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Right up until the throng crowded around them, jostling as they vied for position. Kaspar looked up and saw Archie’s face turn from elation to panic. Watched helplessly as she stumbled back a step, a hair’s breadth out of his reach so that he couldn’t catch her.
And he lost it.
He didn’t know what happened next but he had a vague recollection of trying to protect Archie, of grabbing a camera that was so close to her face she squealed and fell back, of it somehow smashing. Not what he’d intended but he didn’t care right now. At some point he managed to haul Archie into the safety of his arms. The way her hands clutched at him as though she trusted him, and only him, to protect her, only heightened the wild, savage possessiveness with which he was already fighting a losing battle.
She was his. No one else’s. His.
He had no idea how he didn’t just scoop her into his arms and carry her out of the room. Probably because he knew that might have made her feel undermined and overly fragile, but, still, he recalled bundling her out of the ball and into his car. Throwing himself to the other side of the back seat just so that he didn’t give in to this rushing, roaring urge to claim her as his, right there and then in the back of the car.
It was a lethal combination of anger, and fear, and that flicker of helplessness when he’d seen her stumbling and had been unable to get to her in time. Watching it all happen in sickening slow motion. Just like that night when he’d lost control in that back alley fight, doing the only thing that had come into his mind to save himself. Realising too late that if he hadn’t been who he was—Kaspar Athari—the thug would probably never have bothered to have a go in the first place.
And if Archie was any other pregnant woman, would the press have crowded in on her like they had? Or was it because of him? Because she was carrying his child?
Kaspar already knew the answer. Of course he did. He should have known better than to risk Archie like this. He should have kept her well away from here.
The car ride couldn’t end soon enough. He was out of the door before the vehicle had even come to a stop. Racing around, he snatched open Archie’s door and, this time he didn’t fight the impulse to lift her into his arms and carry her, still trembling, through the house and to her rooms. Only once he was sure she was settled and okay did he leave, stalking through the corridors until he came to his suite, hauling his clothes over his head, slamming the shower on and stepping inside.
* * *
Icy-cold water spilled over his body, biting and unforgiving. But it still couldn’t assuage the fire inside him that raged so fiercely it felt as though it was devouring him from the inside out. As it had been all evening, when they’d been so close, so intimate on that dance floor, oblivious to anyone and everyone around them.
There had only been Archie. In perfect, crystal-clear, vibrant detail. Her hand folded into his, her fragile body standing side by side with him. All night. And he had beaten back every single urge to drag her off somewhere more private and haul her onto his lap. Had intended to when he finally got her home.
And then the incident with the photographers had occurred. He’d lost control. Smashed a camera, though he couldn’t even remember how. It was all such a blur but it rammed home, in no uncertain terms, that Archie was much better off without him.
And still Kaspar could barely restrain himself from slamming the shower off and pounding down that corridor to Archie’s room. Every fibre of his being wanted to drag her back into his arms, lower her onto that bed and drive so deep inside her than he didn’t know where he ended and she began.
Pressing his hands to the travertine tiles, Kaspar forced himself to stay where he was, rooting himself to the huge porcelain shower tray. Chill water still coursed off his shoulders, down his chest, his back.
He didn’t hear the click of the door but instantly he knew she was in the room. His entire body knew.
Slowly, very slowly, he lifted his head and turned.
She didn’t speak but she actually braced herself. The move was almost imperceptible but for the fact that it caused the lapels of her silken nightgown to fall open, exposing the creamy valley of exposed skin and a tantalising glimpse of her breasts, which he’d been imagining kissing, tasting only a few minutes earlier.
It was more than his body could take and as though he was some kind of adolescent kid all over again, Kaspar found his body reacting in the most primitive way it could. He could turn away or he could stand there and ride it out.
His muscles spasmed and clenched as she let her eyes drop down over his body, as surely as if it were her fingers scorching a trail over his skin instead. And then the slight widening of her gaze, the way she sucked in a deep breath, the way her chest swelled that little bit more.
He tightened, so hard it was almost painful. The way only Archie seemed to be able to do to him.
‘Stop pushing me away,’ she whispered, the longing in her tone twisting inside him worse than any knife or scalpel could have.
‘You saw what happened tonight. It’s better for you if I keep my distance.’
His voice rasped, raw and unfamiliar.
‘Why? Because you protected me from the kind of gutter photographers who, unlike their welcome, wanted, respectful, carefully selected press colleagues, had never been invited in the first instance? Who had snuck in for the very purpose of causing trouble; pushing me and shoving their cameras into my face and against my stomach? They acted like animals.’
‘Exactly like I acted.’
‘Nothing like you acted,’ she exploded. ‘You were defending me. Anyone could see that. I was scared and you saved me. Besides, it was nothing compared to the way the security guards rough-housed them out of there, or didn’t you see that?’
‘I know what happened,’ he lied. All he could recall was Archie’s pinched expression, the fear in her eyes. ‘I smashed that guy’s camera. I lost control. Just like I lost control in the alley with that kid that night.’
She looked at him like he was crazy. It almost made him want to laugh. Almost.
‘Firstly, that man in the alley was eight years older than you and looking for trouble. Secondly, you did not break any camera.’
