Girl Behind the Scandalous Reputation

She wasn’t on the pill. Why would she be?

‘I think it’s a safe time,’ she murmured automatically, trying to quell a sense of panic so she could think about when her last period had been.

He groaned and paced away from her, one hand raking the gleaming chestnut waves back from his head as if he might tear it out.

‘Look, Tristan, this was a mistake,’ she said with an airiness she didn’t feel. ‘But it’s done now so there’s no point moaning about it.’

He stopped pacing. ‘And if you’re pregnant?’

She turned from her study of an ancient Japanese wall hanging and wet her lips. ‘I’ll let you know.’

He placed his hands on his hips and she tried really hard not to stare at his muscular torso.

‘Look, if it’s all the same to you,’ she continued casting around the floor for her discarded underwear, ‘I could do without a post-mortem.’

She didn’t look at his face but she heard his sharp inhalation.

‘It’s next to the cabinet,’ he bit out, and Lily followed his line of vision to where her tiny nude-coloured thong lay crumpled in a corner. She marched over and snatched it up, balling it into her fist. No way was she going to inspect the state of it while he stood there towering over her like some Machiavellian warlord.

‘Well, I’m going to bed,’ she stated boldly, turning towards the back staircase and heading for the relative safety of her room.

He snagged her arm as she moved past him. ‘Did I hurt you?’ His voice low and rough, as if the concept was anathema to him.

Lily cleared her throat. ‘Uh, no. It was…I’m fine.’

CHAPTER TEN

FINE.

She had been going to say it was fine, Tristan thought moodily the next morning as he stared out of his kitchen window at the grey London skyline. The colour reflected his dismal mood perfectly.

But last night hadn’t been fine. It had been amazing, sensational, mind-blowing. The most intensely involved sexual experience of his life, in fact. And he hated that. Hated that he hadn’t had the wherewithal to go slow, and hated that he hadn’t been able to take her into his arms afterwards and carry her up to his bed. Make love to her again. Slowly this time. More carefully…

He released a pent-up breath and scrubbed his hand over his face, remembering how she had looked afterwards. Gloriously dishevelled. Her dress creased, her hair half up and half down where his hands had mussed it, her lips swollen from his kisses.

He could recall with bruising clarity the moment her body had sheathed his, her shocked stillness. And she had bitten him—marked him—because even though she had denied it he had hurt her. The thought made him feel sick. He should have been more gentle. Would have been if he’d known.

A virgin!

She had been a virgin, and afterwards he had been disgusted with himself for taking her with all the finesse of a rutting animal against a wall.

Damn.

If there had ever been a time he’d felt this badly he couldn’t remember it. Maybe when he’d come across her in his father’s study doing cocaine—or so he had thought at the time—with some loser she had just had sex with.

Correction: hadn’t had sex with.

Damn.

His head was a mess, and last night, after the deed was done, he’d stood in front of her like some gauche schoolboy with no idea how to fix what had just happened. Which was a first. But what could he have said? Hey, thanks. How about we use a bed next time?

And what about her response? Don’t say anything, she’d said, and, I could do without a post-mortem.

Damn.

He couldn’t have been any more shocked by her off-handedness if she’d hit him over the head with a block of wood. On some level he knew it was a defence mechanism, but it was clear she also regretted what they’d done together and that had made him feel doubly guilty.

Not that it should. She was an adult and had wanted it just as much. Things had just come to a natural head with two people available and finding themselves attracted to each other.