Cautious Lover Read Online Free PDF Page B

evenly.
    Jess nodded. "Charisma is probably the word for it. Whatever it is, it seemed to run in the Carrington family."
    "It did?"
    "Marina had a twin brother. Women react to him the way men react to Marina. Same blond hair and green eyes, the same sense of being bigger than life, not quite real somehow. And both Marina and Damon knew how to exploit their assets. They manipulated everyone around them, and they did it so easily that most people never even realized what had hit them until it was too late."
    "A witch and a warlock," Elly whispered, staring into the flames.
    Jess glanced at her again, rather sharply. "That's exactly how I came to think of them," he admitted.
    "Go on," Elly said with a sense of doom.
    "Well, Marina exploded into my life one evening when I was introduced to her at a party. She was very beautiful, very chic and very successful in her own right. She held an executive position in a corporation. I found out later she hadn't climbed up through the ranks purely on merit. Marina used her body to get what she wanted. I knew the minute I looked at her that I wanted her. She knew it, too. And Damon ... Damon was always there in the background, watching and laughing, dancing his own circles around women while Marina enthralled the men." Jess broke off, gray eyes filled with dangerous memories. "At any rate, I took her home that night. I couldn't believe my luck when she let me stay until morning. I had set out to seduce her, but looking back on it, I know it was she who seduced me. Like everyone else around her, I let myself be manipulated. In the beginning I was happy enough to participate in my own downfall. Being seen with her was an ego trip for any man. And I enjoyed the trip for a while."
    "It sounds like you were getting what you wanted out of the arrangement," Elly said bleakly. "That's not exactly manipulation."
    "You don't understand. No one could understand unless they met Marina or Damon. Never mind. That night was the beginning of an affair that kept me strung out for weeks. At times I thought I was going crazy. She knew how to tease and torment and then satisfy a man. And she knew the secret of repeating the cycle over and over again. She would make me wildly jealous, and then she would laugh at me until I lost control. The battles always ended in bed. She was...very skilled in bed. I thought that if I could put a ring on her finger I could possess her completely."
    Elly wrinkled her nose and sighed. "Did you?"
    "Of course not. Things only got worse. Now she was my wife, and in addition to tormenting me with jealousy, she began going through my money at an incredible rate. Such a rate, in fact, that I finally began to get suspicious."
    "Of what?"
    "That she was giving the money to another man. It turned out she was. She was giving it to her brother. Damon was plunging into one crazy business scheme after another, using my money as capital. Before I knew it, I found myself bailing him out time after time. As long as he was 'family' I felt obliged to go to his rescue. The two of them were systematically fleecing me. I could hardly believe it, at first. Me, the guy who had been so fast on his feet in the corporate world, who could out-maneuver the best business brains around and who was a natural on the corporate battleground, was getting ripped off by a couple of slick hustlers who never even went to business school!"
    "I gather that when you finally realized how much money was involved you came to your senses?" Elly knew the sarcasm simmered in her voice, but she made no real effort to quench it. She was feeling too much pain to worry about good manners.
    Jess's expression darkened. He took another long swallow of brandy. "It wasn't just the money. By the time I discovered what was happening on that front I had also begun to realize that I was growing sick of Marina's brand of thrills. The excitement she could generate began to wear thin. And I was disgusted with myself for letting her put me