A Debt Paid in Passion

She should move back to her flat, but that circumstance was being influenced by other ones, putting a pleat in her brow.

“Was that the doctor?” he asked, startling her with a jolt of unexpected excitement because she had been certain he was in his office down the hall.

Trying to downplay the way she exploded with joyful awareness, she walked the cordless phone across the lounge to return it to its cradle.

“Indra. My neighbor.” Her skin tingled despite her internal willing of the heat to leave her cheeks. These encounters in lounges and dining rooms were unbearable.

“Did something happen? You’re frowning.”

Don’t study me, she wanted to cry. Never had she imagined she would long to go back to when she’d been one more piece of equipment in his high-tech office, but his aloof attitude had been a lot easier to deal with. Nowadays he watched her every move as though trying to read between her lines and catch her in a lie.

“Everything is fine,” she said with false nonchalance. “She was asking how long I’d be out of my flat. We always had an arrangement when I was traveling that if she had family staying, they could use my place. Her niece is arriving with her new husband and, not surprisingly, they would love the privacy.”

Awkward sexual awareness poured through her in an infuriating blush. She hadn’t been cleared for sex and Raoul had made it plain he wasn’t interested. Talking about intimacy shouldn’t cause her to simmer with responsiveness, but she became enormously conscious of his masculine silhouette—so wide across the shoulders and narrowing down to those powerful thighs. She desperately wished she could swallow back her reference to the intimate things that happened between a man and a woman.

While Raoul flicked a glance down the T-shirt and yoga pants that were snug on her still-plump body. “What did you tell her?” he asked, his voice so devoid of any hint as to his thoughts she only felt more ill at ease and anxious to disappear.

“That I wished I could help her, but I’ll need it sooner rather than later.” There. She’d drawn the line.

He met her stare with one equally as steady. “What has the doctor said?”

“Stay out of the pool for another week but short walks are fine. Sleep.” She gave him a dry look. “Apparently he’s unaware that babies are night creatures.”

He frowned. “Why didn’t you say? I can get up with Lucy.”

“What’s the point? You don’t have functioning breasts.” Again with the dirty talk. Now all she could think of was his naked, very masculine chest, layered with muscle and sprinkled with fine, springy hairs. Stop! She turned to hide her flaming face.

“I can change her and settle her back to sleep as well as you can,” he pointed out.

She tensed. He was proving himself to be the generous, involved parent she had known he would be, but after so many years without any sort of support, it was ingrained in her to do things by herself.

“I need to manage on my own,” she dismissed. “Soon I’ll have no choice. And you’re working. You need your sleep.”

“What do you call transcribing?” he asked with the irritated tone he’d taken the first time he’d found her at it. “You’re courting a setback, pushing yourself like that.” He spoke in the lofty way that made him a confident company president and a completely annoying adversary.

“I’m not overdoing it. My recovery is my priority. I know my freedom with Lucy hinges on it.” She flashed a meaningless smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t be underfoot any longer than necessary.”

That didn’t seem to reassure him. His frown deepened. Fortunately Lucy woke and Sirena had a reason to escape the intensity of his inscrutable presence.

Raoul’s perfectly functioning libido watched Sirena’s curvy behind zip from the room. He was highly attuned to the meaning behind sudden blushes and flustered disappearing acts. They were the kind of signals that provoked any man’s interest and he was already interested. Way too interested.

Back when he’d first hired Sirena, he’d seen the same little betrayals of attraction. It hadn’t meant anything to him, since women always reacted to him. He had money, worked out, dressed well and groomed daily. Sirena’s suppressed awareness had been routine.

He’d ignored it and his own sexual curiosity right up until That Day. Since then, she’d been spitting and hissing and so washed-out he’d felt like a lecher for any less than pure thoughts. Today, however, her nervously smoothing her hair and standing straighter while seeming ultraperturbed by her aroused senses was insanely seductive.

Emphasis on insane. So what if her body was recovered enough to feel a flash of chemistry? He couldn’t act on it. They were barely capable of civility. Sex would make an already complicated relationship completely unworkable.

It would be easier on his libido if she left, he acknowledged grudgingly. Her involuntary reaction had pulsed male arousal through him so strongly he was drawn taut, his erection thrusting against the confines of his pants, throbbing with imperative to hunt down the woman who had incited him and find relief in the wet depths that had welcomed him deliciously almost a year ago.

There was the problem. It had been a year, he dismissed, trying to forget the whole thing.

He remained edgy into the late hours, though, even after he had accounted for his long spell of abstinence with time spent at work and with lawyers. He’d been too busy to date. It wasn’t that he was so bewitched by one particular woman that only she would do.

Hell. He should visit the city and exercise his urges. Yes, that was the solution. He loathed the idea of Lucy moving out, so—

He paused in dousing his bedroom light, hearing Lucy start crying again. Sirena kept telling him the nights were hers, but this was silly. They shared parenting well enough through the daylight hours. She was being stubborn to prove a point that was totally lost on him.

By the time he moved down the darkened hall, Lucy was quiet again and Sirena was gently closing the nursery door. She jumped as his shadow joined hers on the wall, gasping as she swung around to confront him. visit dpg forum

Clutching her heart, she scolded in a whisper, “You scared me to death!”

“I live here,” he drawled, not the least bit scared even though his heart began to pound. She stood eye level to his naked chest, her bewildered expression burnished gold by the night-light. She was braless under a sleeveless tank and a pair of loose shorts that looked like men’s boxers, her nipples sharply peaked against light cotton.

Damn. This was the wrong kind of night sharing, but he couldn’t stop the bombardment of erotic signals that plowed into his sexual receptors. Her hair was loose and wavy. She was lightly scented from the bubble bath she’d taken earlier. Her breath hitched behind invitingly parted lips while her hungry gaze swept across his pecs, stinging him like licks from a velvet whip.

He wore loose pajama pants that drew a relaxed line across his flat abdomen, but they began to tent—

She yanked her gaze to his, embarrassed and deeply apprehensive.

And, if he wasn’t mistaken, as dazed with repressed sexual need as he was.

“It didn’t sound like she was settling,” he managed gruffly, recalling why he was here. “I was coming to take over so you could go back to bed.” Bed. It was all he could think about. They’d used a sofa that other time and for less than an hour. He wanted more. Hours. Days.

Raoul’s voice made the hairs stand up all over her body. His scent was charged and aggressive, as though he hadn’t quite made it to bed yet, while she was sleepy and befuddled. She became screamingly aware that her hair was everywhere and her thin tank and loose shorts weren’t exactly sexy lingerie. That was probably a good thing, but she secretly wished she looked attractive.

Idiot.

“She’s sleeping now,” she mumbled and sidestepped at the same time he did, almost coming up against him as he loomed before her.

It was the foyer in Oxshott again. Her startled gaze came up in time to see his focus drop to her mouth. Her heart soared and her mind blanked, just like last time.

Not again, she thought, but couldn’t move, paralyzed by attraction and wonder.

His hand came up and hesitated. The bare skin of her shoulder waited, nerve endings reaching out in anticipation. Raoul started to bend his head.

Don’t let it happen, she warned herself with anxious intensity, but her self-preservation instincts were flash-firing so rapidly she couldn’t figure out if she should retreat the wrong way down the hall, barrel through him or exit into Lucy’s room.

His big hand cradled the side of her face, tilting her mouth up to his as his mouth crashed down on hers on an aggrieved groan.

Don’t— Oh, do...

Everything about him was strong and the way his mouth covered hers, so confident and hungry, overcame her willpower. The shape of his lips fit hers perfectly. When the tip of his tongue parted her lips, she shuddered in renewal. Oh, please. She melted into him. She couldn’t help it. She knew how good it could be between them. Her body remembered the virile feel of his muscles gathering, the fullness of him inside her...

His forearm angled across her back with proprietary strength, tugging her into a soft collision that made her release a throaty cry that he swallowed. Their nightclothes were no shield. She felt everything. The hot roughness of his chest, the flat muscles of his waist under confused hands that didn’t know where to land and the fierce shape of his supremely eager erection.