of any charity shop.”
“Kouga likes to dress well.” Ayame shrugged.
“A peacock with a dull little peahen fluttering in his wake?” Akane sneered. “He’ll soon be out looking for more excitement. No, if there's one thing I’m convinced of now that I’ve seen him, it's that he's playing a double game. It has to be the British passport he's after...why else would he be marrying you?”
Why else? Ayame repeated inwardly as Akane stalked off again. What a huge laugh Sumiko and Akane would have were they ever to discover that Kouga was no more than a somewhat unusual paid employee, prepared to act out a masquerade for six months. And every word her stepsister had spoken was painfully true. In the normal way of things a male of Kouga’s ilk would not have looked at her twice.
“Ayame...” Kouga was poised several feet away, a slanting smile for show on his beautiful mouth and exasperation glittering in his deep-set dark eyes. “I wondered where you had got to.”
He could act. Dear heaven, but he could act; Ayame found herself acknowledging over the next few hours. He kept her beside him, dragged her into the conversation and paid her every possible attention. Yet increasingly Ayame became more occupied in watching and listening to him.
In vain did she strive to recapture the image of the far from chatty male in motorbike leathers. For Kouga Wolf appeared to be a chameleon. With the donning of that dinner jacket, he appeared to have slid effortlessly into a new persona.
Now she saw a male possessed of a startling degree of sophistication and supremely at his ease in social company. He was adroit at sidestepping too personal enquiries. He was cool as ice, extremely witty and, she began to think, almost frighteningly clever. And other people were equally impressed. He gathered a crowd. Far from blending in, Kouga commanded attention.
At one in the morning, he walked her into the conservatory, where several couples were dancing, and complained, “you've been incredibly quiet.”
“And you're surprised?” Ayame stared up at him and stepped back. In the dim light, his lean, dark face had a saturnine quality. Brilliant eyes raked over her as keen and sharp as laser beams. “You’re like Jekyll and Hyde. I feel like I don't know you at all—“
“You don't,” Kouga agreed.
“And yet you don't quite fit in here either,” she murmured uncertainly, speaking her thoughts out loud and yet unable to properly put them together. “You stand out too much somehow.”
“That’s your imagination talking,” Kouga asserted with a smoky laugh as he encircled her with his arms.
He curved his palm to the base of her spine and drew her close. Her breasts rubbed against his shirt-front. A current of heat darted through her and she felt her nipples spring into murderously tight and prominent buds. She went rigid with discomfiture. “Relax,” he urged from above her head. “Sumiko is watching. We’re supposed to be lovers, not strangers...”
The indefinable scent of him engulfed her. Clean and warm and very male. She quivered, struggling to loosen her taut muscles and shamefully aware of every slight movement of his big, powerful body. She wanted to sink in to the hard masculinity of him, but she held herself back, and in so doing missed a step. To compensate, he had to bring her even closer.
“I’m not a great dancer,” she muttered in a mortified apology.
“dio mio... you move like air in my arms,” he countered.
And in his arms, amazingly, she did, absorb as one into the animal grace and natural rhythm with which he whirled her round the floor. It was like flying, she thought dreamily, and the reflection could only rekindle a fairy tale memory of dancing on a balcony high above the Grand Canal in Venice. No wrong steps, no awkwardness, no need even for conversation—just the sheer joy of moving in perfect synchronization with the music.
“You dance like a dream,” she whispered breathlessly in the split second after the music stopped, and she found herself as someone unwilling to awake from that dream, plastered as surely as melted cheese on toast to every abrasive angle of his lean, hard body.
Somehow her arms had crept up round his neck, and her fingers were flirting deliciously with his thick silky black hair. Unnaturally still now, she gazed up at him, green eyes huge pools of growing confusion. Dear heaven, those eyes of his. Even semi-screened with luxuriant black lashes, their impact was animal direct and splintering sensual.
As his arrogant dark head lowered, her breath feathered in her throat. But she was still stunned when he actually kissed her. He parted her lips with his and took her soft mouth with a driving, hungry assurance that blistered through every shocked atom of her being with the efficiency of a lightning bolt. In the very act of detaching her fingers from his hair she clung instead, clung to stay upright, vaguely attached to planet earth even though she was no longer aware of its existence.
Heat engulfed her sensation-starved body, swelling her breasts, pinching her nipples into distended prominence and sending a flash-flood of fire cascading down between her quivering thighs. As his tongue searched out the yielding tender sensitivity of her mouth, raw excitement scorched to such heights inside her she was convinced she was burning alive.
Kouga lifted his hips from hers, surveyed her blitzed expression and dealt her a curiously hard but amused look. “Time to leave,” he informed her lazily. “I believe we've played our part well enough to satisfy.”
As Kouga spun her under the shelter of one seemingly possessive arm and walked her off the floor, Ayame was in shock. Her legs no longer felt as if they belonged to the rest of her, and she was still struggling to breath at a normal rate. In the aftermath of that passionate kiss she was a prey to conflicting and powerful reactions, the craziest of which was the momentary insane conviction that Kouga and Shiori’s father could only be one and the same man!
Oh, dear heaven, how could she have forgotten herself to that extent? And the answer came back. He kissed like Shiori’s father. Earthquake-force seduction. Smooth as glass. Going for the kill like a hit man, faster on his feet than a jump-jet. She was devastated by the completeness of her own surrender, and utterly dumbfounded by that weird sense of the familiar which afflicted her, that crazy paranoiac sense of deja vu...
For her Venetian lover had known nothing about her and could never have discovered her identity. Her secrecy that night had been more than a game she'd played to tantalize. She had been honestly afraid that reality would destroy the magic. After all, he had been attracted by a woman who didn't really exist. And his uninterest in further contact had been more than adequately proven when he'd left her standing on the Ponte Della Guerra the following day!
Yet only he and Kouga had ever had such an effect on her, awakening a shameless brand of instant overpowering lust that sent every nerve-ending and hormone into overdrive and paid not the slightest heed to self-control or moral restraint. She breathed in deep to steady herself.
Maybe all Italian men learned to kiss like that in their teens, she told herself grimly. Maybe she was just a complete push-over for Italian men—at least those of the tall, dark, well-built and sensationally desirable variety. Maybe living like a nun and refusing to recognize that she might have physical needs had made her a degradingly easy mark for any male with the right sensual technique.
But what was technique without chemistry? She asked herself doggedly. It was pathetic for her to try and deny one minute longer that she was wildly, dangerously attracted to Kouga Wolf. For what pride had refused to face head-on, her own body had just proved with mortifying eagerness.
As Kouga thanked her stepmother for the party, Sumiko gave Ayame’s hot cheeks a frozen look while Akane surveyed her stepsister as if she had just witnessed a poor, defenseless man being brutally attacked by a sexually starved woman. Ayame’s farewells were incoherent and brief.
The night air hit her like a rejuvenating bucket of cold water. “We’ve played our part well enough to satisfy,” Kouga had said, only minutes earlier. At that recollection Ayame now paled and stiffened, as if she had been slapped in the face.
Naturally that kiss had simply been part of the masquerade. He had been acting. Acting as if he was attracted to her, in love with her, on the very brink of marrying her. Oh, dear heaven, had he guessed? Did he for one moment suspect that she hadn't been acting? How much could a man tell from one kiss? As kisses went, her response had been downright encouraging. Her self-respect cowered at that acknowledgement.
“That went off ok,” Kouga drawled with distinct satisfaction.
“yes, you were marvelous,” Ayame agreed, struggling to sound breezy, approving and grateful, and instead sounding as if each individual word had been wrenched from her at gun-point. “The kiss was a real bull's-eye clincher too. Strikes me you could make a fortune as a gigolo!”
With a forced laugh, she trod ahead of him, valiantly fighting to control her growing sense of writhing mortification “Say that again”
Stalking rigid-backed down the pavement, Ayame slung another not very convincing laugh over her shoulder. “Well, you've got everything going for you in that line,” she told him with determined humor. “The look, the charm, the patter, the screen-kiss technique. If I was some fading lonely lady with nothing but my money to keep me warm, I would've been swept off my feet in there!”
Without warning, a shockingly powerful hand linked forcibly with hers and pulled her round to face him again. Startled, Ayame looked up and clashed with blazing golden eyes as enervating as a ten-ton truck bearing down on her shrinking length.
“porca miseria!” Kouga growled in outrage. “You compare me to a gigolo?” genuinely taken aback by that reaction, Ayame gawped at him. And then the penny dropped. Considering the monetary aspect of their private arrangement, her lack of tact now left her stricken. “Oh, no, I never thought... I mean, I really didn't mean—“
“That I am a man who would sell himself for money?” Kouga incised in a raw tone that told her he took himself very seriously.
Ayame was so appalled by her own thoughtlessness that her hand fluttered up between them to pluck apologetically at his lapel and then smooth it down again. “Kouga... honestly, I was just trying to be funny—“
“Ha...ha,” Kouga breathed crushingly. “Give me the car keys.”
“The—?”
“You’ve had too much champagne.”
Ayame had had only a single glass. But out of guilt over her undiplomatic tongue, she handed over the keys. He swung into the driver's seat.
“You’ll need directions.”
“I have total recall of our death-defying journey here.”
She let that comment on her driving ability go unchallenged. She did drive pretty fast. And in three days' time they needed to get married. There was now some source of relief in the awareness that the marriage would be a fake. He had no sense of humor and a filthy temper. Even worse, he brooded. She stole a covert glance at his hard, dark chiseled profile...but, gosh, he still looked spectacular! In the moonlight, she averted her attention from him, torn with shame at that betraying response. Deep in the pit of her taut belly, she felt a surge of guilty heat, and was appalled by the immediacy of that reaction. He reminded her of Shiori's father...was that the problem?
She shook her head and studied her tightly linked hands, but although she tried to fight off those painful memories, they began flooding back...
When Houjo had changed his mind about marrying her-three years earlier, Ayame had ended up taking their honeymoon trip solo. Of course it had been dismal. Blind to the glorious sights, she had wandered round Venice as if she was homeless, while she struggled to cope with the pain of Houjo's rejection.
Then, one morning, she had witnessed a pair of youthful lovers having a stand-up row in the piazza san Marco. The sultry brunette had flung something at her boyfriend. As the thick gilded card had fluttered to rest at Ayame’s feet the fiery lovers had stalked off in opposite directions. And Ayame had found herself in unexpected possession of an invite to a masked ball at one of the wonderful palaces on the Grand Canal.
Two days later, she had finally rebelled against her boredom and her loneliness. She had purchased a mask and had donned that magical green evening dress. She had felt transformed, excitingly different and feminine. In those days she hadn't owned contact lenses, and since her spectacles combined with her long mane of hair had seemed to give her the dowdy look of an earnest swot she had taken them off, choosing to embrace myopia instead. She had had a cold too, so she had generously dosed herself up with a cold remedy. Unfortunately she hadn't read the warning on the packaging not to take any alcohol with the medication...
When she had seen the vast palazzo ablaze with golden light she had almost lost her nerve, but a crush of important guests had arrived at the same time, forcing her to move ahead of them and pass over her invitation. She had climbed the vast sweeping staircase of gilded brass and marble. By the time she'd entered the superb mirrored ballroom, filled with exquisitely dressed crowds of beautiful people awash with glittering jewels, her nerve had been failing fast. At any minute she had feared exposure as a gatecrasher, sneaking in where she had no right to be.
After hovering, trying desperately hard not to look conspicuous in her solitary state, she had slowly edged her path round to the fluttering curtains on the far side of the huge room and slid through them to find herself out on a big stone balcony. One secure step removed from the festivities, she had watched the glamorous guests mingle and dance— or at least she had watched them as closely as her shortsightedness allowed.
When an unmasked male figure in a white jacket had strolled out onto the balcony with a tray bearing a single glass, to address her in Italian, she'd quite naturally assumed he was a waiter.
“Grazie,” she said, striving to appear as if she was just taking the air after a dance or two, and draining the glass with appropriate thirsty fervor. But he spoke again.
“I don't speak Italian—“
“That was spanish,” he imparted gently in English. “I thought you might be Spanish. That dress worn with such vibrant coloring as yours is dramatic”
In the lingering silence of her disinterested shrug, he remarked, “you appear to be alone.” not easily disconcerted, he lounged lazily back against the stone balustrade, the tray abandoned.
“I was” she pointed out thinly. “And I like being alone”
He inclined his dark head back, his features a complete blur at that distance, only his pale jacket clearly visible to her in the darkness as he stared at her. In a bolshy mood, she stared back, nose in the air, head imperiously high. All of a sudden she was sick to death of being pushed around by people and forced to fulfill their expectations. Her solo trip to Venice had been her first true rebellion, and so far she could not comfort herself with the belief that she had done much with the opportunity.
“You’re prickly.”
“No, that was rude,” Ayame contradicted ruefully, “outright, bloody rudeness.”
'is that an apology?' he enquired.
“No, I believe I was clarifying my point. And haven't you got any more drinks to ferry around?” she prompted hopefully.
He stilled, wide shoulders tautening, and then unexpectedly he laughed a shiveringly sensual sound that sent a curious ripple down her taut spine. “Not at present.” his easy humor shamed her into a blush. “I’m not in a very good mood.”
“I will change that.”
“Not could, but will,” she noted out loud. “you’re very sure of yourself.”
“Aren’t you?”
In that instant, her own sheer lack of self-confidence flailed her with shamed bitterness, and she threw her head back with desperate pride and a tiny smile of wry amusement. “Always,” she murmured steadily then. “Always.”
He moved forward, and as an arrow of light from the great chandeliers in the ballroom fell on him she saw an indistinct image of the hard, bitingly attractive angles of his strong bone structure, the gleam of his thick black hair, the brilliance of his dark eyes. and her heart skipped a startled beat.
“Dance with me,” he urged softly.
And Ayame laughed with undeniable appreciation. Only she could gatecrash a high society ball and end up being chatted up by one of the waiters. “Aren’t you scared that someone will see you and you'll lose your job?”
“Not if we remain out here...”
“Just one dance and then I’ll leave.”
“the entertainment doesn't meet with your approval?” he probed as he slid her into his arms, his entire approach so subtle, so smooth that she was surprised to find herself there, and then flattered by the sensation of being held as if she were fashioned of the most fragile and delicate spun glass.
“It’s suffocatingly formal, and tonight I feel like something different,” she mused with perfect truth. “Indeed, tonight I feel just a little wild...”
“Please don't let me inhibit you,” he murmured.
And Ayame burst out laughing again.
“Who did you come here with tonight?” he queried.
“Nobody...I’m a gatecrasher,” she confided daringly.
“A gatecrasher?”
“You sound shocked...”
“Security is usually very tight at the palazzo d'oro.”
“Not if you enter just in front of a party who require a great deal of attentive bowing and scraping.”
“You must've had an invitation?”
“It landed at my feet in the piazza san Marco. A beautiful brunette flung it at her boyfriend. I thought you asked me to dance,” she complained, since they had yet to move. “Are you now planning to have me thrown out?”
“Not just at present,” he confided, folding her closer and staring down at her with narrowed eyes. “You are a very unusual woman.”
“Very,” Ayame agreed, liking that tag, which hinted at a certain distinction.
“And your name?”
“No names, no pack drill,” she sighed. “Ships that pass and all that—“
“I want to board...”
“No can do. I am not my name...my name wasn't even chosen with me in mind,” she admitted with repressed bitterness, for Ayame had always been a male name in her family.
“And I want to be someone else tonight.”
“Very unusual and very infuriating,” he breathed.
“I am a woman who is very, very sure of herself, and a woman of that stature is certain to infuriate,” she returned playfully, leaning in to his big powerful body and smiling up at him, set free by anonymity to be whatever she wanted to be.
And so they danced, high above the Grand Canal, all the lights glittering magically in her eyes until she closed them and just drifted in a wonderful dreamy haze...