Intimate Exposure by Portia Da Costa Page A

darling Vicki.” His urbane voice had just the faintest broken edge to it. “But another time, I promise. I need to have you there.”
    Vicki turned around, feeling shaky and yet more stirred by the demonic gleam in his eyes behind his glasses. He wasn’t lying; she could see need, a real hunger.
    “I think you need to check yourself out, sweetheart,” he said quite prosaically. “I’ve messed up your pretty hairstyle. You need to tidy it. Sorry.”
    Not knowing how to respond, Vicki fled back to her bathroom, still in shock.
    She adjusted the clip and smoothed down her hair where it’d become a little disheveled. What was Red doing while she was fiddling with her hairstyle? Was he in his own bathroom, dealing with that raging hard-on she’d just felt? He could hardly enter a public cocktail lounge in that condition, could he? Sporting an enormous bulge in his immaculately tailored trousers.
    But then again, he was Red, and she wouldn’t put anything past him. He might even get a brazen kick out of showing off the evidence of what the woman beside him did to him.
    Back in the sitting room though, Red exhibited no sign whatsoever that he’d ever been excited. His expression was mild and slightly amused, and he was the epitome of polished good manners as he escorted her down to the cocktail bar.
    The room was quite full. Guests sat around low tables, all lit with stylized Art Deco lamps of cavorting nymphs, and the geometric rounded armchairs very similar to the ones Vicki had seen on the CCTV in the Salon. The walls were black glass, inlaid with chevron designs and sunbursts, and the long bar itself was a poem of streamlined chrome. A pianist was picking out Noel Coward tunes on a baby grand in the far corner, flanked by potted palms.
    “It’s a perfect thirties cliché!” Vicki exclaimed, laughing aloud despite the tension between herself and the man beside her.
    “You’re not wrong there,” Red said with a wry smile, “but I rather like it, in a kitsch sort of way. Don’t you?”
    “It’s marvelous. I adore it,” she replied, meaning every word.
    Red led her to an unoccupied table. It seemed peculiar that there should be one, given that there really were a lot of people standing around. It was almost as if it were reserved for them. Maybe it was? Perhaps VIP treatment was part of their prize? Red held out her chair for her, and as she settled herself, he took his place across the table from her. Almost immediately, a waiter appeared beside him, and he spoke to the man in a low voice, presumably ordering drinks.
    Vicki bristled for moment—she’d not been given a choice—then bit back her vexation.
    For the moment, Red was in charge. He was her master.
    As he watched her steadily, she was forced to look away and instead concentrated on the black leather of the deep armchair she was sitting in.
    “That scene we were watching…on the television—” she ran her gloved finger over the smooth surface of the hide, “—it was live, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a cable channel or a DVD, it was CCTV?”
    Red laughed softly. “I thought you were watching the girl, Vicki, not scoping out the décor?”
    I wasn’t really watching very much of anything… I was too focused on what was going on in our room.
    But she tempered her answer. It seemed too intimate to refer to his cock inside her, even in the racy cosmopolitan glamour of the bar.

    “I’m interested in design. I couldn’t help but notice the furniture,” she said as airily as she could.
    Red was still regarding her thoughtfully, that slight “dare me” smile on his face. As she refused to look away, he took off his spectacles and polished them with a snowy white handkerchief.
    The teasing bastard was back, obviously. He seemed intent on not supplying any further information.
    “What on earth kind of place is this, Red?” she quizzed him, her voice dropping as the waiter brought two unfamiliar and rather muddy-looking cocktails in highball