Cat looked away from him, scared in case he saw how hurt she was. He was the first man she had ever wanted to give herself to and he had rejected her. But it wasn’t just the rejection that hurt—it was the way he had spoken to her as if she were … less than nothing. And yet his caresses had been so tenderly provocative, his kisses had tasted as if they meant something. How could she have been so stupid as to imagine he might actually have feelings for her?
‘What I meant to say in a very clumsy way was that the passion between us is so intense that it would be almost a sin not to savour it at leisure.’
She tried to close her emotions, shut out the power his gently coaxing tone had over her senses. ‘The only sin would be if I allowed you to touch me again!’
Nicholas smiled to himself—ah, now, this emotion was one he understood. ‘I’ve hurt your pride.’
‘You have not!’ She glared at him. ‘I just can’t believe that I allowed this to go as far as it did. We are supposed to be discussing business plans, not … not having a … a quick …’ She couldn’t bring herself to refer to it the way he had. ‘Anyway, you know what I mean.’
He smiled. ‘Yes, I know what you mean. And we will discuss our business over dinner and then I will take you to bed.’
‘You will not!’
He laughed. ‘But it is inevitable, Catherine.’ As he spoke, he straightened her dress, allowing his hand to run lightly over the top of her breast, feeling her instant response to him. ‘You see? We’ll stay overnight at the hotel.’ His voice was cool. It wasn’t a request—it was a demand.
Before she could say anything else, he leaned closer and captured her lips in a slow-burning, sensual kiss that made her whole body turn over with longing—the feeling blew her mind. She still wanted him; in fact, if anything, the hunger she felt inside was sharpened.
She couldn’t look at him as he pulled away; all her life she’d had no problem in exercising restraint and now, when she needed it most, the ability seemed to have completely vanished.
The aircraft gave a jolt as it hit some more turbulence.
‘We’ll be landing soon. We should return to our seats,’ Nicholas said coolly. He watched as she ran a smoothing hand down over her dress and then reached to pick up the flimsy lacy briefs that were on the floor.
They were ripped and beyond use and, with embarrassment, she was forced to step out of them.
Nicholas watched as she reached to pick them up. ‘You won’t need those, anyway.’ He calmly took them from her and tossed them in the wastepaper bin beside the desk. ‘I don’t want you to wear underwear tonight. I want to know I can touch you—whenever I might please.’
‘You really are the most arrogant and.’ she searched desperately for adjectives to describe him ‘.egotistical man I have ever met!’
He laughed. ‘But you still want me.’ The gleam of self-assurance in his tone made her bite down on her lip so hard that she could taste blood.
‘No, I don’t! I don’t want you to touch me ever again!’
He touched her face lightly and even the soft caress brought forcibly home the fact that she was lying. He was right—she did still want him. Flinching away from him, she returned to her seat, aware that Nicholas was calmly returning her briefcase into the locker.
A limousine met them at the airport. Cat sat as far away as possible from Nicholas as it swept them away down a narrow country road. She stared out at the dark landscape and tried to get the turmoil inside her under some control. Winning the account for Goldstein was what mattered, she told herself furiously. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with that. What had happened—or nearly happened—between them on the journey here meant nothing.
She bit down on her lip and tried not to think about how she had felt when she was in his arms, how she had begged him to make love to her. What worried her most was that bizarre sense of how right it had felt to be held by him—and the feeling of hurt when he had pulled away so cavalierly. Cat had always sworn that a man would never use her the way her father had used her mother.
Early on in her teenage years she remembered that she had questioned her father about his affair with Julia. Had asked him bluntly if her mother had known about it.
‘Of course she did.’ He had shrugged. ‘She put up with it because she wanted to—because she wanted me.’
The words had stayed with her. Her mother’s situation was a salutary lesson on how important it was to stay in control, never let your guard down.
‘Cat?’ Nicholas’s voice brought her out of her reverie and she realized the car had pulled to a halt down by the edge of a ferry terminal. ‘We have to take a boat from here.’
‘Fine.’ Gathering her briefcase up, she stepped out into the warmth of the evening air.
Nicholas watched as she walked ahead of him down on to a wooden jetty. She seemed coolly composed and he knew she was making a determined effort to erect her barriers and retreat from him. He had to admit he was impressed by how quickly she had been able to do that. In all honesty he still felt as if he needed to take a very cold shower.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted a woman so desperately and it amazed him that he could feel this level of attraction for a woman who was a McKenzie—cunning and fraudulent.
They stood in silence on the pontoon. It was a clear night and a full moon shimmered down over the water, casting it with a silvery glow. Nicholas noticed how it also held Cat as if in a spotlight, highlighting the luscious curves of her figure and turning her hair to the colour of spun gold, her skin to porcelain. As if sensing his gaze she glanced over at him, her eyes jewel-bright, seeming too large, too intense for the delicate face. He sensed anger first in the blaze of her look—but then something else—a poignancy that hit him like a blazing arrow. She didn’t look like someone who was cunning and fraudulent; she looked—pure—like a girl afraid to trust, afraid of her emotions.
Then, with a sweep of long dark eyelashes, the look was gone. A trick of the light, he told himself sharply. But the protective feelings the illusion had roused were slow to recede and that made him angry with himself. He couldn’t allow himself to get sidetracked and deceived by her beauty and by the fact that he wanted her. What she looked like on the outside and who she really was were two entirely different things.
She put up barriers to assert a rigid control over her emotions. He couldn’t quite work out why she did that or what drove her. Maybe just a natural need to be focused on business—maybe just a determination to be as tough and ruthless as the rest of her family. Yes, probably the latter.