He refused to allow her to ignore reality. ‘We have to face the past…if only to move on.’
‘I’ve already moved on, Nathan,’ she insisted, but to him her words lacked conviction.
‘Have you? Really?’ She might think she believed that, but he didn’t—no matter what she said to the contrary. ‘All we had together must have meant little to you if you could throw it away with such cavalier disregard.’ And care so little for its loss, he added silently. He leaned in closer, seeing anxiety darken her blue eyes, feeling the increasing pressure of her hands on his chest as she tried to keep distance between them. ‘I haven’t moved on, Annie. I don’t think you have any idea what you leaving like that did to me, or what kind of hell I’ve been in for five years. Maybe you tell yourself you don’t even care. You’ve invented your own version of reality to help justify to yourself the fact that you tossed us aside. But your perception of events is very different from mine. Well, reality bites, sweetheart, and the time has come for us to settle this.’
As if Nathan’s words were not enough to panic her, Annie froze as he moved one hand. His palm cupped her cheek, the caress of his fingers sending a trail of heat across her skin and firing every nerve-ending to zinging awareness. His thumb under her chin tilted her face up until she could no longer avoid his gaze. Robbed of speech by the intense expression in his dark eyes, she couldn’t form a single protest. Nor could she look away. He stared down at her, brooding and mysterious, his closeness making her pulse race and preventing her dragging enough air into parched lungs.
‘How is it possible that you are even more beautiful than ever?’
His husky words sent waves of arousal washing through her, tightening her insides and speeding her pulse. Terrified of her reaction to him, she fruitlessly endeavoured to hold him off, to create some more space to breathe, to think. Every part of her was on red alert—his touch, his nearness, his musky male scent all combining to rob her of common sense and strip away her resistance.
‘Nathan…’
Her warning stalled, his name escaping on a whisper of breath rather than sounding like the denial she had intended. And when the pad of his thumb grazed across the swell of her lower lip she couldn’t maintain coherent thought. As he closed the remaining centimetres between them, his fingers sliding back to fist in her hair and hold her still, she forgot every reason why they shouldn’t do this. Instead, her traitorous lips were already parted in eager anticipation when his own brushed across them. She responded instinctively as his mouth captured hers, demanding, needy, plunging her back into the once familiar abyss of heady excitement and unquenchable desire.
Annie had forgotten how incredible Nathan’s seductive, erotic kisses were. No, that was wrong. She hadn’t forgotten …she had blanked the memories out, because they caused her so much pain and hopeless longing. But her body remembered his taste, the perfection of his touch, the earth-shattering pleasure only he brought her. For an endless moment she ignored everything but the here and now. Unable to help herself, she moved in closer still, craving tighter contact, feeling the delicious jolt as her breasts pressed against the wall of his chest, stimulating the hardened peaks of her nipples. A moan escaped as Nathan’s free hand cupped her rear and drew her against him. His hips rocked into her, making her all too conscious of the hard length of his arousal, and an answering hollow knot tightened deep inside her in response. She rubbed herself over him, desperate to assuage the empty ache of need.
The hungry kiss deepened, turning almost feral in its urgent intensity. Their raging passion was immediately rekindled, flaring hotter than ever. Annie met and matched Nathan’s every move, every stroke, every suck… her teeth nipping, her tongue duelling, twining and teasing with his. She wallowed in the sense of being reborn, of coming home, her body primed, begging for the fulfilment only he could give her.
Then, somewhere below them, the sound of a door closing reverberated in the stillness. Footsteps echoed on the concrete stairs, snapping Annie back to the reality of where she was, what she was doing and who she was doing it with. With a cry of distress she wrenched away, fighting against Nathan’s hold.
‘Stop!’ she gasped.
She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t allow Nathan’s potent sex appeal to sweep away all the pain, anger and despair of the last five years as if nothing had happened. It was over. It was! As Nathan reluctantly released her she stepped away, her legs feeling too weak and rubbery to hold her up. She’d chosen to take the back stairs in an attempt to avoid him, yet had only succeeded in trapping herself alone with him in a secluded spot for long enough to forget every powerful reason she must keep him at a distance.
‘There’s unfinished business between us, Annie. Somehow, somewhere, we are going to deal with it,’ he warned her.
His intent was clear, and it scared her, because she couldn’t handle seeing him or raking up the past, knowing she was still vulnerable to him.
‘You didn’t want—’
‘You have no idea what I wanted…you never did,’ he interrupted heatedly, dragging a hand through his wayward hair. ‘And you certainly didn’t stay around long enough that last day to listen to my point of view. Then you refused to see or speak to me. I loved you, but you ripped out my heart and stomped all over it, turning your back on everything we were to each other, tossing it away as if it was nothing.’
Tears filled her eyes and she held up a hand, backing away. ‘You’re wrong!’
‘No, I’m not.’ His tone was uncompromising and he refused to allow her retreat, despite the footsteps coming closer up the stairs. ‘I deserve my say—you owe me that much at least.’
‘I have to go,’ she insisted, shaking her head, denying his words, anxiety tying her nerves into knots.
‘I’m not letting you run this time, Annie.’
But that was just what she did. Ran from him. Shaking, scared and confused, she pushed past him and rushed down the stairs as fast as her wobbly legs could carry her, deaf to the greeting of the admin assistant she passed on the flight below. The woman’s presence had brought a much-needed return of sanity, preventing her from something even more reckless than the explosive kiss. She had to get away from Nathan—had to have some time alone to regroup and restore her shattered equilibrium.
With one touch, one kiss, the barriers she had thought impenetrable had been rent asunder. Despite everything that had happened, all the pain he had caused her, Nathan still brought her to her knees and sent her hormones crazy with insatiable desire. She had to do something to prevent herself from falling for him and being hurt all over again.
Slipping unnoticed through a side fire exit, Annie hurried outside the hospital building, moving around the corner out of sight of anyone coming and going from the car park, the A and E department, or the separate building nearby that housed the maternity unit.
Oblivious to the cold, she leaned against the wall, her whole body trembling. As she drew in several deep breaths in an effort to compose herself the fingers of one hand strayed to her mouth. Her lips, puffy and sensitised from the wildness of the kiss, still tingled in reaction, and she could still savour Nathan’s taste on her tongue. Closing her eyes, she groaned, reliving the last few minutes in Technicolor detail.
Dear heaven, what had she done?
And what on earth was she going to do now?
All she could think about was the urgent need to protect herself against Nathan’s potent effect on her. He had stormed
