Satin Doll (13 page)

A beam of light flashed on her so suddenly it seemed to explode in her face. She grabbed the railing of the staircase with both hands, freezing where she stood. She could only blink.
 

Behind the beam of light a voice said, “What the bloody hell’s going on?”
 

Chapter Seven

When the beam of light hit Sam’s eyes all she could see for a moment were giant green globes floating in the dark air. But even blinded she recognized that infuriating voice, the harsh Cockney accent. She suddenly came scrambling up the stairs, lurching from wall to railing, wanting to kill.
 

“What are you doing here? Get out of here!” she screamed. She gained the last landing and launched herself at the white eye of light. As she hit the flashlight, it flew up and spiraled through air like a comet. A white beam snaked across the marble floor where it had landed.
 

“Damn, woman, you might have broken my torch.” Chip’s growling voice was close. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
 

“Get out of here!” She swung at his shadowy outline, wild to have a target for her fury. “What are you doing here at this time of night? I’m going to call the police!”
 

“I’m checking something.” Chip’s voice moved away from her to pick up the light. “I might ask you what the devil you’re doing here. It’s pretty damned late.”
 

“I
belong
here!” Samantha stumbled across the landing toward the door of the apartment, thinking of the telephone. She was really going to call the police. “You’ve got no business being in this damned building,” she yelled. “You’re not an employee!”
 

“I never said I was.” She heard Chip follow her, the heavy sound of his feet on the marble floor. He held the flashlight down at her feet. “Give it here,” he told her, meaning the ring of keys. “I’ll open up for you.”
 

“Stay away from me!” She backed away hurriedly, hitting the wall. “What are you doing here, sneaking around in the dark? I’m going to have you arrested for trespassing!”
 

He reached for her, wrapping hard fingers around her hand. “Don’t be a damned fool. Stop yelling and give me the key.”
 

“Keep your hands off me!” She struggled in his grip. “You can’t break in here! I’m going to call the police!”
 

“You’re back early,” he said, right in her face. He seemed to be sniffing her breath. “What’s the matter, love, couldn’t des Baux keep you entertained?” He pried the key out of her fist and bent to the lock. “I’ll open up for you, love, then I’d advise beddy-bye right away. Got anything for a hangover?”
 

“Damn you!” The crack about Alain des Baux was too much. Sam struck out, her fist connecting with the back of his head. She heard him grunt.
 

“Jesus, will you stop hitting me?” He straightened up quickly, pushing the door open. “Control your—”
 

She gave him no time to finish. Sam threw herself at him, wanting to pound him senseless for scaring her half out of her wits, for being a lounging, smirking clown who still hadn’t explained why he was there, for everything. “You’re stealing something!” she shouted. “You’re sneaking around here in the dark burglarizing the place, aren’t you?”
 

She swung at him again and missed. He held her off, both hands on her shoulders. “You’ve been drinking,” he said flatly.
 

“Shut up!” she stormed. “Let go of me!”
 

“God, I hate a belligerent drunk.” He reached around her and pushed the door open wide. Then he half dragged her into the dark apartment and found the light switch on the wall. The lamp by the couch came on. He stood before her, a curly-haired, sexy devil wearing a dark business suit—no jeans, no work boots. “It’s been some evening,” he observed dryly, “if you came back in this shape. Tell me, is our friend des Baux still in one piece?”
 

“Shut up!” she screamed. She tried to yank her arm out of his hard grip. “This is—this is assault! They’ll put you in jail for this!”
 

She threw herself against him with some wild idea of tripping him and breaking loose. As her legs tangled in his, he staggered a few steps with her, tottered, and they went down together on the sitting room’s dusty carpet. As Chip sprawled on top of her, the air rushed out of Sam’s lungs in a whoosh. The powerfully muscled length of him covered her completely, leaving her stunned.
 

“You’ve lost your damned mind,” she heard him growl. He held her down, his hands moving to grab both her wrists, holding them on each side of her head. She saw the hard planes of his good-looking face, his black brows drawn together over his nose like check marks. “You’re pissed blind, Miss New York Executive. And stop yelling about the police. You’d find the Paris
flics
very unsatisfactory. They don’t like drunks, either.”
 

Sam glared up at him, the blood pounding in her head. “You go to hell,” she panted. “I’m going to have you arrested, breaking into the building at night like this!”
 

“I have a key.” He was studying her face with its cloud of pale hair, her trembling mouth, her wild-eyed, stormy-gray look. “I heard you crashing about in the dark like a herd of bloody elephants, gabbling to yourself. I didn’t know what in the hell was coming up the stairs at me.”
 

“You don’t belong in this building!” If he had a key, she knew who had given it to him. He was disgusting. She couldn’t bear to have him touching her. “Let me up! Get off me! You’re mashing me!”
 

He shook his head. “Not a chance, love. You’ll fair come at me to pound me again.” He looked down at her with an air of grim patience. “We’ll just lie here until you cool off. It’s too much, I suppose, to hope you’ve sobered up any?”
 

“I’m not drunk!” As she opened her mouth to deny it, the sweet odor of champagne drifted around them. Sam clamped her mouth shut quickly, glaring up at him. Her breasts under the thin black silk of her tailored shirt rose and fell rapidly. She saw him look down, the quick, knowing slant of his wide mouth.
 

“If you say so.” He kept looking, obviously enjoying the view. “I’m not bored, love. I just didn’t think we’d get this far so quickly.”
 

Sam sucked in her breath. Their lower bodies were pressed together, his thighs gripping hers to hold her down. They were lying intimately on the floor with few layers of clothing between them. Through the red haze of her anger she felt the explicit pressure of his arousal fitting tightly into the V of her legs.
 

Madame Doumer’s stud, she thought, seething. Of all the people she could have turned on that disastrous evening, why did it have to be sleazy Cheap? “Get off me,” she hissed. She bucked her body under him, trying to throw him off. “You haven’t gotten anywhere with me, you creep! Don’t flatter yourself.”
 

He pressed her down easily. “You’re the one to be flattered, you skinny, long-legged twit,” he growled. “After all, I haven’t been climbing all over
you
now, have I?” Something predatory showed in the narrowed black eyes, in the curved, sensual line of his mouth. “It’s purely reflexive, believe me. Standing up, I’d find you eminently resistible.”
 

She heaved against his body, so blinded with fury she couldn’t think. “Why you conceited damned—
Cockney
!”
 

“Cockney?” The slash of black eyebrows lifted. “I’m from Manchester, you ignorant American. The Midlands, the middle part of England. Remind me to draw you a map.” When she thrashed her legs against his, trying to kick him, he sighed. “Obviously this isn’t getting us anywhere.” He loosened his hold on her wrists. “Go sleep it off, Miss Wild West. And forget about calling the
flics
. They don’t listen to drunken—”
 

Sam lunged for him. She grabbed a handful of his hair and held on. “You jerk!” she screamed. “Believe me, if I were coming on to you, you’d know it! You—you cheap bundle of muscle!”
 

He grabbed her hands, trying to pull them out of his hair. “I’m on fire with your sex appeal,” he winced. “I can hardly restrain myself.” He levered himself back from her. “Listen, Annie Oakley, why don’t you pack up your gangly charms, including your nasty temper, and go to bed?”
 

“Why you—you
pimp!
” Samantha howled. Some mindless demon had control of her brain. She hardly knew what she was doing. She grabbed at his shoulders, leveraging her pelvis tightly against the hard bulge in the front of his trousers. “How’s that, buster—feel anything? You wouldn’t know sex appeal in anything under eighty!”
 

He took a quick breath. “What the hell do you think you’re doing to me? You can’t be this drunk.” He mashed her under him even more heavily, his big fingers working to loosen her hand, which was clutching a fistful of his curly hair. “Jesus,” he growled, “enough is enough.”
 

But Sam couldn’t hear him. “You dumb, macho side of beef,” she was yelling, “why don’t you pick on the age group you like!”
 

She dropped his hair and grabbed his collar, the knot of his tie. She heard threads rip. He broke her hold, cursing under his breath, and then she suddenly strained her head up and sank her teeth fiercely into his lower lip. His body jolted against her in surprise.
 

She was suddenly all over him, sobbing with wounded fury, scratching, pounding him with her fists. Chip tried to pull his head back but she clamped her teeth harder. No sex appeal? Her hands tore at his shirt. She’d show him!
 

She felt him flinch as she ripped the shirt open under his suit jacket and dragged it loose from his belt. She ran clawed fingers over his ribs, up the damp, contracting muscles of his back as far as she could reach. She was still hanging on to his lower lip with her teeth. She heard him groan.
 

Hampered by the constraint of his suit, he bent one arm awkwardly to his back to pry her fingernails away from his skin. He tried to move his other hand against her chin to free his lip. “Let go of me, damn you,” he mumbled into her mouth.
 

Let him go? No way! Her body was still wild, aching with what had happened with Alain des Baux, and now it burst out at him with unreasoning vengefulness. She jammed one hand between their bodies and started on the buckle of his belt. His powerful frame convulsed with a jolt that nearly shook her loose. Before she could think of it, she had dragged down the zipper of his fly and yanked back the top of his trousers to his hips with both hands. Her fingers dug into the elastic of his underwear briefs.
 

Samantha stopped, trying to clear her swimming head. Something was wrong. She’d gone too far. But it was too late. Surging, hard, silky flesh brushed her knuckles. Her teeth abruptly let go of his lip.
 

He held himself rigid for a long moment over her, eyes tightly closed. “Son of a bitch,” Chip breathed.
 

Samantha stared up at his dark, rigid face, feeling suddenly cold sober. Oh lord, she’d gone berserk—she’d been trying to tear his clothes off! She had no idea what she’d had in mind when she started all this. Revenge on the nearest male body? She heard him draw in a long, ragged breath, no longer trying to pull away.
 

“Let me up,” she whispered.
 

Chip opened his eyes slowly. They were not black, she saw, but dark brown laced with fiery streaks like opals. Fine beads of perspiration gleamed on his upper lip.
 

For a long moment they stared at each other, breathing hard. “You started this,” he muttered, lowering his head.
 

The room reeled as his rough mouth covered hers. If it was a kiss, it wasn’t like anything she’d ever known, punishing, detached, brutally lustful. His hard tongue parted her lips, pressed against her teeth and, when she moaned in protest, thrust rudely into her mouth. When she struggled, his lips moved back and forth, subduing her, forcing her head against the carpet, making her mouth open wide for him.
 

Sam’s hands flailed helplessly around his head. His big body flattened her against the floor. Her nostrils were filled with his heat, the odor of soap and starched cotton shirt, pungent masculine sweat, and the wool of his suit. There was no doubt, now, as to who was in control.
 

He took his weight from his elbows and, never breaking that devouring kiss, quickly and efficiently pulled open the front of her satin jeans and stripped them down to her ankles. Her bikini panties ripped. She whimpered a muffled cry of protest into his mouth as Chip lifted her hips with both hands and thrust himself into her.
 

There was no time to think—it happened so quickly there was a shattered second only to try, futilely, to pull away from the hard, stretching pressure that parted her flesh and invaded her. A force rammed into her with such strength that for a brief second it stunned her, knocking the breath out of her. Then it lunged again like a huge fiery spear piercing her yielding center. Samantha cried out into his mouth, as he pressed deeper.
 

She was pinned, spread-eagled under him, her legs opened to him, cramping painfully in her thighs. Her mouth was captured, filled with the hot, searching stab of his tongue that followed the motions of his hips. Chip was taking her with a fierceness that said she was getting as good as she deserved. She wanted to scream, to escape him somehow. And yet, as that ruthless power surged into her, she was dimly aware of white-hot excitement where she swelled tightly around his large possession. It was like pain, like incredible fire bursting in her. His rasping breath choked words against her mouth, his body shuddering again. All she could do was groan.