‘I’m giving you my notice.’ Her face was as white as a sheet but her voice was steady. ‘And I am calm.’
‘You’re giving in your notice because I asked you if you were all right?’ Lucas bit out incredulously.
‘No. Yes. I mean…’ She willed herself not to cry, forcing back the tears with superhuman effort. ‘I don’t want to work here any more.’
‘You don’t want to work for me,’ he said grimly. ‘What about Melody?’
‘What about her?’ she said, sticking her chin out. ‘I’ve paid off the last of the debts—’ thanks to his generosity ‘—and we’re solvent again. I can find a job that covers the mortgage and our bills and that’s all I want.’
‘I meant, what about me and Melody?’ he rasped tersely. ‘It might have escaped your notice but your daughter’s got pretty fond of me over the last little while. How is it going to affect her if I disappear out of her life without so much as a by your leave?’
She jerked her head back, her face blazing with a mixture of hot defiance and panic, and it was the panic that made her say the words that cut like a jagged blade. Cruel words, words she didn’t mean even as she voiced them. ‘So all this has been a ploy to get me into your bed through Melody, has it?’ she said in a stony voice that was a cover for the desperate wailing inside. ‘You would actually sink so low to use a child to get what you wanted?’
For a moment he stared at her in blank disbelief, and then she saw a rage such as she’d never seen on any human being’s face darken his countenance like a terrifying winter storm. He stepped into the small cloakroom, slamming the door behind him as his eyes shot white fire into her frightened face.
‘I’ve taken things from you I’ve never taken from any woman,’ he said with deadly intent, ‘and look where it’s got me. I thought you needed time, gentleness, like a highly strung thoroughbred that’s been abused by a moron in an effort to break its will when what it really needed was careful handling and tender persuasion. I’ve tried to show you who and what I am—I’ve bared my soul to you, Kim, and I’ve never done that to another woman. What a damn stupid fool I’ve been.’
‘Lucas, please.’ She was frightened, terrified. There was such revulsion in his eyes she thought she would die from it.
‘And all the time you’ve had me down as the type of sick individual who manipulates a kid in order to get her mother to service him,’ he growled furiously. ‘Because that’s how you think I view it, isn’t it? No finer feelings, no affair of the heart—just bodily needs that require dealing with.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Kim whispered desperately.
‘That’s exactly what you said. Well, maybe I’ll revert to type, then, eh? Give you the satisfaction of telling yourself you were right all along?’
He pulled her against him without any warning and with such savagery that her head snapped back, exposing the pure line of her neck as her face lifted to his.
The cool restraint that had always been a part of his dealings with her was gone, burnt away by the force of the grenade she had thrown at him, and as she began to struggle in his arms his dark head bent and took her mouth in a fiery kiss.
The memory of that last searing time with Graham was suddenly acutely real, but instead of a wet slimy mouth smothering her face, hard, cruel hands ravaging her body voraciously, this was Lucas. His mouth was dominant and determined but it was lighting a fire that was made up of desire, not fear or revulsion, and his mastery of her body, his strength and virility as he crushed her against him, was sending the fire flickering into every nerve and sinew.
She continued to struggle for a few moments more, confusion and whirling distress at his easy command of her senses, his conquest of her mind and body causing her to try and fight when all real protest was gone, swallowed up in the pleasure that was taking hold.
‘You want me, Kim,’ he ground out between increasingly intimate kisses. ‘You might not like that, you might not like me, but you want me nevertheless.’
His hand was cupping her head as he moulded her against him, and she could feel he was already hot and hard and brutally challenging.
‘No…’ It was feeble, humiliatingly so, and he recognised her weakness, his voice holding a quieter, almost gloating note as he said, ‘Yes, oh, yes, my cool little secretary, my elusive ice-queen.’
His hands were ruthlessly exploiting her need of him and she couldn’t resist what his hands and mouth were doing to her, arching against him as she finally gave up all efforts to lie to herself and Lucas, her fingers exploring his hard lean body as intimately as his were doing to her.
It was wild and savage and p
rimitive, a delirious longing to get closer and closer to the man she loved and satisfy their mutual need. There was no past and no future, just the close, desperate exploiting of their shared passion, and with every moment that passed, every delicious sensation that was taking her further and further away from anything she had ever known or imagined, she wanted him more.
She was vaguely aware of where she was but somehow it didn’t matter, it wasn’t real; reality was Lucas’s mouth and hands and the things he was doing to her. And then, as she felt him move her back a pace and position her against the wall, she opened her eyes wide. He was going to take her, right now, with a meeting going on next door and anyone liable to come looking for them.
The same thought must have occurred to Lucas.
The hands that were preparing to hoist her skirt upward froze, his breath laboured and ragged as he fought for control. Kim found herself looking straight into his face and the silver-grey eyes were brilliantly clear, their light burning into her brain as she watched him take raw gulps of air.
When he eased himself away from her it was slowly, giving her time to persuade her trembling legs to take her weight without the support of his arms.
He took a step backwards, raking his hair through a couple of times before adjusting the collar of his shirt and then his tie, and all the time Kim watched him with huge disbelieving eyes.
Her body was burning, aching for an assuagement only he could give, and she couldn’t believe, she just couldn’t take on board that he had stopped.
She saw his hand reach out behind him and open the cloakroom door as he turned, but even when the door began to close again and she was alone she still continued to stand in an attitude of frozen disbelief. And then she began to shake, not so much with the growing feeling of shame that was dawning as the liquid ice of her numbed emotions began to melt and trickle into her bloodstream, but with the knowledge that he was gone, that in the last resort he hadn’t wanted her, he had been able to walk away and leave her.