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Eyes narrowing, she tugged at his arm. ‘This is not escorting...it’s abducting.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
He stopped so abruptly that her flailing body collided with his, and desire, hot and potent, punched him in the stomach as she grabbed at his shirt to steady herself. For perhaps twenty seconds his exasperated eyes met her furious ones, and then she snatched her hand away as if she’d been stung, in a way that utterly infuriated him.
‘Either way, I don’t much care.’ Glancing past her at the departing crowds, he gave her a small, mocking smile. ‘And I’m not getting the feeling anyone else does either. So I suggest you get in the car—or, so help me, I will put you over my shoulder and carry you there myself.’
And then what?
The question slid into his head and his breath caught in his throat as he remembered her body twined around his as he’d carried her onto the bed in his room at Fairbourne. Blanking his mind to the memory of her bare thighs sliding around his hips, he tightened his grip on her wrist.
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she said. ‘You’re far too worried about what somebody might see or say.’
‘Try me,’ he said softly.
He watched her eyes narrow.
‘I already did.’ She was shaking with anger, her cheeks flushed with red flags of defiance. ‘And it wasn’t worth the effort of stripping.’
Basa stared at her, shock and anger flooding through him. No, not anger. It was rage—the kind of white-hot fury that blanked out everything but the darkening bruise around his heart and the blue of her eyes.
‘And yet you still did it,’ he said, his fingers squeezing around her arm. ‘You went up to my room, took off your clothes and got into bed with me.’
His throat tightened. There had been a honeyed sweetness to her eagerness. Her skin had been smooth, her mouth soft and her body even softer as she’d melted into him in a way that no other woman had.
‘I guess the thought of spending your share of the pension pot helped you overcome whatever limited scruples you possess.’
Her face was so white it looked as if it was ossified.
‘That’s not why I went to your room.’
He heard the catch in her voice and knew he had the upper hand.
‘Of course it wasn’t.’ His mouth curved into a sneer. ‘You’ll be telling me next you wanted to look at the view from my window.’
She took a quick breath. ‘I went up to your room because I wanted to have sex with you.’
The bluntness of her words momentarily caught him off balance, but, recovering his composure, he shook his head. ‘That’s not true. You had no intention of sleeping with me; you were just there as a decoy.’
Her pupils flared with anger. ‘It is true.’
‘Then why weren’t you prepared?’ he snarled.
‘Because I’d never slept with anyone before, that’s why,’ she said, and the shake in her voice made it sound as if she was close to tears.
The pavement seemed to ripple beneath his feet as her reply ricocheted around his head like a firecracker. In the square, the excited crowd were setting off flares, and he stared at her in confusion as trails of blue and yellow smoke began swirling around them. His head was spinning and he was struggling to keep his face composed. Shock—raw, unfettered shock—vied with disbelief.
Why hadn’t she told him that on the night?
Was it true? Or was she just playing with him?
Her cheeks were flushed, but he didn’t know if that was down to anger or chagrin at having blurted out something she would likely rather have kept hidden from him. All he knew was that this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have in the street, in front of hundreds of strangers and the averted gaze of his bodyguards.
He wanted answers. He wanted the truth. And once he had her safely inside the car, he intended to get it.
‘We’re not talking about this here,’ he said curtly.
‘Actually, I don’t want to talk about it anywhere.’
