Pretty Wicked (9 page)

‘
No.’

‘
And we didn’t meet in the
coffee shop by accident?’

‘
Absolutely
not.’

‘
Why?’

‘
I wanted to take you to
lunch, apologize, and explain, but I didn’t expect you to pretend
not to recognize me.’

My breath escaped in a rush. ‘So you decided
to date me instead?’

‘
I’m in love with you,
Sky.’

The rich miracle of his desire was a mirage.
He desired Lexi. A construct. Sky was still alive underneath and
still hurting. Still wanting to be accepted. And still a freak. I
looked at him bitterly.

‘
You love me now because I
am beautiful, but underneath a trip to the hairdresser every six
weeks to turn my hair and eyebrows blonde and the countless
cosmetic surgeries, I am still Lexi, the girl you asked out to a
freak party.’

‘
Beauty has nothing to do
with it, Sky.’

‘
I’m damaged goods, Miko.
I’m not normal. I look in the mirror and I still see a freak. I
have to stop myself from making an appointment with the plastic
surgeon.’

A muscle jumped along his jaw and he winced
as if in pain. ‘If you are in any way damaged, then I’m to blame,’
he said huskily.

I yanked my hand away from his and backed
away a few steps. I felt the tears of self-pity start to swim in my
eyes. He looked at me with horror.

‘
Just go back where you
came from and leave me alone.’ Before I could turn around and flee,
his hand shot out and snagged mine.

He didn’t look smooth or charismatic then.
For the first time he looked broken. ‘Don’t, Sky,’ he whispered.
‘Don’t fight me anymore.’

‘
You hurt me,’ I
sobbed.

‘
I know. I can’t tell you
how sorry I am for what I did.’

Tears were running freely down my face. I
bit my wobbly lip. ‘You’re a son of a bitch, Miko.’

He didn’t flinch. ‘I was. I was a mean,
selfish, shallow jerk. And what I did to you was sick. But I’ve
changed, Sky. You changed me.’

‘
That’s bullshit,’ I
spat.

‘
No, it’s the truth. I was
a spoilt kid, high on adulation. Everybody wanted me. I could have
had anything I wanted. Any girl. And it made me careless and ugly.
But the truth was they were using me and I was using them. And then
you got into my car so full of truth and softness and I felt
something. Something I’d never felt. I was so shocked. I’d never
met anyone like you. And if you remember I didn’t want to go to the
party. But you looked so crushed that I had the crazy idea I could
slip you in and slip you out, and nobody would be the wiser. How
wrong I was.’

I shook my head. ‘That doesn’t make sense.
You never once tried to contact me. Why did you wait until
now?’

He frowned. ‘Didn’t your mother tell
you?’

‘
Tell me what?’

‘
I drove around looking
for you for hours but you were nowhere to be seen.’

‘
Mr. Hutton found me
walking by the side of the road and gave me a lift in his
truck.’

‘
By the time I drove to
your house later that night your mother told me you were too upset
to see me. She told me to go home and come back the next evening.
When I went back the next day, she told me you never wanted to see
me again, and closed the door in my face. Then you never came back
to school.’

‘
No, I left for England to
live with my aunt. I was so humiliated. I couldn’t go
back.’

‘
For years I tried to
forget you, but I couldn’t. No matter who I went out with I
couldn’t completely get you out of my mind. I felt something that
night in the car with you that I had never felt before or after. So
I hired a private detective who found you with great difficulty.
You’d changed your name and left the country and you looked nothing
like the picture I had given him.’

‘
What picture?’

‘
Want to see
it?’

‘
Yeah,’ I said
curiously.

He went to the kitchen table and I watched
him open his wallet and extract a small picture from it. He brought
it to me and I stared at the blurred image in disbelief. When I
raised my shocked eyes to him he shrugged.

‘
It’s not your best, but I
had nothing else, so I had to take something from a yearbook. I had
it professionally aged. This is what you should look like without
any…interventions.’

I dropped my eyes back to the picture.
Indeed that was the bespectacled me of seven years ago, but made
heavier, with jowls, and faint lines running between my cheek and
mouth.

‘
You were looking for an
ugly woman,’ I whispered.

He shook his head. ‘I was looking for you.
For that magical girl who sat in my car, tilted her chin and looked
up at the stars. No matter what you look like. I just love
you.’

I stared at him. Could anyone change that
much? Surely this couldn’t be true? In real life every man wanted a
beauty to hang on his cold arm. Rich or poor, beauty was the most
prized ingredient in a woman. But what if his tale of redemption
was true? What if he was the last true romantic on this dead earth?
What if he was truly changed?

He was staring at me. ‘People can change,
Sky. I did.’

I nodded. My heart was glowing. ‘So did
I.’

His finger tilted my chin up. ‘You’re a
Jezebel, you know? Your scent tortured me for seven years and then
I find you and you tell me you’re pregnant.’

I laughed. ‘I didn’t know how else to
explain the fact that I was swooning at your feet.’

‘
Do you know how
devastated I was when you said that?’

‘
Oh, darling. Do you know
I fooled myself into thinking I hated you? I convinced myself that
I wanted to see you suffer. But the truth was I never stopped
wanting you or loving you.’

‘
Will you forgive me for
what I did, Sky?’

‘
Oh, darling,’ I said, and
my throat ached. ‘There is nothing to forgive. I was dead inside
until you came.’

‘
I love you, Sky. I
couldn’t stop loving you even after trying for years. You’re mine
forever.’

I smiled up at my man. ‘Go on then. Show me
how much I’m yours.’

He picked me up and, carrying me in his
powerful arms, kicked the door of the bedroom open. And the
expression in his beautiful, beautiful eyes—pretty wicked!

The End

~~~~~

Books by Georgia Le
Carre

The Billionaire Banker
Series:

Owned

Forty 2 Days

Besotted

Seduce Me

Love’s Sacrifice

The series should be read
in the order shown above

Coming next…

Masquerade

~~~~~

~~~~~

One

Billie Black

‘Fucking kids,’ I swear and bury my head
under the pillow, but the irritating ringing of the doorbell
continues mercilessly. The desire to go out and throttle them is so
strong it makes me grit my teeth.

I pull myself out from under my pillow
abruptly with a frown. Hang on a minute. I no longer live in the
poor end of Kilburn, and there are no kids roaming the corridors
annoying people on Sundays here. Also, I have no debts left so it
can’t be debt collectors either. Not that those lazy fuckers will
work on Sundays.

I get out of bed and, walking barefoot to
the front door, curiously put my eye to the spy hole.

Whoa!

I draw back hastily, and press my hand to my
shocked belly. This is far worse than any debt collector. By far
worse. The bell rings again and holds. The sound is loud and
insistent. It’s not going to go away. I turn my head and look at
myself in the mirror on the wall. My hair is a spiky rat’s nest. I
pull my fingers viciously through the unruly mess, but it does not
improve. The bell goes again. Oh, fuck it! Whatever. I don’t care,
anyway. I take a deep breath, rearrange my face into one of
impatient exasperation and fling open the door.

Cor… Look at that. Tight black T-shirt
packed hard with muscles, he fills the corridor like the Incredible
Hulk, only he is all blond, and he makes little kitty clench tight
even on a Sunday. Damn this man to hell. How can anyone look this
good at this time of the morning?

He removes his finger coolly off my doorbell
and smiles a devastatingly attractive smile, before letting his
gaze, all wicked and sexy, start roving down my body. It’s like
having melted chocolate poured all over me. I want to lick myself.
Keep it together now.

‘
What do you want?’ I
demand aggressively.

‘
To fuck you
senseless.’

I don’t succeed in stifling the gasp that
rises into my mouth. The cheek of the man is astounding. Last night
he brazenly introduces me to his girlfriend, and this morning he
stands on my doorstep wanting a legover! I feel a fine rage in my
veins.

‘
Fuck off, you cheating
skunk,’ would, as Ali down the sweet shop would say, be giving him
too much face. ‘Piss off, I don’t want you to fuck me senseless,’
would be a lie. So: I nod, and move quickly to slam the door in his
lazily smiling face. With lightning speed he lays his palm firmly
against the wood and resolutely pushes his way in. I am engulfed by
the smell of his freshly showered body. Probably washing off her
smell, I think sourly. I don’t do the undignified thing and attempt
to fight against such a male show of strength. I will decimate him
with pithy wit instead.

Inside, he looks as out of place as a rhino
in a China shop.

‘
The polite thing to do
would be to offer me some tea,’ he says, one blond eyebrow
arching.

I cross my arms over my chest. ‘I’m actually
not feeling very polite at the moment.’

He flashes a pearly white grin: wolfish in
the extreme. The guy is a walking sex bomb. ‘That’s just grand,’ he
says. ‘We can be impolite together.’

Pithy wit deserts me. ‘Don’t make me punch
you in the face.’

‘
You were the best lay I
ever had.’

My eyes widen. The surge of pleasure I
experience irritates me. I pretend to laugh dryly. ‘Is that
supposed to be some sort of compliment?’

‘
Yeah, and a goddamn fine
one too.’

Before we go any further, let me first tell
you that this man is good in bed. And I mean he’s really, really
good. Like out of this world good. He butterflyed my legs and went
to work on my girly bits with the precise dedication of a Swiss
watchmaker until I nearly fainted with pleasure. And believe me,
I’m the expert in muff diving, since I have been for most of my
life a lesbian.

‘
Well, you were the worst
lay I ever had,’ I lie.

Unoffended, he laughs merrily. ‘Time to make
amends, then.’

‘
Don’t you fucking dare
come near me,’ I warn. I realize instantly that there is not enough
threat and too much desperation in my voice.

His eyes glint, dark and dirty. They make me
horribly uneasy. I’m not in charge here. We stare at each other and
the rush of sexual heat that sweeps over my body makes me feel
oddly dizzy. The memory of his touch still burns in my bones.
Unable to speak I stare foolishly at him. The truth is I’m pissed
off with this guy for not calling after he promised to, for making
me sleep with my phone for nearly a month, for confusing the hell
out of my sexuality, and for having a girlfriend who is the exact
opposite of me, but as the seconds pass, I am not sure anymore if I
am more pissed off with him or with myself for being so
pathetic.

The problem is that my pulse is racing and I
can’t think past the aching throb between my legs. I take slow
breaths as my body, the hyperaware Judas, remembers and replays the
sensation of all the hard planes, the raw silk of his skin, and the
absolute perfection of that one night we shared.

I blink. Big mistake.

He advances, his lips twitching with
amusement.

I step backwards, purely instinctive, and he
takes another step, and so do I, but in the opposite direction. A
warm flush spreads over my skin. All kinds of thoughts are running
through my brain. Uppermost: of course he’s going to get what he
came for. I can already feel his hand on my hips, and the lure of a
seriously explosive orgasm. He got me the last time through the
same fearlessness of consequences he is exhibiting now. No fear of
rejection. Such naked confidence can be mind-numbingly
seductive.