around her, cradling her against his hard chest.
“You don’t need another doctor,” he said roughly. “You just need to come home with me.”
She could feel the beat of his heart against her cheek through his black button-down shirt. She was enveloped in his masculine scent, sandalwood and amber, exotic and woodsy. Against her will, she closed her eyes. She breathed in his smell, heard the beat of his heart, felt his warmth.
Everything else faded. The private hospital room, the nurses and doctor visible through the window of the door, the sound of one of Talos’s men speaking urgently into his cell phone in some language she didn’t recognize, the antiseptic smell, the beeps of the machines…it all faded.
There was only this.
Only him.
Held securely in his strong arms, for the first time since her accident she felt safe and loved. She felt as if she had a place in the world. With him.
He kissed her hair softly. She felt the warmth of his breath, the hot caress of his lips, and a tremble went over her. Fear? Longing?
Did he love her?
She reached upward, cupping his rough jawline with her hands. Though his clothes were sharply pressed, the dark shadow on his chin suggested he’d changed clothes on the plane without bothering to shave. He’d rushed here from Australia. He’d flown all night.
Did that mean love?
“Why didn’t you come to London with me for my stepfather’s funeral?” she said slowly.
He paused. When he spoke, he seemed to choose his words with care.
“I was busy in Sydney acquiring a new company. Believe me,” he said, “I never wanted to be away from you for this long.”
Eve felt there was something he wasn’t telling her. Or was that just her own confusion playing tricks on her? She couldn’t trust anything in this hazy, empty world, not even her own mind! “But why—”
“You are so beautiful, Eve,” he said, cupping her face. He exhaled in a rush. “I almost feared I’d never see your face again.”
“When you heard about the accident, you mean? You were worried about me?” she said in a small voice. When he didn’t answer, she licked her lips. With a deep breath, she asked the question that had been burning through her. “Because we love each other?”
His jaw clenched as he took a deep breath.
“You were a virgin when I seduced you, Eve,” he said in a low voice. “You’d never been with any man before I took you to my bed three months ago.”
She’d been a virgin?
A wave of relief washed over her. Learning she was pregnant by a boyfriend she couldn’t remember had been a tremendous shock. She’d wondered why they weren’t married—wondered all sorts of things. But if Talos had been her one and only lover, if she’d been a virgin at twenty-five, surely that said something about her character?
But did it also mean love?
She looked up into his handsome face, opening her mouth to ask again, Do I love you? Do you love me?
Then she stopped.
There was something beneath his darkly penetrating eyes. Something he wasn’t saying. Something hidden beneath his words.
But before she could understand what her intuition was telling her, Talos placed his broad hands over hers. The warmth of his fingers burned her, intertwined with her own. Trapping her, but not against her will. Her heart pounded faster.
“Get ready to leave.” He lowered his head to kiss her on the temple, running his hands up and down her bare forearms. “I want to take you home.”
Her breathing became short and shallow as he touched her skin. Little prickles of sensation sped up her arms, down her back, making her hair stand on end. The tingle swirled across her earlobes, down her neck, making her naked breasts beneath her thin hospital gown suddenly feel tight and full. She tried to remember the question she’d been asking, but it had already swept from her mind.
“All right,” she breathed, looking up into his handsome face.
Gallantly, he helped her from the bed, lifting her gently to her feet. She was more aware than ever of how much taller he was, how much more powerful. He was at least six inches taller, with an extra hundred pounds of pure muscle. Looking up at him, she forgot everything but her own longing and fascinated desire for the man towering over her like a dark angel.
“I’m sorry it took so long for me to reach you, Eve,” he said in a low voice. “But I’m here now.” He kissed her head softly, his arms tightening around her as he pulled her into an embrace. “And I’m never going to let you go.”
CHAPTER TWO
BENEATH heavily lidded eyes, Talos watched Eve as he led her to the black Rolls-Royce purring on the street in front of the hospital.
She wasn’t faking her amnesia. In spite of his initial incredulity, he now had no doubt. She had no idea of who he was or what she’d done.
And now she was pregnant with his child.
That changed everything.
He gently helped her to the car. She had no luggage. One of his men had taken her smashed Aston-Martin to the garage, while the other had gone to make quiet amends for the smashed postbox. She wore the black silk dress and carried the black clutch purse from her stepfather’s funeral yesterday.
The black dress clung to her breasts and hips when she walked, the silk shimmering and sliding against her hips and breasts. Her dark, glossy hair had been brushed into a fresh ponytail.
She wore no makeup. It made her look different. Talos had never known her to go out without lipstick before—although God knew, with her lustrous skin, full pink lips and sparkling blue eyes, she didn’t need it to cause every man she met, from the elderly hospital porter to the teenaged boy walking past them on the sidewalk, to stop and catch his breath.
And as she turned back to face him on the sidewalk with a sweetly innocent smile, Talos was grimly aware that he was far from immune to her charm.
“Where are we going?” she asked, crinkling her forehead. “You never said.”
“Home,” he replied, guiding her into the backseat of the limousine. He closed the door behind her.
His body’s reaction to her was irritating—and troubling. He didn’t like it. Because he hated her.
When he’d first seen Eve in the hospital, she’d been curled up on the single bed beneath a thick blanket. She’d looked pale and wan, nothing like the vivacious, tempestuous vixen he remembered. Sleeping, she’d looked innocent, far younger than her twenty-five years.
She’d looked small. Fragile.
Talos had come to London specifically to destroy her. For the last three months, he’d been dreaming
