The movement made her breasts stretch the cotton tank top she wore, making him aware of the vague outline of her nipples against the worn fabric. He watched them harden into bullets, as the urge to peel down her top and lick the turgid tips lodged in his brain and would not be dislodged.
A bright flush rose on her cheeks, their awkward truce sharpening on the knife-edge of desire, as the peaks engorged and her lust-blown pupils flooded the deep mossy green of her irises.
What the hell?
She took a cautious step back, the awareness in her expression tempered by wariness. And he noticed the fatigue again, making her eyes look huge in her pale face.
Not the time or the place to deal with this, Blackstone.
‘Nico should wake up again in a few hours and I want to be there when he does,’ she said, the words rapid, her breathing coarse and uneven.
Was she scared of him, or just of the strength of the sexual chemistry between them?
She lifted a hand out of her pocket and jerked her thumb over her shoulder as she retreated towards the door. ‘Would you like to come and sit with me? I’m sure Nico would love to meet you properly when he wakes up.’
He shook his head, and he saw her visibly wilt with relief at his refusal.
‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ he said, determined to keep that boundary in place. He was more than invested enough in this situation already. He needed to take stock, to properly define the parameters of his interaction, and not just with the boy, apparently, but also with his far too captivating aunt, before he spent any more time with them.
If he spent any time with them, he corrected himself.
‘I’ll be staying at the Blackstone Park Lane while I’m in London,’ he said before she could bolt out of the door. ‘Lisa will escort you to your new home when you’re finished here. You can let her know if there’s anything else you or Nico needs.’
She bobbed her head, her hand trembling on the door knob. ‘Okay, and th
anks again.’ Her face softened, the emotion shining in her eyes only making her more attractive. And him more tense. ‘For coming here, and giving Nico this chance. I know you don’t want to be a superhero, but if this works you will be, to me.’
He nodded, not trusting himself to reply, and not understanding the tight feeling in his chest as she left the room.
He wasn’t a superhero. He wasn’t even a good person. Something she would discover soon enough if they ever decided to act on the sexual chemistry that had flared between them without warning.
Not gonna happen.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and contacted Lisa to set up the press conference for tomorrow. Then he headed out of the waiting room behind Bronte and turned in the opposite direction, walking towards the hospital exit—while attempting to ignore the pulsing ache in his crotch and the tight feeling in his chest which had refused to subside ever since he’d first spotted her at the Ball.
* * *
Six hours later, Bronte lay in a huge four-poster bed in a bedroom suite bigger than her whole flat. She stared at the intricate cornicing on the ceiling while she attempted to regulate her breathing and process everything that had happened to her—and Nico—in the last twenty-four hours.
The detached Georgian house—correction, the detached Georgian palace—Lukas Blackstone had insisted on buying for her and Nico was as overwhelming as she had expected it to be. Four storeys of ornate stucco painted in pristine white with manicured lawns that led to a wrought iron gate leading onto Regent’s Park. But it wasn’t this house—correction, palace—that was making her hyperventilate. It was him.
Her breathing sped up again, the heavy thud of her heartbeat squeezing the air out of her lungs.
What was the matter with her? She should be ecstatic about everything. This mansion, the staff, the decision to employ Maureen, who was moving into the housekeeper’s cottage tomorrow, Lukas’s agreement to donate bone marrow to help find Nikky a cure. But instead she felt completely overwhelmed.
This isn’t about Lukas Blackstone. This is about you. And your inexplicable reaction to him.
She sighed. There, she’d admitted it.
The man was just so overpowering. And it wasn’t just his vast wealth—which had been shocking enough—but everything about him. His tall muscular body, the harshly masculine face and that compelling scar, that enticing juniper scent, the indomitable presence, the way he seemed intent on bending her to his will and, worst of all, the flash of...something...in his eyes when they’d been in the waiting room together and she’d felt her breasts swell and her nipples tighten under that intense gaze. All she’d wanted in that moment was for him to rip open her T-shirt, drag down her bra, release her heavy breasts from their confinement and feast on them, the way he’d feasted on her mouth the night before at the Ball. She’d gone into some weird erotic trance, which even now felt so vivid and so volatile it shocked her to her core.
She squeezed her thighs together, brutally ashamed of the liquid tug in her abdomen that hadn’t gone away since their encounter. Slotting herself into a life totally alien to everything she had ever known seemed like small potatoes compared to having to deal with this uncontrollable, all-consuming hunger.
So there’s that.
She placed her arm over her face.
Had he known? What her body had been begging for him to do? Mortification engulfed her, but the burning flush was soon doused by a cold, hard dose of reality.