Chapter One
SEBASTIAN DARK’S HAND CLOSED over his rival’s and gripped it in a crushing hold. ‘So that’s a deal then.’ He smiled like a cheetah leaning over a gazelle – in for the kill. A sheen of sweat broke out on the smaller man’s upper lip; the smell of defeat punctured the air. Seb regarded his rival distastefully.
They had battled.
Seb had won. He always won.
Smaller companies swam into his business waters at their peril. Shark-like, he gobbled them up and swallowed them. This takeover meeting at one time would have excited Seb enough to produce an erection under his smart Savile Row trousers. Now he had made a bigger fortune than he could spend in a hundred lifetimes. And he had to admit as he looked past his vanquished foe and surveyed London through the floor to ceiling windows of his plush boardroom, he was bored.
‘Thank you for your time Mr ....’ what the hell was happening to him? He had just bought this man’s ailing company for a cut price five million and Seb couldn’t even remember his name.
‘Vanhoffer,’ Seb’s assistant Richard Waters, hissed in an aside.
‘Mr Vanhoffer. It’s been nice doing business with you. I’ll show you out.’
The man stood paralysed at the door of the wood panelled boardroom. Seb towered above him. Placing a hand on the little man’s back to guide him out he noted the man was trembling. With anger, with remorse at losing a company that had taken him a lifetime to build and an hour to lose? Seb barely cared, that was business. Protocol required him to be magnanimous to the foe he had just destroyed. He escorted Mr Vanhoffer down the cream carpeted passage to the lift on the 21st floor. He stifled a yawn as the lift doors closed.
Then, a vision caught his eye so startlingly perfect, so eye-catchingly tantalising he, along with the other men moving about their business, faltered as if in slow motion and stared. It had happened again. The one thing that had sparked Sebastian Dark’s interest in months was igniting the city suite of offices like a sky-rocket on bonfire night. She was wearing black patent stilettos, business-like, up to a point. But with a cutesy bow that made him want to grasp those spiky heels and slide them off, to trace his fingers over the stocking mesh covering her oh-so-pale skin, to stroke toes that would be painted in-your-face kick-arse red.
He wondered if she realised that as she walked, she placed one foot directly in front of the other giving her a Marilyn-Monroe sway that teased and more than suggested the up and down thrust of a good hard fuck. Yup, he conceded, she realised it all right. And she used it. To give her power. And control.
Richard broke the silence. ‘Goddammit, that girl is sex on legs. Just wait till that perfect arse goes by. The things I wouldn’t do given one night alone with her …’ All thoughts of the vanquished Mr Vanhoffer had disappeared once the blonde beauty sauntered into view. ‘They call her the Ice Queen, gorgeous but untouchable.’ Suddenly remembering himself and looking sheepish at Seb’s granite stare, Richard tried to stop gawping. But the girl’s magnetism drew both men in. The tight black pencil skirt moulded over buttocks as round as a young pony’s, the breasts fettered behind a virginal white shirt and oh so artfully pushed up by the files she was gripping. Her ample mounds bounced against the top button as if they longed to be released. And finally those go-to-bed lips, strawberry red glistened at them like a half-bitten cherry.
Apart from himself, Seb noted, enthralled, she was the most controlled human being he had ever encountered. Why was she like that? What was it that made her turn away from everyone, eschew office parties, push people away? The Ice Queen. Fascinating. Controlled and as arctic as a steel ice-pick. She knew every guy in that passageway was hooked. And every woman was puce with envy. It was as though she was playing a game. She
SEBASTIAN DARK’S HAND CLOSED over his rival’s and gripped it in a crushing hold. ‘So that’s a deal then.’ He smiled like a cheetah leaning over a gazelle – in for the kill. A sheen of sweat broke out on the smaller man’s upper lip; the smell of defeat punctured the air. Seb regarded his rival distastefully.
They had battled.
Seb had won. He always won.
Smaller companies swam into his business waters at their peril. Shark-like, he gobbled them up and swallowed them. This takeover meeting at one time would have excited Seb enough to produce an erection under his smart Savile Row trousers. Now he had made a bigger fortune than he could spend in a hundred lifetimes. And he had to admit as he looked past his vanquished foe and surveyed London through the floor to ceiling windows of his plush boardroom, he was bored.
‘Thank you for your time Mr ....’ what the hell was happening to him? He had just bought this man’s ailing company for a cut price five million and Seb couldn’t even remember his name.
‘Vanhoffer,’ Seb’s assistant Richard Waters, hissed in an aside.
‘Mr Vanhoffer. It’s been nice doing business with you. I’ll show you out.’
The man stood paralysed at the door of the wood panelled boardroom. Seb towered above him. Placing a hand on the little man’s back to guide him out he noted the man was trembling. With anger, with remorse at losing a company that had taken him a lifetime to build and an hour to lose? Seb barely cared, that was business. Protocol required him to be magnanimous to the foe he had just destroyed. He escorted Mr Vanhoffer down the cream carpeted passage to the lift on the 21st floor. He stifled a yawn as the lift doors closed.
Then, a vision caught his eye so startlingly perfect, so eye-catchingly tantalising he, along with the other men moving about their business, faltered as if in slow motion and stared. It had happened again. The one thing that had sparked Sebastian Dark’s interest in months was igniting the city suite of offices like a sky-rocket on bonfire night. She was wearing black patent stilettos, business-like, up to a point. But with a cutesy bow that made him want to grasp those spiky heels and slide them off, to trace his fingers over the stocking mesh covering her oh-so-pale skin, to stroke toes that would be painted in-your-face kick-arse red.
He wondered if she realised that as she walked, she placed one foot directly in front of the other giving her a Marilyn-Monroe sway that teased and more than suggested the up and down thrust of a good hard fuck. Yup, he conceded, she realised it all right. And she used it. To give her power. And control.
Richard broke the silence. ‘Goddammit, that girl is sex on legs. Just wait till that perfect arse goes by. The things I wouldn’t do given one night alone with her …’ All thoughts of the vanquished Mr Vanhoffer had disappeared once the blonde beauty sauntered into view. ‘They call her the Ice Queen, gorgeous but untouchable.’ Suddenly remembering himself and looking sheepish at Seb’s granite stare, Richard tried to stop gawping. But the girl’s magnetism drew both men in. The tight black pencil skirt moulded over buttocks as round as a young pony’s, the breasts fettered behind a virginal white shirt and oh so artfully pushed up by the files she was gripping. Her ample mounds bounced against the top button as if they longed to be released. And finally those go-to-bed lips, strawberry red glistened at them like a half-bitten cherry.
Apart from himself, Seb noted, enthralled, she was the most controlled human being he had ever encountered. Why was she like that? What was it that made her turn away from everyone, eschew office parties, push people away? The Ice Queen. Fascinating. Controlled and as arctic as a steel ice-pick. She knew every guy in that passageway was hooked. And every woman was puce with envy. It was as though she was playing a game. She
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