‘Hello, Lana,’ Blake says from behind a desk.
His voice is still the same. Jack Daniel’s on ice. Smooth. A bite hidden somewhere in its amber depths.
A shiver runs down my spine.
He looks at me with a tight jaw and unreadable eyes. He is even more beautiful and raw than I remember. An impossibly splendid, impersonal god. But there is something different about him too. Some harshness that wasn’t there before has crept into those hooded, intensely beautiful eyes. Some faint lines about his mouth.
The shock to my system of seeing him so unexpectedly is so great I am unable to say or do anything. Robbed of all coherent thought I simply stand there slack-jawed: a fool, greedily drinking in the sight of him. For I, have spent many a long, lonely night, the heat of the desert all around me, trawling the net looking for any mention of this man.
For months nothing.
Then one day on a conspiracy site—a brief article that he got engaged to Victoria Montgomery, daughter of the fourth Earl of Hardwick. I sat back, my body in an unbelievable turmoil. Insane jealousy is like red-hot lava. It poured into my gut, carrying with it the terrible, terrible sensation that I had lost something irreplaceable.
There was a small picture of them taken at a restaurant. So grainy there was nothing to be gleaned from it, but I had stared at it for a long time that day, and gone back to it again and again. As if it held some clue to a mystery I didn’t understand. Slowly, I began to notice things, the coffee cup, his hand on the table close to, but not touching hers. Victoria’s face upturned to him, hard to tell her expression, but there was the impression of great devotion and determination. I had rubbed my seventh-month belly slowly. The circles my hand made comforted me. That life is not yours. That man is not yours. Has never been. But this baby is all yours. The molten lava cooled, formed its black crust. The fan droned on. In the next room, my mother slept, blissfully unaware of my deep sorrow.
‘Have a seat,’ he invites smoothly.
But I dare not move. My legs are pure jelly. I close and then open my mouth, but no words come. I swallow and try again. The song ‘Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing’ starts playing in my head. Shit. I am in trouble. Bad things always happen when that song starts playing in my head.
‘What are you doing here?’ My voice is barely a whisper.
‘Processing your loan application.’
‘What?’ I know my expression must be without intelligence, like those worn by beasts of burden, at the very least slow, but I cannot stop the slackness.
‘I’m here to process your loan application,’ he repeats patiently.
Sounds logical, but his words are rocks in my brain. Process my loan application? I shake my head to dislodge the rocks. ‘You don’t work here. You don’t process tiny little loans.’
‘I’m here to process yours.’
‘Why?’ And then a stupid thought occurs to me. Later I will think back and slap my forehead at my own naivety, but at that moment it fires me into action. ‘So you can turn me down? Don’t bother. I’ll show myself out,’ I say hotly, and begin to turn.
He stands. ‘Lana, wait.’
I look all the way up at him. Strange! He even seems bigger, taller.
‘I am the one in the entire banking industry most likely to extend you this loan.’
I continue to stare dully at him. How I have longed to set eyes again on this man. And how I have missed the sight of him. How truly beautiful he is.
‘Please take a seat.’
Dazed I look at the two chairs facing him, but I do not move. My thoughts trawl through treacle. Nothing makes sense.
‘How did you know I would be here today?’
‘A nifty little software that flags your name if it matches your date of birth whenever it comes up in the banking system, and, of course, the fact that you began using your account again less than a week ago.’
I can’t think straight.
‘Is all money in the Swiss account gone?’
I nod. ‘But why are you here?’ I ask, even though I already know the answer to that.
‘Same reason as before.’
‘For sex.’
‘Sex?’ he hisses. ‘God, you have no idea, have you?’
He is angry. Angrier than I have ever seen him. I stare at the transformation in disbelief. What shocks me the most is the expression on his face, drawn, hard, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles in his neck stand out. His eyebrows are two straight lines. The urbane man who fed me caviar and quietly upgraded my mother to first class is gone, vanished, replaced by this stranger with furious, mistrustful eyes. His breathing seems to grow harsher as he advances towards me. He stops a foot in front of me.
At that moment he emits tremendous power. Electricity crackles between us. He holds my gaze steadily for heart stopping moments and I see the battle in his eyes. The emotions that wage for control. I flinch as he draws even closer. Until we are inches apart and the scent of him invades my senses. Nobody else I know smells like him. The smell of old money, Rupert called it. For one unguarded instant carnal lust glitters in his eyes. Then he lowers his lids and masks it. But I have already seen it, the potency of his desire for me. It heightens my perceptions. Drenches me with wanting and lust.
I feel my skin tingle in response. My lips go numb and my throat becomes so dry words would scratch it. What could I have said anyway? Oh, Blake, I’m so sorry? I reach out a trembling hand to him.
His reaction is instant. ‘Don’t,’ he rasps, stiffening.
Shocked, I retract my hand. I have damaged him. The knowledge spreads like a dull ache in my chest. ‘Please,’ I whisper, stupidly, helplessly.
He bends his head towards my face. My eyes are riveted on those sinfully sexy lips. I remember their taste, their passion.
‘Dishonest little Lana,’ he murmurs, his breath hot against my skin. He runs his hands down the smoothness of my neck into the collar of my blouse.
I begin to tremble. He watches his own fingers slip a button out of its hole and then another. He spreads apart the joined material so my throat, chest and the lacy tops of my bra are exposed. His cold furious eyes return to mine. The breaths that escape my lips are suddenly shallow and quick. He smiles possessively. He knows the effect he has on me.
‘You were by far more when you squeezed into that little orange dress and your fuck-me shoes and went looking for money. Look at you now; you’re flapping around inside a man’s jacket. Two hundred thousand and you don’t even buy yourself a nice suit.’
He tuts. ‘And this…’ He raises his hand to my hair. ‘This ugly bun. What were you thinking of?’ he asks softly, as he plucks the pins out of my hair and drops them on the blue carpet. Bit by bit my hair falls around my shoulders. Without moving his feet he reaches back to a box of tissues on the table. Takes one and starts wiping away my lipstick. Meticulously. From the outside in. He throws the stained tissue on the ground.
‘That’s better,’ he pronounces.
I stare wordlessly up at him. He looks as if he wants to devour me. All the time we have been apart is wiped away. It is like we have never been away from each other. This is the man I belong to heart and soul. Without him I have been an empty shell going through the motions.
‘Lick your lips,’ he orders.
‘What?’ I am horrified by the cold command, and yet electrified by the sexual heat his order arouses in me. My nerves scream.
His jaw hardens; his eyes are steely. ‘You heard me.’
The tension in his body communicates itself to me. It simmers between us. Desire ripples through me. My thighs clench tight with excitement and my heart flutters like a crazy thing. This is how he is in my recurring fantasies. Demanding, possessive, taking, raging with sexual need. But the sane logical part of me doesn’t want to comply. The argument between my brain and body is pure torture. In the end, yeah right, as if there was ever any doubt, my body wins. So what if I slip and fall on that slick road. It is only for a moment.
I lick my lips slowly.
He eyes the journey my tongue undertakes avidly. ‘That’s more like it. That’s the mercenary bitch I know.’
One moment he is standing there cold and insulting, and the next he has thrust a rough hand into my hair and pulled my head back. I gasp with shock, my eyes wide, his dark. Like a desert storm he descends on my parted mouth. There is no time even to pull one’s cloak about oneself. So sudden. So unexpected. He tastes wild, the way the first drops of rain in the desert taste. Full of minerals. Bringing life to all it touches.
He kisses me, as he has never done. Roughly, painfully, violently, purposely bruising my lips, his mouth so savage that I utter a strangled, soundless cry. The change, the extent of his anger, is impossible to comprehend. He is different. There is no longing. Only an intense desire to hurt and have his revenge. This is not the same man. My actions have unleashed something uncontrollable. Something that wants to hurt me. Alarm bells go off in my head. It occurs to my fevered brain that he is ravenous, starving. Then for some strange reason an image of him eating thin, almost transparent slices of cheese on biscuits flashes into my mind. How civilized he was. Then. Before I betrayed him.
I taste the fury in his kiss: blood.
And my mind screams—this is abuse. A moan gets caught in my throat, struggles vainly, and then escapes. My hands reach up to push him away, but my palms meet the stone wall of his chest, and as if with minds of their own, push aside the lapels of his jacket and grip his shirt. I know what once lived beneath the shirt and I want it. I have always wanted this man. As if my hands splayed across his chest have communicated my total submission, the kiss changes. His tongue gentles, but demands more surrender.
The fingers grasping my hair hurt my scalp. I feel the pain vaguely, but more than that I feel myself begin to drown in that vortex of sexual desire. The violent, throbbing need between my legs finds its way into my veins and flesh. Every cell in me wants him inside me. I am on fire. One year of waiting has made me hungry for him. I want him. I want him thrusting that enormous dick of his deep inside me. For a year I have dreamed of him inside me, filling me. I know how good he can make me feel. My body tries to burrow closer to him, but I cannot get closer; his grip on my hair is relentless. Desperately I push my hips towards him towards what I know will be delicious hardness.
As if that is some silent signal he puts me casually away from me. And I am thrust back in a shitty back office in Kilburn High Street. What the fuck am I doing? He casually props himself against the desk, folds his arms across his chest and looks at me calmly.
I cannot return the insult. I am a mess. I stand there frustrated beyond belief, breathing hard, the blood pounding like an African drum in my head. My knickers are wet and between my legs I ache and pulse for him. With every weak and trembling part of me I want him to finish what he started. I want him so bad it is shocking. I clench my hands at my sides and try to get myself under control. I look at him, how cool and collected he is, as he watches me struggle to regain some measure of composure.
Then he smiles. Oh! Cocky. He shouldn’t have done that. I feel maddened by the taunting smile. How dare he? He just wanted to humiliate me.
And then I see it. Not so fast, Mr. Blake Law Barrington.
I take two steps forward, reach my hand out and put a finger on that madly beating pulse in his throat. It drums into my skin. The frantic beat is carried away by my blood up into my arm, my heart and into my brain. Years later I will remember this moment when we are connected by his beating pulse. We never break eye contact. His eyes darken. Now he knows that I know—my need may be obvious and easy to exploit, but he is not as unaffected as he pretends to be. He was testing his own limits of control, but it hasn’t been as easy as he expected.
‘Is it sex when I want to see you come apart?’ he asks bitterly.
A breath dies in my chest. I take my finger away from his throat. ‘What do you want, Blake?’
‘I want you to finish your contract.’
I drop my face into my hands. ‘I can’t,’ I whisper.
‘Why not? Because you took the money and ran, while I lay in a hospital bed.’
I take a deep breath and do not look up. I cannot look up. I cannot face the condemnation in his eyes. I did not keep my word. But I had a reason, one that he can never know about.’
‘I was cut up to start with,’ he says.
I look up, shocked, mesmerized. Contrary to his words his face is detached, calm, cold, so cold.
I shiver. ‘You were cut up?’
‘Funny thing that, but yes I was.’ He shakes his head as if in disgust. Whether it is with me, himself, or both of us, I cannot tell.
‘I thought it was just a sex thing for you,’ I murmur. My world is all wobbly. He was cut up! Why?
‘If you wanted money why didn’t you ask me?’ His voice is harsh.
‘I…’ I shake my head in defeat. I cannot redeem myself.
‘You made a serious miscalculation, didn’t you, Lana, my love. The honey pot is here.’ He pats the middle of his chest. I look at the large male hand. Something inside me twists. Once that beautiful hand with its perfectly manicured nails roamed my body, swept my legs apart and entered me. Dear God!
‘But not to worry. All is not lost.’
My gaze lifts up to his mouth. It is thin and cruel and moving.
‘You did me a favor. You opened my eyes. I see you now for what you were…are. I was blinded by you. I made the classic mistake. I fell in love with an illusion of purity and loyalty.’
I raise my face up to his. Blinded? In love? With me?
‘If I had not bought you that night you would have gone with anyone, wouldn’t you? You are not admirable. You are despicable.’
‘So why do you want me to finish the contract?’ I breathe.
‘I am like the drug addict who knows his drug is poison. He despises it, but he cannot help himself. So that we are totally clear—I detest myself. I am ashamed of my need for you. ’
‘The…The…people who paid me—’
‘They can do nothing to you. My family—‘
I interrupt. ‘What about Victoria?’
A sudden flash of anger gleams in his eyes. ‘The fact that I need the feel and taste of your skin is my shame and private hell. Don’t ever bring her into our sordid arrangement. Her name on your lips makes me feel sick. She is the one pure thing I have in my life. She stood by me through…everything.’ He pauses, his lips twisting. ‘I actually told her about you and gave her the option of leaving me, but she refused. She is wiser than me. Far wiser than I gave her credit for. She said you are just a sickness and one day I will wake up and the sickness will be gone. Until then…you owe me 42 days, Lana.’
My God, he really hates me. I close my eyes unable to look into the censure or revulsion glittering in his. He cannot know how much his angry words have cut and wounded me. I had guessed he would think badly of me, but I never imagined he would so utterly loathe me. I never realized that I had hurt him so deeply. I honestly thought it was a sex thing for him. That I was just another in a line of many. In my defense he had never given me to understand otherwise.
Now he hates me with a passion. And there is not a single thing I can do about it. Victoria has shown herself to be a formidable foe. I can never tell him what really happened. I am on very shaky ground. I will have to be very careful. I have too much to lose. I hang my head. I need to think.
‘Name your price.’
My head snaps up. ‘No,’ I hear myself say. This time my voice is very strong and sure. ‘You don’t have to pay me again. I will finish the contract.’
‘Good,’ he says, but he frowns, and for one second I see not just confusion that I refused his money, but something else—relief? No, that would be too weak an emotion for the wild thing leaping into his eyes. Then it slips away seamlessly. A seal that leaps and disappears into the blue ocean.
‘Back to business then,’ he murmurs, and, turning away from me, goes around the desk, and takes his position behind it. Back to the way I found him.