The Morning After

Dear Reader,

Welcome to a new year, and a compulsive and exciting new series in Presents: FORBIDDEN! These are stories in which romance shouldn’t happen—but, luckily for us, it does!

This month, top Presents author Michelle Reid takes you to the edge with The Morning After, a tale of passion and revenge, and then delights you with the happiest of endings. Michelle is British, living in Manchester, England, and says that she often writes at her best during the early hours of the morning, when everyone else is asleep!

Enjoy our little taste of FORBIDDEN! and look out for another great title in this series next month.

Sincerely,

The Editor

The Morning After

Michelle Reid

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

ANNIE wanted to scream. She tried to scream! But every time she opened her mouth he covered it with his own.

It was horrible. A violation. She felt sick.

And it was dark in the room—very dark. The air hot and stifling, filled with the laboured breathing of their uneven struggle. Hands grappling against intrusive hands—her strangled sobs mingling with his thick, excited groans. Alien sounds, smells and textures swamping her senses to hold her trapped in a terrifyingly black void of wretched helplessness.

Suffocating—she felt as if she was suffocating. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think beyond that vile, thrusting tongue. She could feel her heart pounding in wild fear. It throbbed in her chest, her head—thundered in her ears.

Her clothes had gone. She didn’t know where or even how they had gone—but they were no longer covering her body.

Louis Alvarez was. Big, strong and repulsively naked. His greedy hands touching everywhere—everywhere.

It didn’t help that she was slightly drunk from the amount of champagne that she had swallowed. She felt weak and dizzy, her head swimming as she tossed it from side to side in an effort to evade his awful mouth.

He dealt with this by reaching out to grasp a fistful of her silken gold hair, using it to clamp her twisting head to the bed. Her whimper of pain brought his smothering mouth back onto hers.

And then the real nightmare began.

His free hand, shifting to cover one madly palpitating breast, moulding, squeezing before moving on, palm sliding over quivering flesh, eager, hungry. Fingers searching, probing, hurting until, on a sudden surge of sexual urgency, he thrust a knee between her thighs and wedged them wide apart.

Then he was there, heavy on her, his mouth dragging sideways away from hers on a rasping sigh of pleasure as his swollen manhood made contact with her warm flesh.

And at last from somewhere—from nowhere—she didn’t know where—she found the ability to scream. Her body arching away from the invading thrust of his body, her slender neck arching away from the sickening threat of his thrusting tongue—

Then a door was opening, a burst of light flooding like acid through her tortured mind. And the scream came, thick and wretched—a cry from hell, filling the air around her…

The flash bulbs began popping even before the limousine drew to a halt outside the hotel. Annie Lacey and Todd Hanson were big news at the moment. And the paparazzi were out in force.

The car stopped, a uniformed attendant stepped forward to open a door and the flash bulbs went wild, catching frame by frame the appearance of a strappy gold shoe and one long, long silk-clad female leg. Then a head appeared, breast-length, die-straight wheat-blonde hair floating around a physically perfect female face, followed by the rest of the exquisite creature, wearing nothing more than a shimmering short scrap of pure white silk that seemed held to her body only by the thin gold belt she had cinched into her narrow waist.

Annie Lacey. Tall, blonde and leggy. A lethal combination. Beautiful, with a pair of cool, cool pure blue eyes which were so disconcertingly at odds with her shockingly sensual siren’s mouth. She was the present-day super-sought-after supermodel. And super-tramp to those who believed slavishly every word printed by the tabloid Press.

They envied her, though. Love or despise her for her morals, they envied her how she looked and what those looks had brought her.

Fame. Fortune.

Gods, to a lot of people. Unreachable dreams to most. To Annie herself?

Well, she used that gorgeous mouth to smile for the cameras while those blue eyes gave nothing away of what was going on behind them. What Annie thought or felt about most things was kept a close secret—which was why the Press had such a field-day where she was concerned. They could say and print what they liked about her, safe in the knowledge that she wouldn’t retaliate.

Smile and say nothing, was her motto. Because whatever you did say would be taken down and twisted into something completely different—mainly something more likely to sell papers. And that meant lies, sex and the inevitable scandal—a lesson she had once learned the hard way.

A man—a big, blond-haired, blue-eyed man who was as handsome as she was beautiful—rounded the car to arrive at her side, and instantly the media interest intensified.

‘Mr Hanson—Mr Hanson! It is true that Annie got the Cliché contract as a direct result of her relationship with you?’

Todd’s hand settled about Annie’s waist, drawing her close as the next question hit.

‘Are you lovers, Mr Hanson?’

‘Will Susie Frazer return to the States now she’s lost both you and the Cliché contract, Mr Hanson?’

‘Is there any truth in the rumour that Miss Frazer dumped you because you refused to dump Miss Lacey?’

‘I hate you for setting us both up for this,’ Annie threw at Todd through gritted teeth.

‘Just keep smiling and ignore them,’ was all he replied, pressing her into motion towards the hotel. ‘They’re just fishing. They don’t really know anything.’

‘What, with Susie feeding them their lines?’ she drawled.

‘She’s a bitch,’ he allowed, ‘but not that big a bitch.’

‘Was that a joke?’ Annie mocked him. ‘She’s out for blood. My blood preferably.’

‘I wish you two could have become friends,’ he sighed as they stepped through the hotel doors.

‘And pigs might fly,’ was her only reply to that.

There never had been any love-loss in evidence between the two top models from the moment they’d first met. That had been just over six months ago, when Susie Frazer had come to London from her native Los Angeles to attend the British Advertising Awards.

Annie had been there with Todd that time too, he in his role as head of Hanson Publications and more specifically as representative of Cliché magazine—one of the top British monthly glossies on the present-day market—and Annie because she was featured in that month’s issue of Cliché wearing that season’s latest from the Paris shows.

Susie had taken one look at the dynamically handsome Todd Hanson and fallen like a ton of bricks—had seen that he had none other than the notorious Annie Lacey hanging on his arm and declared outright war on the spot.

‘Who does she think she is, looking at you as if you’re dirt?’ Todd had demanded furiously.

‘My reputation goes before me, darling,’ she’d drawled mockingly in reply. ‘But, you have to admit, she does look rather spectacular glaring at me like that.’

Tall and reed-thin, the brilliant flame of her gorgeous red hair forming the most wonderful halo of fire around her exquisite face, spectacular Susie certainly had looked. And despite his anger Annie had been able to tell by the sudden gleam in his eye that Todd had thought so too. So she hadn’t been that surprised to discover a few weeks later that Susie had moved into Todd’s apartment with him.

LUCKY DEVIL HANSON HAS THE PICK OF THE CROP! the tabloids had read that week, featuring accompanying photos of Todd with Annie and Todd with Susie, both women gazing adoringly into his handsome face. Annie had thought it rather amusing, but Susie hadn’t. She was spoiled, vain, jealous and possessive. And she wanted Annie cut right out of Todd’s life. The fact that she had never managed to achieve this aim made her animosity towards Annie almost palpable. So when Annie had been chosen over Susie to promote Cliché’s launch into Europe earlier this week Susie had retaliated by walking out on Todd.

Which was why Annie was here tonight with Todd, instead of Susie. He was still stinging from the way that Susie had walked out on him, and his self-esteem had hit rock-bottom. He needed a beautiful woman hanging on his arm to bolster his ego and—no vanity intended—Annie was undoubtedly it!

‘Susie will be there,’ he’d said, explaining his reason for wanting her here with him tonight. ‘She’s accused me often enough of having something going with you. So let her think she was right! It will certainly hit her where it will hurt her the most—in her over-suspicious little mind!’

It hadn’t been the best incentive that Annie had ever been offered to attend something she did not want to go to. But what the heck? she’d decided ruefully; her own reputation had been shot to death years ago when she’d been named as the other woman in the much publicised Alvarez divorce. And Annie owed Todd—owed him a lot for bringing her through that wretched ordeal a reasonably sane woman.

Like the rock she had always likened him to. Todd had stood by her right through it all, not caring if some of her dirt rubbed off on him. But, most precious of all, he’d believed her—believed her in the sight of so much damning evidence against her, and for that she would always be grateful. Grateful enough to do anything for him—even play the outright vamp if he asked it of her.

Which was exactly what she was here to do. But…

‘Just remember I’m here only as a big favour to you,’ she reminded him as they paused in the open doorway to the huge reception room to take in the glittering array of those already gathered there, who were considered best and most powerful in the advertising fraternity. ‘Once I’m sure Susie has taken note that we are a pair I’m off home. I hate these kinds of do’s.’

But, champagne glass in hand, she moved with Todd from group to group, smiling, chatting, smoothly fielding the light and sometimes not so light banter came their way, and generally giving the impression that she was thoroughly enjoying herself, while her eyes kept a sharp look-out for Susie.

It was then that she felt it—a sharp, tingling sensation in her spine that caught at her breath and made her spin quickly to search out the originator of the red-hot needles at present impaling themselves in her back.

She expected to see Susie. In fact, she had been so sure it would be Susie that it rather disconcerted her to find herself staring across the crowded room at not a red-haired witch with murderous green eyes but a man. A strange man. The most darkly attractive man she had ever encountered in her life before.

Dressed in a conventional black bow-tie and dinner suit, he stood a good head and shoulders taller than anyone else. His hair was black—an uncompromising raven-black, dead straight and shiny, scraped severely back from a lean, darkly tanned face. A riveting face. A face with eyes that seemed to be piercing right into her from beneath the smooth black brows he had lowered over them. Thin nose, straight, chiseled mouth and chin—he had the haughty look of a Spanish conquistador about him. And he possessed the neat, tight body of a dancer, slim but muscled, lithe like a dancer—a Spanish dancer, she found herself extending hectically.

Something like a small explosion of feeling took place deep inside her stomach, and hurriedly she looked away, going to wind herself closer to Todd, as though his reassuring bulk could soothe the disturbing sensation away.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Todd murmured, turning from the conversation he was having with a couple of business cronies to frown at the way she was suddenly clinging to his arm.

‘Nothing,’ she denied, feeling decidedly agitated. ‘Where’s Susie?’ she snapped with a sudden impatience. ‘I would have thought she’d have shown her face by now.’

Todd smiled—a thin, hard parody of a smile. ‘She’s over there,’ he said, nodding his head in the direction in which Annie had just seen the stranger. ‘Playing vamp to that guy from the Rouez Sands Group.’

‘Who—Josh Tulley?’

‘Mmm,’ he confirmed, hiding his jealousy behind that casual reply.

But Annie wasn’t fooled. She knew how crazy Todd was about Susie. She knew how much this was hurting him, and her eyes clouded in gentle sympathy. ‘You have been living like man and wife for the last six months, darling,’ she reminded softly. ‘Maybe she has a right to feel rejected by you over this Cliché thing.’

If Annie had been hoping that her defence of Susie would help soften his heart towards the woman he loved, it didn’t. If anything it only helped to annoy him. ‘I’m a businessman, not a pimp,’ he clipped. ‘My boardroom is not in my bedroom. She knew that before she decided to try her luck in either.’

But that is not what the papers are saying, is it? Annie contemplated heavily. And once again it would be Annie Lacey who was going to carry the mucky can. Then she was instantly disgusted with herself for worrying about her own bad press when Todd had not worried about the mud thrown at him during her fall from grace four years ago!

‘Love you,’ she murmured softly, and reached up to press a tender kiss to his cheek.

Then she almost fell over when those red-hot needles returned with a vengeance. They prickled her spine, raising the fine, silken hairs on the back of her neck, drying her mouth, tightening tiny muscles around her lungs so that she found breathing at all an effort.

She must have actually stumbled because suddenly Todd exclaimed, ‘What the hell—?’ He made a grab to steady her, his blue eyes narrowing into a puzzled frown as he peered down into her unusually flushed face. ‘Are you tipsy?’ he demanded, sounding almost shocked.

It was a shock she well understood. Todd knew as well as Annie did that she had not consumed more than half a glass of anything alcoholic in any one evening in over four years.

Not since the Alvarez affair, in fact.

She shuddered on the name. ‘No. I just feel a bit flushed, that’s all.’ Hamming it up, she began fanning herself with a hand. ‘It’s so damned hot in here. Oh, look! There’s Lissa!’ she cried, wanting to divert him. Why, she wasn’t sure. ‘I’ll leave you to your boring businessmen and go and have a chat. Is Susie still in evidence?’

Todd glanced over Annie’s shoulder then away again swiftly. ‘Yes,’ he said, and she could tell by the sudden tensing of his jaw that he hadn’t liked what he’d seen.

‘Then I want a kiss,’ Annie commanded, reaching up to wind her arms around his neck.

He grinned, relaxing again, and gave it.

‘Take that, you bitch,’ she murmured to the unseen Susie as they drew apart.

Todd shook his head with a wry smile of appreciation for the act that she was putting on for him. ‘You,’ he murmured, ‘are a dangerous little witch, Annie Lacey.’

‘Because I love you and don’t mind showing it?’ she questioned innocently.

‘No,’ he chuckled. ‘Because you love me one way but enjoy presenting it in another. Now, stop laying it on with a trowel and go and talk to Lissa.’

He gave her a light tap on her rear to send her on her way and she fluttered her lashes at him as she went, his laughter following behind her.

The sound was like manna from heaven to Annie, who hadn’t heard him laugh like that in days. And she decided it was worth all the speculative looks that she was now receiving from those around them who had witnessed their little staged scene just to know that he had got his sense of humour back.

And that included the dark, brooding look that she was receiving from one man in particular, she noted on a sudden return of that hot breathlessness.

He was now standing on the other side of the room—though how he’d got there that quickly through this crush Annie didn’t know.

Her heart skipped a beat.

That look was very proprietorial.

Who did he think he was, looking at her like that?

Her chin came up, her famous, cool blue eyes challenging him outright.

He smiled, his chiselled mouth twisting wryly, and he gave a small shrug of one broad shoulder as if to say, I have no right but—what the hell?

Arrogant devil! With a toss of her beautiful hair she spun away and went to join her agent. But right through the next half-hour she was acutely aware of him, what he was doing and who he was talking to.

And even more acutely aware of every time his glance came her way.

It was weird, oddly threatening yet disturbingly intimate.

Todd joined her, and after a short while they moved off through the crush, eyes with varying expressions following their slow progress as they paused several times to speak to people they knew. Some envied Todd Hanson the delicious woman curved to his side, and some envied her the attractive man she was with. But few could deny that they complemented each other perfectly—she with her long, softly rounded, very feminine body, he with his tightly packed, muscled frame, both with their fair-skinned, blond-haired, aggravatingly spectacular looks.

They ended up in another room where a buffet had been laid out. It was the usual kind of spread expected at these functions—finger food, high on calories and low on appetite satisfaction. Todd loaded up a plate with Annie’s help, then they found a spot against a wall to share their spread, the plate full of food balanced between them on the flat of Todd’s palm.

It all looked very cosy, very intimate, with Todd feeding Annie her favourite devilled prawns while she held a chicken drumstick up for him to bite into. But the conversation between them was far from cosy.

‘Well, did you get to speak to her?’ Annie asked him bluntly.

‘She collared me.’ Todd shrugged offhandedly. ‘It wasn’t the other way around.’

‘After waiting until I was safely out of the way, of course. Bite—you’ve missed a tasty bit there…’ He bit, sharp white teeth slicing easily into succulent chicken. ‘So, what did she have to say?’

Another shrug. ‘Nothing worth repeating,’ he dismissed.

Which meant, Annie surmised, that Susie had spent the time she’d had alone with him slaying Annie’s character. He fed her a mushroom-filled canapé and she chewed on it thoughtfully for a while, then said firmly, ‘All right, tell me what you said to her, then.’

For a moment his eyes twinkled, wry amusement putting life into the pure blue irises. ‘Just like that,’ he murmured ruefully. ‘She could just have been enquiring about your health, you know.’

‘And we both know she was not,’ Annie drawled.

He huffed out a short laugh. ‘Do you have any false illusions about yourself at all, Annie?’ he asked curiously.

‘None that I know of.’ She pouted, then, like him, shrugged a slender shoulder. ‘They wouldn’t be much use to me if I did have them, would they?’ She was referring to the fact that people believed what they were conditioned to believe, and the Alvarez affair had done the conditioning on her character four years ago.

His blue eyes clouded at her candid honesty about herself, a grim kind of sympathy replacing the moment’s amusement. ‘I wish…’ he began, but she stopped him by placing sticky fingers over his lips.

‘No,’ she said, her eyes suddenly dark and sombre. ‘No wishes. No heart-searching or self-recriminations. They serve no useful purpose. And we know what we are to each other, no matter what everyone else wants to believe.’

‘I love you,’ he murmured, and kissed the tips of her fingers where they lay lightly against his mouth.

‘Now that,’ she decided, ‘has just earned you the right to use me whenever you want to. Business or pleasure, my love. I am at your service!’

A sudden movement on the very periphery of her vision had her bead twisting in that direction just in time to catch sight of her stranger turning away from them, and that odd feeling went chasing down her spine again.

‘Have you any idea who that man is?’ she asked Todd.

‘Which one?’ he prompted, glancing in the direction that she was looking, but already the stranger had disappeared through the door which led into the main function room.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She turned back to face Todd. ‘He’s gone.’ And she made a play of cleaning her sticky fingers on the damp towels provided, aware that Todd was frowning at her, wondering why she’d felt driven to remark on the person at all. He knew that it wasn’t like her; she usually showed a distinct lack of interest in the male sex in general. So her sudden interest in one man in particular intrigued him. But just when he was going to quiz her further a colleague of his joined them, and the moment was lost.

A fact for which Annie was thankful, because she didn’t think that she could give Todd a reason why the stranger was bothering her as much as he was. He was impertinent, certainly. The way he had been watching her all evening made him that. And arrogant too, because he didn’t even bother to look away when she caught him doing it!

But…

She had no answer to her ‘but’. And on a sudden burst of restlessness she excused herself from Todd and his companion with the excuse that she was going to the bathroom.

She began threading her way through the crowd towards the main foyer, a tall, graceful mover with the kind of figure that was now back in fashion—slender but curvy, with high, firm breasts, a narrow waist and sensually rounded hips.

Being so blonde meant that the white and gold combination of her outfit suited her, the silk clinging sensually as she walked, advertising the distinct lack of underwear beneath it. But although she was well aware of the admiring glances that she was receiving she acknowledged few of them, smiling only at people she knew but giving them no chance to waylay her.

The foyer was almost as busy as the function rooms, with people milling about or just standing in small groups chatting, and Annie paused by the doorway, her blue gaze searching for the direction of the ladies’ room. She spied it way across on the other side of the thickly carpeted foyer, but had barely taken a small step in that direction when she caught a flashing glimpse of flamered hair and sighed when she realised that Susie was going in the same direction.

In no mood for a cat-fight in the Ladies, she watched Susie disappear from view, then turned, feeling a bit at a loss as to what to do next and wondering if she dared just walk out of here without telling Todd.

She’d had enough now and wanted to go home. The tall dark stranger had unsettled her. And the fact that Todd had already had his confrontation with Susie, and that Susie was completely aware of whom Todd was here with, made her reasons for being here at all redundant.

And, to be honest, her bed beckoned. In her line of business early nights were a fact of life, and her body clock was telling her that she was usually tucked up and fast asleep by now.

Quite how it happened she didn’t know, but all of a sudden a noisy group came bursting out of the room she’d just left, forcing her to take a quick step back out of their way—which brought her hard up against the person standing behind her.

She turned quickly to apologise—only to stiffen on a fiercely indrawn breath as something icy cold and very wet landed against her chest…!