Paradise Wild by Johanna Lindsey

about, Corinne, but an hour in bed. Is that clear?”
    She drew herself up. “You don’t have to be so vulgar, Mr. Burk. I understood what you had in mind.”
    “Then you agree?”
    “Yes, do you?”
    He nodded, and she grinned triumphantly. She turned her cards over with a flourish and waited with anticipation for his look of defeat. But it didn’t come. Instead he grinned back at her and shook his head.
    “Not good enough, Corinne.”
    She stared in disbelief at the cards he turned up. A high straight flush in diamonds, beating her by one card. It was impossible.
    When she met his eyes, her own sparkled murderously. “You cheated!”
    “How could you prove it?” he asked as he pocketed the money and the notes.
    “You did, didn’t you? When I left the table you changed your cards!” she accused him furiously.
    “I repeat, how could you prove it, Corinne?”
    “I don’t have to prove it —I know it! ”
    “That makes little difference. The cards say I won and now you will pay up.”
    “Not on your life!”
    Corinne grabbed her purse and ran from the room.
    The dark hall outside the gambling room was empty. The stairs leading up to the second floor were conveniently right next to the entrance door, so that nongamblers could just slip upstairs without being seen. Corinne had never been as aware of those stairs as she was right now. She shuddered as she passed them, hearing a woman’s high-pitched laughter from somewhere above.
    Should she hide up there and let Jared search fruitlessly for her out in the street? That was where he would assume she had gone. But she couldn’t bring herself to go up those stairs. If she could convince Jared’s driver to take her home, then she would leave him at the club. That was better.
    Corinne opened the entrance door, only to have it slammed shut in front of her, Jared’s large hand pressing against it. His arm stretched over her shoulder, and she turned to him.
    “I will scream, Jared. I will! You can’t stop me from leaving here!”
    “Yes, I can,” he said coldly, “until you’ve paid your debt.”
    “I wouldn’t go upstairs with you if my life depended on it. I want you to move!”
    She tried to shove him away from the door, but she couldn’t budge him. He let her try for only a moment before he picked her up and started up the stairs.
    “No!” Corinne screamed. “No, I won’t!”
    “You no longer have a choice,” he said as they reached the top. “Now which room would you prefer, my dear?” he taunted. “One you’ve occupied before? Or would that make you uncomfortable?”
    Corinne’s stomach churned with fear. The long corridor before her was very dark, wallpapered in deep royalblue, with only a single lamp at the opposite end giving the tiniest speck of light.
    “I have never been up here before,” Corinne whispered, hearing the terror in her own voice. “You have got to believe me, Jared.”
    He laughed cruelly and moved down the corridor to the first open door. “But you don’t expect me to, do you?”
    “What have I done to make you think otherwise?” she demanded.
    He entered a room decorated entirely in green, from the carpet to the furniture to the sheets on the large bed. Everything was green.
    Jared shut the door, but didn’t set her down yet. His eyes glowed in the dim light as he looked down at her. “Our room matches your eyes,” he mocked.
    “You’ve teased me for more than two months now,” he continued. “You had to pay the consequences sometime. I don’t usually wait this long.”
    “I never teased you!”
    He raised a dark brow. “Do you deny flirting outrageously with me? Do you deny returning my kisses willingly?”
    “I may flirt a little, but I mean nothing by it,” she said defensively. “I thought you understood that. And I didn’t ask you to kiss me, did I?”
    “But you didn’t try to stop me, did you? A real man won’t settle for just kisses, lady,” Jared said contemptuously.
    “Most