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That was the Portia he wanted—the one he got in the dark reaches of the night, when she belonged to him and him alone. When she yielded to him and him alone. When he feasted on her like a starving man.
Who could never have his fill of her.
He wanted her more with every day. His was a hunger that could not be sated, that grew with every passing day.
Consuming him.
Devouring him.
His mouth twisted into a savage, mocking smile.
How had it got like this?
How had Portia Lanchester reduced him to this?
Worse, how had he let it happen?
He did not know—knew only that soon, very soon now, he must find the strength to finish with her, sever her from his life.
Be free of her.
Before it was too late.
Portia leant on the balustrade of the balcony of a suite in a world-famous hotel in Kowloon, watching the Star Ferry ply its way across from Hong Kong island. The day was cloudy, the Peak wrapped in a white mist. She wondered what she would do today. She had already been sightseeing for three days. There wasn’t much left of Hong Kong to see.
Perhaps she would go across to Macao, that strange, hybrid city, half-Chinese, half-Portuguese, with architecture to match. Or perhaps she would just stay here in this luxurious hotel.
The glass door slid open behind her.
‘Portia?’
Diego’s voice was brusque. She was used to it being so.
But as she turned and saw him standing there, hand splayed on the door’s edge, those dark, hooded eyes resting on her, she felt, as she felt every time, the same surge of longing.
He met the hunger in her gaze and for a moment his eyes blazed with an answering hunger.
Then it was gone, blanked out with that familiar, shuttered look.
‘Yes?’ she answered enquiringly. Her voice was schooled to its usual level of steady indifference, which she always used when she had to talk to him.
He did not speak for a second or two, just went on looking at her with that closed expression on his face.
He looked tired, she thought, registering the observation with a sense of slight surprise. Though freshly shaved, and looking as superb as he always did in his hand-tailored business suits, the white shirt brilliant against the dark tan of his skin, his face looked drawn.
For an instant so brief she almost could not believe she had felt it, she had an urge to go to him, soothe her hand along his brow, wrap her arms around him to shelter him…
‘I’m going to Shanghai for a few days.’
The curtness of his voice brought her back to reality.
She looked at him expressionlessly.
Again something that she could not read shifted in his eyes.
Shanghai, she thought. Would there be a tourist agenda there? It wasn’t exactly a tourist hotspot, just an industrial and financial showcase for the new, expanding Chinese economy.
‘You can go back to London.’
