An Obsessive Love

But nothing she did could prepare her for Dominic, because she already secretly wanted him, already secretly found herself daydreaming about him, about his kiss, his smile, his ready wit, his powerful body, and his strong, handsome, Russian face.

Determined to look attractive herself, she changed quickly into a formal trouser suit in dark green, scraped her long hair back into its cool chignon, and put a little make-up on, her hand unsteady as she applied mascara to her dark red lashes.

Then she went into the living-room, pacing like a restless, fiery gazelle, trembling inside with excitement at the thought of seeing him again.

‘What are you up to?’ Dolly, her flatmate, asked curiously.

‘Mr Thorne is coming round,’ Natasha told her non-committally, ‘to give me my visa and the details of my flight to St Petersburg.’

‘So why get all togged up to see him?’ Dolly eyed her formal suit with a frown. ‘It’s just a brief, casual visit, isn’t it?’

‘I imagine so.’

Dolly laughed at her formal words. ‘You imagine so! Honestly, you are a hoot!’

Dolly Day was exactly like her name: a beautiful blonde bombshell. She was one of those warm, naturally glamorous, naturally exciting women with tremendous personality. She had never been deeply hurt by life, and hopefully never would be.

Natasha frequently envied her as she breezed her way through life, surrounded by friends, swamped by admiring men, throwing parties and getting drunk and laughing at herself when anything went wrong, and never having a cross word for anyone.

She was the perfect friend for Natasha, who had been so bitterly hurt that she often wondered if she would ever recover, and was afraid that the answer was very probably—never.

At least while Dolly Day was with her, Natasha would feel the sunshine.

The doorbell rang.

Natasha jumped, nervous eyes flicking round as she froze in the centre of the living-room.

‘Want me to get it?’ Dolly asked with a smile.

‘No, I…’ She ran a slim hand over her smooth chignon. ‘I’ll go.’

By the time she reached the front door, her palms were sweating. She smoothed them on the legs of her trousers, took a deep breath, told herself she had nothing at all to be afraid of, and opened the front door.

His face was so powerful to her now that her heart beat with sickening speed just at the sight of him, and it was difficult to keep her cool. She wanted to kiss him. Her eyes darted with secret passion to his mouth.

‘Hi,’ he drawled coldly. ‘May I come in?’

‘Of course.’ She stepped back, cold and expressionless.

Dominic walked inside, irresistibly sexy in black jeans and black V-necked sweater, the sleeves pushed up a touch to show tanned, hair-roughened forearms, the V-neck showing his powerful chest.

Natasha’s eyes raced over his body with hot, secret longing. She closed the front door behind him, pushed her hands into the pockets of her elegant trousers, and looked up at him through dark lashes, wondering if she was in as much danger from him as she thought she was.

‘Do you have the entry visa for me?’

He towered over her, eyes hard. ‘Yes. Are we to discuss everything here in the hallway?’

‘No, please follow me.’ She led him to the dining-room along the hall, preferring to be alone with him under formal conditions. ‘May I offer you some tea or coffee?’

‘I’d rather have a shot of whisky,’ he drawled, tossing the file in his hand on to the mahogany table.

Natasha’s lashes flickered. ‘I’ll have to ask Dolly.’

‘Dolly?’ His hard mouth twisted in a sardonic smile.

‘My flatmate. If you’d like to wait here, I’ll——’

‘Can’t I meet Dolly?’ he drawled, following her out of the room. ‘I love dollies!’

Jealousy immediately struck at her vulnerable heart, and as she pushed it away she felt it come thundering back, because she suddenly realised how completely different from her Dolly was, and how much Dominic might prefer her vibrant, open warmth to Natasha’s hurt, damaged personality.

‘Of course,’ she heard her icy voice say, and walked elegantly ahead of him to the living-room, opening the door and saying tightly, ‘Dolly, Mr Thorne wanted to know if we had any whisky here?’

‘Whisky?’ Dolly turned from the bookshelf, blonde hair a lion’s mane around her pretty face. She was sexily dressed in black miniskirt and blue silk blouse. Pale pink lipstick shimmered on her luscious, smiling lips. ‘I think Bobby left a bottle here the other night.’

‘Your boyfriend?’ drawled Dominic Thorne, smiling at her with a glitter in his steel-blue eyes.

Natasha watched grimly, jealousy searing her blood.

‘Oh, hi!’ Dolly gave him a warm smile. ‘You must be Mr Thornec. I’ve heard tons about you. Come on in.’

‘Thank you.’ Dominic shot Natasha a mocking glance, as though he knew she was raging with silent jealousy, and extended a strong hand to Dolly. ‘It’s a real pleasure to meet you.’

‘And you.’ Dolly shook his hand, smiling openly. ‘Hey—are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a beer? Bobby left loads round here. He and the boys came round to watch the football.’

Dominic laughed, eyes moving admiringly over her figure. ‘You have a lot of boyfriends, then?’

‘They’re boys and they’re friends.’ Dolly laughed. ‘But that’s about it. So what’ll it be—whisky or beer?’

‘Whisky will be fine.’ He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans, shot a sidelong glance at Natasha’s tight, angry face. ‘I’ve never met two such different women sharing a flat together. Does it work well?’

‘Oh, wonderfully well.’ Dolly unearthed a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label from under a pile of magazines.

‘But you’re so bright and bubbly,’ drawled Dominic, while Natasha stood there, hating him, ‘and Natasha is so cool and mysterious.’

‘You called me tempestuous the other day,’ Natasha snapped, eyes flashing passionate, jealous green. ‘Make up your mind!’

He looked at her, a sardonic smile on his mouth. ‘Temper, temper…’ he said softly, mockingly, and his smile deepened as he watched the hot, betraying colour rush up her face.

‘Here we are!’ Dolly handed him the bottle of Johnnie Walker and a glass. ‘Not much left, I’m afraid.’

‘Thanks.’ His eyes roved over her with admiration again. ‘Where do you work, Dolly, and who—?’

‘Dolly is going out shortly,’ Natasha cut in tightly, ‘and we mustn’t keep her. She has to be ready when her boyfriend arrives.’

‘She looks stunningly ready to me,’ drawled Dominic, eyes roving with even more blatant sexual admiration over her.

‘Would you please come back to the dining-room with me, Mr Thorne?’ Natasha snapped. ‘I believe we have a lot to discuss!’

Turning on her heel, she strode angrily along the hallway, hearing Dominic say an amused goodbye to Dolly before following her, catching up with her easily on those long, muscular legs of his.

As soon as he entered the dining-room, Natasha closed the door behind him and walked elegantly to the table, hating him for flirting with Dolly and tempting her to make such a fool of herself with her pathetic, absurd and completely unjustified jealousy.

‘You said my visa had arrived…?’ Her voice was icy.

‘Yes, it has.’ He moved to the table too and sat down opposite her, watching her from underneath those heavy, Slavic eyelids.

Natasha felt suddenly uncomfortable. The gleam in those steel-blue eyes sent her pulses racing and her stomach somersaulting. She needed to know what he was thinking.

Irritably, she said, ‘Why are you just staring at me like that?’

‘Because I’m intrigued by your behaviour,’ he said softly, arching black brows. ‘First you kiss me passionately, then you reject me with icy hostility—and then you seethe with jealousy when I flirt with your flatmate.’

Scarlet colour suffused her cheeks. ‘I can assure you I did not feel remotely jealous!’

‘Hmm.’ His smile was sardonic. He toyed briefly with the empty glass in front of him, studied the whisky bottle, but did not pour himself any. Then he looked back at her, and there was a glint of mockery in his blue eyes that made her temper flare.

‘I wasn’t jealous!’

‘Did I contradict you?’

‘No.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘But I noticed a look in your eyes that made me think you——’

‘And you notice a lot about me, don’t you?’

She fell silent, lashes flickering.

‘I mean,’ he drawled lazily, ‘for a woman who feels nothing for me and doesn’t want to get involved.’

At once she looked away, heart thudding fast, realising for the first time just how clever, how shrewd, how very perceptive this man was.

‘You’re a mass of contradictions, aren’t you?’ He was watching her with those steel-blue eyes. ‘That icy, polished façade hides a very tempestuous woman. So far, I’ve seen you show blazing fury, intense passion, seething jealousy—and I’ve even seen you burst into tears. Perhaps it’ss good that you don’t want to get involved with me. If you did, I——’

‘But I don’t want to get involved with you.’ Her strange, intense green eyes flashed up with glittering hostility at him. ‘I don’t want to get involved with anyone.’

‘Apparently not,’ he murmured, watching her intently. ‘Certainly, no man at the office managed to get anywhere with you. And you don’t have a boyfriend, do you? I know, because I had you checked out, remember, and there was no mention of any man in London.’

Natasha looked at the polished surface of the table, rigid with tension, hating him for being so damned clever, afraid of where he was leading with this line of thought.

‘You’ve lived in London for four years, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said tightly.

‘And no man, in all that time?’ He clicked his tongue softly, shook his dark head, smiling like a Siberian tiger ready to pounce. ‘How do you cope with all that emotional energy? You must be like a pressure-cooker, getting ready to explode.’

She sat there silently hating him and saying nothing.

Dominic watched her, waiting for an answer.

The clock ticked softly on the mahogany mantelpiece.

‘But this is so exciting!’ Dominic said softly, eyes deadly. ‘I do love mysteries, and I feel sure you’re one of the biggest mysteries I’ve ever met. I simply must try to unravel you.’

Natasha shot him a look of ill-concealed hatred.

‘It must be something to do with your past,’ he murmured, eyes narrowing in thought. ‘But it can’t be here in London, or my agents would have found it. Therefore, it must be before you came to London. QED.’

‘Will you just go away and mind your own business?’ she said with sudden fierce dislike, because he was much too clever to be allowed to run amok through her past with those damned agents of his.

‘I was right, then,’ he said sardonically, smiling. ‘And it must be something to do with a man, or you wouldn’t now be so determined to avoid them at all costs.’

‘Will you just mind your own——?’

‘So what exactly happened to make you shy away from men? Obviously, there are a number of things that could have caused it. So let’s tick them off. After all, you know what Sherlock Holmes maintained: eliminate the impossible, and whatever you are left with, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. So let’s start with the possibility of some kind of sexual attack.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

‘Well, I did consider sexual violence when I first met you, but not for very long because you’re the one who kissed me—and very passionately, too.’

Her eyes flared. ‘You know why I kissed you!’

‘Your motivation is not under the microscope, sweetie. Let’s just stick to the point.’

‘The point is that I want you to go!’

‘And the point is that somebody in the past—some man—inflicted some kind of damage on you which makes you avoid getting involved. It can’t have been sexual damage, because sex clearly isn’t the barrier.’

‘Will you stop this?’ she demanded fiercely, as fear rose in her.

‘No, it must be emotional, because that’s what you’re really afraid of, isn’t it? You’re afraid of getting emotionally involved with a man, any man, doesn’t matter——’

‘I asked you to stop!’

‘And if that’s the case, then it must be a man in your home town in Kent who——’

‘Stop it!’

‘A man in Kent who hurt you so badly that——’

‘Shut up!’ Natasha shouted hoarsely and got to her feet with such sudden violence that her chair toppled backwards, crashing into a glass cabinet.

It shattered.

They both flinched as the glass exploded in hundreds of pieces on to the carpet. Then they stared at each other. Natasha was appalled by the dark intense understanding in his eyes, and suddenly saw herself as he must see her—nervous, edgy, frightened, strung out like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof.

The door burst open.

‘What the hell was that?’ Dolly demanded. ‘I thought I——’ She stopped, staring at them both, eyes shocked—as well she might be, because only a Martian would not sense the frazzled air of powerful emotion blazing between Natasha and Dominic.

‘I knocked a chair over,’ Dominic said raggedly, and ran a hand through his tousled black hair. ‘I’ll pay for the damage, of course.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ Dolly said. ‘A friend of mine will fix the glass for——’

‘I insist,’ Dominic bit out roughly.

Dolly stared for a second, then said, ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’ She hesitated, staring at Natasha. ‘Are you all right?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Natasha replied at once, her voice shaking. ‘In fact, I think I’ll accept your earlier invitation and come to the party with you and Bobby, after all.’

Dominic’s dark head swung to stare furiously at her. ‘We still haven’t gone over the details of your trip to Russia or——’

‘I’ll look at the papers tomorrow,’ she said tightly. ‘Please just leave them there and go.’

His mouth tightened. He looked from her to Dolly, then back at her again, and his eyes were jet-black with rage because he knew what she was doing and felt powerless to stop her.

‘Fine,’ he said harshly, striding towards the door. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon to check that you know what you’re supposed to be doing.’

‘Sweet of you!’ she drawled thickly, hating him, and he threw her another black look before striding away down the hall.

The front door slammed behind him.

Dolly looked at her as they both heard his footsteps on the stairs. ‘What the hell was all that about?’

‘Nothing,’ Natasha said thickly, unable to confide in her, for some reason, even though Dolly knew all about Tony, and had never betrayed her confidence, not in all the time she had shared this flat with her. But somehow, the effect Dominic Thorne was having on her was so exceptional that Natasha was afraid to confide in anyone about it.

It’s too strong, she realised, horrified.

He’s already obliterating Tony from my mind, and the reasons are so numerous I couldn’t even list them.

Where Tony had been in his early forties, greying, balding and coldly uncommunicative, Dominic Thorne was thirty-seven, dramatically handsome, sexy, powerful, dynamic, intelligent, sensitive, cynical, gorgeous, rich…

As a man in his own right, Dominic wiped the floor with Tony. But as a man in relation to Natasha, he positively ground Tony out like an old cigar under his expensive, self-assured heel.

And as for her sexual feelings towards Tony—well, she had had none. It had all been platonic, more like play-acting than real love, more like teenage adoration for an unattainable man.

But Natasha knew her sexual feelings for Dominic Thorne were as hot and dangerously hungry as they could get, and if he ever did more than kiss her, she would lose her grip on safety forever.

I’ve only met him three times, and I’m already emotionally, mentally, sexually and spiritually involved with him. In a big way. More deeply than I ever have been before, and if I don’t nip it in the bud, right here and now, I’ll end up obsessively, passionately, irrevocably in love with him.

Danger reared like a hissing serpent. Natasha stepped back in fear from it. She mustn’t feel like that. Never, ever, ever…

CHAPTER THREE

THE party she attended with Dolly was wonderful fun, but after Dominic’s visit, Natasha wasn’t really in the mood for fun. In fact, she was unable to think of anything but Dominic.

Sitting on the doorstep of the party house at midnight, she stared into the warm, moonlit sky.

How could he have been so damned clever—and so unfeeling? Even if he had guessed the truth behind her isolated, loveless life, he didn’t have to hit her in the face with it, force her to admit to it. It could be argued that he’d just been feeling his way, watching her reactions to see whether he was on the right track or not, but she didn’t believe that. Certainly not when she forced herself to sit down and think about why he had done it.

Why? What could he possibly get out of it? Don’t tell yourself, she thought fiercely, that he wants to get emotionally involved with you, because that way disaster lies.

Oh, she could just see it now.

Her capacity for limitless passion, undying devotion and supreme love would rear its ugly head again, making her look a fool, be a fool, and cope with the humiliation of obsessive folly, all over again.

Well, I won’t go through it, she told herself determinedly. I’d rather die than let a man like Dominic Thorne talk me into getting emotionally involved, just because he finds it a challenge.

What other reason could he have, after all? He wasn’t in love with her. Nor would he ever be. He just found her an intriguing mystery, as he had so honestly said, and a mystery that he wanted to unravel.

Maybe it was even more basic than that, though, she thought angrily. Maybe it had something to do with that damned stupid reputation she had gained at Thorne Industries, and that would make the challenge for Dominic quite irresistible, and definitely sexually based—to be the man, the one man, who managed to get Natasha Came into bed.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.