Rumours on the Red Carpet. Carole Mortimer

for one thing you aren’t nearly old enough to be the self-made zillionaire Lucien Steele.’ She estimated this man was aged somewhere in his early to mid-thirties, ten or twelve years older than her own twenty-three, and she knew from the things Jonathan had told her about this evening’s guest of honour that Lucien Steele had not only been the richest man in New York for the last ten years, but was also the most powerful.

      He gave an unconcerned shrug of those impossibly wide shoulders. ‘What can I say? My parents were wealthy to begin with, and I’d made my own first million by the time I was twenty-one.’

      ‘Also,’ Thia continued, determined, ‘I saw Mr Steele when he arrived.’

      It had been impossible to miss the awed reaction of the other guests. Those incredibly rich and beautiful people had all, without exception, fallen absolutely silent the moment Lucien Steele had appeared in the doorway. And Felix Carew, a powerful man in his own right, had become almost unctuous as he moved swiftly across the room to greet his guest.

      Thia gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘Lucien Steele is in his early forties, several inches shorter than you are, and stocky, with a shaved head.’ In fact on first glance she had thought the man more resembled a thug rather than the richest and most powerful man in New York!

      ‘That would be Dex.’

      ‘Dex...?’ she echoed doubtfully.

      ‘Mmm.’ The man beside her nodded unconcernedly. ‘He takes his duties as my bodyguard very seriously—to the point that he always insists upon entering a room before I do. I’m not sure why,’ he mused. ‘Perhaps he expects there to be an assassin on the other side of every door...’

      Thia felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach as she heard the amused dismissal in this man’s—in Lucien Steele’s?—voice. Moistening her lips with the tip of tongue before speaking, she said, ‘And where is Dex now...?’

      ‘Probably standing guard on the other side of those French doors.’ He nodded down the balcony to the same doorway Thia had escaped through minutes ago.

      And was Dex making sure that no one came outside, or was he ensuring that Thia couldn’t return inside until this man wished her to...?

      She gave another frown as she looked up searchingly at the man now standing so near to her she could feel the heat emanating from his body on the bareness of her shoulders and arms. Once again she took note of that inborn air of power, arrogance, she had sensed in him from the first.

      For all the world as if he was used to people licking his highly polished handmade Italian leather shoes...

      * * *

      Lucien continued to hold Cyn’s now trembling hand and waited in silence for her to gather her breath as she looked up at him between long and silky lashes with eyes a dark and mysterious cobalt blue.

      Those eyes became shadowed with apprehension as she gave another nervous flick of her little pink tongue over the moist fullness of her perfectly shaped lips. ‘The same Lucien Steele who owns Steele Technology, Steele Media, Steele Atlantic Airline and Steele Industries, as well as all those other Steele Something-or-Others?’ she murmured faintly.

      He shrugged. ‘It seemed like a good idea to diversify.’

      She determinedly pulled her hand from his grasp before tightly gripping the top of the balustrade. ‘The same Lucien Steele who’s a zillionaire?’

      ‘I believe you said that already...’ Lucien nodded.

      She drew in a deep breath, obviously completely unaware of how it tightened the material of her dress across her breasts and succeeded in outlining the fullness of those—aroused?—nipples. Nipples that were a delicate pink or a succulent rose? Whatever their colour, he was sure they would taste delicious. Sweet and juicy, and oh so ripe and responsive as he licked and suckled them.

      He had noticed the woman he now knew to be Cynthia Hammond the moment he’d entered Felix and Simone Carew’s penthouse apartment a short time ago. It had been impossible not to as she’d stood alone at the back of the opulent room, her hair a sleek and glossy unadorned black as it fell silkily to just below her shoulders, her eyes that deep cobalt blue in the beautiful pale delicacy of her face.

      She wore a strapless ankle-length gown of that same deep blue, leaving the tops of her breasts, shoulders and arms completely bare. The smoothness of her skin was a beautiful pearly white unlike any other Lucien had ever seen: a pale ivory tinted lightly pink, luminescent. Smoothly delicate and pearly skin his fingers itched to touch and caress.

      The simple style of that silky blue gown allowed it to cling to every curvaceous inch of her full breasts, slender waist and gently flaring hips, so much so that Lucien had questioned whether or not she wore anything beneath it.

      He still questioned it...

      But what had really made him take notice of her, even more than her natural beauty or the pearly perfection of her skin, was the fact that instead of moving towards him, as every other person in the room had done, this pale and delicately beautiful woman had instead taken advantage of his arrival to slip quietly from the room and go outside onto the balcony.

      Nor had she returned by the time Lucien had finally managed to extract himself from the—what had she called it a few moments ago? The licking of his ‘highly polished handmade Italian leather shoes’. His curiosity piqued—and very little piqued his jaded palate nowadays!—Lucien hadn’t been able to resist coming out onto the balcony to look for her the moment he had managed to escape all that cloying attention.

      She drew in another deep breath now before speaking, causing the fullness of her breasts to once again swell deliciously over the bodice of that clinging blue gown.

      ‘I really do apologise for my rudeness, Mr Steele. It’s no excuse, but I’m really not having a good evening—and my rudeness to you means that it has just got so much worse!’ she conceded with another pained wince. ‘But that is really no reason for me to have been rude about you—or to you.’

      He quirked one dark brow. ‘I don’t think you know me well enough as yet to speak with any authority on whether or not I deserve for you to be rude to me or about me,’ he drawled mockingly.

      ‘Well...no...’ She was obviously slightly unnerved by his emphasis on the words ‘as yet’... ‘But—’ She gave a shake of her head, causing that silky and completely straight black hair to glide across the bareness of her shoulders and caress tantalisingly across the tops of her breasts. ‘I still shouldn’t have been so outspoken about someone I only know about from the media.’

      ‘Especially when we all know how inaccurate the media can be?’ he drawled wryly.

      ‘Exactly!’ She nodded enthusiastically before just as quickly pausing to eye him uncertainly. ‘Don’t you own something like ninety per cent of the worldwide media?’

      ‘That would be contrary to monopoly regulations,’ he drawled dismissively.

      ‘Do zillionaires bother with little things like regulations?’ she teased.

      He chuckled huskily. ‘They do if they don’t want their zillionaire butts to end up in court!’

      Thia felt what was becoming a familiar quiver down the length of her spine at the sound of this man’s throaty laughter. As she also acknowledged that, for all this man unnerved her, she was actually enjoying herself—possibly for the first time since arriving in New York.

      ‘Are you cold?’

      Thia had no chance to confirm or deny that she was before Lucien Steele removed his evening jacket and placed it about the bareness of her shoulders. It reached almost down to her knees and smelt of the freshness of those lemons as his warmth surrounded her, and of the more insidious and earthy smell of the man himself.

      ‘No, really—’

      ‘Leave it.’ Both his hands came down onto the shoulders of the jacket as she would have reached up and