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Because something had changed.
In a world where she wasn’t allowed to keep her own secrets, she had one.
Her night with him had been a forbidden erotic salute to her DNA. To the part of herself that she couldn’t allow. And she didn’t want to give it any more freedom than one night, those few hours. Otherwise satisfying her own needs, her own desire, might consume her.
The way it had consumed her mother.
‘How did you find me?’ she asked, ignoring the desire ripping through her to askwhyhe’d found her.
She’d left no traces of Flora Bick. She’d checked in to the hotel under her birth name and she’d left Flora Campbell behind in London.
And yet here he was.
The presence of him filled the stillness. The quiet. And it was loud, demanding her attention. She couldn’t stop looking at him and remembering the choices she had made with him.
She suppressed the shiver threatening to crawl across her skin and clenched her fists tighter. Afraid that she’d reach out and touch him. Test the reality of him in the light of day.
‘The way I find anything,’ he answered, slicing through her thoughts and dragging her gaze back to his.
He stepped towards her, shortening the space between them, stealing the air she was trying to inhale and replacing it with something visceral. Something new, somethingpossessive, that reached across the distance between them.
‘I hunt.’
A helpless sound left her lips. ‘I’m not an animal,’ she said, because it terrified her.Excitedher. His words hit her stomach in rush of need. Ignited an instant hunger inside her to be claimed.Found.‘You can’t hunt human beings.’
‘And yet here I am,’ he corrected her. ‘Having huntedyou.’
He’d been a ghost in her life...reminding her of her past, that she was an addict’s daughter. Reminding her of how easily she’d given in to her compulsions. And here he was now. Reminding her of the kissing, the touching, thefreedomshe’d felt in his arms. How she’d acted no better than an animal driven by need.
But she was not her biological mother. She might be susceptible to addiction, but she could resist, couldn’t she? She had to. She wouldn’t give in to her body’s demands again. She would control her impulses. This instant and all-consuming pull to touch him could and would be held at bay.
‘I should go back inside,’ she said.
He placed a hand on her hip. Gently. But she was rooted to the spot by the heat radiating from his palm, infiltrating the layers of clothes covering her skin.
He swallowed thickly, the taut lines in his throat stretching. ‘Do not run from me again.’
It was a command, but a pleading note punctuated it.
Flora couldn’t do anything but plant her feet to the ground. The danger was standing right in front of her, touching her, but she couldn’t shrug off his hold on her body because his fingers on her jean-clad hip weren’t what was holding her in place. It was the intensity in his eyes.
‘I didn’t run the first time,’ she lied, because she couldn’t confess the truth. ‘I walked straight out through the front door of the hotel.’
He pulled his hand away. ‘Without saying goodbye?’
Shame gripped her. Quietly, she’d slipped from his room and gone back to her own. She’d collected the folder containing the redacted version of her life and then she’d run all the way home. From bus to train. City to country. From field to farm. Ready to fall back into line. Obey the rules. Forget everything she’d learnt in London.
She’d locked her time in London away...justified her reckless actions as being just one night. One slip from grace.
She wouldn’t slip again.
‘Why would I say goodbye when we didn’t say hello?’
‘We shared—’
‘A night. A moment,’ she interrupted. ‘And you’re not following the rules.’
‘Rules?’
