Georgia and Emily were so excited it was no use insisting on their normal bedtime, and so the little girls ate dinner at the elaborately festive dining table with the grown-ups, beside themselves with delight. They were almost asleep over their dessert, and when Mitchell picked them up, one on each arm, Kay went with him to tuck her daughters into bed. She was aware it was all too cosy, too intimate, but she couldn’t do a thing about it for the time being, she told herself helplessly. It wasn’t as though she had chosen to inflict them all on him, it had just…happened.
Both children were asleep as their heads touched the pillows, so worn out by all the excitement of the day and the anticipation of the morrow that they didn’t need a reminder to go straight to sleep if they wanted Father Christmas to come.
Mitchell didn’t hurry her to leave, standing with her as she watched the sleeping children for a couple of minutes. ‘You love them very much, don’t you?’ he said softly.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say, Of course I do, they are my children, but, remembering all he had said downstairs, she answered simply, ‘They’re my world.’
Mitchell expelled a quiet breath. ‘I know.’ He turned his head, lifting her face up to his with one finger in the slumbering stillness as he murmured, his tone rueful, ‘I thought it was going to be all so simple, dating you.’
‘And it isn’t?’
‘No, it damn well isn’t and you know it. You do know it, don’t you, Kay? I want you, nee
d you.’ He drew her out of the room as he spoke, shutting the door quietly behind them and then taking her into his arms on the shadowed landing. He didn’t have to tell her what he wanted, the desire was there to read in his eyes, his mouth hungry as it took hers.
Kay clung to him, her head whirling less with the after effects of the flu and more with the feel of his hard body against hers. She kissed him back; she couldn’t help it. She always kissed him back—that was the effect Mitchell Grey had on her, she thought with a thread of bitterness for just a second before it was burnt up in the liquid heat coursing through her body.
His hand was in the small of her back to steady her and she gasped as the other cupped one of her breasts, his fingers beginning a languorous rhythm on its sensitive peak that had her stifling a moan of pleasure.
Something had happened, she told herself bewilderedly. There was a release of the restraint he had shown thus far. This gentle eroticism was as deliberate as it was powerful; he was forcing her to acknowledge her own need of him in the age-old way. Little did he know she’d got there before him…
His mouth and hands had complete mastery over her quivering senses, her body melting against his as he kept up the barrage of sweet sensation, fuelling her own passion with his. She thought briefly of the times Perry had made love to her, taking her with barely a kiss beforehand and thinking only of his own pleasure. What would it be like to really be loved by Mitchell? she asked herself dazedly. To lie with him all night, to explore and stroke and kiss every inch of that hard-muscled male body and to let him do the same to her. Because he would want to; she knew he would want to. Not for Mitchell a quick, brief coupling.
He had moved, pressing her back against the wall of the landing, and she could feel his thighs hard against hers, her softness stamped with the rock-hard power of his arousal. It was heady, intoxicating, to know how much he wanted her; it made her alive to the potency of her femininity in a way she had never experienced before.
There were sounds in the hall below them, then Henry’s voice saying something to her mother as he opened the dining-room door and a faint whiff of coffee in the air. She felt Mitchell slowly draw away with a low groan of regret, his chest rising and falling with the force of his need as he straightened. ‘We have to go,’ he said huskily. ‘Unfortunately.’
‘Yes.’ She was breathing hard, her cheeks flushed and her hands trembling at the tumult of desire he had released. She hadn’t known she was capable of feeling like that, not in a hundred years, and now he wasn’t holding her any more she felt dizzily adrift.
She raised a shaking hand to her hair, stumbling slightly, and immediately his hands came out to steady her, his voice rueful as he said, ‘Damn it, I forgot you’re still far from well. You’ve only been up five minutes and I’ve practically eaten you alive. Why can’t I keep my hands off you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I do. It’s because you’re enticing, mouth-watering—’
‘Me?’ In spite of herself Kay smiled. ‘I’m not one of your gorgeous model-type females, Mitchell, as I’m only too aware. I do have mirrors in the house, you know.’
He let go of her, stepping back a pace and surveying her through eyes that were brilliantly clear in the darkness of his face. ‘One, I don’t have a harem of gorgeous model types, Kay,’ he said quietly, his voice holding the edge of irony. ‘Two, whatever you see when you look in the mirror, I see a warm and beautiful woman who is yet to be fully awakened to the power of her charm. And three, I never say anything I don’t mean.’
She stared at him, her eyes locked with his, and then he moved closer again, his thumb stroking her cheek in a caressing gesture that brought a lump to her throat. ‘Red hair that glows like fire when the light catches it, brown eyes as deep and soft as velvet, skin so delicate and fine it’s like porcelain. How can you not see all that, Kay?’
She didn’t dare believe this meant anything beyond what was for him a tried and tested seduction technique. He had told her he didn’t want commitment or anything lasting; he had been totally up front about it. Maybe if she didn’t have the twins, if she were answerable only to herself without any responsibilities, it would be different. Maybe then she would take a chance and give herself to him, hoping he would come to love her eventually, that when the time came to say goodbye he wouldn’t be able to let her go.
But she did have the twins. She couldn’t mess with their security or stability, neither did she have the luxury of being able to flirt with emotional suicide. And whatever he said, she still couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that a man like Mitchell Grey—a man who could have any woman he wanted—would be interested in someone like her for long. She was five feet five of ordinary womanhood. She had freckles, her breasts were too small and her bottom was too big, and at that certain time of the month her skin could erupt like Mount Vesuvius. Whereas he… He was perfect.
Perry had hurt her but she had picked herself up, dusted herself down and got on with life. But if Mitchell betrayed her, if she gave herself to him and then he tired of her…
She turned her head from his intent gaze, shrugging her shoulders and making her voice as light as she could. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t that what they say? And hadn’t we better go down now?’
‘Sure.’ He made no attempt to touch her. ‘But it’s only fair to let you know I never give up, Kay. I always get what I want.’
She felt more vulnerable than she’d ever felt in her life. Even after Perry had gone and she’d realised she had a pregnancy and then single parenthood to face, she hadn’t felt such a sense of desperation, but she couldn’t let him see how he had affected her. She forced herself to start walking towards the top of the stairs, tossing over her shoulder, ‘Ah, but do you always get what you deserve, Mr Grey?’
She heard him chuckle. ‘Touché, Mrs Sherwood.’
This was still just a game to him. As they began to descend the stairs she felt exhaustion sweep over her in a great wave. Thank goodness she hadn’t done what she’d wanted to do a few minutes ago and thrown herself into his arms, telling him she was his for as long as he wanted her. Madness. That was what he created in her: madness.
As they entered the dining room Kay saw her mother glance at her, and then Leonora said, consternation in her voice, ‘Darling, you’re as white as a sheet. You’ve done far too much on your first day up.’