Ruthless Reunion

He didn’t immediately, retaining it just long enough for her to recognise the power of an intrepid will. Through her silent wretchedness a little voice warned her to be careful.

‘Could I get you another drink?’

‘Very probably,’ she murmured, her claws unsheathed by the pain of bitter betrayal, making him a scapegoat for all his sex. ‘I’d imagine there’s very little you couldn’t do,’ she added levelly, looking him up and down in a way designed to faze him but which only resulted in producing a throb of something elemental in her that was almost frightening in its intensity.

‘Then I’ll rephrase that.’ He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, and amended with emphasis, ‘May I get you a drink?’ From his perfect diction it was clear he was neither Bermudian or American, but full-blooded English. From the hint of impatience in that deep voice, it was also obvious he didn’t usually have to work this hard.

‘Better.’ Her sultry mouth curved in the merest smile as she picked up the Martini glass from the bar, put it to her lips. ‘But the answer’s still thanks, but no thanks.’

‘Too complicated?’

‘Much too complicated,’ she responded, noticing now the fine lines around his eyes and the grooves etching his mouth, as though he had been driving himself too hard, or been under some strain.

‘Really? I was under the impression you wanted me to come over and speak to you.’

‘Were you?’ She gave a brittle little laugh, unintentionally tantalising, provocative, and saw the glint of something dark and dangerous leap in his eyes. Setting her glass back down on the bar, she glanced away, feigning interest in some laughter coming from one of the tables before enquiring casually, ‘Are you married?’ Not that it mattered, she assured herself firmly. He was much too sophisticated and dangerous for her to be playing with.

‘Married?’ He made it sound as though she had insulted him even by suggesting it. ‘No, I’m not married.’

Perhaps she had insulted him, she thought, some sixth sense telling her he wasn’t the type of man to approach a woman if he had a wife somewhere. A man with ethics. Uncommitted. In control. A man who could make her forget…

Sanchia shook the shocking, disturbing notion away, wondering where it had come from.

‘What’s your name?’

Above the soft music drifting out from behind the bar, the equally soft command stirred a contrary desire in her to rebel—against him, against the effect he was having on her, against herself. ‘Is that a prerequisite?’

Something like annoyance flashed in his eyes but was quickly erased. ‘A prerequisite for what?’

A rather sensual smile played around his mouth now and, held by the snare of his flagrant masculinity, Sanchia’s gaze faltered, her brain acknowledging the power of mind and body that lay behind that impeccable façade. He would know how to please, pleasure, protect a woman—for as long as she was his at any rate, she fantasised, shaken by her own wild speculation. He could also hurt her, if she played this dangerous game with him. But maybe that was what she wanted, she thought suddenly—crazily. The diversion this man could provide would numb the pain.

She had had more to drink than was wise if she was thinking like that. Not that she’d really had very much, and not so much that the man standing beside her would have noticed, but certainly one or two glasses more than she was accustomed to.

Her sparkling eyes turned the deepest amber as she looked up into his face. A hard, handsome face, whose forcefulness filled her with such a contrary mixture of rebellion and excitement that she wanted to challenge it and lose herself to it all at the same time.

She gave a heedless shrug. ‘Whatever,’ she answered, with another fleeting little smile, and felt his gaze burn over her shoulders and her generous breasts in tacit acknowledgement. A reckless heat licked through her, and deep inside her something throbbed in startling response. ‘Isn’t it all part of the game?’

‘The game?’

‘You ask my name. You buy me a drink. We wind up in bed. Isn’t that the natural progression of things?’

‘You’re very direct.’

You’d be direct, her mind screamed, if your fiancé had just killed himself and the other woman he’d been shacking up with!

‘Is there any other way to be?’ Her dark lashes swept downwards, camouflaging agony. ‘Why cloak it behind a charade of needless civilities?’

‘Why, indeed?’

She could sense that he didn’t mean that. He was just a little bit shocked by her plain speaking, she suspected, although he wasn’t allowing it to show.

‘And have you always been so cynical?’ he went on.

A smile curved the corners of his mouth again, a hard, sexy mouth that in another situation would show a woman heaven. She wondered what it would be like to feel its demanding pressure on hers.

‘Cynical?’ Her slanting eyes made an unconscious survey of his magnificent physical attributes. Broad shoulders made sleek by exclusive tailoring. A solid walled chest, tight waist and hard, lean hips. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her smile was provocative, blazing from bright lips that were struggling to conceal pure pain. ‘I didn’t mean to be.’

‘Didn’t you?’ Those grey eyes smiled, but there was a mild reprimand in the deep timbre of his voice.

He was using his gaze like dangerous visual foreplay—and it was working! She had never felt so aroused in her life. Those stimulating eyes had marked her out for his possession, and, much as she wanted to resist their lethally hypnotic power, she didn’t seem to have any defence against it. All night long there had been a silent exchange of something flagrantly sexual between them, a dark and mutually carnal demand that was screaming out to be met. She didn’t know how she could feel such a barrage of conflicting emotions. Excitement slashing through grief. Desire riding side by side with pain. The weight of it was almost unbearable.

‘So you prefer anonymity?’ That masculine voice throbbed with sensual amusement, and yet suddenly she recognised some raw and personal anguish behind the formidable strength in that face. ‘Most intriguing.’

‘Why not?’ Her fingers curled painfully into her palms from the urge to reach up and touch him, touch the elemental heart of whatever was causing him to suffer. ‘We aren’t going to see each other again.’

‘Aren’t we?’

The determination in those two words sent a little frisson through her. She wanted to challenge them—challenge that glaring authority—but words wouldn’t come.

‘Well, now that’s settled, let me tell you what I—’

She wasn’t aware of lifting her fingers to that firm, communicative mouth, only of its sensual warmth beneath their gentle pressure to silence him.

For a fleeting moment she stared at him, shocked by her own temerity. Mouth parched, breath coming quickly, blood pumping through every stimulated vessel, her hungry amber eyes were drowning in the incandescent heat of smouldering grey.

She had crossed a line, she realised hectically—stupidly! And if she stayed there would be no turning back.

Grabbing her camera off the bar, she jumped off the stool and, without a word, twisted away from him, out of the ballroom into the quiet lobby and into the haven of a waiting lift.

Slipping her camera strap over her shoulder, she stood breathless, trembling, wanting only for the lift to swallow her, when an impeccably sleeved arm sliced between the closing doors.

They yielded, allowing her pursuer entry, and whirred shut again, locking them both in a bubble of screaming intimacy that was swelling with each straining second.

They stared at each other like combatants, chests heaving, mouths turning almost savage.

There’s no way out, Sanchia thought, and felt the white-hot tide of desire pool in a molten heat in her loins.

And then the bubble burst and he was dragging her against him. Or had she reached for him first? She wasn’t sure. Only that that savage mouth was devouring her, just as hers was devouring him, responding to the fierce heat of his demands with throbbing, driving needs of her own.

His hands were twisting in the gleaming swathe of her hair with an almost painful pleasure, while hers revelled in the thick dark strength of his even as she sagged against him, weakened and clinging to him for support. Hungrily, she brought her fingers clawing down over his face, over the hard, exciting texture of his cheek and jaw, sinking her nails into his broad shoulders with a little cry of pleasure when one arm moved to catch her hard against his powerfully aroused body.

Her breasts ached for his hands, craving their warmth against their full, aching sensitivity, and like an extension of her own thinking he seemed to know. She felt the moist heat at the very heart of her as his hand slid easily inside her dress, the hard contraction of her body’s crying out to have this man possess her, to lose her pain and misery in the torturous rapture he could provide.

The whirr of the lift moving upwards was drowned by their laboured breathing. It whined to a halt, opening into a private corridor. A route merely to the penthouse suite.

It registered with Sanchia only numbly as the man lifted his head, his features flushed from the hunger that rode him—rode them both. She hadn’t even been aware of him pressing the indicator button.

There was no one about. Only the two of them and the thick silence that came with the luxury he had paid for.