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He lurched back. The harsh rasps of their breathing tore through the quiet night. He laughed, the sound husky, strained, and she wondered how she had amused him. But then he clasped her chin and lifted her face to his.
‘Promise me this won’t end up in your article.’
She blinked, the request disorientating and confusing at first—the intoxicating hunger rushing through her body so turbo-charged, she couldn’t think.
But then it all came crashing back—who she was, why she was here, what she had worked so hard to achieve... She was a grown woman with a career, a life and a little girl who could be compromised, threatened, even destroyed by this man.
You fool. The power you feel is an illusion, a trap. He holds all the power here. He always has.
She staggered back, wrenching herself out of his embrace. She pressed a panicked hand to her head to discover the carefully styled chignon had been torn loose. The hair extension came away in her fingers—somehow a symbol of the shattered illusion.
Her breath heaved, and her heart pumped so fast, she was terrified he could hear it too.
‘I... I have to leave,’ she whispered.
But as she went to walk past him—torunpast him—he snagged her wrist. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I can’t... I can’t do this. It...it would be totally unprofessional,’ she said, clinging to any excuse, any way to get away from the yearning she’d foolishly unleashed downstairs—which was still charging through her body and telling her to take the risk. To indulge the pleasure without regrets.
‘Are you joking?’ he said. He didn’t sound annoyed, just surprised.
‘No, I’m not.’ She twisted her wrist out of his grasp, rubbing the skin where his touch burned. ‘And, FYI, I don’t write porn.’
She rushed back through the suite’s lavish living area, her body aching with unfed desire.
‘Come back here!’ he shouted.
This time, his hands captured her shoulders to drag her round, and the tremble of reaction reached right down to her soul.
‘I didn’t mean to insult you,’ he said softly.
She clasped her arms around her waist. She had to get out before the madness took her again. But somehow she couldn’t seem to move. She stood rooted to the spot as his hands caressed the bare skin, his thumb skimming over the pulse point in her neck he had devoured only moments before.
‘Yes, you did,’ she countered, knowing his intentions hardly mattered now. All that mattered was that she didn’t give in to the sensations still pulsing at her core. He had never treated her with gentleness before, only demand. Why did the softness of his touch now, that strange feeling of possession—as if both their bodies understood he had a right to hold her—only make her heart pound harder?
He let out a gruff chuckle, self-deprecating and all the more disarming for it.
‘Yeah, I guess I did.’ He lifted his hands from her shoulders, raising his palms in the universal sign of surrender. ‘But, in my defence,’ he added, his voice losing the lilt of amusement. ‘I’m a deeply cynical guy. And you’re a reporter who can make a fortune out of exposing all my secrets.’
She missed the warm weight on her bare shoulders instantly, but worse was the lurch in her chest at the candid direction of the conversation. And the thought of how he had been manipulated, his private life exposed by another woman.
She’d assumed he was a man who couldn’t be hurt, but maybe he could.
She’d kidded herself she had accepted his invitation to Paris to find out more about him. She could see now that had never been the whole truth.
She’d also been compelled by the incendiary chemistry which had derailed her life once before...and made Ruby. But even so she was still desperately curious about him.
‘Do you have a lot of secrets?’ she asked, before she could stop herself.
‘Are you asking as a reporter or a woman?’ he replied.
It was a leading question. One she was wary of answering truthfully. But even so she said, ‘As a woman.’
His lips curved in the half-smile. But this time, when the dimple appeared, it seemed genuine.
‘Yeah, I’ve got a lot of secrets.’ His thumb moved, brushing under her chin, then trailing down to trace the swell of her breast above the gown’s bodice. His touch was subtle, alluring, devastating.
Her breathing accelerated, her heart pumping desire back.
