Liam topped Justin’s six feet by several inches. They were both dark-haired but there the similarity ended. Liam’s hair wasn’t nicely trimmed, it was thick and silky,
inclined to wave and at the moment touched his collar. She knew the length and lack of style weren’t a fashion statement, he just habitually forgot to keep hair appointments. Liam had the same olive colouring as his father and, with his rather prominent nose and thick, slanted eyebrows, he had none of Justin’s smooth good looks. What he did have in abundance was sex appeal—buckets of the stuff.
‘You sound like you have something to say, Wood. Don’t stop,’ Liam drawled, ‘I’m fascinated.’
Jo pulled at the collar of her silk shirt with a hint of desperation. The air-conditioned room was suddenly stifling. Why had she never noticed how, well,
noticeable
Liam was before?
‘Jo, what’s wrong?’ Liam’s sharp, anxious enquiry seemed to come from a long way off. ‘Get out the way, you idiot, she’s going to faint.’
‘Don’t fuss,’ she complained weakly as she was firmly laid down on the carpet.
‘Stay where you are,’ Liam barked. ‘You want to let the blood get to your brain—let’s face it, it’s not that easy to find.’ His fingers touched the inner aspect of her clammy wrist where her pulse was lively enough. ‘Have you done this before?’
‘Done what?’ Even when she closed her eyes the black dots still danced across her vision.
‘Fainted,’ came the impatient reply.
‘I’ve never fainted in my life.’
Liam bent his head to catch her words. ‘Give me strength!’ Strength didn’t seem to be something he lacked as he lifted her up into his arms. ‘Get out of the way!’ he snapped as he collided with Justin in the doorway.
‘You’ve spilt the water,’ Justin complained, empty glass
in hand. ‘You can’t do that!’ he objected sharply as Liam shouldered his way past.
‘What is it I can’t do?’
‘Abduct her.’
‘Grow up, man!’ Liam recommended tersely. ‘I’m quite happy to exchange pleasantries with you at a time of your choosing.’
Pistols at dawn, my seconds will call on yours, Jo thought, swallowing an inappropriate giggle.
‘Only right now Jo needs to get out of this place.’ She saw him dismiss the small space she’d worked so hard for with a fastidious sneer before he strode off leaving Justin staring after him, a frustrated expression on his red face.
Justin wouldn’t do anything as undignified as chase after them, she knew that.
He
certainly wouldn’t have made a spectacle of himself by carrying her through the heart of the plush building.
‘Poor Justin.’ It obviously hadn’t occurred to Liam to do anything as obvious as ask her whether she required being rescued—dragged off like a sack of flour. Finesse never had been one of his more striking traits.
Liam snorted. ‘Poor Justin, my foot! He couldn’t wait to get out of the room when things went pear-shaped back there.’
There was a spot just between his shoulder and the angle of his square jaw that could have been created for the specific use of supporting her aching head. ‘He’s not very good with illness—not that I’m ill.’
‘If you’d told me that earlier I wouldn’t have caused untold injury to my back.’
Even though she was still angry with him, she laughed weakly. ‘I could probably walk now.’
‘Don’t spoil it, Jo, I’m quite enjoying myself,’ he confided
against her ear. ‘All these years wasted perfecting my modern man technique,’ he complained. ‘Modern man, my foot! These women go a bundle on the caveman style. I’ve never been on the receiving end of so many come-hither looks in my life! Women never fail to amaze me!’
‘Glad to be of service. Who are you planning to drag off to your cave?’ Who was he kidding? He was
always
on the receiving end of come-hither looks. The resignation with which she generally viewed the peculiar tastes of her fellow females seemed to have deserted her for the moment.
‘Your cave seems the best destination.’
‘My keys are m my bag, which is in the office—we’ll have to go back.’ The thought of backtracking and being the focus of all those curious eyes again made her cringe.
‘I’ve got a key, remember. If I go back in there I’ll probably throttle that overdressed, self-opinionated bore.’
‘What a trusting soul I was to give you a key,’ she said wearily.
‘Meaning what, exactly? It works both ways, remember: you’ve got my key. Do you want to sit in the front or lie in the back?’ he asked as they reached the underground car park. He placed her carefully on the floor and unlocked the four-wheel drive he drove.
‘I’m not an invalid,’ she snapped, displaying her independence by climbing into the front seat. ‘And what I mean is, I had watering my plants in mind when I handed over the key, not assaulting my friends. You’ve been watching too many Rambo movies.’
He started up the engine. ‘If life was as simple as it is in action movies I’d be a happy man,’ he admitted, with a lamentable lack of shame for his ludicrous behaviour. ‘There are roadworks at the junction so make yourself
comfortable, it’ll be a long ride. You told Wood I’m the father?’ His eyes flickered to her face.
Sensational, thrillingly blue eyes that were part of his Celtic heritage. She’d never associated sensational and thrilling with Liam’s eyes before. She suddenly experienced a deep longing to step back in time and have their relationship back on its smooth, familiar footing.
‘Before your dramatic announcement, you mean? Yes, I did.’ Just as well—the poor man would probably have had an apoplexy if he’d first learnt the truth that brutally. ‘I think I owed Justin the truth after all we’ve had together.’
Liam’s nostrils flared and he made a sound of disgust.
‘Does it bother you he knows? Is it meant to be a secret?’ she shouted, her indignation rising at his sneering response.
Jo saw the flicker of anger in his eyes as he shot her a swift sideways glance. ‘It seems I was the only one not in on the secret—he probably knew before me,’ he accused thickly. ‘Forgive my confusion but I’m obviously out of date. The last time you spoke about Justin, he’d broken your heart. Or don’t you remember the occasion?’
‘I’m hardly likely to forget, am I?’
‘Neither am I, Jo.’ The inflection in his deep voice sent the colour flaring in her cheeks. ‘You didn’t tell me he wanted to marry you.’
‘No.’ She’d been distracted. Had he forgotten, or was he remembering what she
had
said that night?
The possibility that he was recalling the same things she was made the fine, downy hair on her forearms stand on end. A shiver slithered slowly down her spine as, dry-mouthed, she risked a swift look in his direction from under the sheltering sweep of her eyelashes.
He’d come hotfoot in response to her tearful phone call when Justin had walked out on her. She’d been too absorbed by her own misery to register the lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth and the tell-tale shadow on his jaw. He’d held her whilst she’d wept, murmuring soothing nothings in appropriate places, sliding his fingers tenderly through her damp hair, pushing the tangled strands off her hot forehead and gently patting her back. When the storm hadn’t abated his lips had replaced his fingers on her damp cheeks, across her forehead, the tip of her nose.
Finally, when her sobs had subsided, she’d given an exhausted sigh. ‘What would I do without you?’ His tenderness brought a lump of emotion to her throat and made her voice husky. She put all the gratitude, warmth and love that filled her heart to overflowing into the kiss she pressed on his lips.
The sudden tension in him communicated itself to her immediately. Had she offended him? ‘I’m sorry. . . ’ she began, suddenly horribly afraid she’d overstepped some invisible boundary.
His blue eyes were burning with a strange light. She was ill prepared for the sudden weakness that pervaded her limbs—it went bone-deep. His glance flickered to the bare curve of her right shoulder, exposed where the baggy neck of her nightshirt had slipped. A sharp, painful sound swiftly cut off emerged from his chest.
Holding her upturned face, his thumbs running down the length of her jaw, he bent closer. Like a sleepwalker he repeated her own impulsive action exactly. It should have been chaste, clinical even, their lips were modestly closed. It wasn’t!
Frantic! When he lifted his mouth from hers she felt
frantic.
It couldn’t stop! He had to do that again, surely
he could see that too? Through half-closed eyes she tried to read the hard lines and angles of his face.
His laugh grated on her sensitised nerve-endings. ‘Feel better now?’ He wasn’t reading the right page of the script. She shook her head in a gesture of denial; this wasn’t the time for prosaic words.
She felt a spurt of anger as he ruffled her hair, a need to lash out. Why must he always treat her like a child?
‘Do
you
feel better?’ she enquired in open challenge. She didn’t even try to understand the compulsion which drove her.
She couldn’t plead error in retrospect; it was quite deliberate when her hands moved under the hem of his shirt. Fingers spread, palms flat, she slowly slid her hands up over his flat, tight belly and higher still to the muscle-packed expanse of his chest.
Nothing
, she decided, could feel better than his warm, satiny skin—the texture was intoxicating. The deep shudder that rippled through his immobile form must have involved every muscle in his body.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
If his voice had been icily cold it might have doused the fire in her brain, but it wasn’t—it held a husky rasp that made her tremble even harder. Tremble, yes, I am, she realised, feeling oddly objective about this discovery.
‘We both know what I’m doing, Liam.’ Her voice was husky but incredibly calm. Calm was the last thing she felt, she felt reckless, and drunk on power. ‘It’s what I’ll do next that’s got me wondering.’
‘You’re not yourself.’
‘You’ve no idea what a relief that is.’ Herself was miserable, depressed. . . repressed, a small voice added.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘I know that these buttons are hellish difficult. Could you help. . . ?’
He caught her wrists then, roughly, and pulled them away from his body. ‘Don’t play games.’
This had to be the most humiliating moment of her life! ‘Don’t look at me as if I’m an axe murderer! All I want is a kiss. If it’s too much trouble, don’t bother!’ she yelled, feeling totally mortified. She tossed her head and ripped her hands from his grasp. She held only a tenuous hope of salvaging even a shred of pride.
She didn’t get more than a step away before he reached her and, with one arm around her waist, lifted her feet off the ground. The impetus of his action as he turned her around drove them forwards until her back was against the wall. The breath was driven from her body.
Her head dropped forward. No wonder he was angry. She was acting like some sort of. . . of sex-starved tart. His hands were on her shoulders and she could feel his nearness from the heat of his body. She was too ashamed to look at him.
‘I’m sorry, don’t hate me. . . ’ Her voice cracked.
‘Hate? Oh, God, Jo, I could never, no, don’t cry again, darling. I know you’re feeling rejected; the bastard, I’d like to kill Justin,’ he said viciously. ‘You don’t need to indulge in casual sex to prove you’re desirable.’ She wanted to deny this analysis but he kissed the corner of her mouth, then the other corner. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but you’ll be better off without him.’
She did shake her head in denial this time, and the next kiss hit dead centre. He pulled back, but only a fraction. Jo opened her eyes; she still had her eyes open when they moved forward simultaneously. Her lips parted and there was only a momentary delay before he accepted her offer.
He didn’t just accept it, he took the initiative out of her hands in a big way. She’d never experienced anything that came close to the onslaught of his lips and tongue as his teeth tugged and nipped, his tongue tasted and explored. Her body was filled with a languorous heat, her senses swam, she
ached
!
‘This is crazy!’ The groaned words were wrenched from him. He might have acknowledged insanity, but that didn’t stop his lips from continuing to strain hungrily against hers. His hands slipped to her hips barely covered by the plain cotton nightshirt she wore. The contact made her body jerk.
‘That’s lovely, don’t stop,’ she begged throatily. Lovely, exciting, sizzlingly erotic, it was all that and more! Jo had never felt so primitively aroused in her life. As her feet left the floor she instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist. She arched her back and provocatively pressed her slim, lithe body as close to him as possible.
‘Your skin’s so soft, so smooth.’ His tongue strayed over the graceful curve of her collar-bone for a moment and she whimpered with delirious pleasure.
Blindly, panting hard, Liam reached behind her for the door. More luck than judgement brought their erratic progress, interrupted as it was by gasps and moans as each new sensation was explored and enjoyed, to her narrow bed. He fell with her onto the bed, impressing her body into the soft mattress.