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‘Were a virgin,’ he corrected, that tiny smile curving his lips again. ‘So you’re using contraceptive pills?’ he reiterated.
‘I said it won’t be a problem,’ she replied, not entirely truthfully. But she felt hideously exposed, her feelings raw and tender when they had no right to be. Especially in the face of his pragmatism.
She forced her pride to the fore, to cover the erratic beat of her heart.
She’d rather die than admit she wasn’t on the Pill, that she hadn’t even considered contraception. But she was so close to the end of her cycle, an accidental pregnancy had to be highly unlikely. And if any problems did arise, she told herself staunchly, she’d handle them. Alone. She might be inexperienced, but she wasn’t naïve. She wasn’t about to risk having another child. And especially not with a man like Lukas.
I don’t make love.
She gripped the towel tighter around her, the chill in the room prickling over her skin. If there was one thing she’d learned from her father—and Darcy’s brief but catastrophic affair with Lukas’s brother—you couldn’t make a man love you. And you certainly couldn’t change him. Nor should you try to. It was far too much work, and it was bound to fail. Leaving you deluded, like Darcy, or destroyed, like their mother.
Maybe she’d lost sight of that in the heat of the moment. But she wasn’t going to forget it again. She didn’t need or want any man’s love. She had Nico. And she had herself. And that was more than enough.
He watched her, as if he were trying to assess whether to quiz her further. She knew she’d never been a very accomplished liar, so she drew her knees up to her chest, keeping the towel wrapped firmly around her. Not that it made her feel any less naked under that searing gaze.
‘Shouldn’t you be going to your event?’ she prompted, suddenly desperate to escape from him, and all the feelings still churning inside her that had no right to be there. ‘You’re late already.’
‘I want you here when I get back,’ he said. Or rather demanded.
She bristled, not just at the dictatorial tone but the underlying suggestion—that somehow because she’d slept with him she was now his to command.
But she held on to the curt reply. She didn’t have the energy to have a stand-off with him. Not only that, but she was naked while he was fully clothed, and the heat had begun to pulse in her sex again, as soon as he’d walked back into the room in that tux. She couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t dissolve into another puddle of lust if he pushed. And she didn’t want to make love—correction, have sex with him again—until she’d got over the emotional fallout from their first encounter.
Of course, it hadn’t meant anything to him—he’d had a ton of girlfriends. And he’d already told her he had a lot of experience separating sex from emotion. But he was her first. And it had been...well, pretty mind-blowing—in a purely physical sense. However pragmatic and practical and not naïve she was, losing your virginity to a man like Lukas Blackstone was bound to take a little while to process. And get in perspective.
Her skin flushed pink again. He stood up to leave, his big body towering over her.
Okay, make that a lot of time to process and get in perspective.
‘I’ll be back in half an hour at the most,’ he said, as if she were a puppy who was expected to be obedient.
‘I won’t be here. I can’t stay,’ she said.
He frowned, his displeasure clear. ‘Why not?’
‘I have to get back to Nico. I always kiss him goodnight.’ It wasn’t a lie, she told herself. She needed to see Nico tonight, now more than ever. The little boy would keep her grounded, stop her making too much of what had happened. Stop her wanting it to happen again, which would be catastrophic. She could see that already.
His frown deepened—he didn’t like her excuse—but after what felt like several millennia he gave a brief nod. ‘Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow morning then.’
She felt the muscles in her abdomen loosen with relief.
‘I’ll come to the house. But I want to see you in private before I see the boy.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
His gaze raked down to where she held the towel too tightly against her chest. Her nipples throbbed and peaked in a predictable response.
‘I think you can guess why, Bronte. You’re not innocent any more.’
She wanted to be disgusted by his implication—that now they’d slept together once, she’d be happy to sleep with him again simply because he expected her to. But the only one she was disgusted with was herself. And her instinctive response to him.
She bristled, and clutched the towel tighter. ‘All right,’ she said, while planning to make sure she did not let Nico leave her side every moment Lukas was in the house.
Forget taking time to process the sex and get it into perspective. No time would be long enough to mitigate the erotic power he wielded over her.
Lukas was just too... Well, too everything. He was coming to the house to see Nico, not her—and once he left he was going to the Maldives. It would be weeks before he returned, by which time he would have forgotten about her and this...this thing between them. And, hopefully, with time and distance she would have too. And the erotic power he wielded would no longer be an issue. And all these raw, runaway emotions, the inexplicable yearning, would be gone too. Because they would both have moved on.
‘Take the elevator down when you’re ready,’ he said, still ordering her about. ‘I’ll tell Lisa to arrange a car and have a couple of security guards standing by to usher you out the back entrance to avoid the press.’
