Too late. He lowered his head and caught her lips, and everything alive in her went haywire and she fought not to respond to him. Clouds gathered across her mind, then cleared once they’d taken her back four years to when this was all she lived for. His body felt the same as it had then, still hard, strong and sensually assertive. His mouth was the mouth which came to her in her dreams and wrung her senses out with a frustrated longing. He even smelt the same, his skin, warm and satiny to the touch, evoking a hunger in her that she’d known all along had never been quenched. And the hot, sweet, melting sensation trickled insidiously through her body so that she had to hold herself stiff and unbreathing to maintain her resistance.
Dominic lifted his head, his eyes black where the pupils had engulfed the silver-grey iris. A dark flush stained his lean cheeks, and his mouth was parted, the air softly rasping her face as he breathed unsteadily upon her.
‘Take another deep breath, Madeline,’ he softly advised, his mouth so close to her own that the words vibrated against her trembling lips. ‘You’re going to need it, because that wasn’t good enough. Not by a long way.’
This time everything that had been missing from the first kiss was there in strength in the second. Heat—a heat that burned her lips apart. Hunger—which sent his tongue snaking into her mouth to tangle greedily with her own. And passion—passion so intense that it forced a groan from her as her body caught fire, the flames dancing in applause for something her senses had been starved of for years.
Dominic muttered something, impatient because she was still putting up a token resistance. His arms tightened around her, one forcing her into an arch so that she had to cling to him to maintain her balance, the other burying itself in her hair, tugging her head back so that she was completely vulnerable to his demanding kiss. And she felt the heated press of his own response begin to throb against her.
It was her downfall. On a final distraught groan, she melted, and gave him what he was demanding of her, the hot sensual response of her own desire.
The kiss changed then, drawing a hunger from both of them that had them straining against each other as wave after wave of hot drugging passion swept over them.
When at last he dragged his mouth from hers, Madeline was so disorientated that she swayed dizzily, her limbs weak and trembling, heart throbbing loudly against her panting breasts.
Appalled with herself, she pushed him away, anger—thankfully—coming to her aid alongside the self-disgust which helped feed her voice with contempt as she bit out huskily, ‘That was a mistake. You shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Why not?’ He sounded husky and warm, his hand stroking her hair as though he were soothing a frightened fawn instead of a sexually furious female.
‘Because you’ve just spoiled all our plans,’ she informed him coldly, by quick degrees grabbing back her composure. ‘I’ll look for another way to heal the family breach,’ she told him. ‘But it won’t be with any help from you!’
‘Because I kissed you?’ He sounded horribly mocking. Madeline felt her cheeks grow so hot that they burned her with humiliation. ‘I had to do something to get through that wall of ice you’ve surrounded yourself in. God knows,’ he derided, ‘we’d convince nobody of anything with you freezing me off every time I so much as look at you!’
The derision brought her head up, her mouth beginning to tingle when she found her eyes drawn to the throbbing fullness of his still savouring the recent kiss. ‘Well, now you won’t have to worry about my reaction,’ she said, turning stiffly away from him and placing a trembling hand on the door-handle. ‘I want nothing more to do with you, Dominic. Please let me leave,’ she added when he stopped her opening the door with the simple pressure of his palm on the wood.
‘Don’t be stupid!’ he rasped, getting serious at last. ‘You can’t seriously be running away because of a couple of inconsequential kisses!’
Inconsequential! If she didn’t get out of here quickly, she would hit him for that! On a strength born of anger, she managed to tug the door open despite his pressing hand.
‘Is it Linburgh?’ He followed her into the hall, his hand coming out to grasp her arm and pulling her to a protesting halt. ‘Because, if it is, why not just say so instead of pretending all this—virginal outrage over a damned kiss?’
Madeline spun around on him then, her eyes alight with anger. ‘No,’ she said tightly. ‘It is not Perry, nor any other man, come to that!’ His face was no longer passion-softened but hard and watchful. As she glared at him, she saw him frown and begin mentally backing off, recognising the signs that the old and unpredictable Madeline had broken through her sadly slipped composure. But she didn’t care any more; she just wanted to get out of his flat, out of his life by the quickest means possible. ‘If you want to know the full unvarnished truth of it,’ she bit out stingingly, ‘then I’ll give it to you. I came back here because I hoped four years was long enough to make my point. But it seems it wasn’t. So I’ll state it clearly so there should be no mistake. I am not available, for a dalliance, a flirtation, or a romance feigned or otherwise with you. And not because my feelings are involved with another man! But because I just don’t wa
nt you!’
‘Finished?’ he clipped out coldly.
Madeline nodded.
‘Then I’ll take you home.’
He drove her to the apartment in a stony silence which was reflected in the granite hardness of his features, and Madeline sat beside him in a state of panicked near hysteria, wishing she had never come back, wishing she had just stayed in Boston where nothing nor anybody had the power to hurt her like this man did.
He escorted her all the way to her door before he delivered his own bitter reply to what she’d thrown at him.
‘You’re a liar, Madeline,’ he said. ‘Whether you’re lying to me or, worse, to yourself as well I don’t know. But you are—a liar. You responded to me in the exact way I responded to you—with a fire and a hunger built up over four long bloody frustrating years! Think on that while you lie in your bed tonight in lonely splendour. And think on this too.’ He pushed his face up close to hers, his anger so strong he pulsed with it. ‘If this—thing between our two families isn’t resolved soon, not only will Vicky be more hurt than she is already, but your father will find himself in dire financial difficulties! He needs my support, and the only way he will get it is by you co-operating with me!’
His mouth landed a final stinging kiss to hers, then he was striding angrily away while she watched him go without a single word, too shaken by the unpalatable truth in what he’d said.
Tears filled her aching eyes as she watched him step into the lift and stab the ‘down’ button, felt a desperate need to go after him and even took a jerky step forward with that intention, before forcing herself to remain exactly where she was, and watching the lift doors slide across his hard, angry face.
The old Madeline was the one who had gone chasing after her angry man. This one held on to her pride at all costs.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE HADN’T come. Why she had expected him to turn up at all, Madeline didn’t know. But the wayward hope had lingered with her all through their first course and was just beginning to shrivel as they waited for their second course to be served. She had only picked at her food, too tense to eat. And Vicky was too engrossed in an involved story about a potential client she was trying to capture to notice Madeline’s complete lack of appetite.
‘I tell you, Maddie,’ Vicky was saying excitedly to her inattentive audience, ‘if I could land this one, I’d make my father eat every single one of all those deriding remarks he’s made about women in a man’s world! And he’s so delicious to look at. He…’