The Alpha Male

‘I wrote to you,’ she exclaimed. ‘I know I did.’

‘I never received a word.’ His eyes were hard.

Penny shrugged. ‘Maybe it got lost.’

‘You’re sure you wrote to me?’

‘Ryan, I had just recovered from a brain inflammation. I was scarcely in my right mind. The doctors couldn’t even tell me whether I was going to have permanent brain damage or not!’

‘And do you have any brain damage?’ he asked, watching her over the rim of his whisky glass.

‘What do you care?’ she retorted.

‘I care a great deal. So tell me the truth.’

‘I had to take anticonvulsant medication to prevent seizures. For a while.’

His penetrating grey eyes assessed her. ‘For a while?’

‘I didn’t like the side-effects. So I stopped taking it.’

‘The doctors must have been concerned, surely.’

‘I didn’t tell them.’

‘Was that wise?’

‘It was my decision. I felt much better the moment I stopped the medication. And nothing has gone wrong since.’

His gaze stayed on her for a long, assessing moment, then moved from her to the paintings, dimly visible in the firelight. ‘But the experience changed you.’

‘It was a bad experience. And now I don’t want to discuss it any further.’

‘But I need to know everything, Penny.’

‘That’s too bad.’

‘You have to understand,’ he said evenly, ‘that the last words you spoke to me were a threat to abort our child—’

‘Oh, is that it?’ she cut in. ‘You’re still wondering about that? Whether I am an evil, calculating, vicious woman, ready to commit any bloodthirsty act to get back at you.’

‘Of course you aren’t any of those things.’

‘Then why are you so suspicious? Are you so afraid that I’m really a monster?’

‘I know you’re not a monster,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘I wouldn’t love you so much if you were.’

His words made her heart flip over like a hooked fish. ‘Ryan, don’t.’

‘But even if you were a monster,’ he went on, ‘I would still love you. Helplessly and completely. I can’t help loving you, you see. I was born to do it. When you love like that, it’s probably not important to know anything about the one you love. It doesn’t matter anyway, as you’ve just said. But somehow, I can’t help wanting to find out.’

Her hands were trembling as she drained the whisky. ‘Then I shall take great pleasure in keeping that knowledge from you,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘You can just keep wondering whether I’m a liar and maybe worse.’

He had not touched the whisky with his lips yet. Now he tossed the contents of his glass into the fire with a flick of his wrist. The whisky flared into hot green and blue flames, while the ice cubes hissed and evaporated on the embers.

‘Do you know what it’s like to love someone, Penny?’ he asked. ‘I thought you did, but I must have been wrong.’

She had flinched at the blazing whisky in the hearth. The coloured flames died down now, with a hot reek of vaporised alcohol. ‘You were wrong,’ she said.

‘It’s a pity. So you don’t know what it’s like to desire another person with such intensity that their body becomes a whole world to you. A world whose landscape you live in, whose tastes and smells you yearn for, every waking minute. A world you can never forget, no matter how much time passes, no matter how much distance comes between, no matter how many sad things happen.’

The firelight was dancing in his eyes, and her gaze was drawn inexorably to his as he went on, his voice husky and low.

‘And you don’t know what it’s like to ache for another person’s tenderness—and not to find it. To look for a face you love so much it hurts—and not see it. To yearn for a voice that you can no longer hear.’

‘That’s not love,’ she said unsteadily. ‘That’s obsession.’

‘Then I’m obsessed,’ he said. ‘What’s the difference?’

‘Obsession is more dangerous,’ she replied.

He shook his dark head. ‘Only to me. Not to you.’

‘You’re dangerous to me, Ryan. That’s why I had to get away from you.’

‘You were too young to understand then,’ he replied. He reached out and drew his fingertips slowly down her cheek. His touch was like velvet, but she shuddered in reaction. ‘Now you’ve matured. You’ve been through tragedy and danger. You have grown into yourself. We’re ready for each other now.’

‘You’re mistaken!’

His warm hand cupped the back of her neck and drew her face to his gently. Penny felt everything she had achieved over the last year start to sink into treacherous quicksand as her mouth approached his. She felt his breath on her lips, and closed her eyes.

‘Ryan, I don’t want this!’

‘I think you do.’ His mouth closed over hers.

For a moment it was as though she were drowning. And then her mind was flooded by passionate memories. They had been lovers once, such wonderful lovers.

It had been so long.

Desire rose in her with a force that could not be denied. She locked her arms around his strong neck and kissed him back, her body arching to his.

After a moment, the two of them slid to the floor in front of the fire, still locked in their embrace. The heat of the flames licked at them, igniting them still further. Ryan pulled at her blouse and Penny heard buttons snap off with the urgency of his need.

Still kissing, whispering one another’s names, they undressed each other with clumsy haste. When she was naked, he pushed her onto her back and stared down at her with devouring eyes.

The blaze of the fire made tiger-stripes across his magnificent naked chest. He was like a great cat, brooding over her, and like a cat he touched her skin with his nose and drew her scent deep into his nostrils.

‘You always smell so wonderful. Your skin is like rose petals.’

‘A rose with thorns.’ But though she uttered the warning, she was responding to him. This was insanity, worse than madness, because she was colluding with her own downfall.

He stroked the curving softness of her belly. She shuddered at his sensual caress. ‘You will always be mine, Penny,’ he whispered. ‘Nobody else’s. Mine alone.’

He kissed her nipples gently. The silky disks ruckled in his mouth, their hard tips pushing against his tongue with unabashed desire. He sucked the eager peaks, one after another, and Penny whimpered his name softly.

He gazed down at her, his eyes heavy with desire. ‘I’ve missed you so much. I thought I had lost you forever!’

Her naked body was like alabaster in the firelight. Her hips were fuller than her narrow waist would have implied, and he stroked the curves with the fingers of an artist touching an exquisite vessel.

‘Your hips were made for love, my darling,’ he whispered. ‘For bearing children. I’m so sorry you lost our child.’

‘How could you think I would throw away my baby?’ she demanded, raising herself on her elbow. ‘How can you say you love me, if you think that?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘This morning I felt as though you had stabbed a dagger into my heart.’

She felt the scalding tears slide down her cheeks. They splashed onto her nipples, shining wet on her skin. ‘Why did you come?’

For an answer, he sealed her mouth with his own. It was a kiss as hot as her tears, filled with passion and desire. His hands caressed her naked body, moulding the tender curves of her breasts hungrily, sliding down between her thighs to cup the nest of soft curls there.

She responded with a rush of desire that overwhelmed her.

‘Have you been with anyone else since you left me?’ he asked her, looking into her eyes.

‘No,’ she confessed. ‘Have you?’

‘No. So we don’t need to go to the clinic for a clean bill of health before we do this…’

She kissed him to stop him saying any more.

Ryan’s tongue was in her mouth, seeking her own, demanding a response. She felt his fingers encounter the melting wetness of her own desire. With gentle, expert movements of his fingers, he brought her to the very edge of her climax in no more than a few seconds. She cried out against his mouth. His own urgency matched hers. As though unable to resist any longer, he mounted her.

Penny cried out again as she felt the swollen length of his manhood between her thighs—a feeling so familiar, so thrilling, so achingly beautiful. She locked her arms around his neck and looked up into his eyes. Ryan was panting as though he had run a mile, his eyes no longer cold or hard, but glowing with passion.

She raised her hips, her thighs lifting to hold his taut, muscular waist.

The invitation was unmistakable. With a soft, purring sound, Ryan lowered his body so that his erect manhood caressed the wet petals of her sex. Penny moaned, her eyes half closing. He slid himself to and fro across the most sensitive zones of her body, arousing her unbearably.

She had been alone for so long, locked in her own misery. Now he was back, and deep inside her. Penny had not known that there was so much need in her, so much emptiness aching to be filled. So much tenderness aching to be given.

She dug her fingers into his powerful shoulders, demanding that he enter her; but it was not until she was already starting to climax that he finally thrust slowly and deeply into her body.

Ecstasy flooded her whole being. She felt herself arching against him, calling his name inarticulately. He filled her so completely, each movement bringing new waves of pleasure and fulfilment, as though her soul was stretching and expanding.

And at last he reached his own vertex and crushed her in his arms, covering her face with burning kisses.

Slowly, like leaves settling to earth after a gale, normality returned. They slid into an exhausted tangle by the fireside.

‘Now that I’ve found you, I will never let you go.’ He pulled her head onto his chest and cradled her there, the way he used to do, long ago.

They lay in silence for a while, listening to the crackling of the flames. Then he spoke.

‘I almost lost you forever, and I didn’t even know. You’re not safe to be out on your own. Why won’t you let me cherish you for the rest of your life?’

‘Because I need to live it for myself,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to live your life for you, sweet girl. I just want to be next to you.’

‘You don’t. You want to swallow me up.’ This was getting perilously close to the sort of arguments they’d had in London. ‘And you couldn’t have stopped me from getting encephalitis, anyway.’

‘I would have made sure you got the best treatment, the best doctors in the world.’

‘Oh, I know that, Ryan. If you could, you would have had the illness instead of me, wouldn’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘But I needed to have that illness for myself, my love. It was part of my life, part of my destiny, for good or for bad. To take it from me would have been to cheat me.’

‘I don’t agree with that,’ he said. ‘Avoiding misfortune is sensible. You don’t have to run to it with open arms. You’re too much of a pessimist.’

‘A fatalist,’ she corrected.

‘Tell me the name of the hospital you were admitted to in Exeter.’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I would like to speak to the doctors who treated you.’

She felt icy cold, and then burning hot. ‘So you can check the hospital records? To see if what I’ve told you about the miscarriage is true?’

There was enough strong feeling in those words to make him frown. ‘Have I offended you?’

‘No.’ She pushed away from him and sat up, her slender body silhouetted against the firelight. ‘As a matter of fact, you’ve just proved that you’re the heartless bastard I always knew you were.’

He cocked his head at her. ‘I’m the heartless one? I know I have a heart, because you broke it this morning, Penny. That was the last news I expected to hear.’

‘I’m sorry, Ryan, but it was far worse for me, believe me.’

‘Are you going to give me the name of the hospital?’

‘So you can try and obtain my medical records? No, Ryan, I’m not. If you choose not to believe my simple word, then nothing else really matters, does it?’

‘I suppose not,’ he said in a strange voice.

‘I think you’d better go now.’ She was tying her hair back into a pony-tail, turning her face away from him so he wouldn’t see the tears pouring down her cheeks.

‘I’d rather stay,’ he said, touching her naked shoulder.

Penny shook her head. ‘You got what you wanted. Go now.’

‘I want all of you,’ he said, caressing her shoulder. ‘I’ll never be happy until I have all of you.’

‘Why not be content with what you’ve had?’ She wiped her tears away clumsily. ‘You’ve proved I’m still a fool. You can go back to London now and forget me forever.’

He was silent for a while before answering. ‘You were never this cold, this hard,’ he said at last.

‘As you said, I’ve changed. I used to be soft as putty. But not any more. I’ve learned to fight for myself at last.’

His arms slid around her, strong and male. ‘I’ll be back.’ She felt him kiss the nape of her neck. ‘Sweet dreams, Penny.’

Her eyes were so full of tears that the firelight was no more than a dancing orange blur that dazzled and hurt her brain. But she kept staring at it while she listened to him dress…and long after she heard the door close and his sports car drive away.

CHAPTER FOUR

SHE had given Miles Clampett the key to the workshop, and he was putting the finishing touches to the door when she arrived the next morning. Despite the bitter weather—it had snowed overnight, and the world had gone white and silent—he was whistling cheerfully.

‘You look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,’ he grinned. ‘You must have had some lavender under your pillow.’

‘What?’ she asked suspiciously. Miles was a notorious snoop, and she wondered what he was talking about.

‘Us country folk,’ he said, putting on a Farmer Giles accent, ‘we puts lavender under our pillows to get a good night’s sleep.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ she said, stepping over a pile of shavings to get inside.

‘You don’t need to. I’m sure your gentleman friend knows how to ease your tensions.’ He winked. ‘Saw his car outside your cottage last night. And smoke coming from the chimney. Cosy.’

She didn’t need Miles to remind her of last night’s folly. The memory was burned into her brain as though with a red-hot branding iron. In any case, it was too early in the morning to exchange repartee with Miles.

She went inside, ignoring him.

The wisdom of last night was, at best, dubious. But however tangled her emotions were, her body evidently felt no regrets. The lingering melancholy in her system seemed to have been burned away. Her heart was beating a little faster and the blood in her veins was defying the snowy weather to make her skin flushed and glowing.

She glanced at herself in the mirror that hung in their tiny bathroom. Those roses in her cheeks had been what had caused Miles to snigger when he’d seen her. There had been a definite transformation.

She forced her thoughts away from Ryan. There was no time for introspection. She already knew that it was going to be another busy day.

The day after tomorrow was Saturday, and she had not one, but two weddings. Both were big weddings, too, meaning not just bouquets and buttonholes for the wedding parties, but churches to do as well. They would have to co-opt Tara. Luckily Tara, who was saving up to go to Australia, needed the money and never minded doing extra work.

Their business was really prospering. Hard work had never frightened Penny, and she was prepared to fight for her success.

She had no sooner started work when the phone rang. She picked it up with a hello, and was greeted by a husky, all-too-familiar voice.

‘I’m sorry last night ended on a bad note. That was not the way I had planned it.’

She felt her nipples tighten in response to his voice. ‘I didn’t realise you’d planned it, Ryan,’ she retorted, ‘but I suppose I should have guessed.’

‘I put that badly. I should have said, that wasn’t the way I’d dreamed of it.’

‘Well, I’m sorry I disappointed you.’

Ryan chuckled softly. ‘Stop trying to pick holes in everything I say. Last night was wonderful. I’ve ached for you for so long. It was heaven to hold you, to kiss you…I only meant to apologise for offending you at the end. You took my words the wrong way.’

‘Did I?’

‘Penny, you still don’t understand me. Sometimes I wonder if you ever will.’

‘You’re right,’ she replied. ‘I don’t understand you, Ryan. I don’t understand why you’ve come looking for me. The fact that you’ve taken the trouble to track me down shows that you don’t understand me, either. Or that you simply don’t care.’

His voice softened. ‘Wasn’t last night wonderful for you? I know it was. And I know that this morning your blood is tingling, just like mine. You feel alive for the first time since you left me. Isn’t that true?’

She felt an awkward resentment at his accuracy. ‘Sex is a completely different thing from love. Sex can be wonderful between total strangers.’

‘Oh?’ There was a different note in his voice now. ‘You know this from experience?’

‘That doesn’t concern you,’ she replied smartly. ‘I’m very busy, Ryan. Was there anything else?’

‘I want to see you tomorrow night.’

‘No!’

‘I’m back in London,’ he went on, ignoring her protest. ‘I have business here until tomorrow. I want you to have dinner with me at Northcote tomorrow night. You can advise me on how to furnish the place—it’s still empty.’

‘I keep telling you, but you won’t listen—we have nothing to say to each other!’

‘And I have some things of yours,’ he concluded smoothly. ‘When you ran out on me in London, you left half your stuff behind. Photographs of your parents, letters, the jewellery I gave you.’

‘I don’t want the jewellery,’ she assured him. ‘Please take it back.’

‘Well, there’s a beautiful Adam fireplace at Northcote,’ he said. ‘I’ll make a nice big blaze, and throw everything on it, shall I?’

‘No! I want the photographs!’

‘Then come and get them,’ he said succinctly. ‘Tomorrow night at seven.’

‘Ryan—’

The line had clicked dead in her ear.

She slammed the phone down with a growl of frustration.

‘So who is he?’ Miles Clampett asked through a mouthful of nails. He had sauntered in, and was leaning against the door jamb with his usual smirk. ‘An old flame, obviously.’

‘Have you been eavesdropping?’ she demanded.

‘Not half,’ he admitted, taking the nails out of his mouth. ‘But then, you were shouting so loud I could hear you in the mews. Come on, Penny, we’re old friends. Who is he?’

‘His name’s Ryan Wolfe,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I knew him in London.’

‘What’s he do for a living? Rob banks?’

‘More or less. But not at gun-point. He’s a financier in the movie business. He puts together projects for films.’

Miles looked impressed. ‘What kind of films?’

‘Anything that interests him. Short films, long films, documentaries, serious films, commercial blockbusters. Whatever he thinks is going to work. He brings together consortiums of investors and introduces them to the creative people.’

Miles whistled. ‘Looks like he’s successful.’

She shrugged. ‘He’s very good at what he does. Not all his projects make money. Sometimes he does things because he believes in the talent of the people involved, even though he knows it won’t be a huge commercial success. But generally, he comes out of each project considerably ahead of the game.’

Miles was examining the nails in his hand. ‘And you and him? You had a big scene together in London?’

‘We knew each other.’

‘That much is obvious, darling. In the biblical sense, and all other senses. So what went wrong between two such beautiful people?’

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