business clients. Entertaining how?
Moving very quietly, he crossed the floor to the open staircase that led up to the next level. At the turn in the stairs he paused, hearing the man’s voice come closer. Standing in the shadows, he could observe unseen.
Then the owner of the voice appeared and Salvatore grew very still.
He was a young man, no more than thirty, with curly hair and a strikingly handsome face. From here Salvatore could just make out that he was smiling mischievously.
‘Come on, darling,’ he was saying. ‘Don’t give me a hard time.’
Then Helena’s voice, filled with laughter.
‘I’m not being difficult Jack, honestly. I’m just not used to doing it this way.’
‘Well, let me show you.’
He vanished, but Salvatore still heard his voice from a distance.
‘Come on, do it like I showed you before. Put your arms over your head and lean back-that’s better. You’re still a bit overdressed. Can’t you take something off?’
‘No, this is as far as I’m prepared to go. Hurry up and take me.’
‘But if you-’
‘Just take me-like that, yes-and again…’
Salvatore’s hand tightened on the rail until the knuckles were white. What he might have done next he never knew, for something intervened-a sound that shook him, made him stare.
It was the clicking and whirring of a camera, then Jack’s voice saying, ‘OK, OK, great, do that again-look at me-’
‘Take me like this,’ came Helena’s voice.
‘Yes, yes-like that-
‘Well, that should be everything. I wonder if-
She came towards him, arms outstretched, a smile of welcome on her face. He returned it, taking her in his arms.
‘I knew you’d be working, but I didn’t know it would be this hard,’ he said.
‘It’s all right everyone, you can pack up and go,’ Helena called.
There was a general laugh, and for the first time Salvatore realised that there were several other people in the room, all female. Two of them were holding arc lights to illuminate Helena, and the third was the photographer’s assistant.
Helena herself was dressed for photography, in a long white dress of thin silk, slit high at the sides, while the top plunged to the waist. From where he was standing it seemed to Salvatore that she wore nothing underneath, but, try as he might, he couldn’t be quite certain.
The crew were packing up fast, but the photographer she’d addressed as Jack said, ‘I’d like to have another look around, to see if there are any more good settings-’
‘Another time,’ Salvatore told him.
‘But this would be the perfect-’
‘Out!’ Salvatore commanded, handing him a wad of notes.
They vanished.
‘So you prefer their company to mine,’ he observed.
‘No, but I’m going to earn money with those shots.’
‘In this place?’ He looked around at the room, a bare wooden structure without decoration.
‘They’re not going to be looking at the place, just me, draping myself over it.’ She went to a large beam, aslant from floor to ceiling, leaned on it and let her arms glide up slowly over her head.
‘Like this,’ she purred. ‘And like this.’ She raised one knee so that the silk fell away on either side, giving him a grandstand view of the most perfect, elegant leg he’d ever seen.
‘And how much will they pay to see you like that?’ he asked, moving closer and reaching up to trap her wrists.
‘It depends how well the pictures sell. A lot, I hope.’
He drew her wrists towards him and over his shoulders, then took her by the waist, pulling her closer.
‘Do you really not mind men looking at you, for money?’ he asked.
‘They’re only pictures. Who cares if they look at me-as long as I’m not there to know about it? It doesn’t matter what they’re thinking.’
‘But I’m here,’ he murmured, dropping his lips to her neck. ‘Does it matter what I’m thinking?’
‘As long as you’re thinking the right thing,’ she whispered.
‘I want to take you to bed and make love to you until we’re both crazy. I want you to make love to me so that I know I’m the man you need. Is that the right thing?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she growled. ‘That’s very much the right thing.’
Her knee was still raised, so that it was easy for her to hook her ankle behind him in a gesture whose significance he couldn’t miss.
‘Of course I am,’ she murmured. ‘I stir my cauldron night after night, thinking up spells to lure you in.’
His hands were finding their way through the slits at the side of her long skirt, seeking the top of her legs where she wore a lacy thong, so frail that it almost didn’t exist. He grasped her hips, feeling around to the back, the swell of her behind, almost naked as the thong vanished in the centre. Moving carefully, he hooked his thumbs through the delicate material and, with a swift wrench, demolished it, dropping the shredded remains onto the floor.
Now there was nothing between her and his fingers, seeking and finding what he’d expected, the hot moisture that said she was ready for him. Helena gasped, almost overcome there and then by his skilled exploration.
‘Now,’ she urged breathlessly. ‘I don’t want to wait-
She sensed vaguely that he was tearing at his own clothes until he too was half-naked, and then entering her with a swift, decisive vigour that sent pleasure screaming through her so violently that she grasped him to her, curling both her legs up and around him as if she would enclose him within her forever.
Forever. No end to the sheer physical joy that made the rest of life seem irrelevant. There was this and only this, and it must be made to last because she was yielding herself to it with a lack of caution that would normally have alarmed her.
But not now. She was strong enough for anything, even to look him in the eye when they had both climaxed, and say, ‘Don’t you dare stop.’
There was a couch in the office next door. He carried her in and they finished stripping each other before dropping down onto the narrow space that was barely big enough.
Her flesh seemed to have acquired a memory of its own, that had nothing to do with her head. Their first loving had left her with an intimate knowledge of him, so that her hands directed themselves to the places where a touch could drive him wild, and, once there, a kind of devil magic inspired them to caress and caress until he was beyond his own control.
He entered her with one fierce movement, seizing, claiming, conquering without subtlety. But then his hold on her changed, grew easier, less intense. Now he could draw back and look into her face as he moved inside her, still demanding but gentle.
‘Look at me,’ he murmured and saw her eyes open wide as though in amazement. He didn’t understand.
‘Tell me,’ he whispered, ‘tell me.’
But she couldn’t speak. She could only look up at him, suddenly defenceless in a way that tore his heart.
‘Tell me,’ he pleaded again.
But their excitement was mounting again, driving him to move faster, harder until she cried out, clasping him to her as though she would hold him there forever. And he found himself wishing that she would do that.
As the world grew peaceful again he lay with his head against her, wondering at the web in which he was caught. She’d spoken of luring him in with spells, but her strongest spell was one she exercised unknowingly.
She could make him want to protect her. She could make him laugh. She was the most dangerous woman he’d ever known.
She thumped him lightly on the shoulder. ‘You’re repeating yourself.’
