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‘Not here, darling,’ he went on wickedly. ‘Better wait until we get home!’
Home! She wasn’t going home with this man…
That brought her back to the present in the blink of an eyelid, her head coming up again sharply, her mouth opening on a gasp of protest. But the protest never had a chance to form because the man behind her spoke again before she had a chance to say a word.
‘Time to go, sweetheart. Say goodbye to your friends.’
It was the way he said friends that alerted her. She had been in danger of giving away their pretence. If she had voiced her protest, she would have made it clear to the men at the table that her rescuer was not the lover she had claimed him as.
‘Goodbye, guys! Th-thanks for keeping me company.’
Just who was this man who had come to her rescue so unexpectedly? The question raged in her mind as she made herself turn, ready to walk off with him, struggling to look as if this were something she did every day.
He slid his hand into hers, lacing his strong fingers with hers, holding her in a way that felt light and gentle, but which she was sure would be even harder to break away from than the dark-haired man’s hold had been.
‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
He was tall, and strongly built, that much she could tell from the swift, sidelong glances she slanted in his direction, not daring to actually turn and stare. In the shadowy light of the bar, his face was turned from her, eyes fixed on the doorway towards which his determined strides were taking them. She could only let herself be pulled along in his wake, wanting to be well away from her earlier tormentors before she did what she knew she was going to have to do and put the brakes on sharply, saying, ‘This far and no further.’
‘Hang on a minute…’ she tried, but he either didn’t hear or pretended not to. His ruthless path through the bar didn’t falter, and where she had struggled through the crowds on her way in, now they just seemed to part smoothly to let him through.
The next moment they were at the door and moving down the steps into the street.
‘Now hang on!’
She dug her heels in as she spoke, mentally slamming on the brakes and praying that his strength and power wouldn’t just drag her over, tumbling ignominiously down the stone stairs after him.
‘That’s far enough!’
This time her voice reached him. Either that, or the pull on his hand was enough to drag him to a halt. He stopped abruptly, then whirled round, coming to face her, and she saw his features for the first time in the full glow of the light of the street lamps.
She’d seen them before. Seen that strong-boned, forcefully arrogant face. The jet-black, deep-set eyes above slashing cheekbones, the long, straight sweep of a nose, and the fall of rich, thick hair, darker than the night’s shadows around him.
‘You!’
The word escaped on a cry of shock as she recognised the man she had seen at the other side of the bar. The only other person who had been on his own in the busy, noisy room.
The man she had not dared to risk approaching because some intuitive sense of fear had held her back. Her instincts had sprung straight to red alert, flashing warning signs before her eyes and shrieking, ‘Danger—keep away! Don’t touch!’ even before she had had a chance to think why. She just knew that something deep and primitive inside her had made her feel that he was someone to be treated with the intense caution with which she might approach a prowling jungle cat if she came face to face with it out hunting.
And seen up close he looked even more so. More dangerous; more devastating. More blatantly masculine. More shockingly attractive—and yet even his undeniable sexual appeal had a worrying core of threat at the bottom of it.
This wasn’t the sort of man she usually encountered. He was nothing like the men she had known at home and in the office, the few, friendly dates she had ever been out on. He was beyond her experience, beyond her knowledge—and very definitely beyond her control.
Those instincts were working overtime again—and this time they were yelling at her that she was completely out of her depth with this man.
And if she wasn’t very much mistaken, she had just jumped right out of the frying-pan and straight into the very heart of the fire.
CHAPTER TWO
‘ME?’
THEO’S response to Skye’s shocked exclamation was as calm and relaxed as he could make it, though any real control was the last thing he felt capable of.
He should never have touched her.
His body still burned at the thought of it; his brain had almost melted in the burn of the fierce, erotic heat that had flooded every inch of his body, making him hard and hungry in a second. He still ached from the sudden ebbing of the blazing tide, the effect of the cold night air that had hit him as soon as they had left the bar.
He should never have touched her, but what he hadn’t anticipated was the way that she had responded to him.
He’d thought she felt it too.
If she hadn’t, then what the hell had she meant by the way she’d reacted—resting her head against his shoulder, leaning back into him?
But now she was behaving as if she thought he was a demon from hell and not at all the person she’d been hoping for
‘You were expecting someone else?’
‘N-no—not exactly,’ she stammered. ‘I—it’s just—I never thought that you’d be the one to come to my rescue. I should thank you,’ she added, too belatedly to smooth his very ruffled feelings.
‘Think nothing of it.’
A wave of his hand dismissed her stumbling thanks. Theo was well aware of the way that the frustrated demands of his aroused body were distorting his mood, making him feel bad-tempered and edgy. And what made a bad mood infinitely worse was the way that, seeing her face full on now, in the light from the doorway, he found that the promise suggested by her back, her profile, indoors, was more than fulfilled by the reality.
She was gorgeous. A pale, oval face. Stunning light coloured eyes, with incredibly thick, lush lashes. A full, soft mouth seemed just made for kisses, and the thoughts that imagining that mouth on his own skin triggered off were so X-rated that he was glad of the shadows in the street, the darkness of the evening, that hid his response from her.
‘And I should introduce myself.’
Her hand came out, stiffly formal.
‘I’m—Skye…’
The hesitation before her name and the way that she didn’t add a surname told him she didn’t want to trust him with the full details of her identity. Fair enough, that was fine with him.
‘Anton,’ he growled, knowing he was forced to take her hand, but making the contact as brief and brusque as possible before letting it drop.
He didn’t want a repeat of the cruelly demanding sensations he’d experienced before, especially when it seemed that this Skye was determined to be on her way as soon as possible and there was no chance of taking things any further.
‘Anton.’
The way that she echoed the name he had given her made him wonder if she really knew, or suspected, it was not genuine.
He didn’t give a damn one way or another. Even here, in England, the Antonakos name—and, more importantly, the Antonakos fortune—was so well known that the realisation he was a member of that family was enough to create an interest where there wasn’t one, to put a speculative light in the eye of anyone he met.
And, in his experience, women were the worst offenders. Along with the name Antonakos, they saw the prospect of a meal ticket for life; a future of luxury and ease, if they could just play their cards right.
As he was not at all sure what sort of cards this Skye, whoever she was, was about to play; he preferred to keep his own—and the truth of his identity—very close to his chest.
Not that she seemed in the least interested right now. Those pale eyes were scanning the street, looking up and down the road.
‘Are you looking for someone?’
Suspicion made him voice it. Damn it, had he got this all wrong from the start? He cursed under his breath at the way that thought made him feel. He didn’t want her to have been really waiting for anyone. He had assumed that the lover she had claimed was imaginary—had wanted him not to exist.
The truth was that he wanted this woman for himself, and right now he was prepared to do whatever it took to get her.
‘Was that boyfriend you mentioned real after all?’
‘Oh, no.’
The shake of her head sent the red-gold fall of her hair flying around her face, tiny drops of rain shimmering in its depths from the drizzle that was falling.
‘No, I made him up in the hope they would let me go. I wasn’t looking for anyone—just a taxi.’
‘I can give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’
‘A taxi will be fine.’ It was the vocal equivalent of several steps backwards and away from him. No physical action could have put more of a distance between them.
A black cab was approaching and she lifted a hand to hail it, but too late. It swept past in a spray of water from the puddles filling the gutter, spattering her skirt and legs with mud.
‘I can give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’
The way he repeated his exact words of just moments before brought Skye’s eyes to his face in a rush. Meeting the glittering darkness of his gaze, seeing the way that the muscles of his jaw were drawn tight, she knew a sinking sense of realisation.
She’d insulted him with her refusal. He was angry too, something that told her how much her rejection had meant to him.
‘I—was trying to be sensible,’ she managed.
‘Isn’t it a little late for that now?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, the situation you got yourself into back there—’ His dark head nodded towards the noisy, smoky bar. ‘That was hardly the action of a sensible person.’
The deliberate emphasis on the repeated word goaded her, as she was sure it was meant to do, sparking her temper and bringing her chin up, eyes flashing angry fire.
‘I didn’t exactly ask for that!’ she snapped. ‘It just happened!’
‘I only offered you a lift in my car.’
The resignation in his tone had a hard edge to it, one that warned her of the way his temper was fraying at the edges.
‘I’m sor—’ she began, but he ignored her and rushed on angrily.
‘I was brought up never to let a woman risk being on her own, if I could do anything to help her.’
‘Then get me a taxi—please.’
She prayed he wouldn’t argue further. She was rapidly losing her grip on her self-control as it was.
‘No.’
It was cold and hard and unyielding, and it chilled her blood just to hear it.
Out of the frying-pan and into the fire. The ominous phrase that had slipped into her head in the first moments they had been outside now pounded round and round inside her skull until she felt as if her mind would explode.
‘You don’t need a taxi. I will take you wherever you want to go.’
Skye’s eyes closed on a shudder of horror as she tried to imagine just how that scenario would play out. She didn’t even want to think of her father’s reaction if she was to arrive home in a strange car—with an unknown man. Even less did she want to imagine the way her prospective fiancé would view that situation.
Oh, why had she ever thought she could do this? Why had she let herself believe that she could fling herself into one night of liberty just to try and put a temporary barrier between herself and the future that lay ahead of her?
Why had she ever imagined that she could have one night in which she lived the same sort of life as her friends, as other young women her age? One night of total freedom, of irresponsibility, of reckless abandon before the walls of restraint and restriction closed round her once and for all?
She had never been able to live that way even when she had had her freedom—the freedom of youth. So why had she ever thought she could do it now, just for tonight? She had been out of her depth from the start—and she was sinking in deeper with every second that passed.
‘I’ll get one myself, then.’
She swung away from him violently, knowing in her heart that she was really running from herself, not from him. But she was closer to the edge of the pavement than she thought. Her heel caught on the kerb, twisted awkwardly and went from beneath her. She would have gone flying off the footpath, falling headlong onto the wet tarmac, into the middle of the road and the path of the oncoming cars, if the man beside her hadn’t reacted with instinctive speed.
‘Skye—look out!’
In the blink of an eye he was beside her, reaching out and catching her before her stumble became a fall. She was held tight, hauled up into arms that felt like tempered steel as they tensed, took her weight and then pulled her back to safety.
Safety? Or right back into the heart of danger?
Skye had no way of knowing and her head was whirling too much in the aftermath of the shock of her near fall to be able to think clearly.
The position she was in didn’t help either. Anton had spun her round as he caught her up so that now she was clamped tight against him, enfolded in his arms, with her body crushed against the hard length of his, her head on his chest, her cheek above the heavy, heated thud of his heart, the sound of his pulse in her ears.
And it was all happening again.
Just as it had when he had come up behind her in the bar, so now her blood was heating in urgent response to his closeness, her heart racing in time with the fierce beat of his. She was surrounded by him, held in the heat and hardness of his grip, the clean, male scent of his body surrounding her, melting her thoughts inside her head.
It felt like coming home.
It felt as if she had always been there. As if this was truly where she belonged. Where she most wanted to be in all the world. And with the instinctive cuddling movement of a small creature seeking comfort from the cold, hard world outside, she snuggled closer, burying her face in his shirt front, her hands sliding under his jacket, her arms going round the narrow waist.
She felt his grip tighten even more, and his dark head bent, his face coming so close to hers that the faint roughness of the beginnings of evening growth of beard rubbed lightly against the delicate skin of her cheek. She sensed—unbelievingly—the warm caress of his mouth on her neck, at the base of her ear, and heard his deep sigh as he whispered harshly against the delicate lobe.
‘Skye, don’t go—stay! I want you to stay.’
‘What?’
Had he really said what she thought she had heard? She couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. It had to be her ears deceiving her or the voice of her own hungry longings sounding inside her head, telling her what she most wanted to hear.
But she couldn’t have heard it. Men like this Anton didn’t suddenly beg girls like her to stay with them, not on such brief acquaintance.
Had he really said…?
