‘We were talking about you,’ she bit out. ‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘Is he the reason you walk around with your heart barricaded up, sending out touch-me-not messages in the way you hold yourself, even while your eyes, your mouth—’ his eyes trailed lower, ‘—and your breasts beg me to do just the opposite?’
‘Stop it!’
But he wouldn’t stop. ‘Eliza said he died before she was born. Were you married to him, Mackenzie?’
‘No.’ She made the immediate denial without even thinking.
‘Was he going to support you and Eliza, or had the relationship gone sour?’
He kept pounding away at her, making her want to raise her hands to cover her ears. To resist the juvenile action, she clenched her hands into fists at her sides and tried to focus on the painting that was just visible if she looked over his left shoulder at the wall. An original Van Gogh if she wasn’t mistaken …
‘Talk to me, Mackenzie.’
‘No. It’s none of your business.’ She didn’t want to talk about it. His questions reminded her of how big a fool she’d been over Grayson.
‘I’m right, aren’t I? He hurt you when you were … What? All of eighteen?’ He shook his head. ‘You were still in your teens and that was years ago. Have you ever let another guy get close since then?’
He was way too close to the truth. All the raw pain and bitter disappointment was just a layer away from exposure. Grayson’s betrayal—his promise to marry her and be a father to Eliza had all been a lie. His words of love and adoration had been lies too. While Mac had tried on wedding dresses, she thought Gray was away for the weekend on business.
His last words to her had been, ‘Trust me.’
Stupidly, she had.
She’d believed he’d given up playing the field because he’d fallen deeply in love with her. She’d been full of pregnancy hormones and very young and insecure, but she’d trusted him because she believed in their love and she’d wanted a future together with Grayson and their child.
It’d all been an illusion based on lie after lie.
There’d been nothing trustworthy about Gray.
The bastard hadn’t gone away at all. A friend had seen him in London with a woman, followed them to a hotel and phoned Mac to tell her. When Mac had phoned the hotel she’d been shattered to learn he was a guest there. Her whole body had shaken as the operator put her through to his room. The phone had been picked up by a woman who’d told her Gray was in the shower.
Even then, Mac had believed it must all be a mistake.
Now, her hands unclenched and crept up each opposite arm until she hugged herself and shrank back against the awful truth she’d learnt. Her surroundings blurred. The hurtful memories coalesced as she relived the weekend that had brought her more anguish than she’d ever known.
Ditching her shopping trip, she’d jumped on the underground and walked the short distance to the hotel. From across the street, she saw Gray standing at the entrance to the hotel with a brunette. Then, her entire world had fallen apart as he’d kissed her passionately. The kiss had gone on and on until Grayson’s silver Porsche pulled up in front of them, and the hotel worker tossed him the keys.
Gutted didn’t come close to describing Mac’s sense of total betrayal. The experience had been an emotional earthquake. It had shattered her confidence, destroyed her trust and left her shaken. For a time she’d been a hollow shell. That same afternoon she knew she had to call off their wedding and plan to raise their child by herself, because she wanted nothing more to do with Grayson.
‘I see the pain in your eyes. It’s time to let it go, Mackenzie,’ Devereaux said softly.
Lost in her thoughts, his voice wrenched her back to the present.
‘You need to move on with your life, both for your sake and for Eliza’s,’ he told her with empathy. ‘Don’t clutch on to your bitterness or your pain will become hers—your lack of trust in men will influence her in her relationships in the future.’
His hand rubbing her shoulder was like a soothing, healing balm to the lacerations on her soul which still bled from time to time. Yet, his words were a stern challenge and were anchored in a disturbing truth she’d never stopped long enough to examine.
Looking up at him, an overwhelming sense of need flooded through her. A need to lean into him, to take strength from him and to obliterate her pain. Transported back in time, she was her eighteen-year-old self again—hurt, vulnerable and in desperate need of comfort and security.
‘Eliza said he died in a factory explosion.’ The words were gentle—coaxing for information, not pushing.
What Eliza had said was a half-truth. It was all Mac had revealed to her daughter.
The Sunday night of the same weekend—before Mac had even had an opportunity to vent her pain and anguish and tell Grayson just what she thought of him—police had found his body in the clothing factory he owned. There’d been an explosion and fire. The fire department had deemed the explosion was arson. The coroner’s inquest had revealed that Gray had been dead before the fire started … that he’d been murdered.
An anguished sob broke from her mouth as she relived the trauma.
‘Do you still love him?’ Devereaux asked softly.
‘No!’ The word erupted through her tight larynx. Turning away from him, she closed her eyes tightly against the tears which threatened and prayed she wouldn’t break down in front of him.
No. She didn’t love Gray. She’d only been in love with an illusion. The illusion had shattered in spectacular fashion and with it, her confidence in her own judgement had been destroyed. To know she’d placed all her faith in a man she couldn’t trust—a man who’d betrayed her—was soul-destroying. It was a blow to her confidence and she’d never recovered from it.
Every now and then Eliza would ask something about her father, and Mac would have to swallow down on her bitterness and pretend to her daughter that her father had been someone worth having fond memories of—a man worth loving. She would never reveal to Eliza that her father had been a cheating, lying bastard. Nor would she admit that his death had been anything other than accidental. Mac would keep up the strain of the pretence even though it still made her bilious.
Enough! She wouldn’t think about Gray.
How had Devereaux turned the conversation in this direction when it was she who’d come with questions?
Yet, she couldn’t even remember her questions and their discussions because his strong hands rested at her waist and drew her back against the wonderful solid wall that was his body. She hadn’t even realised how tense all her muscles had become across her shoulders and down her back, until she felt the heat of his body against hers. Then, it was impossible not to relax back into that haven of masculine strength.
His hands moved up over her arms, and massaged her shoulders. ‘I sense you’ve been to hell. Let me take you to heaven, Mackenzie,’ he murmured close to her ear before he placed kisses against her hair at the back of her head and enfolded her securely in his arms.
She drew on his strength and welcomed his comfort.
Her knees weakened and so did her resolve to maintain her barriers as she melted against him.
Gently, he turned her around to face him. One of his hands dropped to the small of her back. The other was at her chin, urging her to angle her head to look up at him.
‘If he didn’t see your worth, he’s not deserving of your tears, Mackenzie.’
Oh damn! One of the tears that blurred her vision now ran down her cheek. But, she wasn’t certain if she cried tears over Grayson. It was more a case of Devereaux’s tender concern that had moved her to tears.
‘Don’t think about him,’ he urged as he wiped the droplet away with a soft brush of the pad of his thumb.
A second later it was impossible to think about Gray. It was impossible to think coherently about anything.
‘You deserve to be happy,’ Devereaux told her. His hand smoothed against her hair, enticing her to reach out and grab happiness with him—to stop hiding behind past pain, to live in the moment and to own her decisions.
Devereaux was like a warm, blinding light, beckoning her forth from the cold shadows of past regrets.
Any reason why she shouldn’t live in the moment with this particular man emptied from her head and left a vacuum. She was incapable of any cognitive processes—only capable of feeling. Her senses sharpened and everything she felt was, oh, so acute. She was consumed by the heat radiating out of his body, the scent of freshly showered male, and the feel of his outgoing breath lightly fanning her lips as he lowered his head towards hers.
No thought. Just feeling. The words played around her head like a mantra.
She drew in an unsteady breath and closed her eyes. Without vision, she was aware of the swelling of her breasts, and the way the lacy fabric of her bra abraded her nipples as they hardened into taut nubs of need. Her body swayed towards his and her arms lifted of their own volition to allow her hands to firm over the luxuriously soft towelling of his bathrobe—a deceptively soft covering over the firm muscles which lay beneath.
A moan of longing parted her lips, and in the next second, her eyelids flew open. She caught the naked desire in his eyes as his mouth claimed possession of her lips. His yearning mirrored hers. Seeing the urgency of his passion, knowing this almost primordial need consumed him just as much as it did her, was enormously gratifying. There was an elemental connection between them that was unstoppable. Inevitable.
The kisses they’d shared three days ago had been hot. Every day they’d worked side by side, her awareness of him had intensified. Unfulfilled lust had become like a pressure cooker—simmering steadily whilst eager to reach boiling point. Now, their mutual need ignited a blazing inferno between them—a desperate, inexorable pull of attraction determined to find satisfaction.
His hands at the slight indentation of her spine, moved lower to smooth over her bottom and to press her against the firmness of his arousal. Mackenzie rejoiced in the feel of him, unconsciously rotating her hips slightly against his fullness as his mouth devoured hers and his hands caressed her through the fabric of her dress.
Out of her mind with inescapable longing which demanded immediate fulfilment, Mac arched her neck backwards as his lips broke away from hers and trailed fervently across her jaw line, to the sensitive flesh of her neck just below her ear, then lower … lower. His tongue flicked against her collarbone while his fingers worked the zip at the back of her short cocktail dress and deftly undid the hooks of her bra.
Tossed on a sea of relentless longing, Mac threaded her fingers through his hair and, as soon as her dress and bra fell away, she urged his mouth to one of her breasts. He drew her nipple into his mouth and suckled—teasingly at first then with an ecstatic ferocity which spoke of a compulsion he couldn’t deny. This was what she’d imagined, only a hundred thousand times better.
Liquid desire pooled between her thighs and she moved restlessly. Wantonly.
As if he sensed her desperation, Devereaux moved his hands again. In a few short seconds, his fingers were beneath the elasticised band of her knickers and right where she needed them to be.
Oh, yes.
His skilled fingers went to work—caressing and stroking her between little tugs and pinches at her clitoris, sending her mindless with sheer pleasure while his mouth continued to draw on her breast.
Nothing had ever felt so good.
And, just when her fingertips bit into his shoulders, he slid two fingers inside her.
Her hips bucked. Her whole body went weak, relying wholly on his arm keeping her upright while she came apart and reached her climax in spectacular fashion.
‘More?’ he asked her huskily.
Oh God, yes. ‘More,’ she moaned. Not just more. She wanted everything he could give her.
It took way too long for him to pick her up, carry her through to his bedroom and lie her down on the bed. Her only thought was that it was just as well he was naked beneath his bathrobe, because she couldn’t wait another second for him to be inside her.
‘One moment,’ he husked as she tried to pull him down on top of her.
She only just registered him reaching into his bedside drawer and withdrawing a condom.
A condom.
Pregnancy.
Eliza.
Grayson.
She sucked in a shocked, audible breath and he turned to her with a frown.
‘Mackenzie?’
‘Oh God, Dev, I can’t!’ she half sobbed as she scrambled off the bed and ran naked out the door to retrieve her clothing. When she was pulling her clothes on with all haste, she heard his voice from the doorway of his bedroom.
‘Is this still about Eliza’s father?’
She couldn’t make that confession. It shamed her that she couldn’t move beyond her former mistake—couldn’t cast Gray into the past. It also rocked her to know she was about to make the same mistake again—that she’d willingly, welcomingly and wantonly succumbed to the charms of yet another playboy. A guy who’d been in a passionate, public embrace with another woman just over an hour ago.
She couldn’t look at him when she answered and she couldn’t admit she wanted to mean far more to him than an impromptu fill-in. ‘This is about you, Dev. You’re a prince. You’re my client.’
‘And my reputation precedes me?’ he guessed.
‘Yes,’ she told him quietly. Forcing herself to work up the nerve to meet his eyes, she also found the courage to speak honestly. ‘I’m sorry. I reacted without thinking, but I can’t be another notch in your bedpost. That’s what I was to Eliza’s father, but back then I was very young and naive. I’d like to think I’ve grown up in the last ten years.’ She bit down on her lip as it wobbled, and moved her hands expressively in a gesture of appeal for his understanding—for the compassion she believed he had under his playboy exterior. ‘You talked about me moving forward for my sake and Eliza’s and I have to thank you, because you’re right. But, this … you and me … a brief night of shared lust isn’t the way forward. Moving forward would be having a loving, meaningful, respectful relationship—not jumping into bed for a quick relief of physical cravings.’
Despite her resolve to be brave and forthright, embarrassed heat scorched through her cheeks. Her physical craving had been met—partially. He must still be suffering from physical frustration and she felt as guilty as hell that she’d taken her satisfaction from him without offering him any in return. ‘I’m sorry. It’s hardly fair to leave you like this … when you didn’t …’ Oh Lord! ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen when I came here tonight.’
His expression was unreadable as he leant against the frame of the doorway, his magnificent body covered by the robe. ‘You’re not only a beautiful woman, Mackenzie, you’re honest and caring and strong. As much as I desire you, I also admire and respect you. You deserve to be loved and cherished.’
Tears scalded her eyes and she hastily wiped at them with the back of her hands and willed any others away. She was grateful for his respect and admiration—pleased he thought she was worthy of true affection—but gutted at his next statement.
‘Unfortunately, I can’t be the man you need right now.’
She wanted to argue with him—wanted to dig to the truth and demand he stop playing whatever game it was he played—wanted to tell him she’d help him overcome whatever it was that held him back from being the man she and King Gabriel believed he could be. Yet, the inner turmoil of her emotions exhausted her and sanity insisted she admit defeat for her own self-protection.
A small nod of acknowledgement was all she managed before she said, ‘Goodnight, Devereaux.’
‘Goodnight, Mackenzie.’