He paused, feeling his body respond to the provocation in her eyes and the pulse jerking erratically at the base of her throat. ‘Like this...’ And, reaching out, he stretched his arm along the back of the seat and lightly touched her hair. ‘This hasn’t changed one bit. It’s still just as wild and beautiful.’ Pulling loose a gleaming curl, he wound the hair round his finger.
Heart pounding, Addie shook his hand off. ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about going blonde. And short. Really short.’
With considerable difficulty, she tore her eyes away from his dark, shimmering gaze. Did he seriously think that one touch was all it would take? That just stroking her hair would be enough for her to melt into his arms and forget all about his appalling attempt to blackmail her? She caught her breath. Probably. He was so used to women throwing themselves at him. And, judging by the way her whole body was vibrating like a tuning fork, it appeared that she agreed with him. Or at least her stupid, treacherous body did.
‘I could walk from here,’ she said quickly, glancing out of the window at the rain-spattered pavement. ‘It doesn’t look that bad any more.’
She turned to face him and instantly wished she hadn’t. Lounging negligently, his grey gaze seemed to hold her captive, so that even if she’d wanted to yank open the door and run as fast as possible from the dangerous, swirling undercurrents in the car, she would not have been able to do so.
‘What?’ she said hoarsely. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Why do you think?’ Slowly, with almost cat-like laziness, he leaned forward and picked up her hand, playing gently with her fingers.
She opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t know or care, but somehow the words stayed stubbornly in her throat. Her mouth was dry and she could feel her pulse hammering in her wrists so hard that her hands seemed like living creatures. Drawing back, she pressed her spine into the upholstery of the seat.
‘It doesn’t matter what I think. None of this is real.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s like you said. It’s just us being alone together again.’
He was holding her softly, but his voice was softer still. ‘Maybe. Only you seem pretty damn real to me—and so does how I’m feeling right now.’
Her blood felt as though it were thinning, growing lighter. If only she could fly, she thought desperately, fly far away. But neither fight nor flight was possible. Even thinking appeared to be a struggle.
Threads of heat were trickling slowly over her skin like warm syrup off a spoon and she stared at him helplessly, hypnotised by the languorous glow of his gaze. She wanted to lie back and close her eyes and breathe in his warm, masculine scent and believe what he was saying was true. How could it not be? When he said it in that voice...
For a moment she lingered over his words, repeating them inside her head: How I’m feeling right now...
And slowly she pulled her fingers away from his. It sounded true because it was true. Probably Malachi did feel like that ‘right now’. But it would pass. No matter how beautiful and enticing it sounded, it was as transient as a winter sunset.
She shrank back inside her skin. ‘But that doesn’t make it right,’ she said quietly.
She felt his gaze, fierce and fixed, on the side of her face.
‘It makes it better than right. It makes it perfect. This time, this way, it’ll be good between us. There’s no expectation. No promises or pressure.’
He made it sound so simple, so perfect. She could feel herself wavering.
Beside her, he inched closer, and looking up into the focus of his eyes, she saw a heat and intensity that seemed to melt her breath. She felt a rush of panic for those eyes told her what she already knew: that he still owned her sexually and now he was claiming her back.
‘Stop it!’ She lifted her hand and held it up. ‘Stop saying these things. And don’t come any nearer. I don’t want you to.’
‘Only because you don’t trust yourself.’
Holding up his hand, he pressed his palm against hers, and the longing inside her seemed to split her apart.
‘Why are you fighting this? You want me as much as I want you, Addie. Tell me you don’t. Tell me I’m wrong.’ In the depths of his eyes something flickered like the flare of a match—a small, bright flame of desire.
She knew she should speak, deny his claim. But she couldn’t find her voice—and even if she could have done she wouldn’t have been able to string her words together in any sensible order.
Heat was spilling over her skin like milk boiling over in a pan. And suddenly she wanted it to overwhelm her. To stop fighting and sink beneath the liquid warmth. His fingers were wrapping around hers, tugging her inexorably towards him, and she knew that they were going to kiss and she was glad...because sometimes kisses were less complicated than words.
Reaching up, she pressed her fingers against his lips, shivering as she saw his gaze darken with hunger. For a moment their eyes locked, and then she slid her hand up and over his jaw and into his dark silky hair, pulling his mouth feverishly onto hers.
At the touch of his lips she felt an ache—blissful, voluptuous—spreading out low from her pelvis, and then her hands splayed apart, her head spinning dizzily as he deepened the kiss.
Moaning, she arched her body towards him, her breath stuttering in her throat, a fissure opening up inside her as his tongue slid between her parted lips and his hands curved around her waist and thigh, pressing, probing.
‘Addie...’
She heard him murmur her name, felt his hand slide inexorably up over the soft skin of her thigh and then higher, beneath the hem of her dress to the pulse beating insistently between her legs.
Her skin felt hot and tight; inside she could feel herself melting. Gasping, she leaned against the hard muscles of his chest, the hot, salt scent of him coiling round her skin so that she was shaking with longing, her whole body clamouring for more. Shuddering, she pulled at his shirt, tugging at it where it was caught beneath his waistband, lost in the quickening of her breath and the lambent heat pooling low in her pelvis.
He groaned softly. ‘Stop, sweetheart...’
And then he said it more loudly, dragging his mouth from hers, lifting his hands away, and she stared up at him dazedly even as her disorientated brain began to absorb the full facts of the situation.
Her eyes opened and, face flaming, she stared in horror at her reflection in the window. How could she have let that happen? Was she out of her mind?
But blaming her mind for what had just happened was about as senseless as blaming the moon for turning the tide. However, any debate on the whys and wherefores of blame was going to have to wait.
Taking a quick breath, she looked up at him reluctantly. ‘That shouldn’t have happened,’ she said slowly.
Leaning back against the seat, he watched her smooth down the hem of dress. ‘And yet it did.’
Her cheeks grew hotter. ‘It was a mistake.’
‘And we learn
