wasn’t even sure what she would do if he...
His mouth covered hers. He gave her no opportunity to back out, or overthink it, he just made it happen. One hand sliding around the back of her head to cradle her, the other at the small of her back. His hand was so broad he could span her waist from behind.
In a flurry of sense impressions, Sybella had never felt so delicate, so utterly aware she was a feeling, sensate woman and, as exciting and dangerous as this was, she felt completely safe in his arms.
Where he had been so rough with her out in the snow he was now showing due care and acknowledgement of her as a female, which put to bed his remark about mistaking her for a man and engendered a fluttery feeling inside her. It bloomed high in her chest and a swirling warmth gathered down below.
He brought her in close to his body and she felt the full hard, muscular strength of him and it was enough.
She gave way, her mouth softening under his, the entire lost art of kissing returning to her with some subtle but much appreciated changes.
His tongue touched, grazed, tasted, seduced and the feel of him was so completely male and so overwhelming in the certainty of his approach Sybella took what he gave her instinctively and with an utter disregard to where this might be leading.
Until all her doubts came rushing back in and she ducked her head.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked gruffly.
Apart from he was a stranger, and they didn’t know one another, and she suspected given her activities in his house only trouble could come from this?
‘I don’t know.’ She did know—she was feeling a bit too much and it had been so long and she no longer had any certainty in her ability to meet him as a sexually confident woman. But had she ever?
She wasn’t ready for this.
Meg would say whatever sense of herself as a desirable woman had been shoved into the back of her wardrobe in a box along with her preserved wedding bouquet and all the plans she and Simon had made for the future. But it had happened before that. It had happened when Simon had briefly dated another girl and slept with her.
It was a little disconcerting to say the least to discover, gazing up at this intense, beautiful man, she had no idea where to go from here with him. But she did know one thing. She had to let him know what was going on in his house.
‘I have to tell you something,’ she blurted out. ‘Edbury Hall is open to the public on weekends.’
* * *
Nik didn’t immediately let her go. His hand was still curled around her sweet waist gloved in soft cashmere wool that made the most of her glorious curves above and below.
He could pinpoint the moment he’d stopped thinking clearly. It was when he’d seen her bending down by the fire, the most female-looking woman. She was the proverbial hourglass, and if there was a little more sand than was standard in that glass his libido didn’t make that distinction. She had ample breasts and long, shapely legs, deliciously plump around her thighs and bottom, and in his arms she’d felt like both comfort and sin.
Which explained why his brain took a little longer to catch up, because his body was happy where it was, Sybella’s curves giving him a full body press.
‘Why is the house open to the public?’ He forced himself to set her back. ‘On whose authorisation?’
‘Mr Voronov senior’s, and—and yours.’ Sybella’s voice gave out, so the ‘yours’ wasn’t much more than a whisper.
‘Mine?’ he growled, any trace of the man who had begun to kiss her and rouse such passionate feelings in her evaporating like the last patch of sunshine on a cold winter’s day.
‘You were sent the paperwork. I didn’t just go ahead only on your grandfather’s say-so,’ she protested.
‘I received no paperwork.’
No. She gnawed on the inside of her lip. Now she would have to explain about the letters. But she didn’t want to be responsible for a further breach between grandfather and grandson. Family was important.
No one understood that better than someone who for a long time didn’t have any.
No, it would be better if his grandfather confessed.
And what if Nik Voronov decided to blame her anyway?
Blood was blood, and old Mr Voronov might easily side with his grandson.
Sybella knew she had nobody to blame but herself and for a spinning moment she just started babbling. ‘I don’t see who has been hurt by any of this. Mr Voronov is a lonely man and he enjoys having people into the house...’
‘And you have taken advantage of that.’
‘No!’ Sybella closed her eyes and took a breath. Arguing with him wasn’t going to accomplish anything. ‘I understand you don’t know me,’ she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could, given the escalating tension, ‘and you say you’re worried about your grandfather—’
‘I am worried about him.’
‘Well, I don’t see any evidence of that given you’re never here!’
Oh, she should have kept that to herself. And now he was looking down at her without a shred of give in him.
‘I suspect you’ve taken my grandfather for a ride, and, if I find out that’s the case, you really don’t want me for an enemy Mrs Parminter.’
It was difficult not to take a step back.
She swallowed hard. ‘Do you go through life mistrusting people?’
‘When it comes to my family I don’t allow anything past the keeper.’
Those words took the indignant air out of her because she guarded her little family too. His grandfather had become of late an honorary member of that family and for a moment she wondered if she’d got it wrong. Nik Voronov might genuinely care about his grandfather. If the shoe were on the other foot she would be suspicious too.
She tried again. ‘Honestly, Nik, it’s not what you think.’
‘I think we can probably go back to Mr Voronov.’
He was making her feel as if she’d done something wrong.
Which was when she noticed he was getting out his phone.
‘Are you calling the police again?’ She tried not to sound despairing because, really, what were they going to arrest her on? Impersonating a married lady? Kissing a man she’d just met?
‘I’m arranging a car for you. I take it you live in the village?’
It was no more than a ten-minute walk if she took the lane, but Sybella didn’t intend to argue with him about the lift.
‘If this is your organisation’s way of drumming up support you can let them know that honey traps
