A Ruthless Passion

Nick hated himself for those endless moments in each other’s arms. Cat understood; his regard for the man who’d given him his chance in life meant that there was no possibility of any future for them.

Not then, not ever.

Still with her hand against his mouth, Nick said harshly, ‘Cat.’

He stood up, pulling her with him, and kissed her, and again it was like being spun into some alternative reality where the only thing that counted was Nick’s mouth and his hard body against her, and the mingled scents of coffee and the musk of arousal.

And then she was free, clutching her shaking arms around her, and he was watching her with a guarded face, no expression on it at all.

‘Damn you,’ he said sardonically, ‘you still kiss like a virgin.’

‘And you,’ she hurled back, ‘still kiss as though you know exactly what you’re doing, as though it’s part of some plan.’

‘It was never my plan to want you. At first I told myself that it was that patrician little face, those impeccable manners, that background. Not much money, but birth and breeding by the century.’ His smile was cynical. ‘An untouchable princess, irresistible to a boy from the streets.’

She said shakily, ‘That’s incredibly offensive.’

‘But true.’ He turned away, reached for the coffee cup and pushed it towards her. A muscle flicked in his jaw, and leashed tension prowled through him like a baulked tiger. ‘Drink up.’

Her heart cramped. Ignoring the coffee, she started to leave. ‘This is getting us nowhere; I’d better go.’

He shrugged. ‘If you want that money, you’d better stay.’

Cat hesitated, hating this, hating him, but eventually she sat down again. She’d made herself responsible for Juana and she’d stick it out whatever it cost in pride.

Nick said with scathing honesty, ‘Can you look me in the face and tell me you don’t want me?’ He waited, and when she remained stubbornly silent he finished, ‘And that you don’t hate being imprisoned by such a degrading desire? You resent it as much as I do.’

Cat’s fingers tightened around the mug of coffee; any denial would be a lie. She lifted the cup to her mouth and drank the liquid, longing for the caffeine to kick in. She could do with some artificial support.

Nick let the silence stretch on until she said stiffly, ‘Wanting is not enough.’

He laughed without humour. ‘It’s all we’ve got, Cat.’

Nothing had changed.

All they had in common was this driving sexual urge and money, she thought distastefully, trying to banish the image of Juana’s face from her mind, because the sex would be wonderful, and the money would give the child a future.

She watched the coffee swirl as she turned the cup back and forth. Scraps of thoughts jostled and pushed in her brain, coloured by emotion’s false hues, patternless and inchoate until one gained form, tantalising her into wondering if this was a chance to make Nick see her as she really was…

Seductive, alluring, the possibility filled her mind, banishing prosaic common sense.

Nick paced over to the window and stood staring out at the park, completely at home in the room he’d earned with determination and discipline and a huge expenditure of energy. From somewhere outside a horn tooted, followed almost immediately by the clear, liquid call of a thrush.

He said remotely, ‘I’d give you fidelity, but I’d expect it too.’

Did he know Glen had been unfaithful, the first time within a year of their marriage when she’d insisted on going to university? Glen hadn’t been a good loser.

Nick turned and looked at her, amber eyes missing nothing.

‘No,’ she said aloud, making up her mind in a flash of anger. She might have developed a taste for danger, but she was worth more than this! ‘I won’t have an affair with you, Nick, so that you can get me out of your system. I’m not some kind of disease you can inoculate yourself against. Yes, I want you, but I’m not going to sleep with you to scratch an itch that won’t go away. I can do without you. I’m making a good life for myself; I’m settled and contented—’

‘Contented!’ He came across and took the mug from her, setting it down on the table. ‘Contentment is for cows!’ Eyes narrowed and hard and bright, he touched her face, long fingers stroking her cheek, easing down the line of her throat. ‘You’re so lovely,’ he said, his voice dropping several notes, ‘and when you smile you light up the world. Smile for me, Cat.’

His words melted her defences like flames on ice. Although she fought it, the beginnings of a fugitive smile curled her lips.

‘And when you say my name,’ he murmured, drawing her closer, ‘it sounds like “I want you”. I like to hear you say it, like the way you look at me when you think I can’t see you…’

He bent his head until his mouth was a fraction away from hers and she could feel the words as he said them. ‘The tiny flutter in your throat drives me crazy, and so does the colour that stains your skin, the way those exotic eyes go heavy and smoky and seductive when you look at me….’

By then she was desperate for him, her body so keenly attuned to his voice, to the faint fragrance that was his alone, to the shimmering sexual aura surrounding them, that she couldn’t have refused the kiss.

Stark self-preservation clamped her eyes shut, and once she’d blocked out his face she could summon the energy to say hoarsely, ‘I will not prostitute myself, not even to help Juana.’

‘Why not? You prostituted yourself for your mother.’

Eyes flying open in shock, she whispered, ‘I did not!’ As his brows lifted she said lamely, ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘If she hadn’t suffered from a heart complaint that meant she needed twenty-four-hour care, would you have married Glen?’ Nick’s voice was remote, his cloak of control pulled around him so that she could no longer guess at the emotions that lay beneath. He dropped his hand and stepped back, watching her with the merciless calculation of an enemy.

‘If your father hadn’t just died, leaving you penniless, would you have married Glen?’ he probed unsparingly. ‘You were alone and adrift, with a sick mother, no house, no job, and, thanks to some pretty antiquated ideas of child-rearing, no idea of how to find anything that would pay more than the most basic wage. When Glen came along like a slightly tarnished knight waving a chequebook, you saw deliverance and you couldn’t marry him fast enough.’

She said indistinctly, ‘My reasons for marrying him are none of your business.’

‘Would you have left him at the altar if I’d offered marriage, Cat?’ he asked cruelly. ‘Or perhaps you’d have found the offer of money more attractive.’

She had no answer. When he’d asked her to cancel the wedding he’d offered her nothing. The prospect of failing her mother, of betraying Glen, had filled her with appalled apprehension.

And she had really believed that she loved Glen.

‘No,’ he said with a smile that chilled her soul, ‘of course you wouldn’t have. I didn’t have half the money he had.’

In a quick, acid voice she returned, ‘None of this matters now. My mother’s dead, and Glen is too. Forget I asked for the money, all right? Forget I came to see you. Make things easier for both of us and pretend I’m still on Romit.’

Desperately she headed for the door.

But before she got there Nick caught her by the arm, swinging her around to face him, the gypsyish face taut with arrogant anger. ‘What have you spent your income from the trust on? Why are you living in a hovel with five other students? Why are you working in a backstreet restaurant to put yourself through university?’

‘You have been busy spying since I saw you last!’ She’d expected him to check out her time in Romit, but the discovery that he’d run a survey on her since she’d got back to Auckland fuelled a feverish rage.

So angry that she could have slapped his face, she grabbed his shoulders and shook him. It was like trying to move a kauri, the largest tree in the southern hemisphere. ‘Keep out of my life, Nick.’

‘You invited me back into it.’ But his voice had changed—become deeper, less furious.

The fingers around her arm eased their grip and slid up to her shoulder just as Cat realised that she’d got herself into an extremely perilous situation. Run! prudence yelled, but she couldn’t let him go. Instead her hands moulded the sleek, firm muscles across his shoulders.

Eyes glinting, he said, ‘You made the first move, Cat,’ and kissed her, and this time she went under like a stone dropped into still, deep waters.

Always previously there had been anger and a driving desperation in his kiss; this time the anger was muted, soon replaced by a hunger that roused both urgency and an avid need—a potent, ferocious combination against which she had no defences.

Sensation tore through her; in a surrender as symbolic as it was unconscious, she opened her mouth to his, shuddering with pleasure when he accepted her yielding response and plundered the innermost reaches of her mouth, his arms tightening around her as he picked her up.

His mouth branded the length of her throat, summoning a raging tempest from every part of her singing, exultant body. Suddenly the progression from desire to passion, and thence to fulfilment seemed so simple, so natural and inevitable, tempting Cat unbearably with its honeyed promise of rapture.

His face against her throat was hot, his mouth demanding, yet she had never felt so safe, she thought dazedly, registering with a violent shock the touch of his hand on her breast, confident, overpoweringly erotic.

She shivered as passion needled exquisitely through her; expectant, breathless, she waited while he cupped the gentle curves.

And she knew she had to stop it now, while there was still time.

‘Cat,’ he muttered, the word slurred and heavy.

Summoning every ounce of will-power, she put her hands on either side of his face, lifting it until she could meet his eyes. ‘No,’ she said as distinctly as she could.

And watched helplessly as icy self-control drowned the golden turbulence of his eyes. He set her on her feet and stepped back, looking down at his hands as though they had betrayed him.

Grief proved greater temptation even than desire; shivering, she stopped herself swaying towards him.

‘It won’t work,’ she said raggedly, stepping out of the danger zone. ‘I’m going home.’

‘I’ll take you.’ He ignored her headshake, picking up her bag.

Silently Cat went with him down to the car. She didn’t give him her address, and he didn’t ask; he drove straight to one of the few old houses in the inner city still divided into students’ apartments. Cheap, dilapidated, it was close to the university and the restaurant she worked in at night.

‘Did you know this place is due for demolition?’ he asked as he braked outside it.

‘Something else your spy discovered? Yes, I knew.’ His dark frustration beat at her as she slid out of the car and pulled her bag out of the back. ‘Goodbye, Nick,’ she said in a calm voice that hid the painful thudding of her heart.

He didn’t start the car until she looked out from her bedroom window.

Whenever she’d seen him she’d watched Nick secretly, imprinting on her too-susceptible heart the exact shade of his eyes, the way his lean cheek creased when he smiled, the sheer male grace with which he walked, the inborn aura of power that shimmered around him.

Yet somehow she’d managed to convince herself that her absorption meant nothing. She’d tried so hard to be a good wife that she’d lost herself, concealing the real Cat beneath the glossy surface of Glen’s wife.

How foolishly naïve she’d been. Impressed, secretly proud that someone like Glen could fall in love with her, she’d let herself be persuaded into a marriage that had been fake from the moment she’d seen Nick. Would she have abandoned Glen if Nick had made some move towards her, had followed up on the potent attraction that spun itself between them? If he’d claimed her instead of standing back that day at the hotel?

One hand clenched at her side, she turned away from the window. She’d never know.

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