She was breathing in light, quick gasps, high colour back in her pale cheeks, her thick black eyebrows clashing in defiance of the secret excitement glimmering in her wide-eyed gaze. The throbbing in her left hand had dimmed to an extent t
hat she was reawakened to the numerous other, more pleasurable aches in her body, the subtle reminders of how thoroughly she had enjoyed his possession.
‘So I did,’ he murmured softly, towering over her. ‘And what’s done is done, isn’t it, Jane? I can’t very well unpossess you...’
He cupped her chin and brushed a thumb over the dampness in the shadowed hollow under her eye.
‘And nor, I think, would you want me to,’ he added huskily. Although there was a masculine smugness to his certainty, it wasn’t the offensive, gloating triumph of an enemy over a vanquished foe, and Jane’s heart fluttered in her chest.
‘I—’
His thumb flirted over her patrician cheekbone to slant across her trembling mouth. ‘Don’t! Don’t lie, Jane. Let there at least be honesty between us about this...’
He bent and replaced his thumb with his mouth. He kissed her, not voraciously, devouringly, as he had kissed her all through the night, but softly, sweetly, seductively... almost forgivingly. A morning kiss, full of such delicate promise that Jane was bewitched with a bewildered yearning. She felt his hand slide under the lapel of her robe and shape her warm breast, gently exploring the stiffening peak. She might have found the strength to defy his passion, but against his tenderness she had no defences. No man had ever considered her worthy of tenderness.
‘Oh, yes, it was good for both of us, wasn’t it, sweetheart?’ he whispered, sipping at her lips. ‘Spectacularly good. So why should we fight it? Maybe it’s time to stop looking back and start looking forward...’
‘To what?’ she asked, her mind blurred by the addictive sweetness of kisses that were far more potent than any drug.
‘To what we can do for each other.’ His voice lightened to a sexy, teasing drawl. ‘After all, I did promise the doctor I’d look after you...’
Years of self-denial prompted her instinctive reaction. ‘I don’t need—’
‘Of course you do—we all do at some time in our lives,’ he told her, lifting his hand from her breast to comb the tumbled waves off her smooth brow, arranging them in a dark frame around her serious face. ‘And you’re more needy than most, sweetheart...or you wouldn’t have been so quick to sell yourself last night.’
A scalding sense of shame swept over her. She wanted to tell him that he had paid a great deal too dear for what had been given freely, but that would give far too much away. ‘It wasn’t like that—I was angry—’
‘I know, so was I,’ he soothed her, with a honeyed understanding that was even more seductive than his kisses. ‘Because all the time we were mouthing insults at each other I was imagining what it would be like to have you beneath me in bed.’ He stilled her restless movement by weaving his fingers into her hair, trapping her head on the pillow.
‘Do you think I haven’t realised that you only took the money for spite? You’ve got far too much pride to play the whore for me or any other man. You went off with Dan because I’d pushed you too far and you wanted to twist a knife in my guts, and things got out of hand...’ His mouth twisted into a cynical line. ‘But that’s OK. I know how these things can happen. I’m intimately acquainted with the subtle ways that revenge can suborn the soul...’
His cobalt eyes seemed to blaze with an inward fire as he gently manoeuvred her forearm so that her injured hand lay across his large, flat palm.
‘I have a serviced apartment on the beach at Mission Bay,’ he said quietly. ‘Small but with all the built-in luxuries you could ask for, and very private...no one need know where you are, if you want to handle it that way. If you like you could move in today.’
It took her a moment to work out what he was saying. ‘Are you asking me to live with you?’ she croaked.
‘I don’t live there; I have a house of my own. The apartment would be yours,’ he corrected her scrupulously, ‘for the duration.’
For the duration?
‘But I’d visit as often as was agreeable to both of us, and probably stay overnight fairly regularly, so naturally I’d take care of all your living expenses,’ he clarified.
But Jane was still grappling with his original statement.
For the duration? He was talking about the duration of an affair!
Her pulse went wild. ‘You want me to be your mistress?’ she gasped.
He shot her a reproving look through thick, dark lashes. ‘That’s a very old-fashioned term. I have in mind a more modern partnership, one of mutual pleasure and mutual independence.’
‘More modern, maybe, but no more equal,’ she said shakily, while inside elation soared above her shock. So he didn’t just want a torrid sexual fling—he was laying down the parameters of a relationship. And, typically for a dominant male, he expected it to be all on his own terms. She strove to feel insulted by his offer. ‘I wouldn’t exactly be as independent as you, would I? Not if I’m living in your flat on your money...’
His eyes glinted. As an experienced negotiator he was a skilled interpreter of the nuances of language and behaviour. Alert for the slightest hint of complicity, he noted that Jane’s use of the present tense altered her answer from rejection to mere objection. Neither had he missed the tiny flare of her nostrils, nor the uneven rise and fall of her magnificent breasts. The lady was definitely intrigued by the bait. It only remained to reel her in.
His fingers curled lightly round her bandaged hand, caging it without pressure. ‘If you still want to get a job after your hand heals, that’s up to you—I’m sure you’ll no longer have trouble finding one. I just want you to know that there’s no need to worry about how you’re going to survive in the meantime, or to fear any reprisals, whatever happens between us.’
‘What are you saying?’ she whispered, afraid to believe the message implicit in his words.