For Better for Worse

It had all been lies. She might have been a virgin, but she’d been no innocent. It had been an elaborate act to hide her murky past. Suddenly he felt exposed. What was he doing here?

But just then something in Kat’s stance seemed to droop and she said in a resigned voice, ‘Fine, I’ll make coffee.’

She disappeared into a tiny galley kitchen and Zafir had to admit that he knew very well why he was here—he still wanted her. Even more so after seeing her again. But questions buzzed in his brain. He put down his overcoat on the back of a worn armchair and took in the clean but colourless furnishings of the tiny space she now called home.

He’d never been in the apartment she’d shared with three other models when he’d known her before, but it had been a loft in SoHo—a long way from here.

She emerged a couple of minutes later with two steaming cups and handed one to Zafir. He noticed that she was careful not to come too close, and it made something within him snarl and snap.

She’d taken off her coat and now wore a long-sleeved jumper over the T-shirt. Even her plain clothes couldn’t hide that perfect body, though. High firm breasts. A small waist, generous hips. And legs that went on for ever…

He could still feel them, wrapped around his back, her heels digging into his buttocks as she urged him deeper, harder—

Dammit. He struggled to rein in his libido.

‘Take a seat,’ she said, with almost palpable reluctance.

Zafir took the opportunity to disguise his uncontrollable response, not welcoming it one bit. He put it down to his recent sexual drought.

She sat on a threadbare couch on the other side of a coffee table. Zafir took a sip of coffee, noting with some level of satisfaction that she hadn’t forgotten how he liked it. Strong and black. But then he frowned, noticing something. ‘Your hair is different.’

She touched a hand to the unruly knot on her head self-consciously. ‘This is my natural colour.’

Zafir felt something inside him go cold when he observed that her ‘natural colour’ was a slightly darker brown, with enticing glints of copper. Wasn’t this just more evidence of her duplicitous nature? Her hair had used to be a tawny golden colour, adding to her All-American, girl-next-door appeal, but in reality she’d made a mockery of that image.

He put down his cup. ‘So, Kat, what happened? Why did you disappear off the international modelling scene and who is Kaycee Smith?’