Their Most Forbidden Fling

‘You always were good with your hands,’ she said, and then blushed. ‘I mean, with doing things about the farm.’

His lips gave a vague sort of movement that could not on anyone’s terms be described as a smile. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ he asked.

‘Sure, why not?’ Molly said. Anything to make her relax and stop making a fool of herself, she thought.

He placed a glass of white wine in front of her. ‘I have red if you prefer.’

‘No, white is fine,’ she said. ‘Red always gives me a headache.’

Lucas went about preparing the meal. Molly watched as he deftly chopped vegetables and meat for the stir-fry he was making. He worked as if on autopilot but she could see he was frowning slightly. Was he regretting asking her to stay for dinner? He wasn’t exactly full of conversation. But, then, she was feeling a little tongue-tied herself.

‘So why an intensivist?’ he asked after a long silence. ‘I thought you always wanted to be a teacher.’

‘My teacher stage only lasted until I was ten,’ Molly said. ‘I’ve wanted to be lots of things since then. I decided on medicine in my final year at school. And I chose intensive care because I liked the idea of helping to save lives.’

‘Yeah, well, it sure beats the hell out of destroying them.’

Molly met his gaze over the island bench. ‘How long are you going to keep punishing yourself? It’s not going to bring him back.’

His eyes hardened. ‘You think I don’t know that?’

Molly watched him slice some celery as if it was a mortal enemy. His jaw was pulsing with tension as he worked. She let out an uneven sigh and put her wine down. ‘Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for me to stay and have dinner,’ she said as she slid off the stool she had perched on. ‘You don’t seem in the mood for company. I’ll see myself out.’

He caught her at the door. His long, strong fingers met around her wrist, sending sparks of awareness right up to her armpit and beyond. She looked into his eyes and felt her heart slip sideways. Pain was etched in those green and brown depths—pain and something else that made her blood kick-start in her veins like a shot of pure adrenalin. ‘Don’t go,’ he said in a low, gruff tone.

Molly’s gaze drifted to his mouth. She felt her insides shift, a little clench of longing that was slowly but surely moving through her body.

His body was closer than it had ever been. She felt the warmth of it, the bone-melting temptation of it. She sensed the stirring of his response to her. She couldn’t feel it but she could see it in his eyes as they held hers. It sent an arrow of lust through her. She wanted to feel him against her, to feel his blood surging in response to her closeness. She took a half a step to close the gap between their bodies but he dropped her wrist as if it had suddenly caught fire.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, raking that same hand through his thick hair, leaving crooked finger-width pathways in its wake.

‘It’s fine,’ Molly said, aiming for light and airy but falling miserably short. ‘No harm done.’

‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Molly,’ he said, frowning heavily. ‘Any … connection between us is inadvisable.’

‘Because you don’t mix work with play?’

His eyes were hard and intractable as they clashed with hers. ‘Because I don’t mix emotion with sex.’

‘Who said anything about sex?’ Molly asked.

His worldly look said it all.

‘Right, well … I’m not very good at this, as you can probably tell,’ she said, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear. ‘I try to be sophisticated and modern about it all but I guess deep down inside I’m just an old-fashioned girl who wants the fairy-tale.’

‘You’re no different from most women—and most men, for that matter,’ he said. ‘It’s not wrong to want to be happy.’

‘Are you happy, Lucas?’ Molly asked, searching his tightly set features.

His eyes moved away from hers as he moved back to the kitchen. ‘I need to put on the rice,’ he said. ‘You’d better keep an eye on your cat.’

Molly went outside to find Mittens. He wasn’t too happy about being brought back inside, but she lured him back in with a thread she found hanging off her coat. She closed the door once he was inside and went back to where Lucas was washing the rice for the rice cooker. ‘What can I do to help?’ she said. ‘Shall I set the table in the dining room?’

‘I don’t use the dining room,’ he said. ‘I usually eat in here.’

‘Seems a shame to have such a lovely dining room and never use it,’ Molly said. ‘Don’t you ever have friends over for dinner parties?’

He gave a shrug and pressed the start button on the cooker. ‘Not my scene, I’m afraid.’

‘Do you have a housekeeper?’

‘A woman comes once a week to clean,’ he said. ‘I don’t make much mess, or at least I try not to. I wouldn’t have bothered getting anyone but Gina needed the work. Her husband left her to bring up a couple of kids on her own. She’s reliable and trustworthy.’

Molly cradled her wine in her hands. ‘Do you have a current girlfriend?’

He was silent for a moment. ‘I’m between appointments, so to speak.’

She angled her head at him. ‘What sort of women do you usually date?’

His eyes collided with hers. ‘Why do you ask?’

Molly gave a little shrug. ‘Just wondering.’

‘I’m not a prize date, by any means,’ he said after another long moment. ‘I hate socialising. I hate parties. I don’t drink more than one glass of alcohol.’

‘Not every woman wants to party hard,’ she pointed out.

He studied her unwaveringly for a moment. ‘Not very many women just want to have sex and leave it at that.’

Molly felt a wave of heat rise up in her body. ‘Is that all you want from a partner?’ she asked. ‘Just sex and nothing else?’

Had she imagined his eyes looking hungrily at her mouth for a microsecond? Desire clenched tight in her core as his gaze tethered hers in a sensually charged lock. ‘It’s a primal need like food and shelter,’ he said. ‘It’s programmed into our genes.’

Molly was more aware of her primal needs than she had ever been. Her body was screaming with them, and had been from the moment she had laid eyes on him on the street the other day. It still was a shock to her that she was reacting so intensely to him. She had never thought herself a particularly passionate person. But when she was around him she felt stirrings and longings that were so fervent they felt like they would override any other consideration.

‘We’re surely far more evolved and civilised than to respond solely to our basest needs?’ she said.

His eyes grazed her mouth. ‘Some of us, perhaps.’

The atmosphere tightened another notch.

‘So how do you get your primal needs met?’ Molly asked with a brazen daring she could hardly believe she possessed. ‘Do you drag women back here by the hair and have your wicked way with them?’

This time his gaze went to her hair. She felt every strand of it lift away from her scalp like a Mexican wave. Hot tingles of longing raced along her backbone. She felt a stirring in her breasts; a subtle tightening that made her aware of the lace that supported them. Her heart picked up its pace, a tippity-tap-tap beat that reverberated in her feminine core.

His eyes came back to hers, holding them, searing them, penetrating them. ‘I’m not going to have my wicked way with you, Molly,’ he said.

‘But you want to.’ Oh, dear God, had she really just said that? Molly thought.