A Little Seduction Omnibus (9 page)

‘Your aunt...your family owns
this
?’ Beth gasped. He had already told her about the family’s castle, of course, but she had not expected anything so grand!

‘It’s not so unusual—not here,’ Alex told her easily. ‘There are families who, after the repatriation of property following on from the Velvet Revolution, now own a handful of such places. Fortunately for us we only ever owned this one. I say fortunately because the cost of maintaining such homes can be prohibitive, as you can imagine.

‘In my family’s case we were fortunate in that much of the original furniture had been left
in situ
, and the castle had been lived in by a government official—or rather a succession of them—rather than simply left empty. Some of the more valuable pieces have gone, of course, and the paintings—family portraits in the main.

‘As with many others of its type, the renovations to the original castle were done at the height of the influence of the Hapsburgs; there is a very strong Viennese influence in the decor of the state apartments. Let me show you.’

Still trying to take in the fact that this place, this castle, belonged to Alex’s family, Beth followed him in bemusement as he led the way through a succession of rooms that made Beth feel as though she had stepped back in time. Although she was familiar with the style and decor of many of the great houses at home, the intricately lavish rococo plasterwork which decorated the walls and ceilings of the rooms she walked through made her gasp a little in wonderment.

In one room, a salon of elegant proportions, she couldn’t help staring in delight at the soft watery green of the paintwork. Mirrors alternating with pastoral scenes decorated the walls, and hanging from the centre of the ceiling was the most magnificent chandelier she had ever seen.

‘Ah, yes, that was how the family originally came to own the castle in the first place,’ Alex told her ruefully. ‘They made chandeliers for the Hapsburg court.’

‘Does your family actually live here?’ Beth asked him in an awed whisper.

‘When they
are
here, yes. Although the state rooms are only used on formal occasions. The whole family comes and goes pretty much at will, although during the working week my cousins and my aunt stay in Prague, where they own a large apartment. This is the drawing room the family uses,’ Alex informed her, taking her through into another elegantly proportioned room which, whilst still magnificent, was less heavily decorated than the rooms she had just seen—and more comfortably furnished.

‘Are any members of your family here now?’ Beth asked him curiously.

Alex shook his head, frowning as he saw the way she shivered and then going over to the fire which was made up in the grate. Kneeling down to remove a box of matches from a pretty covered box, he lit the fire.

‘No. My aunt would have been here, but there was a burglary at the factory recently. Some antique glass was stolen—my aunt is very distressed. She blames herself. My cousins, her sons, have been urging her for some time to have a more up-to-date burglar and security system fitted at the factory as the collection of antique glassware they have there is quite unique. They have samples of the kind of glass they make going back right to the late 1600s—but my aunt, who is very much a traditionalist and a matriarch of the old school, wanted to wait until their current night-watchman, who is approaching retirement, had actually left.

‘She told my cousins that it would offend Peter’s pride if they were to install a security system whilst he was still there, and she didn’t want to hurt him by doing so. Now she says that because of her stubbornness not only has a priceless collection of glass been stolen, but, even worse, Peter is in hospital with concussion, having been hit on the head by the gang who broke in.’

‘Oh, no!’ Beth couldn’t help exclaiming in distress as she listened to him. ‘Will he...the night-watchman...be all right?’

‘We hope so. But until she knows that he has recovered my aunt refuses to leave the city.’

‘Does she know you’ve brought me here...to her home? Will she mind?’

Alex shook his head.

‘It was her suggestion that I do so. She is immensely proud of our family tradition and of this place.’

‘Yes, I’m sure she is,’ Beth agreed.

The heat from the fire was beginning to warm her chilled body, but she still winced as lightning tore a jagged line right through the thick greyness of the mist outside. There was a loud clap of thunder and then almost immediately another flash of lightning.

‘Don’t worry, we’re safe in here,’ Alex comforted her, adding more prosaically, ‘Are you hungry?’

Beth discovered a little to her own surprise that she was, and nodded.

‘You stay here, then,’ Alex instructed her. ‘I shan’t be long.’

He was gone about fifteen minutes, long enough for Beth to be curious enough to wander around the room studying the family photographs decorating the highly polished surfaces of the heavy wooden furniture.

In one of them an unexpectedly familiar face stared back at her. Picking it up, she studied it.

She was still holding it a few seconds later when Alex returned, carrying what looked like a large picnic hamper.

‘Is this your aunt?’ she asked him, holding the photograph she had been studying out to him.

‘Yes. It is,’ he confirmed, smiling at her. ‘How did you guess?’

Beth said nothing. She wasn’t going to tell him that she had known because she’d recognised the woman as the same one she had seen him with in the hotel in Prague, and then at the opera, and she certainly wasn’t going to tell him just what assumptions she had made about the two of them. It had never occurred to her that the elegant and obviously expensively dressed woman might be a member of Alex’s family, and not a rich tourist for whom he was working.

‘Food,’ Alex informed her as he put the hamper down. ‘I’ll just—’ He broke off as the thunder crashed again and all the lights suddenly went out.

Cursing, Alex told her ruefully, ‘I should have guessed this might happen. Fortunately my aunt always keeps a supply of candles to hand in every room. The electricity supply here is notorious for its unreliability, and these storms don’t exactly help.’ As he spoke he was pulling open the drawers in a pretty sofa table and setting candles in a couple of heavy silver candelabra on the mantelpiece above the fire.

‘We’ll have to picnic in here, I’m afraid,’ he told Beth as he placed one on the table behind the sofa. Outside it had suddenly gone very dark, the wind driving the rain so hard at the windows that Beth could hear the fierce sound it made.

‘Perhaps we ought to make our way back to Prague,’ she suggested nervously, remembering how hazardous their journey to the castle had been.

But Alex seemed to misunderstand the cause of her apprehension, coming to stand close to her as he asked her softly, ‘What is it you’re afraid of, Beth? Not me?’

‘No, of course not,’ she denied, and then, for some reason she couldn’t understand herself, she discovered that she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at him, and the feeling that was curling up right through her body had far more to do with a dangerous sense of forbidden excitement than with any kind of fear.

There was something undeniably erotic about being here alone with him in this timeless place, and the lack of the modern amenity of electric light, the softness of the fire and candlelight, only served to highlight the sensation that filled her that she might have been transported back in time, to a time when for a young woman to be alone with a young man had been a very, very dangerous thing indeed.

‘No, not you,’ she said a little breathlessly.

‘Then this, perhaps,’ Alex suggested, closing the distance between them and taking her in his arms and kissing her, gently at first, almost reverently, and then far more passionately as she swayed closer to him and her heartbeat picked up and echoed the fierce rhythm of the driving rain and her own equally stormy driving inner yearning.

‘We should go back,’ she protested shakily when Alex released her mouth.

‘We can’t, it’s too late,’ he told her, and Beth knew that he wasn’t really talking about their actual journey from the castle. ‘We
can’t
go back, Beth,’ he reiterated as he touched her mouth with his fingertips and then traced its trembling shape with his finger. ‘Not now...’

‘I thought we were going to eat,’ Beth reminded him. Her lips felt dry, clumsy, reluctant to form the words, reluctant to do
anything
that would increase the sensual pressure of Alex’s fingertips against her lower lip but equally reluctant to deny herself the pleasure of it.

‘You’re...hungry...?’

The smouldering look which accompanied his comment, the way his gaze dropped from her face to her body, made Beth’s heart race.

‘I... I...’

‘You’re right. We
should
eat,’ Alex agreed tenderly, reluctantly releasing her. ‘Come and sit down by the fire.’

He pulled a chair up for her and Beth allowed him to guide her into it. She wasn’t used to being treated so protectively, to being so
cherished
. One part of her loved it, another feared and suspected it. She didn’t dare allow herself to fall into the trap of believing that any of this was real, that Alex’s treatment of her, his tenderness towards her were genuine. They weren’t. She mustn’t allow herself to forget that he was simply using her, and that all she felt for him was, quite simply, a healthy physical female desire. She must
not
allow her thoughts or emotions to become clouded by the romanticism of the situation.

Alex picked up the hamper and carried it over to put it down on the floor between them.

‘Come and sit down here,’ he told her, dragging a couple of soft cushions off the sofa and piling them up against one of the chairs. ‘It will be warmer. The chair will protect your back from the draught...’

Obediently Beth did as he suggested. There was something dangerously sybaritic about being here like this with him. The heat from the fire was slowly relaxing her tense muscles whilst the candlelight spread soft, sensuous shadows across the darkening room. Outside the light was already fading, the afternoon giving way to early evening as the storm clouds continued to darken the sky.

‘Where did you get this?’ Beth asked Alex as he opened the hamper.

‘The hotel,’ he informed her promptly. ‘It’s all cold, I’m afraid...’

Beth could have told him that for some reason she was no longer really all that interested in food, but a self-protective instinct made her refrain from doing so. If she did Alex might be tempted to ask just what more compelling appetite had taken its place, and she was very much afraid that she might be tempted to tell him.

‘Chicken?’ Alex asked her, holding out a tender portion towards her.

Uncertainly Beth looked at it.

‘It’s good,’ Alex encouraged her, taking a bite out of it and then offering it to her, commanding her softly, ‘Bite.’

Unable to drag her gaze away from his, Beth did as he instructed, nibbling delicately on the chicken and then tensing as Alex reached out his free hand to push a stray lock of her hair off her face, his fingers just brushing against her mouth as he did so.

There was something almost shockingly sensual about what they were doing, about being fed by him like this, about knowing his fingers were so close to her mouth as he held the chicken and she bit into it, and the temptation to eat the meat with a deliberately erotic female show of the hunger she felt for him was something that Beth had to fight to control.

‘Enjoy it,’ Alex said softly to her, as though he knew what she was thinking—and feeling. ‘An appetite for food is like an appetite for love...meant to be savoured and enjoyed—indulged! That’s how I want to make love with you,’ he told her rawly. ‘Slowly and thoroughly, with every touch, every caress a feast of pleasure and indulgence.’

She was, Beth suddenly discovered, trembling so hard that Alex must be able to see and feel it.

Had Alex brought her here on purpose, to make love to her, to seduce her? If he had...
if
he had, he couldn’t have chosen a more romantic setting, Beth acknowledged as Alex threw what was left of the piece of chicken on the fire. Whilst it sizzled in the heat he removed a bottle of wine from the hamper and uncorked it, pouring it into two glasses.

‘To us,’ he told Beth, handing her one of them and raising his own in a toast.

It was red and full-bodied, and it hit Beth’s empty stomach in a warm rich wave that heated her blood, raising her temperature and lowering her resistance.

Having taken another gulp of it, she put down her glass and automatically ran her tongue-tip over her lips. In the firelight she saw Alex’s eyes darken fiercely. He held out his own glass to her and told her softly, ‘Drink.’

As she bent her head and took a sip he watched her, and then very deliberately and very slowly he turned the glass round, so that the place where she had drunk was facing him, and then equally deliberately he raised the glass to his own mouth, drinking from exactly the same spot she had drunk from. It was a simple enough gesture, and also a very explicit one. Beth could feel her heat, the response, the awareness, surge through her body in a jagged sensation as fierce and primitive as the lightning outside.

‘It’s
you
I’m thirsting for...hungry for...’ Alex told her rawly.

He put down his glass and reached for her, cupping her face as he had done earlier in the day and covering her mouth with his own, his thumb probing the softness of her lower lip, his tongue sliding into the access he had made for it and entwining softly with hers.

And the heat engulfing Beth had nothing whatsoever to do with the fire, nor the sweet film moistening her skin anything to do with the rain hammering down outside.

She
did
try to be strong, to cling to sanity and reason, reminding herself mentally that it was just desire, just sex, a physical appetite—that was all it was, all
he
was. But beneath her fingertips she could feel the heavy thudding of Alex’s heart, and Alex himself was urging her to free his body from the restrictive captivity of his clothes, guiding her to buttons and fastenings which, with his help, seemed to come free with almost miraculous speed.