Athan spelt it out, keeping his gaze on her to assess her reaction. ‘He wishes to cut the apron strings from me. Assert his independence. Which is why,’ he went on, his voice tinged with sarcasm, ‘you will doubtless understand my concern that he has high-tailed it down to find you. I don’t want him thinking he is now free to take up with you again.’
‘Well, he isn’t, is he?’ she retorted. ‘You’ve seen to that. How can I possibly look him in the face knowing what his own brother-in-law did to me?’
‘Indeed,’ Athan’s voice was smooth now. ‘So—’ he took a breath ‘—he’s accepted he cannot see you again? You told him that? Made it crystal-clear?’
‘Yes.’ Her monosyllabic reply was clipped, unemotional. But her emotions were running all the same—like a deep, underground river, cutting through the rocks and obstacles in her mind. Obstacles she had to keep in place. Absolutely had to …
‘Good.’
He sounded satisfied. But there was something in his voice that alarmed her. It was not the satisfaction of a man who had disposed of an embarrassing and unwanted family problem.
‘In which case …’ he said, his eyes resting on her. ‘In which case,’ he repeated, ‘I have something else to say to you.’
She stared. Her heart-rate had started to quicken, but she didn’t want it to. As she didn’t want to see what she was seeing in his eyes.
He’s too close. This kitchen is too small. I can’t breathe—can’t find fresh air …
He was still sitting at the kitchen table, but his presence dominated the room—dominated her senses, her vision. She tried to think straight, but she couldn’t. Everything about him focussed her on him, and deep within her still that powerful subterranean river of emotion was coursing, seeking its way upwards, out of the depths of her mind …
‘It’s this.’
He was speaking again, and she heard his words—heard the accent in them that had so worked on her, drawn her to him, just as everything about him had drawn her hopelessly, ineluctably, irresistibly …
His sloe-dark eyes were resting on her, delving into her, winding her gaze on his like a spool, so she could only look back at him, her eyes widening, melting …
‘I want you back.’
His words fell into the space between them. The space that would soon no longer be between them …
Because it was quite clear in his head now. Crystal-clear. It had taken till this morning to crystallise—and it had done so instantly, irreversibly, when his phone had rung and he’d been told that Ian Randall was heading down to Devon.
In that instant he’d known—known with a spike of emotion that was like a punch to his guts—that he would never allow Ian or any other man to take Marisa from him. That whatever it cost he would take her back. However impossible, he would smash those problems to pieces and get what with every cell in his body over this punishing absence had grown more and more and more impossible to deny.
So he had let instinct—hot, overpowering instinct—take over. Take him from his desk, his office, London, and into his car, pressing pedal to the metal and storming his way westwards.
And now he was here—and so was Marisa, so was everything he wanted. Everything he was going to have.
No one and nothing was going to stop him. Not any more …
‘You’re out of Ian’s life now, and that was what I had to achieve.’ He looked at her, said what he knew he had to say. ‘I didn’t like what I was doing, Marisa, but I had to do it. Family is everything—and I had to protect my sister from the threat you represented to her. You can have no share in Ian’s life. But,’ he went on, ‘you’ve accepted that, and I’m relieved to hear it—drastic though my method was. I acknowledge that.’
He held up a hand again, as if to brush aside the means he’d adopted to part his brother in law from her, and continued, getting to the most important part of his communication. The essential part. The part he’d driven over two hundred miles to deliver.
‘Now we’re free—both of us. Free to do what I have wanted to do since the moment I left you in your flat on our return.’
He got to his feet, crossed towards her. The narrow space between them disappeared. He reached out his hand, sliding it around the nape of her neck. The tendrils of damp hair were like silk on his fingertips. The scent of her body was like incense. The flush in her cheeks like roses. Her parted mouth was like honey waiting to be tasted … claimed … reclaimed …
‘This,’ he said, and his eyes poured down into hers like a golden haze, so that she was dizzy, blinded. Triumph surged in him—triumph and sweet, sweet possession …
He lowered his mouth to hers and bliss consumed her. She had dreamt of his kisses, yearned for them, craved them like an addict—and now it was happening. Here, now …
Bliss, sweet golden bliss.
He was drawing away from her again, but his hands were cupping her head, his body close against hers, his eyes still pouring down into hers.
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he said. His voice was a husk. ‘I can’t do without you. And now, with you severed from Ian, I’ve realised I don’t have to! I am free to take you back—to have again what I had before.’
His mouth started to lower again.