‘I don’t need your sympathy.’ Put on the spot by the raw emotion in her voice that paradoxically tugged at his own, Jag put the brakes on the conversation. What he needed was her to get naked so he could work off some of the excess energy coursing through him, not to feel even more than he already did.
He heard her murmur a soft goodnight before she disappeared through one of the closed doors. As he was about to tell her that she’d entered his bedroom instead of her own she returned, red-faced. ‘I think I just went into your room. It smells like you.’
Jag’s jaw clenched. ‘You did.’ He pointed to the door on the far side of the room. ‘You can access your bedroom through there.’
She ran her hands down the sides of her dress and threw him a nervous smile. ‘Okay. Take two.’
Needing to lower his tension levels with something other than her, Jag headed for the bar. He’d just picked up the crystal decanter when she screamed.
Striding through the connecting door, he pulled up short when he found Regan standing on the bed, holding a stiletto sandal in her hand and wearing nothing but a nude-coloured slip. A very short nude-coloured slip.
‘Sp-p-pider,’ she stammered, her lovely eyes as wide as dinner plates. ‘I swear it’s as big as a wildebeest.’
‘Where?’
‘In the...in the wardrobe.’
Finding the offending arachnid, he had to concede that the spider was indeed huge. Maybe not a wildebeest, but if you’d never seen a camel spider before it probably looked as bad as one. Retrieving an empty glass from her bathroom, he captured the spider and tossed it outside the window, closing it after him.
‘Technically it’s not a spider,’ he informed her, returning to find her still on the bed, her long, lithe legs braced apart. ‘It’s known as a Solifugae.’
‘As long as it’s technically gone I don’t care what it’s known as. Are there any more?’
Jag checked around the bed, welcoming the diversion from her legs. ‘All clear. I’ll make sure the staff do a regular sweep of the rooms tomorrow. But rest assured, we don’t tend to see very many of them inside the palace. They prefer the open desert.’
‘This one got lost,’ she said, still warily eyeing the carpet as if she expected to see an army of them come out of the woodwork.
‘Come.’ He held his hand out to her, even though he told himself not to touch her. ‘I’ll help you down.’
Still in a state of shock, she took his hand without argument, becoming unbalanced as she stepped off the bed.
Jag caught her in his arms, her body fitting against his like a silken glove, her arms winding around his neck, her legs wrapping around his hips.
Somehow her bottom, round and firm, was cupped in the palms of his hands.
The kiss from the night before spiralled through his head, taking over.
‘You wanted to know what I tasted like and now you don’t want to repeat it.’
At one point during the night he’d wanted to repeat it so badly he’d nearly cleared the grand ballroom. Part of the problem was that her taste was damned addictive.
The air-conditioning whirred overhead.
Was she breathing?
He wasn’t.
Her body was open to his, clinging, her scent winding him up. He was so aroused, he shook with it. All it would take was for him to bunch her silk slip a fraction higher, test her readiness with the tips of his fingers, release himself from his trousers and bury himself deep inside her.
His hands moved to her thighs, tightening on the soft resilience of her skin, then he inhaled raggedly, letting her slide down his torso until her feet touched the floor, biting back a groan.
She stared up at him, as dazed as he was, her eyes dark with unslaked lust. Her nipples were hard, her breathing as uneven as his, and he knew if he put his hand between her legs he’d find she was equally turned on.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. She wasn’t here for this. He hadn’t asked her to pose as his fiancée so that he could satisfy a hunger for her he was barely able to comprehend. He’d done it to avert an international crisis; he’d done it to get his sister back. How would it look if he threw sex into the mix for the hell of it?
If Chad James was out there having sex with his sister he’d kill him. He’d expect no less in return. He took a step back from her, called himself ten types of a fool and headed for the door before he could change his mind.
CHAPTER SEVEN