Far From Perfect (8 page)

I think I’m in hell.

Nick was wracked by a turmoil of feelings. For one, he wanted to grab her and shake her over the tales she was telling about her erstwhile boyfriend. Lydia had told him that was going nowhere. For another, he wanted to reach across, take her hand and stroke it gently. He wanted to charge round the accursed table that separated them, envelop her in his arms and tell her everything would be all right and that he would look after both her and her near-bankrupt father for as long as they wanted and needed him. It was a physical pain, the thought she might feel worried or sad or unsure of either her future or her father’s. She ought to be safe and secure and cherished forever and ever as long as she lived.

Maledizione
! What was he thinking? He could never offer her those assurances.

All right, he could take away her father’s money worries with the stroke of a pen, something he’d already put measures in place to do, regardless of the success or otherwise of the engagement plan. But those other things? The long-term commitment to one woman, the absolute safety and the cherishing. No. Those he could not offer. It wasn’t in his blood.

In a grim flashing moment, he relived the shouting and crying he’d heard as a child, his mother and father arguing with savage bitterness. Those arguments had driven his mother to drink and pills and his father into the arms of other women.

Marriage to a Lisitano man was poisonous, even when there was love there—perhaps especially when there was love there—and it was a deadly chalice that he would never force on any woman. Least of all Anna. To drive her to the tragic end his mother had endured was unthinkable. A death decreed accidental, but which even at a tender age, he’d known in his heart was suicide.

“Nick, are you even listening to me?”

Anna’s sudden demand made Nick realize the terrible events of his childhood had taken him away from the problems right at hand.

“Of course,” he shot back, the dark memories making his voice harsher than he’d intended, the loss still flooding his mind after all these years. “I trust you’ll be tactful and gentle when the time comes. As will I. But my father’s recovery right now is my main concern, and I won’t allow anything to get in the way of that.”

“Not even the fact I’m as good as engaged to another man?”

Again the stubborn lie about Johnson. Caught on the raw, it angered him.

“And yet you responded to me when I kissed you.”

His voice remained cool even if inside, his tumultuous emotions confused and scalded him. Anguish, guilt, long-standing frustrations, all careened around the central, most recent memory, the feel of Anna’s velvet-soft lips parting beneath his. The imagined sensation tore at him, and the sexual hunger that had temporarily subsided reasserted itself with gut-twisting intensity.

How dare she go on and on, claiming to care for some insipid boyfriend when she’d participated so uninhibitedly in that kiss? Even now, though there was anger in her eyes, his sexual radar told him she was completely attuned to the incredible chemistry between them.

“You took me by surprise,” she replied, the blush of rosy pink across her cheeks undermining her protest. She was holding her poise, just about, but beneath the surface she was whirling in the same maelstrom he was. Anger, confusion, the baggage of the past, the issues of the present…but most of all desire, a force of life that denied all negatives.

Stop lying! Stop avoiding the issue!

He didn’t know whether it was her he was accusing, or himself. He only knew he wanted her to admit that she wanted
more
than nonentities like Johnson could ever give her. Anna was volcanic and passionate—
Dio
, how he knew that!—and she needed a passionate man with hot red blood in his veins to satisfy her and keep her happy. Granted, he couldn’t offer her long-term prospects, the true marriage for both love and sexual compatibility that she really needed. But a brief affair between them, loaded with intense sex and relaxed good times, might exorcise both their respective demons and allow Anna to seek the right long-term relationship eventually.

For her own welfare, he had to break up this ridiculous half-hearted attachment she claimed to have for Martin Johnson, and the sooner he did it, the better.

Why don’t you speak?

The tension was unbearable. Every drip of the tap, every tick of the clock, every faint traffic sound from the unsleeping metropolis outside seemed to accuse her of being a liar. As did Nick’s intense, unwavering blue stare.

What was going on behind those incredible eyes? Why didn’t he just accuse her of avoiding the truth? Because heaven knew she
was
avoiding it more desperately than she’d ever avoided anything in her life. She’d responded to Nick because he was still the man she most desired above all men, still the man she should desire least for the sake of the safety of her heart.

He’s not for you. He never will be
, she told herself stringently.
Your body is just stupid and uncontrollable, and it won’t listen to reason. You’re just letting yourself be beguiled by a beautiful face and the physique of a classical god.

“I took you by surprise? Oh, I think not, Anna.”

His eyes flicked from her face to the way she was fidgeting first with her teacup, then with the tablecloth, then with the sugar tongs. She stilled her hands, realizing she was giving everything away to him so easily.

“You were ready for that kiss,” he persisted, a subtle note of triumph coloring his voice. “You were anticipating it. It was
exactly
what you wanted.”

“Don’t be ludicrous.”

Her heart was fluttering. She could feel an arc of high tension building in the air between them. Fighting to hold on to her purpose, she kept her voice steady. “And you’re just trying to muddy the issue now too. To distract me with all this BS about kisses, because you
know
you’ve done something reprehensible and you’re trying to bamboozle me into going along with what you want.”

She expected him to protest, to claim again that he was only acting in Carlo’s interest. Placing her hands on the table, she made to stand, push back her chair and get away from him.

But before she could, he’d leant across the table and put both his bigger, stronger hands over hers, pinning her in place.

“The kiss
is
an issue, Anna.” As he came to his feet, he inclined across the table, the cups and the cloth towards her. “It proves that you want me.” He paused, his rapier glance settling momentarily on her lips and making them feel as if they’d been licked by fire, “And that I want you.”

Anna couldn’t move. Theoretically, she could have pulled away, but in every way that mattered, he’d immobilized her. She couldn’t look into his eyes—they’d break her apart if she did, crack her right open and reveal her every last secret to him.

But looking at his mouth was worse.

Just to see those sculpted lips was to feel them upon hers. Pressing, bewitching, tasting, controlling. Unconsciously, she licked her own lips in panic, then burnt with shame when he laughed softly and wickedly.

“Stop it!” Managing to break free of his spell at last, she straightened up, almost knocking over her chair. “How can you say you want me? You didn’t want me four years ago. Not really. You left me in no doubt whatsoever about that.” She edged away, knowing she should run, run like the wind, but still unable to summon the larger action.

Moving with that strange, phenomenal speed of his—the diametric opposite of his customary watchful stillness—Nick shot around the table and in front of her.

She stepped back.

He stepped forward.

She stepped back and back and back until she felt the wall behind her, no retreat. Nick matched every pace until he was so close that she could see the night stubble on his skin, smell his elusive cologne and the faint and even more fugitive odor that was purely and savagely man.

His hands settled on her shoulders, fingertips curling, gripping lightly but unrelentingly.

“It’s not that I didn’t want you,” he murmured low, his breath warm against her temple as he sought to press a single light kiss in her hair. “Never believe that I didn’t want you, Anna.” Another kiss, even more delicate, on the line of her brow. “It’s just that I knew that I shouldn’t have had you. Not then. Not like that. You were too young and too trusting.”

“That’s ridiculous. I was twenty, for God’s sake. I’ve got friends who were married at that age, even with children. And even if I was virgin, I was an adult.”

“I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you,” Nick persisted, steely for a moment, as if she hadn’t even spoken.

Anna felt as if she were going to collapse but for Nick’s strong hands upon her. “And now?” she heard herself saying, as if from a great distance, “Do you think it’s okay to take advantage of me now?”

“Now things are different. It’s not taking advantage of you. It’s what you need,” he growled softly, then brought his mouth down on hers with a singular authority.

I should shake him off
, she thought faintly, amazed how insubstantial her outrage at his highhandedness felt.
I should wriggle free, get away, do anything but succumb.

But she couldn’t.

Nick’s devilish tongue was in her mouth and she was lost, lost, lost. Protest, good sense, self-preservation, everything but the feel, the taste, the power of Nick and his beautiful mouth had as good as vaporized into nothingness. She put up her hands to slide her arms around him and pull him closer, but he prevented it. Instead, his own hands went quickly to work, unfastening her sash, then parting the panels of her robe. With the thick velour out of the way, and just his layer of silk and hers of brushed cotton between them, he pressed the full length of his imperious body against hers and made her know him.

His erection was like a knot of heated stone, jutting against her belly, and she knew that he’d be able to feel hard puckered tips of her breasts against his chest. Pure longing almost made her faint. For four interminable years this was what her body had cried out for, and she gasped and moaned aloud for it now. In a helpless female instinct, she rocked her hips.

Nick laughed deep in his throat, and even though she should have been appalled, and fought him for his profound male arrogance, she couldn’t. In fact it only seemed to fuel her flame.

When he freed her mouth her head tipped back against the wall and she moaned again as he dealt swiftly with the buttons at the neck of her nightshirt. Her shoulder bared, he pressed his lips against her naked throat. His tongue, hot and moist, moved delicately over the soft skin there, and once again her pelvis jerked and moved against him.

Long, graceful hands roved over her body, scorching her through the cotton cloth. And when his mouth claimed hers once more, opening her lips with a crushing, confounding pressure, she felt him pluck at the nightshirt’s hem and slide it swiftly and deftly upwards.

Her plundered mouth tried vainly to form the word “no”…but it was only going through the motions, an empty gesture. Her heart, her body and soul were screaming “Yes! Yes! Yes!” And that was the cry that Nick was hearing too.

Hot fingertips slid tantalizingly over her bottom and her hip and then spread across her inner thigh, searching, searching…and finding. A heartbeat later, he took possession of the very quick of her.

Still kissing her, still owning her lips and her tongue with his, he began to gently caress the core of her pleasure.

Nick! Oh Nick!
she cried inside, loving his touch, hungering for it after four years of arid famine.

It didn’t take long. Her need was too great, and his skills ineffable. With a ragged whimper into his mouth, she convulsed in climax.

Chapter Four

“Look, I just don’t want to talk about Nick this morning, Lyd. We’ve got a lot of work to get through and we haven’t got time to waste on
him
.”

Not to the mention the fact she didn’t want to risk her face burning as pink as a peony. Something that happened every time she thought about that scorching encounter last night. It was a sure giveaway, and Lydia would pounce on it.

Every last shred of composure shattered, she’d simply run from the kitchen like a scalded cat when Nick had finally released her from his arms. She’d been too mortified and too confused even to speak, much less make any sense.

How could she have let him touch her like that? And yet, in her heart, and in her still-tingling body, she knew it had been exactly what she’d wanted. What she’d invited, goddamn her libido.

But the truth was still unpalatable. As was her cowardice. Unable to face anybody, she’d been out of the house at the crack of dawn, without breakfast or even coffee.

By six thirty, bleary eyed from less than two hours sleep, and halfway down an early morning Starbucks, she’d been at her desk, sifting through a pile of CVs from prospective applicants. Not that her judgment was really up to it. A serial axe murderer or a porn star could probably have slipped past her at the moment.

And now, unsurprisingly, Lydia was demanding all the dirt from last night. Anna had half expected the older woman to know most of it already, at least the bits that were fit for public consumption, but it seemed that neither Nick nor her father had yet broadcast any word of the engagement.

But why not?

Nick had every reason to make things public immediately, and she couldn’t see her father being able to contain the news of his dearest wish come true for very long.

“Something happened. I know it,” Lydia persisted, looking disgustingly fresh and unaffected by the amount of champagne she’d consumed the previous evening. “There’s still chemistry between the two of you. Even a blind man in blinkers can see that. And chemistry will out, my sweet. Always. Just you believe it,” she finished triumphantly.

“That’s bullshit, Lyd.” Anna strained every nerve to project an airy, unconcerned good humor. “Okay, so Nick’s staying at Deverill Square, but that’s it. I didn’t even see him after the party. And I haven’t seen him since.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire!