Free A Little Seduction Omnibus by Penny Jordan Page B

responded to him, of how great the temptation was not to move away from him but to move closer .
    ‘I could ring my cousins from your room,’ Alex was telling her persuasively. ‘I promise you you won’t be disappointed, Beth.’
    Was it just her imagination, or was he subtly implying that her expectations of pleasure would not merely be satisfied by the quality of his cousins’ glass? Beth could feel her face starting to burn with hectic hormone-driven colour.
    The warmth of his breath as he spoke to her was so tantalisingly like a caress that she had to grit her teeth to stop herself from moving closer to it, to stop herself from imagining how it would feel to have the soft caress of his mouth moving against the tender, vulnerable pleasure spot just behind her ear, to move from there to...
    Beneath her clothes Beth could feel her nipples peaking and thrusting eagerly against their protective covering, flaunting their availability and their need.
    Frantically Beth decided that she had to do something, anything, to put a stop to what was happening.
    ‘From the way you’re talking, anyone would think that your cousins are the only manufacturers who produce high-quality reproduction antique glass,’ she told Alex challengingly, gritting her teeth as she deliberately pushed herself away from him and looked into his face.
    ‘Well, they aren’t the only ones, but they do have a reputation for being the best. Of the only other two I know, one has order books going right into the millennium—mainly from its American customers—and the other is presently in negotiation with an Italian company that wants to go into partnership with them.’
    ‘How very convenient,’ Beth told him sarcastically. ‘But as it happens I’ve actually found my own source...’
    ‘You have?’ Alex was frowning slightly. ‘May I ask where? None of the factories you’ve got listed...’
    ‘It isn’t somewhere on my list,’ Beth told him, too infuriated by his patronising manner to be guarded or cautious. ‘I’ve been told by one of the gypsy stall holders in Wenceslas Square that she can supply me with an introduction to a factory that makes the quality of glass I want.’
    ‘A stall holder in the Square?’ Alex looked patently unimpressed. ‘And you believed her?’ he derided, before asking her hardily, ‘You didn’t give her any money, did you?’
    ‘No, I didn’t. Not that it’s any of your business,’ Beth defended herself sharply. She felt like a naughty child, called up before her head teacher to explain herself, and it wasn’t a sensation she was enjoying. What right, after all, did Alex have to question any of her decisions? And as for his comment about her not parting with any money...!
    ‘She’s going to get some samples of the glass for me to look at...’
    ‘You’ve told her where you’re staying?’
    If anything he was looking even more disapproving, and a belated sense of caution warned Beth not to tell him that she had actually arranged to go down to the Square to meet with the stall holder that evening.
    ‘She knows how to get in touch with me,’ was all she permitted herself to say.
    ‘You do know the reputations some of these gypsies have, don’t you?’ Alex demanded. ‘You must have been warned. A lot of them are illegal immigrants into the country. They are well known to be in the pay of organised criminals...’
    ‘What, all of them?’ Beth derided him, parodying his tone of voice to her minutes earlier.
    ‘This is not a situation you should take lightly,’ Alex told her sternly. ‘These are potentially very dangerous people.’
    Beth couldn’t help herself. Childish though she knew it was, she gave a heavy, theatrically bored sigh that stopped Alex speaking immediately and caused his mouth to harden into an implacably tight line.
    ‘Very well,’ he told her curtly. ‘If you won’t listen to my advice then at least, for your own safety and my peace of mind, let me be there when you