“A choice I’m questioning more and more with each moment you stand here,” he muttered, glaring at her. “Business partners don’t have to like each other, but they do have to trust each other, and my trust is something I will never give you again.”
She flinched, but she didn’t move to leave. “Never is a long time, Denys, and I intend to earn your trust. And I know you’re seething with resentment, which is understandable, but that’s a hard thing to keep up, day after day, year after year.”
The mention of years was a reminder of just how trapped he was. “Be damned to you. What you’re suggesting is impossible.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Don’t you?” Provoked beyond bearing and frustrated as hell by a desire that still seemed unconquerable, he wrapped an arm around her waist. The application form fluttered to the floor as he pulled her hard against him.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“You want to know why this won’t work, Lola?” Desire thrumming through his body, he cupped her cheek, his thumb pressing beneath her jaw to tilt her head back. Her skin was as soft as he remembered, the fragrance of her hair as intoxicating as ever, and even as he told himself he was making a fatal mistake, Denys bent his head. “This is why,” he said, and kissed her.
Chapter9
The moment his lips touched hers, pleasure pierced Lola like an arrow, pleasure so keen and so sharp that she cried out against his mouth.
He responded at once, his arms tightening around her as he pulled her even closer, and her mind tumbled back into the past, to summer afternoons in St.John’s Wood, to scents of bay rum and jasmine, to hot, frantic lovemaking and its languid, luscious aftermath, to a time and a place where sensation and bliss were the only things that mattered, where they had tried to burn away the social difference between a viscount and a cabaret dancer.
Denys,she thought, and the pleasure deepened and spread until it was in every part of her body, bringing a yearning she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in years.
Her lips parted, and he deepened the kiss, tasting her tongue with his own in a carnal caress that inflamed all her senses. Her handbag hit the floor with a thud, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
He made a rough sound against her mouth, and his embrace loosened, but he did not push her away. Instead, his hands slid down, gliding along her ribs to her hips. His palms felt like fire, seeming to burn through all the layers of her clothing as he pulled her closer.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she should stop this, for it could ruin everything she’d come here to do, but she feared it was already too late. The sandpapery texture of his cheek, the taste of his mouth, the hard feel of his body, were so achingly familiar, and when his grip tightened and he lifted her onto her toes, bringing her hips flush against his, she couldn’t summon the will to push him away.
She’d thought enough time had gone by. She’d thought both of them would be over this by now. Denys’s kiss, his caress, his lovemaking, those afternoons together—she’d worked so hard to make all of those things nothing but a distant memory. She thought she’d succeeded. Yet now, with his body against hers and arousal flooding through her, it was as if not a single day had passed.
Without warning, he broke the kiss. His hands tightened on her hips, then he shoved her away and took a long step back, his hands falling to his sides.
Lola stared at him, wordless, her senses reeling and her lips still burning. She ought, she supposed, to say something—something offhand so they could both get their bearings and pretend this hadn’t happened. But for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a thing. She pressed her fingers to her mouth and said nothing.
It was Denys’s voice that broke the silence. “God,” he said, his voice ragged, “if this doesn’t prove the point, nothing will.”
She frowned, striving to think. “What point?”
He took a deep breath and another step back, rubbing his hands over his face. “The one I’ve been trying to make since you arrived here.”
Those words hit her like a splash of ice water, snuffing out all the fire raging through her in an instant, leaving her as spitting mad as a wet cat. “You kissed me to prove a point?”
“No, I didn’t. Although it’s a damn fine way to make the case, and I wish I’d thought of it.” He glared at her, seeming as angry as she, though why he thought he had any grounds to be angry was beyond her. “But when you’re anywhere in the vicinity, my capacity to think, even of devious plots to drive you away, deserts me utterly.”
“So what just happened is my fault?” Lola glared back at him, outraged that he was painting her as some sort of wicked seductress. “Of course it is. I was standing here, after all, and a man can’t be expected to conduct himself in honorable fashion when a notorious dancer with a ruined reputation is standing in front of him. That’s too much to ask of any man, even agentlemansuch as you.”
That shot hit the mark, she could tell, for a hint of what might have been regret crossed his face. But if she thought he’d offer an apology, she was mistaken. “As I said before, I didn’t do it to prove a point, but the point is made just the same. A partnership between us just can’t work.”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Oh, no, no, no. If you think your conduct this morning—deliberate or not—will enable you to wriggle out of your obligations here, you are mistaken.”
“Obligations?”
Her anger hardened into resolve. “I’m calling a partners’ meeting. According to the Imperial’s bylaws, I have that right, and I’m exercising it. I will make the arrangements with your secretary.”
“Make whatever arrangements you like, but I have no intention of attending any such meeting.”
“Do as you please.” She bent and picked up her handbag from the floor. “If you are absent, I will make whatever business decisions I deem necessary. You will be apprised in the minutes of what I have decided. I think I shall begin by deciding next year’s playbill.”
“A pointless exercise. Without my consent, you can’t carry out such a decision, or any other, for that matter.”
