‘Excellent.’
She beamed at him. ‘I’m so glad for you!’
He cocked his head with an ironic smile. ‘So am I.’
‘It must have been a terrible experience for a child,’ she said, her emotions swinging wildly back to deep compassion.
‘At fifteen, you were little more than a child yourself.’
She drew herself up to her full height, once more unsettlingly conscious that the top of her head barely reached his unshaven chin. ‘I’ve always been mature for my age.’
‘You like children?’ he asked inconsequentially.
‘Of course I like children,’ she said, bewildered.
‘Some women don’t.’
‘Well, I love them,’ she said firmly. She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘Peter thinks I’ll make a great mother.’
His eye narrowed. ‘From what you know of me, you should be on your knees begging for mercy, not deliberately going out of your way to annoy me,’ he warned with silky menace, and she gasped as his big hand suddenly curled around her throat, applying an uncomfortable pressure to draw her towards him until her breasts rested against his chest.
‘Take your own advice, Vivian, and forget the past. You’re not going home to marry Marvel; you’re not going to have his children or share any kind of future with him…’
His hand tightened under her jaw, lifting her up on to her toes, so that she had to clutch at his thick shoulders for balance, her fingers sliding against his smooth skin.
‘I’m your future now. I’m the one who controls your destiny.’ She gave a little yip as his free hand slipped under the hem of his sweater to splay warmly across her quivering, tautly stretched belly. ‘And I’m the one who controls your fertility. The first child you’ll ever carry in your womb will be mine. The first baby to suckle at your breast will belong to me, as you will…’
Vivian trembled in shock at the starkly primitive statement of possession and her equally primitive response. Her lips parted soundlessly as his fingertips skimmed under the lacy band of her panties and pressed gently into the fringes of the downy thicket between her thighs.
‘Such a fiery little nest… Is it as hot and spicy as its colour suggests? I’ll bet it is…’ She gave a faint whimper that was stifled by the nip of his teeth against her tender lower lip and his purred praise vibrating over her tongue. ‘I bet you’re hot and spicy all over when you’re in sexual heat, peppered with those delicious freckles and salted with the sweat of your arousal. I look forward to dining on your splendour…’ His hand moved up to brush briefly across the silky undersides of her heavy breasts, pausing to discover the betraying tightness of her nipples.
He made a deep sound of male gratification and suddenly released her, stepping back to study with ferocious pleasure her swaying body and her dazed look of sensual confusion.
His chest rose and fell rapidly, his body rippling with arrogant satisfaction as he straightened her glasses, which were fogged and slightly askew.
‘You do see the exquisite justice of it, don’t you, Vivian? An eye for an eye is such a paltry vengeance for a man of my sensual nature. I prefer a much more intimate, pleasurable and fruitful form of revenge…’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘LOST something, Ginger?’
Stomping out of the dilapidated old boat-house, which it had taken her half an hour to break into, Vivian stopped dead.
Yes, my sanity, she wanted to say. She must be mad to allow him to play these games with her; crazier still to be enjoying it.
Nicholas Thorne had threatened her in the most elemental way a man could threaten a woman, and yet it wasn’t fear that made her heart race and her stomach churn whenever he was near…
She looked up, squinting against the slanting rays of the setting sun.
He was leaning against the corner of the salt-encrusted wooden building, a familiar, infuriating smile of mockery twisting his narrow mouth, an oilskin jacket flapping open over his grey fisherman’s sweater and the usual pair of jeans. Somehow she had difficulty picturing him in a conventional suit, yet he must wear one all the time in his role as ruthless head of a sprawling business empire.
‘A boat, perhaps?’
‘You have to have one somewhere,’ she growled, disturbed as ever by his wicked humour. ‘You can’t live on an island without owning some kind of boat.’
‘Feel free to look around,’ he replied with another quirk of his lips.
‘Thank you, I will,’ she said cuttingly.