His Most Exquisite Conquest: A Delicious Deception / The Girl He'd Overlooked / Stepping out of the Shadows

Hungrily his mouth captured hers, their breath mingling, tongues blending in an urgent mimicry of the ultimate outcome of where all this was leading, as Rayne let her head fall back in wanton acquiescence to all that was about to happen.

They were equal now. Mouth to mouth. Pulsing body to pulsing body. Locked in the most fundamental act between a man and a woman.

Below them, beneath the darkening Mediterranean sky, Monte Carlo pulsed with a life of its own but they were oblivious to it, the sound of their impassioned breathing like an extension of the exotic chorus outside.

His teasing had backfired on him, Rayne realised with her heart singing. He was desperate to make love with her, a scenario she had only ever dared to dream about seven years ago. But now it was happening and the reality was sending shock waves of pleasure through her body way beyond any she could ever have imagined.

With a small sob of need and urgent trembling fingers, she tugged at the buttons of his shirt.

His chest was bronzed and beautifully contoured, as she had imagined it would be, the feathering of hair that ran down and disappeared inside his shirt igniting a fire in her as she ran her hands across it.

‘You’re beautiful.’ It seemed as natural to say it as it did to breathe, as very softly she pressed her kiss-swollen lips to his heaving chest. He smelled of pine and a masculine musk that acted like an aphrodisiac on her already heightened senses. His skin tasted slightly salty when she brought her tongue across the hard wall of muscle and bone.

‘Not nearly as beautiful as you.’

Did he really think that? Or was it just sex talking? How could she compare with the super-model type of woman his name was usually linked with? At that moment, though, she didn’t care—only that he was with her. Like this.

‘Take this off,’ he urged raggedly, already tugging her dress down over her hips. ‘I want to see you. All of you.’

Before she could murmur an objection, having thought about his type of woman and feeling extremely self-conscious about not living up to all he expected her to be, the whisper of fabric was nothing more than a pool of light around her ankles and she was standing there in nothing but her flimsy white sandals and a white lacy string that left very little hidden from the dark intensity of his gaze.

‘King,’ she breathed, hiding her sudden embarrassment against the warm hard wall of his shoulder. Gently, though, those warm strong hands held her away from him.

‘Let me look at you,’ he exhaled in a way that was half an entreaty, half a command.

Allowing it, she stood stock-still and closed her eyes against the starkly visual images of what she knew he would be seeing. Red hair cascading like a dark waterfall over one shoulder, the urgent rising of pale breasts with their rosy tips still hard and turgid from his exquisite attentions.

She wondered if he’d think as she did. That her breasts were slightly too full for her tiny waist and the less curvy flare of her hips. But he was smiling when she opened her eyes, the smile of a man well gratified with the gift he was being given.

He reached out then, cupping the undersides of her breasts as tenderly as if each were a rare treasure, and Rayne gave a small moan, her lashes coming down over her eyes against the excruciating pleasure that ripped through her lower body as his thumbs lightly stroked the sensitised peaks.

‘Look at me.’

She didn’t want to! How could she stand here like this and let him see the naked longing in her eyes? Face him, knowing that her body was betraying the extent of her need of him? But his voice was as much her master as the sensations that were holding her in thrall and very slowly her lashes fluttered apart.

He looked flushed and tousled and as much a slave to his desire as she was, she realised, feeling the burn of his gaze like a brand on her body as it slid leisurely down over her rapidly rising breasts and ribcage, over the flat plane of her belly to the white triangle of lace at the apex of her creamy thighs.

‘Such loveliness should be rejoiced in. Worshipped,’ he emphasised heavily, his massaging hands leaving her breasts to follow the same path down over her midriff, her hips and her trembling thighs before coming to rest on the taut mounds of her bare buttocks, the beauty he had just spoken of with the heat of his desire bringing him finally to his knees.

Rayne gazed down on his thick dark hair as his hot mouth sought the heart of her femininity, concealed behind the last barrier of her string.

His moist heat burned into her, mingling with her hot wetness through the wisp of lace, and Rayne plunged her fingers into his hair to clutch him to her and with a groaning need thrust her throbbing centre hard against him.

He groaned his satisfaction as she squirmed above him.

‘I think we can dispense with this, don’t you?’ he murmured huskily.

His smile was excitingly sensual when he tilted his head to look up at her, although the strong masculine face was flushed with the desire that was making his eyelids heavy and lent his mouth the brooding look of a man in the grip of passion.

Rayne sucked in her breath as his fingers made short shrift of removing the little scrap of nonsense. His hands were dark and long and extremely masculine against the smooth, silky sheen of her legs.

Blindly she saw him toss her string down alongside her dress.

Both scraps of nonsense, she thought, if she’d imagined that either could protect her from her own weakness for him, or from his potent masculinity and his determined, exciting hands.

His clothes were unbelievably arousing on her nakedness as he pulled her to him and, where she had tugged his unbuttoned shirt out of his waistband, his chest hair rasped deliciously against her swollen breasts.

‘Oh, King …’ Involuntarily, she was wriggling against him, wanting even closer contact. She had never felt more wanton or more feminine.

‘Easy, darling,’ he said softly, and though she knew that the endearment might have been used with any woman he had been making love to, she was too driven by her need for him to be anything but happy to pretend that just for tonight she really meant something to him. ‘Don’t you think I feel it too?’

In fact he had never felt so hot or so hard in his entire life, King realised, with such an intense burning throb in his groin it was almost akin to pain.

He hadn’t intended this when he had come back from the clinic tonight, bearing the brunt of two men’s total disregard for each other. Or having to tell Rayne—while personally appalled at Mitch’s lack of ethics—that, legally, she had no claim against his father, and then to go on and shatter all her illusions about love and loyalty into the bargain. But it had been a hell of a day and he needed to lose himself in the pleasure of everything she was offering. And heaven help him if he was behaving like a sex-starved teenager! But this lovely woman couldn’t begin to know just how much pleasure it was going to give him to make love to her.

Claiming her mouth once more, he ground his hips against hers to show her just what she was doing to him and laughed softly into her mouth—a satisfied sound—when she gasped from the evidence of his arousal and pressed herself against his hardness in answering need.

Dragging his mouth from the drugging warmth of hers, it was only to rasp against the perfumed silk of her hair, ‘Come to bed with me.’

Her murmur of acquiescence was muffled by the depth of her wanting, but he understood.

Cupping her buttocks to lift her, he felt her warm eager legs wrap around him and, like that, somehow they made it up to his suite of rooms.

Monte Carlo was a blur of lights through the panorama of the open windows, its busy Corniche a blazing snake that led sinuously who-knew-where? Just like where making love with this man would be taking her tonight, Rayne thought distractedly, although she was in far too deep now to care.

From over his shoulder, on The Rock on the south side of the harbour, she glimpsed the palace, floodlit as a beacon against the dark velvet of the night.

Clarity against confusion. The thought rang through her brain. Like common sense against a wild, abandoned pleasure such as she had never known.

As King laid her down on the bed, she let the pleasure take her over—the excitement of him removing his clothes, the hard shadowed potency of his thrusting manhood and the heart-leaping anticipation as he came down to join her.

She reached for him at once and knew the heady thrill of touching him intimately for the first time.

‘Go easy,’ he advised raggedly and she could tell from his laboured breathing how close he was to losing control. ‘I don’t want to waste this. I want to savour every minute of these hours with you.’

That it sounded like the prelude to something final, she didn’t even want to think about. She couldn’t think anyway because, in moving away from her to remove her sandals, he was suddenly employing his tongue to trace a slow sensuous trail along each thigh.

Except that now he had found the secret parting between them and, lying there, breath held in shuddering anticipation, she almost screamed with pleasure when his teasing tongue flicked across her ripe swollen bud.

She had had just two lovers in her life, but she had never permitted such intimacy, and now she knew why no other relationship had ever been enough for her. Because there was only one man she wanted! Only one man she had ever wanted. And she knew that after tonight she would be spoiled for any other man who ever came after King.

As he drove her mindless with his mouth, her hands clutched the soft fabric of the coverlet beneath her to try and stem the tide of pleasure that was building in her. A small guttural murmur escaped her. She didn’t want to climax yet.

‘What is it? What is it you want, Rayne?’ he murmured with his lips softly brushing the soft flesh of her inner thigh. They left a slick trail of warmth where they’d touched, moist from the nectar of her body.

You! her mind clamoured, begging, silently appealing to him. It’s all I’ve ever wanted—for so long!

Too unsure of him to actually say as much, she used the language of her body to show him by reaching down to entice him back across her.

‘Ah, is that all,’ he said softly and, even in the grip of passion, she realised, there was still room for sensual teasing in his voice.

As he reached across to open the drawer of the bedside cabinet, it hit her that he was continuing to call her Rayne. Rayne, not Lorri, because Lorri, the girl he had once ignored—silly, trusting, naïve Lorri—was gone, killed off by the crumbling of everything she had trusted and believed in. By the harsh reality of life as it really was.

King’s muttered oath as he pushed closed the drawer he had been groping in suddenly woke Rayne to what was wrong.

‘Don’t you have any?’ she asked breathlessly and a little coyly, despite how far their intimacy had come.

‘I thought I did.’ He let out a frustrated sigh and then, with a wry pull of his mouth, ‘It’s been a while,’ he admitted to her.

Later, Rayne would glean some comfort from that statement. Right now, though, all she felt was frustration, agonizing and raw.

‘I’m sorry, Rayne.’ She was lying there with her hair spread like dark fire across his pillow, her beautiful body flushed from the fever-pitch he had brought her to, and which was mirrored by the febrile glitter in her slumberous eyes. ‘I should have checked.’ He swore again, quite viciously this time. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said, noticing the anguish on her lovely face. ‘Or you’ll make me lose my mind and all my principles will be shot to the winds, and I’ve no intention of putting you at risk like that.’ He meant from an unwanted pregnancy. She could see the effort it was taking for him to honour those principles he’d spoken of. His face, as he drew away from her and sat up, was ravaged by his own frustration. Even in the dim light she could see the flush that darkened the skin across his cheekbones, and his darkened jaw appeared clenched against his thwarted sexual desire. But there was a bleakness to his superb profile that made him look vulnerable and weary.

Of course, she thought, reasoning through the depths of her wanting. He had been worrying about Mitch all day …

With her heart going out to him, she wondered how she could ever have doubted that he was anything other than trustworthy, and that that integrity he was showing her now would extend to every aspect of his life. And her intuition must have recognised that for her to have still found herself so attracted to him, even when she’d wanted to believe the worst about him.

She wanted to tell him she was sorry she’d misjudged him so completely, but she was still too aroused and racked with need for him to speak. She laid tentative fingers on his forearm. ‘It’s all right,’ she assured softly, with wild impulses leaping through her from the sensation of his skin beneath her fingers. ‘We don’t need one.’

‘You’re protected?’ The disbelief that chased away some of the shadows from his face was worth a month of birthdays, Rayne thought, smiling shyly, too aroused to tell him why. That weeks ago she’d been given the Pill to correct her erratic cycle, thrown out of kilter through worrying about her mum.

‘We’ll be perfectly safe—I promise,’ she breathed, her simmering desire beginning to bubble over again just from caressing the superbly contoured muscle of his upper arm. It felt firm and solid. As solid as the rest of his body as he came down to her again, causing her to gasp from the weight and power of him, and then from a breath-catching expectancy as he gently parted her legs.

But he didn’t enter her right away. Instead, with his hot, hard flesh merely nudging at her moist softness, he treated her to a torturous game of re-arousal that had her sobbing at the ecstasy of his tormenting lips and hands until she spread her legs fan-like and raised her hips uninhibitedly to his in a frenzied and unequivocal invitation to him to take her.

And that was more than he could take, she realised, gasping and overcome by sensation when one long, hard thrust had him sinking deeply into her eager warmth.

Pushed over the limit, she started to climax at once, bucking and sobbing until she was nothing but an abandoned mass of writhing sensations, propelled to greater and greater heights by King’s driving and increasingly deeper penetration.

Her zenith when it came was a starburst of colour and spell-binding pleasure in which she felt she was being catapulted to another planet. And then the moment came when King’s own climax burst and he was flowing into her, joining her with him and to him, sending the earth spinning off its axis as they floated together—one mind and one body—in some glorious parallel universe.

When she awoke, she was alone in the big bed and the blinds were drawn up to reveal the cloudless Mediterranean blue sky.

She was in a very masculine room, with plain soft furnishings and heavy designer furniture, in contrast to the pale and more delicate fitments of her own room.

Her stomach flipped now as she remembered what had transpired, the tender spots on the most intimate places of her body an exciting reminder of a long and rapturous night.

Now, though, remembering why she had come here and all that had transpired yesterday, she wondered just how wise she had been in letting it happen.

The Claybornes had as good as destroyed her family—or at least Mitch Clayborne had, even if Grant Hardwicke had brought it on himself in incurring Mitch’s wrath by planning to run off with his wife. But Rayne’s mother wasn’t aware of that, and Rayne vowed she would do her best to keep her from ever finding out. However, where King was concerned, her mother still believed, as Rayne had, that he was just as guilty as Mitch of stealing her father’s work. So whatever would her mother say if she knew how little it had taken for her daughter to wind up in bed with King? She’d be horrified and hurt beyond belief, Rayne thought, as she would if she knew about Grant’s affair. And how could she explain to her mother that King had played no part in hurting her father, when she didn’t think Cynthia Hardwicke would even survive knowing the whole truth?

All she could do, she reasoned, was not tell her mother anything—not even let her know that she had been here.

As for Mitch Clayborne …

Turning over in bed, she let out a low groan. She didn’t think she could stand the embarrassment of ever facing him again.

She was just about to step out of bed but, hearing the door opening and realising she was entirely naked, she slipped back in, pulling the single sheet up over her breasts.

Despite her concerns, her heart leaped to see King striding in wearing a white dressing gown and leather slippers. He had combed his hair, but his unshaven jaw was even darker this morning and his tanned chest and legs contrasted deeply with the robe.

‘You slept well,’ he commented, and his smile was so warm that all her worries were in danger of melting like the winter’s last snows. ‘Hélène’s cooking breakfast, but I thought you might like a glass of orange juice to revive you,’ he said.

Thanking him, Rayne took the crystal glass and drank from it gratefully. She couldn’t believe how thirsty she was—or how hungry. Obviously making love with him had stirred her appetites, she realised, in more ways than one.

‘King … About last night,’ she began when she came up for air, hardly able to look at him after all they had shared.

‘What are you going to tell me?’ He looked at her knowingly. ‘That it shouldn’t have happened?’

‘Something like that,’ she murmured sheepishly, finishing her juice.

‘Too late, my sweet. It did.’ He sounded fatalistic as he removed the empty glass from her hand. ‘Not once—but twice—’ his mouth was pulling sensually ‘—if I remember correctly. So what excuse are you going to give me for virtually ripping off my shirt and then nearly driving me out of my mind with your wicked ways?’

The dark intensity of his eyes was making her throb in every intimate part of her that he had made his own, which meant that her ‘wicked ways’, as he’d called them, still weren’t satisfied. Because she still craved him, and even more so as she remembered every tender caress of his skilled and wonderful hands and the burning heat of his mouth on the most secret places of her body.

In a voice tremulous with desire she said, ‘I didn’t rip off your shirt.’ And because this whole scenario was too embarrassing for her she said, ‘I think I should go.’

‘Go?’ He frowned. ‘Go where? To the bathroom? Or home?’ he enquired flippantly.

‘Home, of course,’ she responded seriously. ‘It’s much too embarrassing to stay here now that Mitch knows who I am.’

‘Is that the only reason?’ he purred with sensuality curling his fantastic mouth again and, before she could answer, too ashamed to know how to respond, he said, ‘He’s expressly requested that you stay. So do I. In fact, I insist upon it.’

‘Insist?’ Rayne echoed with her rebellious nature surfacing through her unquenchable desire.

‘All right, then. I invite you to stay,’ he amended.

‘Why?’

‘Because I think you must be feeling a little overwrought and probably much too tired after … last night,’ he reminded her with his irises darkening, although he was still smiling, ‘to be in any fit state to go anywhere.’

‘I’m surprised, after all you called me yesterday—deceitful, lying, naïve—’ she took a warped pleasure in reminding him equally ‘—that you should even care.’

‘Of course I care.’

A glimmer of something deep inside her responded too eagerly to that heavily breathed statement. A throwback to her teenage years. That was all it was, she told herself chaotically.

‘You’re under my roof,’ he went on, surprising her because she’d thought it was Mitch’s house. ‘I wouldn’t want to be responsible for driving you out.’

‘Your roof?’ she enquired obliquely, while reluctantly processing the fact of his merely feeling responsible for her.

‘Does that surprise you?’

‘No.’ Nothing about him surprised her.

‘My roof. My house …’ her breath caught sharply as the mattress suddenly depressed beneath his weight ‘… and my bed.’

His voice was arousing in itself, even without the things he was saying, and she thought of those couple of lovelorn weeks she had spent in his office, listening to his voice from behind that glass partition, wondering what it would be like to hear it roughened by desire.

‘If Hélène’s getting breakfast, we don’t have time,’ she said breathlessly because he was already turning back the sheet, making her whole body scream in anticipation.

He laughed softly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, pressing his lips against her forehead, and his voice was so soft she had to close her eyes because she couldn’t deal with the depth of feeling it aroused in her, ‘I think we do.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

RAYNE decided she had to go and visit Mitch at the clinic as soon as possible, since it had all come out now, who she was and why she was there.

She didn’t feel like seeing a man who had used the terms of a signed agreement as a payback to ruin his ex-partner because, no matter how bad or naïve a businessman Grant Hardwicke had been, that was what Mitch had effectively done. But although she was still in shock over the things King had told her about her father, she still felt she owed it to Grant Hardwicke to hear the facts first-hand from Mitch himself.

At King’s insistence, Rayne allowed him to drive her to the hospital, where a handful of reporters who had learned of Mitch’s condition leaped on them like locusts as soon as they arrived at the main doors.

‘Is it true, Mr Clayborne, that this health scare of your father’s is more serious than the clinic is saying?’

‘Is there any improvement in his condition?’

‘Does this mean Clayborne shares in all areas are set to rise further with the expectation of your taking outright control?’

Questions came thick and fast, with microphones being thrust towards them, so that Rayne realised just how influential and newsworthy the Clayborne name was.

‘You’ve heard the clinic spokesman’s statement. My father’s condition is stable,’ King answered, pressing forward unperturbed, taking it in his stride. ‘I’ve nothing more to add.’

‘Mr Clayborne!’ a female journalist shouted over the jostling heads. ‘Can we deduce from your arriving here accompanied this morning …’ her gossip-hungry gaze fell pointedly on Rayne ‘… that your relationship with super-model Sophie Ringwood is well and truly over?’

Rayne gave a small gasp as a flashbulb suddenly went off in her face.

‘No comment,’ King said, his arm coming instinctively around her.

Rayne was glad of his shielding strength, turning her head into the immaculate pale jacket covering his shoulder as the camera flashed again before he hustled her inside the building.

‘I’m sorry about that.’ His face was grim as they came into the bright modern efficiency of the airy clinic. ‘It comes with the territory, I’m afraid.’

‘Naturally,’ Rayne returned, breathless from all the commotion, feeling the sudden loss of his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t think she could ever get used to living life in the spotlight as he obviously had, she thought, trying not to dwell on what that reporter had said about his super-model girlfriend as he guided her towards a waiting lift.

‘Remember he’s ill,’ King warned when she refused his offer to accompany her into Mitch’s room as they were stepping out of the lift, insisting on going in alone. ‘And it won’t do either of you any good to get into a stew.’

‘As if I would!’ she breathed. ‘Unlike your father, I do have ethics,’ she added under her breath as a passing nurse, looking interestedly at King, gave Rayne the remainder of her smile.