For Revenge or Redemption? (9 page)

When she told him he went through without any hesitation to fix the problem. A couple of seconds later, the lights came on, but then instantly went out again.

‘Do you have any other appliances switched on?’ he queried.

‘Only the fridge.’

‘Anything upstairs?’

‘Again, the fridge…’

‘What is it?’ he asked, seeing her frown.

‘I put the dishwasher on before I left this morning. But that would have finished hours ago.’

‘I think you’d better let me check.’

As soon as she opened the door of the flat to let them in, she could feel the heat coming from the kitchen.

Seth shot her an urgent glance. ‘What time did you say you put it on?’

Grace looked at him anxiously. ‘Before I left for work…’

Three strides brought him across her tiny kitchen. He cancelled the switch on the wall above the worktop before opening the door of the overheated appliance, stepping quickly aside as a cloud of steam gushed out.

‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that your dishes are clean,’ he remarked dryly. He was down on his haunches now, pulling the lower basket towards him, and Grace felt her gaze drawn to the way the dark-grey fabric of his trousers strained across his thighs as he inspected the shiny interior of her dishwasher for any obvious damage.

‘It’s been going all this time?’ It was an amazed little utterance, dragged from a throat suddenly dry from a riveting sexual awareness.

‘Seems like the programmer’s stuck,’ he diagnosed authoritatively. He was pushing the basket back in, but stopped in mid-action. ‘Hardly a load worth putting on, was it?’ he commented, noting the sparsity of dishes in both baskets.

Grace made a small gesture with her shoulders. ‘Believe it or not, I don’t spend all my time in this flat cooking.’

‘Obviously not.’ His speculative smile left little doubt as to what he thought she spent most of her time doing. Probably entertaining a steady stream of boyfriends! she thought hopelessly. ‘But that doesn’t alter the fact that you’re not eating enough.’ His eyes, skimming over her willowy figure beneath her black executive suit, admonished as much as they admired. ‘Worrying about something, Grace?’ The sound of the dishwasher door clicking closed only added to an air of menace Grace could almost touch as he got to his feet, so that she was far too affected by him to answer. ‘We’re going to have to do something about that, aren’t we?’ he said.

Aware of the worktop against the small of her back, Grace swallowed, feeling absurdly trapped. The way he was looking at her with that smouldering regard—as though he knew that the reason she couldn’t eat or sleep properly was because she was so wound up over him—left her in no doubt, after that last remark, as to what he was going to do about it.

One of the sleeves of his suit was pushed up, exposing a good deal of immaculate white cuff. Those loose strands of hair that fell tantalisingly over his forehead even though he’d raked them back were curling damply from the steam. He looked flushed, dishevelled and incredibly sexy.

‘Come here, Grace,’ he urged softly.

S
HE
didn’t want to. She wanted to ask him to leave. But his eyes were as compelling as his voice had been and, while her lips wouldn’t move, her feet had no such reservations.

Fuelled by an inner fire that his masculinity had stoked, as much a slave to her desire for him now as that teenager had been all those years ago, she moved towards him, drawn by an insistence stronger than her will, stronger even than all her instincts of self-survival.

When she was but half a pace away he reached out and let his fingers curl around the nape of her neck, closing those extra inches as he brought his head down to hers.

Surprisingly, his lips grazed one corner of her mouth, so gently that Grace sucked in her breath from the exquisite tenderness of his action.

His breath was warm and so feather-light against the curve of her cheek that the sensuality of it sent shivers along her spine. She turned her head, her mouth aching for contact with his. He laughed softly, denying it, drawing a small, plaintive sound from her lips.

‘Why rush it?’ he whispered against her ear, and even the deep timbre of his voice was arousing her—as he knew it would, she realised helplessly, lured deeper into the sensual heaven he was creating for her.

With one hand resting against his shirt beneath his open
jacket, Grace could feel the warmth of him and the steady rhythm of his heart. His biceps flexed under fingers that were locked tensely onto his immaculate sleeve just below his shoulder. Even the cut and elegance of his clothes couldn’t disguise his latent strength, the whipcord power of his body.

‘Seth…’ she murmured as wanting became a need that spread like bushfire, radiating excitement, heat and tension along her veins.

‘Pleading?’ he mocked softly. But then he was covering her mouth with his own, his arms coming fully around her, pulling her into the hard angles of his taut, aroused body, his groan lost in the warm cavern that was yielding to his sensual plunder now.

No man had ever made her feel like this, Grace acknowledged, her arms sliding up around his neck. No one!
Only this man!
And now she knew why all her potential relationships with other men had failed. Because after Seth she had wanted to feel like this with someone else, just once, and it had never happened for her. Never in eight long years.

The scent of him was intoxicating as her eager fingers slid into the dark strength of his hair, locking him to her to prolong the kiss, wanting it never to stop.

When he did it was only to allow his lips to follow the scented column of her throat, forcing her head back as her body reacted with a will of its own, arching, yielding, guiding him along its secret paths to unleash the pleasure to which only he had ever possessed the key.

Somehow he had tugged open her blouse and pushed aside the scalloped lace of her white bra, and as his mouth closed over the erect, tingling peak of her breast the pleasure spilled out in a spiral of throbbing need.

‘Seth…’

She shouldn’t be doing this! There was a frantic little voice inside her head:
he despises you!
she tried telling herself. But her feeble attempts to remind herself were lost in the delirious
heat of all that he was doing to her as she helped him remove her jacket and blouse, and felt him release the button on her skirt and draw down the zip like it was second nature to him to be undressing her.

He murmured some appreciative sound as the clinging little garment slid to the floor, followed by the bra he had unclasped, so that she was standing there in only her white satin string and sheer black hold-ups.

Later she would regret this, she knew, but for now what did it matter what he thought about her? All that mattered was that she was in his arms, this man who had been born to be her lover, because he was right, she accepted with a painful intensity. He was the only man she wanted. The only man she had ever wanted.

His hands caressed her breasts, his slightly callused palms an excruciating pleasure as they teased and tormented the pale, swollen aureoles.

Wild for him, drugged with desire, she tugged at the buttons of his shirt, allowing him to help her in removing his jacket, dragging his shirt out of his waistband.

The feel of his taut, warm skin as he pulled her back against his hair-roughened body sent pulsing sensations rocketing through her.

Her breathing laboured, Grace caught his groan of need, her excitement a stifling heat that held her rigid as he moved to allow his tongue to travel down and down along her eager body.

He was on his knees, his long fingers caressing the gentle curve of her buttocks, playing across the smooth, pale flesh above the black lacy tops of her stockings.

She moved convulsively and he caught her to him, his mouth hot against the core of her femininity beneath the damp scented satin of her string.

She was on that beach again, paralysed by the depth of her
wanting, her body moving of its own accord, for him to douse the fire he had aroused in the only way it could be doused.

‘Oh, mercy…’ He shuddered violently against her and the next instant he was lifting her up, finding his way instinctively to the room with the big double bed.

Somehow they were lying there naked together and those hands caressing her body were as familiar as a pathway home.

She jerked against him, eager for his possession, but he was determined to make her wait, treating her to a practised and abandoned eternity of consummate love-play, just as he had promised he would.

A long time later when she was damp and sobbing with desire, thinking she would die of wanting if he didn’t take her soon, gently he parted her thighs and with one rapturous thrust slid into the slick, wet warmth of her body, blowing her mind with his slow, calculated control.

With a driving need, she curled her fingers along the velvet-sheathed strength of his back, her body closing around his, writhing beneath him like a mad thing until the swift, sharp crescendo of orgasm that made her cry out. It seemed to go on and on, until the thrusts that were driving her became harder and more urgent, and the fluid warmth of him erupted and flowed into her, finally dousing the mutual fire of their passion.

Some time afterwards he raised himself up and looked at her. Her hair lay like a silver cloud over the pillow. Her face was flushed and damp from the ecstasy they had shared. Her eyelashes, though, were drawn down, as though she didn’t want to look at him—or couldn’t.

Marvelling at how beautiful she was, a warm pleasure curved his mouth from the way she had made him feel, as though he were the only man on earth—or, amazingly, the only one that mattered—and on a breath that seemed to shudder through him, he murmured, ‘Look at me, Grace.’

The eyes she raised reluctantly to his were dark and slumberous from the aftermath of their love-making, but as they tugged over his face something clouded their depths and in a barbed tone she said, ‘Why? So you can claim yet another victory for yourself?’

Her unexpected response surprisingly cut him like a whiplash.

Of course. She hadn’t been able to help herself, any more than he had. They were bound to wind up in bed together whether they liked each other or not. And it was clearly “or not” in her case, he realised, mocking that moment’s conceit when he had imagined otherwise.

So what had he been expecting? he challenged himself roughly. Declarations of undying love from her? His inward laughter was mirthless and cold. Of course not. He wouldn’t have welcomed that from her in any case. Or would he? The thought struck him suddenly. He had to admit that it would be a rather ironic turn up for the books.

‘If that’s the way you want to view it.’ Self-ridicule put a chill in his voice now. ‘Although for one supposedly beaten you sounded pretty triumphant at the end.’

Shame scorched Grace’s cheeks. How could she have let it happen? she remonstrated with herself, mortified that he had seen her so helpless and begging. But that was exactly what this whole seduction thing had been about, she realised hopelessly, wanting to bury her head under the pillow and never come up for air.

‘I take it there’s no chance of your getting pregnant?’ Seth’s question was curt, matter-of-fact.

Coldly reminded of all she had been through after the way she had behaved with him the first time, Grace pressed her eyelids closed, immensely relieved that at least she was protected by the Pill she had started taking shortly before her cancelled wedding.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t help biting out, ‘Isn’t it a bit late to ask me that now?’

It was, and he could have kicked himself for not giving it too much consideration beforehand, but then she had blown his mind with her abandoned response.

‘Well?’ It was a hard, emotionless demand.

‘Don’t worry.’ Rolling away from him, Grace leapt to her feet and self-consciously scrambled around for the robe that she’d left draped across the bottom of her bed that morning. ‘I won’t be coming after you with a paternity suit,’ she assured him caustically, finding the robe in a pool of pale satin on the carpet. ‘If that’s what you’re worrying about.’

‘Do I take it then that you’re on the Pill?’

Propped up on an elbow, he reclined there, watching her, totally unfazed by the fact that he was naked while she was struggling to bring both ends of her robe together, ridiculously embarrassed after what they had just done.

‘Take it any way you like!’ Finding it almost impossible to keep her eyes from those heavily muscled limbs and hard, lean torso, when he had just used that devastating masculinity of his to subdue her, she swung away from him towards the bathroom, not anticipating the speed at which he could come after her until he was pulling her round to face him before she was even halfway towards the door.

‘What are you trying to do?’ His fingers bit into her arm. ‘Deny that it happened?’

How could she? She still wanted to slide her hands over his magnificent body, surrender to its warm strength and thrusting power with a pleasure unequalled by anything else in the universe.

‘No,’ she uttered shakily, looking past him so she wouldn’t have to focus on the harsh sweep of his jaw and that hard, incisive mouth that had made her cry out with the screaming intimacy of its kisses. The musky scent of him that was filling her nostrils was a taunting reminder of how uninhibitedly
their juices had fused. ‘Just trying to come to terms with being such a fool.’

‘Don’t let it get you down.’ He released her with almost careless indifference. ‘The feeling does wear off eventually.’ And on that scathing note he turned away, leaving her fleeing to the bathroom with the stinging reminder of how she had once made an equal fool of him.

Fortunately, Seth flew off the following morning to pursue some new accounts in the States, which gave Grace time to recover her composure and a little bit of dignity. She didn’t know how she would have faced him, particularly in front of the rest of the board, Simone and other members of staff, knowing that she had played right into his hands and handed him on a plate the conquest he had been planning.

As she took telephone calls, attended meetings and made appointments for the week ahead, she kept asking herself—as she had been doing constantly since before she had come out of her bathroom the previous night and found that Seth had already left—why she had let things get so out of hand between them.

He had shown her a soft side of himself yesterday that had lured her into a false sense of security, and like a prize idiot she had fallen for it when she knew how much he despised her and how little respect he had for her. Consequently, she only had herself to blame.

She groaned at her senseless behaviour, so unable to think of anything else that she cut off a caller who wanted to speak to the marketing manager and got through the rest of her work like an automaton. Her only consolation, she thought, racked by shame and self-reproach, was that she’d learned her lesson the first time and that at least this time there wouldn’t be any repercussions from their love-making.

Seth didn’t return at all that week. Having already put things in place to keep the company running smoothly while
he was away, he telephoned some time during the following week to say that he expected to be out of the country for the rest of the month.

He didn’t speak to Grace personally, however, leaving the message with Simone. Hurting and angry, Grace decided that, having achieved everything he had set out to do—taking control of Culverwells, then securing her ultimate humiliation by taking her to bed—he was obviously now treating her with the contempt he thought she deserved.

Christmas came and went with still no word from him, and her wretchedness was only compounded by a heavy cold.

Having spent the holiday alone, being forced to miss a party at Beth’s, and with Corinne having flown off to Madeira on Christmas Eve, Grace returned to work on a wet January morning feeling as though she was the only person in London that Christmas had done a detour round, and with the knowledge that Seth wasn’t due to return for another week.

And, if that wasn’t enough to deal with, her period was overdue.

At first she put it down simply to stress. Stress could be responsible for a lot of things and over the past couple of months she had had a lot of things to be stressed about.

No way could she be pregnant, she assured herself resolutely. Fate couldn’t do that to her twice.

But, beneath her over-confident attempts to dismiss any possibility that she might be, lay the nagging truth that she was worried sick. She’d been protected, when she and Seth had made love, it was true, but she was only on a low-dosage Pill, and she had had a stomach upset a couple of days before. She hadn’t even thought of it at the time, but of course something like that could render the Pill ineffective. It didn’t help reminding herself that her periods were as regular as clockwork. That there was only one other time in her life that her period had ever been late…

Around mid-week, feeling queasy and off-colour, she
decided to buy a pregnancy test. And it was then, in the lonely privacy of her flat, where she had behaved so foolishly with the man whose only plan was to make her pay, that her worst fears were realised.