The Irresistible Tycoon

His thighs were hard against hers, the image of his sexuality stamped forcefully on her soft belly, and Kim could feel his heart slamming against his ribcage like a sledge-hammer as he allowed the kiss to deepen into an intimate assault on her senses that was almost like a consummation in itself.

And then, slowly, she felt the embrace change, his hands continuing to stroke and pet her as they moved to the small of her back but with a control that restrained even as it pleasured.

She raised dazed eyes to his and the silver gaze was waiting for her, his voice rough and not quite steady as he said, ‘Melody is upstairs,’ and then, when he could see she was still too bemused and disorientated to understand, ‘Another minute and I wouldn’t be able to stop. Okay? You do something to me, Kim. Something mind-blowing.’

‘Do I?’ she asked faintly, aware the towel had fallen as her hair tumbled free.

She raised a trembling hand to push back the heavy fall of silk from her face as she spoke, and as she flung back the shining, thick curtain the robe fell fully open, revealing her slender, honey-tinted, rounded curves to Lucas’s hungry eyes.

With a wordless exclamation Lucas pulled her to his chest again and kissed her hard on the lips, his mouth urgent and expressing the desire that still had Kim weak and shaky. ‘It’d be good between us—you know that, don’t you?’ he whispered huskily. ‘Say it, tell me you know it too.’

Yes, it would be good,

incredible, but what about when it ended? Kim asked herself silently. How did one cope in the aftermath of a nuclear missile exploding everything that was safe and familiar to smithereens?

She had never wanted this. She had never wanted to fall in love again. And then she froze, her face turning as white as a sheet as the truth she had been trying to fight for weeks refused to be ignored any longer. She loved Lucas. She loved him.

‘Kim?’ He had been watching her closely and his voice was terse. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ All the desire and excitement his love-making had induced was gone and she felt as cold as ice.

‘You look like someone has just kicked you in the teeth so don’t tell me nothing,’ Lucas said as evenly as he could, struggling for calmness.

‘I said nothing is the matter, so nothing is the matter,’ she said numbly, struggling out of his arms with a strength that took him by surprise. ‘Just leave me alone, Lucas.’

‘Leave you alone?’ he said incredulously.

‘Yes.’ She was crying and screaming inside but her voice was actually cool, she thought amazedly. ‘I want you to leave, now.’

‘Oh, no—oh, no, sugar.’ There was a raw determination in his voice that was even stronger than the anger. ‘No way. We’ve come a long way since October and I’m sure as hell not going backwards. You talk to me.’

‘You can’t make me do anything.’ Her chin was sticking right out but the fear and defiance in her face was all at odds with what he was asking. Lucas stared at her, recognising that this opposition had its roots in something much more deep than their conversation that morning. And, for all her aggression, she looked about as old as Melody right at this moment.

His anger collapsed. ‘No, you’re right,’ he said quietly, ‘but only because I don’t and wouldn’t operate like that. Brute force or any sort of blackmail is not my style, Kim. But nevertheless we are going to talk. And do you know why?’

She stared at him, her eyes wide and enormous in the lint paleness of her face.

‘Because I love you,’ he said softly.

‘No!’ It brought a response but not the one he had hoped for. Lucas felt as though ice-cold water had been thrown at him but he didn’t betray it by the flicker of an eyelash.

‘Yes,’ he said coolly. ‘I’ve been around enough to know the real thing when it happens, Kim. And just for the record I’ve never said that to another woman, not even in the most…intimate times.’

She jerked her head, her eyes wild as she went for the jugular in an effort to make him leave. ‘And there have been plenty of those,’ she flung at him tightly.

‘I’ve not been celibate,’ he agreed with silky smoothness, ‘but licentiousness has never held any appeal.’

‘I don’t want a relationship with you.’ She said it slowly, with a sharp little pause in between each word, and Lucas felt his anger mounting again at the sheer intractability in her face.

‘Then you’ll spell out why,’ he ground out equally slowly. ‘You owe me that at least and I’m not budging until we have that talk, Kim. Take Melody to school and then come back here. I mean it.’

She had heard that particular note in his voice too many times over the last months to doubt it, normally when he was digging his heels in over a business situation that seemed impossible and which he was determined to change. But he couldn’t change her. Not now, not ever. But she would talk to him. Perhaps when he heard it all he would realise she was serious? And she was. Oh, she was, she told herself desperately. But how was she going to tell him about the humiliations, the awfulness of it all? But she’d have to; it was the only way.

‘All right.’ It was dull, lifeless, and took away any triumph Lucas might have felt.

Melody was all skips and smiles and giggles when Kim came downstairs from getting dressed a little later, and once her daughter had said goodbye to Lucas—insisting on being lifted up into his arms so she could kiss his cheek—she gambolled out to the car like a spring lamb.

The reason for her exuberance became apparent once they were on their way to school.