Satin Dreams Read online

  She tried to focus her eyes on the lean, muscular male body hurriedly stepping out of its clothes. Nicholas Palliades had managed to do something mysterious to her; she felt somnolent, confused, dazedly sensuous, waiting there against the gold satin sheet. Not like herself at all.

  Alix slowly pulled down her panty hose and dropped them over the side of the bed. While she did so, Nicholas kicked off his shoes, his black eyes following the shifting curve of her hips, the flat planes of her belly with its ruddy triangle of curls. He tore off his tuxedo trousers and tossed them away. Black underwear briefs followed. Then suddenly he was standing at the side of the ornate bed regarding her with burning black eyes, powerfully, unselfconsciously nude.

  After one startled glance she looked away. But a vivid picture remained in her mind of a tanned, sleekly muscled body, black hair that dwindled in a dark line to the slitted indent of his navel, then down into a springy mat with his big, aroused sex thrusting up rigidly in it.

  Her mouth was dry; her lips wouldn’t move enough to speak. Her throbbing body wouldn’t obey her mind’s suddenly urgent command to get up, get out of the bed, and out of there before it was too late. It took all her strength of will to stay where she was, knowing that if she just waited, everything would be over soon.

  She saw him turn and reach for the trousers he’d discarded so hurriedly on the floor. He took out a packet and tore it open. Carefully and deliberately, he stroked a silky opaque covering into place.

  “I have to go,” Alix whispered faintly.

  The frontal view of his powerful body and the protection he had put in place was boldly provocative. And frightening. Her racing mind told her this was Paris in the here and now, and that someone like Nicholas Palliades wasn’t going to go to bed with a casual partner without protecting both of them. But it didn’t make it any better.

  Then he was on the bed, kneeling over her.

  The reality of Nicholas, big, naked, and virile, was too much.

  “I can’t do this,” Alix said, trying to get up.

  He paid no attention. He pressed her down into the bed as his mouth touched her breasts softly. Her tightly budded nipples lifted and puckered with desire, and she heard him murmur something against her flesh. When his hot mouth tugged at her, she gasped, digging her fingers into the bedspread. Then his hand was between her thighs.

  “I have to leave,” Alix cried feebly. Bewildering, hot tremors of sensation attacked her, made her breathless, as he stroked her open and then gently invaded her with his fingers.

  “Wait!” she cried. She grabbed his arm. “You don’t know,” she managed between the onslaught of his fevered kisses, “but this is something I really have to—”

  “Don’t be afraid.” He was as breathless as she, black eyes a little wild. “Forgive me,” he rasped, “I want you too much to wait.”

  Before she knew what was happening the weight of his body was over her, pressing her down, radiating such driving desire that it was impossible to fight it. Then he was between her legs, her body cradling him awkwardly, the intruding latex-covered flesh pressing against her. She heard his sharp, dragging gasp of sheer desire before his mouth covered hers.

  Alix knew she should detach herself from what was happening—to remove her mind if not her body, as much as possible. But she had lost control of her senses. Nicholas Palliades was doing devastating things to her. Some of them hurt. Some were cruelly confusing, as her own flesh responded with a fierce, fiery aching. Her body resisted, fighting his invasion. She hadn’t counted on the reality of this powerful, lusting man—this stranger—around her, holding her, inside her body, wanting her, possessing her!

  He ignored her struggles, mistaking them for passion. “Ah, God, don’t let me hurt you.” His voice was hoarse in her ear.

  Alix was oblivious to everything except the hard, big probe opening the intimate folds of her flesh. And her body responding like a tightly straining flower being forced to receive him. She felt the first stab of pain.

  His flushed face was only inches from hers, his eyes slitted. When he thrust against her a second time, Alix yelped. She was aware of Nicholas murmuring how much he wanted her, his choked words strangled by pleasure. But for Alix it was like nothing she’d ever known.

  It was terrible.

  Her hands locked in his hair as she went rigid with pain and resistance. His eyes glazed, uncomprehending, as she yanked at his hair frantically.

  “My God,” he whispered. A look of horror settled on his face.

  “It’s all right!” Alix cried. They couldn’t stop now.

  His black eyes dilated, his face a mask of stunned disbelief. “Jesus,” he said under his breath.

  He struggled to withdraw and couldn’t. Instead, a convulsion wracked him.

  “It’s all right,” Alix sobbed. It was worse than anything she’d imagined. But it was too late now. “Go ahead!”

  He took an agonized breath. “All right? Go ahead?” Cursing, he closed his eyes, sheathed tightly in her, unable to move.

  She was determined not to let him stop. She gritted her teeth and deliberately shoved herself against him, moving him deeper. When she lifted herself to wrap her legs around him, what was left of his control broke completely. The very air around them seemed to explode.

  It was over within a few violent seconds. He groaned, bellowed, smothering her face and mouth with kisses, writhing with the shudders of his release. Then he fell to one side against the sheets, gasping.

  A moment later Nicholas tore himself away from her and leaped out of the bed.

  Alix screamed.

  “A virgin! A goddamned virgin!” He managed to make the word a vile accusation.

  Alix sat up in the disheveled bed, clutching the edge of one satin sheet to her naked breasts. Nicholas had somehow brought her body to such an erotic pitch that it had left her trembling, almost sick. And the torn places hurt. If she’d known how it was going to be, she thought wildly, she would never have started all this!

  She watched him stride up and down the room, starkly nude, raking his hands through his dark hair. “Okay, what’s the game?” He switched to French and then back to English. “What I don’t understand is, why the hell didn’t you try to peddle this to me before we started?”

  Alix could only stare at him, terrified, the sheet clutched to her chin. She watched as he kicked her discarded shoes out of the way. “Oh, come on,” he yelled. “You ask a bigger price for virgins, you know that!”

  She didn’t know that. Alix wrapped one arm around her body protectingly. Her mouth felt bruised and swollen; she could see the ragged, disordered mass of her red hair hanging in her eyes. “I’m not ‘peddling’ anything,” she protested tremulously.

  He paid no attention. “A virgin! Jesus, I’m a Greek,” he bellowed. “Virgins are for marrying!” He turned away and stormed the length of the room. “I’ve never had a virgin in my life! I’ve never wanted one.” He whirled on her fiercely. “And I’m damned well not going to marry you, if that’s your game!”

  Alix moved her legs under the gold satin sheet, wincing from the pain. She wished he’d stop shouting. When she lifted the sheets to investigate the curious warm stickiness, she saw a large crimson smear of blood. She was attacked by such a terrible feeling of guilt and despair, she didn’t think she’d survive. What have I done to myself? She’d always been accused of willfulness, of wanton disregard for inevitable consequences. Oh God, now it was true!

  Nicholas Palliades paced up and down furiously. “It was a setup, a goddamned setup! And I walked right into it. I ought to have my head examined, getting myself into this kind of stupid trap!” His expression was savage as he strode back. “It’s part of some rotten scheme,” he snarled at her, “some damned plan, isn’t it?”

  Alix looked up, startled. “How did you—”

  “How did I what?” He lunged across the bed to grab her by one bare arm. “How did I know? Do you think I’m stupid? I have powerful enemies—my whole fa
mily has enemies!” His face blazed with anger. “They’d use anything to get at us.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant!”

  “Oh, wasn’t it?” He tossed a small wrinkled object on the bed. “It broke”, he snarled. “You and whoever else is in this with you got really lucky this time. The condom broke.”

  Alix slid her legs over the opposite side of the bed, trying to remember where she’d left her dress. “I didn’t have anything to do with whatever it is—” Her eyes slid to the object on the bedspread furtively. “—breaking.”

  “The hell you didn’t! It broke because you’re a damned tight little virgin! That’s what you were counting on.” Nicholas suddenly put his knees on his side of the bed and grabbed her shoulders. “What’s the price? What’s the blackmail? How much for the virginity? Rape? Settlement out of court? Breach of promise? Sexual battery?” He gave Alix a shake that made her head wobble. “I’m not going to marry you, slut!”

  “You’re a lunatic!” She pried his hands away. “I have to get out of here.”

  He stalked her. “You and your friends have a price in mind, haven’t you? What’re you going to charge me?”

  He followed her as she tried to pick up her clothes. “Or are you going to wait,” he shouted in her ear, “and up the price when you announce you’re pregnant in a few weeks?”

  Alix tried to shove him away. He promptly grabbed her by the shoulders again and shook her, violently.

  Nothing, Alix knew as he let her go and she staggered back, could be more insane than this terrible evening. She’d endured a painful, humiliating assault on her body, and now she was struggling with a psychotic who thought she was going to blackmail him! Worse, she was trapped in an apartment on the avenue Foch that she didn’t know how to get out of.

  And he thought he was being threatened!

  “You’d better let me go,” she panted. “There are people watching us right now who will see that I don’t get hurt.”

  He dropped her as though she were boiling hot. “Now we’re getting to the bottom line.” The muscles in his bare chest rippled as he clenched and unclenched his fists. “So you’ve got friends who’ve been watching the whole thing. People who will see that you don’t get hurt?” His lips curled in a snarl. “While you wait until you can find out whether or not I made you pregnant?”

  “Are you out of your head?” She gasped as she discovered that she needed a tissue; she was still bleeding. It was the final humiliation. Alix almost broke into tears.

  She knew she’d made an enormous blunder. She didn’t want to become Nicholas Palliades’s mistress—or any man’s mistress! What in the name of God had persuaded her she ever did? The whole business of sex was ludicrous, painful—disgusting!

  Her scheme had boomeranged. Whatever Robert had done to her didn’t call for the kind of revenge that hurt her more than anyone else! It was a wonder something worse hadn’t happened! Alix fought back a wave of angry sobs.

  She had to find her clothes and get out of there! She started for the living room.

  “You’re not going anywhere!” He followed her, swift as a sleek, naked cat. “After all this you don’t think I’m going to let you out of my sight, do you?”

  Alix broke into a run. The living room was bleak, curiously empty in the dim light. She scooped up her shoes, then the glittering lump of the beaded dress where it had fallen to the floor by the window. Her coat lay over the back of the easy chair.

  Nicholas Palliades stormed down the hall, yanking up his tuxedo trousers as he came. “Did you hear me? You’re not going anywhere until I call my lawyers!”

  Alix slipped the emerald dress over her head. It felt cold and heavy against her bare flesh. The unfastened back flapped open as she bent to pick up her satin evening coat.

  He moved between her and the foyer. “I want my lawyers to take you to be tested tomorrow.” He stopped, glaring at her. “Hell—I’ll take you to the hospital myself. Tonight!”

  Alix slipped out of his way. He’d never believe her if she told him that it had all been a terrible mistake because she was stupid and willful.

  “Just let me out of here!” She struggled to zip up the back of her dress with one hand, while juggling the green satin coat with the other.

  But he stalked her as she inched toward the door. “Dammit, I had you first,” he raged. “Come back to bed. I might as well get my money’s worth.”

  Alix backed into the foyer. “Don’t touch me. You lay a hand on me and I’ll see you regret it!”

  “Who’s in this besides you? Give me their names.” He lunged for her again. “I’ll see the sons of bitches rot in jail before you get any money out of me!”

  The elevator was just behind her. Alix stuck her shoes under one arm and pulled off the earrings.

  “I don’t want anything from you!” She threw the earrings at him. “Keep your sleazy junk!”

  The sparkling platinum bits bounced off his naked chest and fell to the floor.

  Alix ran for the elevator doors. Nicholas Palliades’s hands reached out to stop her, and caught the open back of her dress.

  As he yanked, a spatter of glass beads erupted like a fountain. The nylon thread Rudi Mortessier had used to tack the intricate green patterns together unraveled with a liquid hissing, releasing little rivers of glass beads that spewed across the marble floor of the foyer.

  Alix jumped inside the elevator, clutching the front of the dress as it fell open.

  Nicholas was cursing in a mixture of languages. He made a dive for the elevator doors, but they closed, inexorably, with a clanging of bells.

  Alix pushed the buttons on the inside panel. As the elevator began to descend, she could hear a drumming sound—his furious footsteps following her on the stairs, racing her to the lobby.

  She managed to get her shoes on and pull on the satin evening coat. She was naked under the torn dress, her body slick with perspiration and sex. Every time she moved, little cascades of beads streamed onto the floor of the cage. As soon as the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid back, Alix lunged out, running past the security guard in the lobby, then onto the walkway that led to the street.

  It had almost stopped snowing, but the ground was thickly covered with an icy white blanket. She plunged into it up to her ankles, heedless of her fragile satin shoes. The wind caught the stiff folds of the evening coat, billowed it out like a sail, and she staggered. She expected at any moment to hear Nicholas Palliades shouting for her to stop.

  She found herself at the curb in the avenue Foch, skidding and sliding in the snowfall. Headlights came out of the darkness. A car slowed; someone peered through a windshield with wipers still going against the last errant snowflakes.

  The window on the driver’s side rolled down. “What’s the trouble?” The voice was male, speaking English. He drove slowly beside her as Alix stumbled along the sidewalk. “Can I help?” He had a rugged face and a disarming smile, the accent was American. And he was there. Almost as though he had been looking for her.

  Alix stopped, breathing in the frigid air. The man in the car leaned across the front seat to hold up an open wallet displaying identification cards. His sharp blue eyes took in her disheveled hair, the beaded hem of her evening dress hanging below her coat, her stockingless feet in soaked satin slippers.

  “I’m Christopher Forbes,” he called out the window. “Writer for an American magazine, Fortune. Look, if you’re not afraid to get in, I’ll give you a lift.”

  Alix held her blowing hair out of her face with one hand and crouched down to see. It was dark in the avenue Foch, but she could make out a picture of a strong, pleasant face on a press card. There was another photograph on his U.S. driver’s license. He was telling the truth.

  She shivered, drawing the satin coat around her, her teeth chattering from more than the cold.

  “I’m not afraid,” Alix told him.

  La Navette

  The Shuttle

  Six

  Mortessier
’s seamstresses were taking their late-afternoon break in the employees’ lounge, watching Thierry Mugler’s collection on a special Television France fashion spectacular from Les Halles. Mugler’s spring line was a good one; the enthusiastic applause from the crowds watching in the rotunda of Paris’s giant, glossy fashion complex penetrated even upstairs where Gilles was working with the models.

  “Who’s on now?” Iris whispered to Alix. The seamstresses yelled out as an especially successful Mugler design came down the runway. The Ethiopian model was itching to join them; Iris followed the Paris couture shows on television as eagerly as she did the international soccer matches.

  Alix glanced at Gilles. The assistant designer was not in the best of moods. They were all recovering, in one way or another, from the emotional explosion of the day before, when Gilles had broken the news to Rudi Mortessier that he was leaving. When Iris whispered again, Alix shook her head. They could both use a break, but it was best not to push it.

  Alix and Iris were wearing almost identical versions of a white summer suit from Mortessier’s spring line. Gilles was working on the solution for the suits’ elusive problems.

  Iris gave a little twitch as the seamstresses in front of the television set downstairs broke into cheers. “Ah, Thierry must be fantastic this year,” she groaned. “I adore his clothes. He is head and shoulders above Christian Lacroix, Ungaro—all of them.”

  Iris’s chatter was the last straw for Gilles. He threw down his pencil and put his head in his hands. “Don’t let me bother you, Iris.” The sarcasm was meant to be withering. “Naturally, you must do what is important. Go sit in front of the television until Mugler’s show is over! Until your backside grows to the chair!”