Pride After Her Fall

‘You’re welcome,’ he said just as softly.

Lorelei felt herself drift towards him and suddenly Nash was there, in her space, and the atmosphere between them was on fire.

‘Come on,’ was all he said, and she allowed him to take her hand. She knew what he meant.

* * *

He put her in his civilian car, drove the highway just on the limit.

Lorelei didn’t ask him where he was taking her. She was too busy asking herself what she thought she was doing.

He’d barely touched her but her body was literally humming, and the tension in the car was doing her head in.

What was he thinking? Where was this going? Did it really matter?

He’d made it pretty clear he was in charge.

She watched the capable pull and push of his big hand on the gears, his long, strong arm, the cut of musculature running under the high sleeve of his T-shirt, the faint press of his chest as he breathed in and out, the way his jaw settled with precision as he concentrated on his driving. He was driving fast, but he was driving safely. He had made her feel safe since the moment she met him.

They were coming up to the turn-off.

‘Your place or mine?’

It was the first time he’d spoken.

It was a question she couldn’t hide behind, pretending this wasn’t about sex. I came to the track to find you, to let you know I was available to you...

This never happened to her. Never. She was always cautious. She didn’t meet a man and climb into his car and go home with him... Her breath hitched because she realised they’d come to a stop at the turn-off and she still hadn’t answered him.

Nash cupped her chin, lowered his mouth to hers. Kissed her so sweetly she wanted to cling to this moment.

He did let her go. To decide for her.

‘My place. It’s closer.’

CHAPTER NINE

IT WAS the longest drive known to man, although practically Nash knew it was barely twenty-five minutes.

Lorelei’s soft, sexy eyes on him driving were about as close to actually being skin to skin without taking their clothes off.

Her quiet bothered him, though.

Was she thinking about Massena? Did he need to go there, ask those questions?

He didn’t share.

He was very, very possessive.

Okay, up until now that hadn’t been the case with other women, but it appeared to be the case with this woman.

He’d been up all night thinking about her, visualising her with another man’s hand on her waist, another man seeing her home. It was unreasonable. He’d blown her off. He’d been the one to call a halt. Everything he knew about her meant this was playing with fire.

The traffic in town was heavy. The light was leaving the sky and the boulevards were twinkling.

Nash shot the Veyron in and out of snags until they were mercifully prowling into the garage under his apartment complex.

Lorelei’s chest was visibly rising and falling as they sank into the spotlit gloom, the darkness making the space between them more intimate and strangely tense. The excitement and adrenalin rush of the track had been infiltrated by reality. Nash remembered the things he’d said to her, virtually accusing her of being a media-whore, and yet here she was, despite all of that.

‘About my car—’ she said suddenly, her voice low and husky.

‘All taken care of.’

‘I know, but—’

‘Why bother your head about those things?’ He cut her off. ‘It’s nothing—a trifle.’

He could sense in her the need to say more, but all of a sudden she just subsided, looking down at her hands in her lap.

‘The flowers were lovely,’ she said instead.

Nash suspected she was trying to tell him something, but he didn’t want to hear it. This wasn’t about him fixing things for her in her no doubt chaotic life. Nor her eminently female desire to turn their liaison into something prettified with flowers and romantic gestures. He was here for one purpose and one purpose only: to work through this unholy desire to have this woman any way he could get her. All. Night. Long. They’d deal with the morning and where they went from there tomorrow.

For a guy who liked to plan, he was certainly enjoying making it up as he went along.

Which somehow was making this hotter.

‘This is where you live?’ Lorelei said a little breathlessly as they pulled up.