Tycoon's Choice: Kept by the Tycoon / Taken by the Tycoon / The Tycoon's Proposal

She was still quivering, still breathing fast when, his hands at her waist, he lifted her to her feet. ‘Now let’s see what you’ve learnt.’

Startled, she turned to look at him.

His green eyes mocking, he said, ‘The days when women were expected to lie down and think of England are well and truly over. In these modern times women are men’s sexual equals, so now it’s your turn to make love to me.’

Stretching out indolently on his back, his hands clasped behind his head, he waited.

While her heart hammered against her breastbone, she dragged air into her lungs and, her hands unsteady, pushed back the long strands of blonde hair that were clinging damply to her cheeks.

‘In the past you’ve always made a pretence of being a little shy and innocent,’ he added caustically. ‘Now you don’t have to pretend any longer, so let’s see what you know or what you’ve learnt since then.’

Her eyes filled with unspoken anguish and she bent her head and looked down, the overhead light casting the shadow of her long lashes onto her cheeks.

That look punched a hole in his heart.

He reached out and, taking her hand, squeezed it gently. A consoling gesture she remembered from the past. A gesture that now seemed to be merely mocking.

Snatching her hand away, she said raggedly, ‘Very well, if that’s what you want.’

When she awoke it was almost ten-thirty, and she was alone in the bed. While her body felt sleek and satisfied, her mind was a jumble of thoughts and mixed feelings.

After her somewhat clumsy attempt to make love to him, mortified by her own inexperience, she had been turning away when he stopped her.

‘Let me go.’ She tried to break free. ‘I’m going back to the flat to spend the night.’

‘I don’t think so. It’s too late.’

Suddenly he rolled and, reversing their positions, trapped her body beneath his. His weight sparked off a heated rush of desire that made her quiver.

Feeling that betraying movement, he put his mouth to her breast and felt her hips jerk in response.

As he recognised that her need was almost as great as his own, his lovemaking was hard and fast and intense, focused simply on the twin goals of pleasure and release.

Caught up in the dark glory of it, her breath ragged, she let go of the hurt and anger and abandoned herself.

This was real. This was enough.

Only it wasn’t.

Despite the explosion of ecstasy, despite the bodily bliss, there was so much missing—the caring, the warmth, the commitment.

She started to cry, and the tears simply wouldn’t stop.

He gathered her up and cradled her to him.

When she was all cried out, he kissed her wet cheeks and, holding her in the crook of his arm, settled her head on his shoulder.

Totally drained, emotionally exhausted, she slept almost at once.

In the early hours of the morning, still tangled in the gossamer threads of a lovely dream of a summer picnic she and Rafe had once shared, she reached out and touched him.

He stirred and turned his head, so that his face pressed into the curve of her neck.

Warm and sleepy, she snuggled against him and felt his immediate response, the hard hammer-blows of his heart as his arms closed round her. Then in the darkness his lips had found hers, and he was kissing her with a passion that once more set her alight.

They had kissed and caressed and made love a second time with an undiminished hunger, before falling asleep again in each other’s arms.

Recalling the piercing beauty of their lovemaking, she felt her eyes fill with tears. She wept then for a lot of things. For past mistakes that couldn’t be altered, for still loving him in spite of everything, but most of all for giving in and going to bed with him.

If she had been strong enough to hold out against him he wouldn’t have forced her, she was sure of that. It was her own need for him that had been her downfall, that had wiped out this last year as if it had never been and left her once more in his thrall.

Despairingly she asked herself, how was it possible to go on loving a man who, once he’d had his revenge, for that was what it amounted to, wouldn’t give her a second thought?

Even so, and though she despised herself, she knew that she might be tempted to stay and give him what he wanted from her, if only Fiona didn’t exist…

But the other woman did exist and presumably she still loved Rafe in spite of everything. Still hoped to marry him.

Poor Fiona.

How was it possible for two women to go on loving a man who was basically rotten?

Three women, if she counted Harriet Rampling.

Out of the blue and for the first time, Madeleine found herself wondering about the relationship between Rafe and his godmother.

How was it that, after he had treated her daughter so shabbily, and apparently reneged on the bargain he had made with her husband, Harriet Rampling and her godson were still so close that she would choose to live in his house?

It didn’t seem to make any sense.

Chapter Seven

MADELINE was drying her cheeks with the back of her hand when the bedroom door opened and Rafe came in carrying a tray of coffee.

He was wearing stone-coloured trousers and a fine olivegreen sweater with a loose, sleeveless jerkin. His thick dark hair, a shade longer than was fashionable and trying to curl, was brushed back from a high forehead.

Needing to be in control, she sat upright and, pulling the duvet up to cover her nakedness, trapped it under her arms.

His eyes on her tear-stained face, he put the tray on the cabinet and, sitting down on the edge of the bed, reached out a hand to tilt her chin. ‘Regrets?’

‘It’s too late for regrets.’ In spite of all her efforts her voice shook betrayingly.

He freed a strand of hair caught in her earring, curled it round his finger and tucked it behind her ear, before cupping her cheek.

There was tenderness in his eyes, in his touch, and, feeling an uncontrollable wave of love, she turned her face into his palm.

The breath hissed through his teeth and then he was holding her close, his mouth muffled in her hair. ‘I think it’s about time we were—’

The trill of a phone cut through his words.