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‘That isn’t what I meant.’ She flushed, instantly trying to shut down the memory, but she was too slow.
Heat spread through her, intense and decalescent, as she recalled just how Liam had made her come apart with the faintest touch of his hand—or his tongue. She wondered if he was thinking the same. How he had made her plead, and sob, and scream until she’d been drained and exhausted, sprawled in his arms and still wanting more.
Always wanting more. Little wonder that she’d believed herself to have been in love.
Now she wondered if she’d allowed herself to be swept up in the sheer Cinderella nature of their relationship, without ever admitting that she’d been slightly intimidated by him.
‘Your body tells me different,’ he ground out, and she felt a wallop of something entirely inappropriate as he leaned over the other side of the desk.
She was powerless to drag her gaze from his physique, once more on display.
What was the matter with her?
Tick.
She could actually hear the clock on the wall above her head, and still neither of them moved. Or spoke.
Tock.
His brows knitted together tightly in a way that was so agonisingly familiar that Talia—despairing of herself—had to clutch the desk white-knuckle-tight in an effort not to reach out and smooth it out.
Tick.
Desperation lent her another burst of daring—or maybe it was foolhardiness. Who knew?
‘And what if it did?’ she demanded hotly. ‘You made it clear you weren’t interested in me.’
‘I didn’t say anything of the sort.’
His voice grazed through her, like a blade that scraped at her and made her raw. Only somehow it was more stimulating than agonising.
She tried to speak but the words stuck in her throat.
‘You said—’
‘I said that I hadn’t ever expected—or hoped—to see you again,’ he rasped. ‘Not that I wasn’t interested.’
Talia was aware that he was advancing on her but she couldn’t seem to make herself move. She shook her head wordlessly, unsure if it was the uncharacteristic, dangerous edge to his tone or his sheer, dizzying proximity that was sending her head into a spin. More likely it was the three years’ worth of feelings she’d thought long dealt with but which, it was now turning out, had only barely been repressed.
‘You still want me?’ she managed at last.
Whole lifetimes might have passed, or maybe it was instantaneous, but suddenly his hands were deliciously on her shoulders, as big and strong as she remembered, and his face right next to hers. Eyes that were simultaneously black with desire and hot shimmered in front of her, making her feel...everything.
‘Against everything my head is telling me,’ he growled. ‘I came here for my patient, not for you. Yet here you are, haunting me like some kind of spectre.’
Abruptly, like some flip of a switch, he seemed to stop fighting and his mouth came down on hers, as if staking his claim after too many years apart—possessing her. Like leaping headlong into a volcano just as it was erupting.
He kissed her long, and thoroughly, and expertly, as only Liam had ever done to her. A kiss that was simultaneously a punishment and a gift.
His hands held her head just as he wanted it, taking the kiss deeper and deeper. Lazy, drugging kisses that were more and more perfect with every delicious stroke of his tongue, leaving her feeling high and as though she was bouncing off the walls.
‘So what is this?’ she muttered almost feverishly, when they finally came up for air, barely able to tear her mouth from his for fear that he wouldn’t let her back again afterwards. ‘Some grand reunion between two old lovers?’
‘No reunion,’ he rumbled ruthlessly, his voice all silk and menace as the words rasped against her lips and reverberated straight down to between her legs. ‘Try more like a long-overdue exorcism.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE WORDS SHOULD have pulled her up sharply, but Talia was already too far gone to react.
