Except her damn chin was quivering.
Luke hesitated, the roar of his heated blood and his own aching need almost, almost winning out. ‘Aurelie—’
He saw uncertainty flicker in her eyes, shadows on water, and then she reached up to grab him by the lapels of his suit; he was still completely dressed.
‘It’s too late for second thoughts,’ she said, and as she kissed him, a hungry, open-mouthed kiss, he had to agree that it just might be.
He kissed her back, desire for her surging over him in a tidal wave, drowning out anything but that all-consuming need, and he felt her fumble with the zip of his trousers.
‘Aurelie...’ He groaned her name, felt her fingers slide around him. He pushed aside the lacy scrap of her underwear, stroked the silkiness of her thigh. He slid his fingers higher, kissed her deeper, his body pulsing with need, aching with want. Yet even as his hands roamed over her, teasing and finding, a part of his brain started to buzz.
Distantly he realised she’d stopped responding. Her arms had fallen away from him and she was lying tensely beneath him, stiff and straight.
She let out a shudder that could have been a sob or a sigh, and Luke pulled back to look down at her.
Her eyes were scrunched shut, her breathing ragged, her whole body radiating tension. She looked, he thought with a savage twist of self-loathing, as if she were being tortured.
Swearing, Luke rolled off her. His body ached with unfulfilment and his mind seethed with regret. He’d known this was a mistake.
He raked a hand through his sweat-dampened hair, let out a shuddering breath. ‘What happened?’ he asked in a low voice, but Aurelie didn’t answer. Silently she slid off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. Luke heard the door shut and he threw an arm over his eyes. He didn’t know what had just happened, but he was pretty sure it was his fault.
From behind the closed door he heard her moving around, a cupboard opening and closing. Seconds ticked by, then minutes. Unease crawled through him, mingling with the virulent regret and even shame he felt. He hated locked doors. Hated that damning silence, the helplessness he felt on the other side, the creeping sense that something wasn’t right. Something was very, very wrong.
He got up from the bed, pulled up his trousers and buckled his belt, then headed over to the door.
‘Aurelie?’ No answer. His unease intensified. ‘Aurelie,’ he said again and opened the door.
As soon as he saw her Luke swore.
She stood in front of the sink, one arm outstretched, a fully loaded syringe in the other. Acting only on instinct, Luke knocked the syringe hard out of her hand and it went clattering to the floor.
Aurelie stilled, her face expressionless. ‘Well, that was a waste,’ she finally said, her voice a drawl, and bent to pick up the syringe.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
She eyed him sardonically. ‘I think the more important question is, what do you think I’m doing?’
He stared at her, confusion, fury and shame all rushing through him in a scalding river. This woman drove him insane.
Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t? He’d said he would. ‘It looks,’ he said as evenly as he could, ‘like you’re shooting yourself up with some kind of drug.’
Her lips curved in that way he knew and hated. Mockery. Armour. ‘You get a gold star,’ she said as she swabbed off the syringe with a cotton pad and some rubbing alcohol. ‘That’s exactly what I’m doing.’
And he watched as she carefully injected the syringe into the fleshy part of her upper arm.
Luke felt his hands clench into fists at his sides. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on here?’
She put the syringe away in a little black cosmetic bag. Luke glimpsed a few clear phials inside before she zipped it up and put it away. She gave a small, tired sigh. ‘Don’t worry, Bryant. It’s only insulin.’
She walked past him back into the bedroom, and Luke turned around to stare at her. ‘Insulin? You have diabetes?’
‘Bingo.’ She reached for a fuzzy bathrobe hanging on the back of the door and put it on. Sitting on the edge of the bed, swallowed up by fleece, she looked young and vulnerable and so very alone.