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Yet the way she had felt tonight hadn’t been all bad. A part of her had liked his high-handedness, had enjoyed being the girl welded to his side. The sheer physical impact of him, his charisma, the way people leapt out of his way—she had seen it through others’ eyes and she’d liked it.
He owned that world in a way she hadn’t quite comprehended before. He was a man who reigned over an empire which celebrated machismo, and apart from the massive profit turnover it came with a huge element of sex appeal.
If you were that kind of woman.
Clementine lifted her hands to her hot cheeks and shook her head in amused despair. He had been drenched in sex appeal tonight, and just thinking about it was making her fidget. Who was she kidding? Everything about Serge got her going, and he knew it.
She’d been doing her best all week to keep him at arm’s length, to protect herself by being the independent woman who had her own life and wasn’t looking to him to offer her anything more than what he had given any other woman. She had her pride, and she’d been stuffing her own needs behind it and leading with her chin.
But now she didn’t bother to hide her relief when he finally came up. Stripped down to jeans and a T-shirt, he looked like the big tough guy he was and she was honest enough with herself to admit she liked that. She liked it enough to want to shove aside her anger and hurt and climb him like a tree. Her pride kept her sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, but she was going to be honest with him for a change. He was a tough guy—he could take it. And so could she.
‘We need to talk,’ he said bluntly.
‘Yes, we do,’ she fired back. ‘And I’m going first. Now, you listen up, Slugger. I’m much more than your current squeeze. I’m very good at my job, and your little fighting empire would be lucky to have me, and if you think my living here equals being kept by you, you’ve got another think coming. Okay?’
He was silent, just watching her. He didn’t even blink. The atmosphere began to crackle with something and Clementine shifted uneasily on the bed.
‘Are you listening to me?’ Her voice quavered a little.
In reply Serge stripped off his T-shirt. As muscle and taut male skin came into view Clementine lost a little bit of concentration.
The T-shirt dropped to the floor.
‘Serge?’
‘You went behind my back,’ was all he said, eyes hooded, gaze resting on her mouth.
She moistened her lips, shifting a little on the mattress.
‘Do you have any idea how I felt, seeing your face on that screen and knowing you were out there in that crowd?’
His voice was low, intent, and he wasn’t really asking a question. He was telling her.
Clementine’s heart-rate kicked up and began to gallop.
Yet for some reason she thought this was the best time to throw herself off the emotional pier and blurt out, ‘No, I don’t know how you felt, because you never talk about your feelings.’
A tight smile sat at the corner of his mouth, as if he knew something she didn’t. ‘Well, guess what, kisa? I’m going to now.’
‘That’s good,’ she prevaricated, giving a little ‘oh’ as he yanked down his jeans. He was naked and he was aroused and he was palming a condom from the drawer beside the bed, and Clementine wondered just when the talking part was going to take place.
He flipped her onto her back and came down over her, pinning her with his larger body. He did it so fluidly that one minute Clementine was sitting upright, fretting, and the next she was flat on her back staring into the eyes of the man who had rescued her from those thugs in the underpass.
‘Now,’ he said with slow deliberateness, ‘let’s talk about how I feel, Clementine. How about how I felt when I saw you alone in that crowd?’
He swept her T-shirt up over her head and bent to nudge a pointed rosy nipple with the stubble of his chin.
‘How about how I felt when I saw you flirting with men who work for me?’
He took that nipple deep into his mouth.
‘I don’t know how you felt,’ she gasped, but she was getting the picture.
Her body began to sing as his hand went south under the elastic of her pyjamas, testing her readiness. She’d been ready from about the time he’d said, ‘We need to talk.’
‘I felt like this.’ He stripped her of the pyjama pants and cupped her bottom. Her thighs fell open of their own accord and she welcomed him as he thrust into her, a single stunning stroke. ‘I felt like this, Clementine.’ And he moved inside her harder, with a single-mindedness that wound her up with him, until she felt all the anger and tension in him turning into something that overwhelmed them both.
