the idea of Zac getting married.
‘Why, chérie, you make me sound as though I’m an ogre,’ an amused voice sounded in her ear and she swung her head round sharply, her eyes clashing with Zac’s glinting gaze. ‘I’m not that unbearable, am I?’
Cheeks flaming, Freya gave him a look that warned him he did not want to know her opinion of him, but to her annoyance he gave her one of his devastating smiles and tugged her to her feet before she could think of an excuse not to dance with him.
‘I obviously need to demonstrate my charming side,’ he murmured smoothly as he swept her across the dance floor.
‘Forget it,’ Freya snapped. ‘I know exactly what you are, Zac, and your famous charm does nothing for me.’ She tried to ease away from him but his arms tightened around her waist and she gave a shocked gasp when she felt the rigid proof of his arousal straining against her pelvis.
‘You disappoint me, ma petite, especially as you can be in no doubt of what you’re doing to me right now,’ he said mockingly. He placed his hand in the small of her back and exerted enough pressure so that she was forced up against him.
‘You are disgusting,’ Freya hissed as she tried to ignore the warmth that was flooding through her. The music slowed and Zac steered her around the dance floor, each subtle movement of his hips bringing his aroused body into closer contact with hers. In desperation Freya closed her eyes against the scorching heat of his gaze, but the sensations he was arousing in her only intensified and she shuddered when his hand inched lower down her back and made small, circular movements across the top of her buttocks. She stumbled and clung to him as the music faded to the periphery of her mind. Nothing existed but Zac, and the subtle, sensuous rub of his hand evoked a delicious, quivering excitement between her thighs.
Without the barrier of their clothes he would be free to take her properly and thrust deep into her, she thought dreamily, the image of him doing just that suddenly so stark in her head that her muscles clamped and to her utter shock she felt tiny spasms of pleasure radiate from her central core. She felt Zac tense, but she couldn’t prevent her climax and as she shook uncontrollably he dipped his head and captured her startled cry with his mouth.
It was over almost instantly and as she came down reality intruded, bringing with it the music and hubbub of voices from the dance floor. Oh, God, what had she done? Had anyone seen? And was it even possible to reach a sexual climax when he hadn’t even touched her intimately? Dying with shame, she could not bear to look at him, but her eyes seemed drawn to him by a magnetic force. His face was a rigid mask, his skin stretched taut over the knife-edge of his cheekbones while his eyes gleamed with sensual promise beneath his heavy lids.
She stared up at him in desperation, silently daring him to comment as his lip curled into a slow, mocking smile.
‘You are hungry, chérie,’ he drawled softly. ‘If I’d known I would have followed my instincts when I first saw you in that dress tonight and cancelled dinner.’
Freya swallowed her retort as he led her back to their table, aware that she was not in a position to say anything when her body had behaved so abominably. To her utter relief no one else in the room seemed to have noticed her making a spectacle of herself, but Zac would never let her forget her moment of weakness, she thought on a wave of panic. He knew now she was his for the taking whenever he chose. But somehow she would have to resist him before he damaged her self-esteem permanently.
IT WAS almost midnight when they bid Chester and Carolyn Warren goodnight and drove back to the penthouse. Freya wished she were tired but to her dismay she felt wide awake and filled with a wild, reckless energy. Those few moments of madness on the dance floor with Zac had inflamed her senses and left her body aching for his full possession—but it was going to be disappointed.
She intended to go straight to her room the moment they entered the apartment, but Zac’s butler, Laurent, greeted them with a tray of coffee and petits fours that he had prepared specially for their return. ‘I’d really like to go to bed,’ she muttered to Zac as he ushered her into the lounge in the wake of the butler.
‘And upset Laurent?’ His eyebrows raised a notch. ‘You’re a brave woman.’
Stifling a groan, she dredged up a smile and accepted a cup of frothy cappuccino from the butler. The last thing she needed right now was the additional stimulation of caffeine, she thought gloomily as she watched Zac drain his cup in two gulps before he crossed to the bar and poured himself a cognac.
‘Would you like a nightcap with your coffee?’
‘No, thank you,’ she replied hastily. What she needed was something to knock her senseless for the next twelve hours and prevent her disturbing fantasies about Zac, but, although getting blind drunk was tempting, she decided that her loss of control tonight had been embarrassing enough to last her a lifetime.
She stirred her coffee and glanced up at Zac, who was standing at the window staring out into the darkness. ‘When did your father die?’ she asked him quietly, recalling her conversation with Chester Warren. ‘Chester said it was two years ago, which was when we met, but you never said anything and I had no idea you were grieving.’
Zac shrugged dismissively. ‘My father died nine months before I met you and my grief was a private matter which was nothing to do with you or our relationship.’
He sounded so cold, so clinical, that Freya shivered. Zac kept his life compartmentalised into separate boxes and had clearly never considered allowing her into the box marked personal. ‘But if you’d told me I might have been able to…I don’t know—’ she broke off helplessly ‘—help in some way.’
‘How?’ he demanded tersely. ‘You couldn’t have brought him back and I did not need help. I dealt with my grief.’ He had neither looked for, nor wanted, sympathy, he brooded grimly, and he had been determined to deal with the loss of his father in his own way, which for the most part had been to block it out of his mind and get on with his life.
After his twin sisters had died a few months after birth, his mother had sunk into a deep depression that had lasted for most of his adolescence. He had been shocked by the power of love and had viewed it as a destructive emotion that had wreaked havoc on his parents’ lives, and he had decided that he would never be held hostage to his emotions.
When his father died, his mother had been distraught and once again he had felt helpless in the face of her overwhelming grief. But Freya’s soft smile and unashamedly eager sensuality had been a welcome relief from the surfeit of Yvette Deverell’s emotions. He hadn’t wanted to talk about grief or loss; he had wanted to forget everything and enjoy her glorious body—until he’d discovered that she hadn’t been giving herself exclusively to him.
Zac’s shuttered expression warned Freya that he did not welcome her intrusion into an area of his life that he had never spoken of before, but she pushed on doggedly, determined to learn more about this man who was to all intents and purposes still a stranger to her. ‘Chester told me that you felt you had to work particularly hard to prove to the Deverell board that you would be a worthy successor to your father. If you had explained why you practically lived at your office, I would have understood,’ she insisted.
‘But instead you grew bored of waiting for me and looked elsewhere for sex.’ Zac gave a harsh laugh. ‘Mon Dieu, I satisfied you every night, but it wasn’t enough, was it, chérie? You were insatiable, you wanted me on hand morning,
