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Idiot. Revealing his weakness had been a mistake. He hadn’t meant to, but the cork had popped under the pressure of saving her from danger and finally, after two years of reimagining it, holding her.
Bloody hell—why did she have to feel tailor-made for his form? The perfect height. A slender yet curvaceous shape that could wrap around him without smothering his need for space and autonomy. Her breasts, as natural as God had made them, had crushed against his chest with nipples so hardened by the cold he’d felt them like pebbles through both their shirts. He clenched his fists, still longing to warm those tight peaks with his tongue until they were both hot all through.
Naked, and burningly aroused, he tilted back his head and struggled against the foe that had been stalking him for too long. He didn’t recall when the switch had happened. Sometime between hearing she’d been caught with a boy at school and seeing her climb from the pool at eighteen. Suddenly he’d been unable to ignore her, or the singe in his blood whenever he was around her.
Then she had turned twenty, drunk her way to the bottom of a champagne bottle and, with no other man in the vicinity, turned her wiles on him.
Nic had tried not to let temptation get the better of him. He’d at least gone to the beach to avoid her. She’d followed, determined to get her man.
Nic had rules. Drunk women were never on the menu, no matter how willing they appeared to be. She’d sidled up to him, though, and he’d succumbed to a moment of weakness. One kiss. One warning to a reckless young woman who needed a lesson in putting herself at a man’s mercy. One peek through the door into carnal paradise.
And Olief had seen it from the house. He hadn’t seen Nic push her away, hadn’t heard Nic read her the Riot Act. By the time Olief had reached the beach Rowan had been stumbling her way back to the house, and Nic had finally earned a hard-won moment of privacy with Olief.
It had been punctured by words Nic would never forget. “What are your intentions, Nic? Marriage?”
Olief’s appalled disbelief, sharp with disparagement, had cut through Nic. It had been more than Olief warning off an experienced man from what he considered an impressionable young woman, deluded as that judgment had been. There’d been a fleck of challenge—as if Olief couldn’t believe Nic would dare contemplate marrying into his family; as if he looked down on Nic for imagining it would be allowed. Nic wasn’t good enough to be acknowledged as his son. Did he really imagine Olief would accept him as a son-in-law? Where did he get the nerve even to consider it?
It had been worse than humiliating. It had been hurtful. To this day Nic suspected Rowan had set up the whole thing and he wanted to shake her for it.
And yet when he’d had his hands on her today he’d only wanted to feel more of her. He’d seen the glow of arousal seep under Rowan’s skin and that had been a fresh, sharp aphrodisiac. The volcano of lust pulsing in him refused to abate now he’d caught a glimpse of answering fire in her, hotter and more acutely aware than he’d ever seen it in her before. Damn it, she was—
What?
He opened his eyes but saw nothing, still blinded by hunger even as a shift occurred in his psyche. She wasn’t too young. Not anymore.
Off-limits? By whose standards? Olief’s? He was dead, and if he were alive to know how many men Rowan had had, he wouldn’t defend her as being inexperienced.
As to marriage—well, Nic didn’t want to marry anyone. Especially Rowan. He wanted to slake this hunger and move on with his life.
Nic winced, hearing his rationalizations for what they were, but craving was clawing in his chest, tearing through the walls of resistance he’d kept in place through years of encounters with her. Possibility opened before him with treacherous appeal. What was to stop him? Nothing. There was nothing to keep him from having her. Why shouldn’t he? She’d been throwing herself at him for years.
Nic shuddered with physical need and inner turmoil. He never acted on impulse, yet everything in him longed to hunt her down right now and take. He shook off wild yearning and reached for self-discipline. Cool logic. Self-respect. He loathed her. Coming to Rosedale wasn’t about giving in to an appetite he’d denied for years. It was about gaining what he really wanted: his rightful place as the head of Olief’s media conglomerate. Not because he was the man’s son, but because he’d earned it.
Nic shrugged into a light pullover and faded jeans, trying to ignore his unrelenting want for Rowan, searching for a clear mind while opportunity hung before him, refusing to be disregarded.
What a profound thorn in his vitals she was. She would never sign those papers if she thought she could string him along by torturing his libido.
His body aching with denial, he gathered his wet clothes and faced the inconvenience of Anna’s quitting. Doing the washing and other chores would be a good lesson for Rowan, he decided arrogantly. Perhaps he was looking to punish her after all. She had been tormenting him for years. He was entitled to payback. At the very least she’d learn this wasn’t rent-free accommodation.
He was framing exactly how he’d inform her of that when the bloody footprints in the upper hall stopped him cold.
Rowan jerked her head out of the shower spray. Nic?
“What the hell? Rowan!” His voice grew louder. The bathroom door opened and he was right there on the other side of the steamed glass, glaring like an angry drill sergeant.
Rowan squeaked in shock and turned her back on him, but she couldn’t ignore the fact she was stark naked in front of him. The underside of her skin began to warm even though she was still frozen at her core. She tensed her buttocks, aware her bottom was on blatant display. Since when did he even know which room she used?
Strategically hugging herself, she cried, “Get out of here!”
“What have you done? It looks like a crime scene out there!”
“Oh, did I stain the precious hardwood you’re planning to tear up? I’ll scrub it once I quit bleeding to death, I promise. Now, get out!”
The door slammed with firm disgust. She sniffed in disdain at his impossible standards and stared at hands that looked worse under the running water. They scorched with protest at the pummel of spray, but they had to be cleaned. Her feet were begging her to get off them, but her leg worried her most. Not the sting on her skin, which was acute enough to make her clench her back molars. No, there was a deeper pain that concerned her. All the walking today hadn’t helped. She was afraid to look but had to. No one else would.
Rolling her eyes at her decline into maudlin self-pity, she switched off the shower and dragged a bathsheet around herself. It wasn’t as if her mother would be any use in this situation so why bother getting weepy? Olief would have been solicitous, though.
Shaking off wistfulness, still deeply chilled, she closed the lid of the toilet and sat down to pat herself dry. The door swung open again.
“Really?” she demanded, instinctively curling her feet in and closing a hand over the knot of her towel. She was in a high enough state of turmoil without Nic accosting her with his potent male energy every ten seconds. He’d already got her all bewildered on the beach, and then seen her naked in the shower. Sitting on a toilet in a bathsheet, shaking off a near-death experience, put her at the worst disadvantage ever.
He hesitated at the door, but it wasn’t with doubt. She had the impression he was gathering himself. Bracing for a challenge.
Odd. She searched his expression for more clues, but he revealed nothing beyond a clinical interest in her hands as he set bandages and disinfectant on the counter. “You scraped yourself on the rocks, I assume?”
“Good work, Holmes. I should have consulted government-issued safe work plans prior to retreating from the tide, I assume?”
A pithy look, then, “It’s a wonder your mother didn’t drown you at birth. Do you want help or not?”
She grudgingly held out a hand. “I don’t even know why you want to help me.”
“I don’t,” he replied flatly, going down on one knee and reaching for supplies. “But I am an adult, and adults take responsibility rather than doing whatever selfish thing they want.”
“Is that a dig? Because I’m almost twenty-two. A fully-fledged adult.” Even to herself she sounded like a petulant child and, really, reminding him it was nearly her birthday was the last thing she ought to do.
“All grown up,” he said, with an ironic twist to the corner of his mouth. Renewed tension seemed to gather in his expression as he smoothed a bandage against her wrist.
“Yes,” she claimed pertly. Her pulse involuntarily tripped under his dispassionate caress, making her subtly catch a breath.
His gaze came up sharply, the blue like the center of a flame.
She was transported back to the feel of his arms as they’d stood wet and trembling on the beach, his arousal hardening against her. Heat flooded into her, chasing away the last of her chill, cooking her alive. She should have felt appalled and disgusted, but to her eternal shame she was energized by the crackle of sexual awareness in the air.
“All grown up,” he repeated, with flint in his tone, and lifted her hand to press his lips against the bandage, a cruelly mocking glint in his eye.
She flinched and pulled her hand away, even though she’d barely felt the pressure of his mouth. That so hadn’t been kiss-and-make-it-better!
Derisive amusement darkened his eyes. “No? That’s not like you, Ro.”
Her heart took a long plunge of disgrace. At the same time she felt herself begin to glow with heated longing and other weakening sensations, even as uncertainty and intrigue muddled her mind. Desperately she reminded herself of how unaffected and ruthless he could be.
“What are you doing, Nic?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to clear the huskiness from her throat. “Offering a clumsy seduction in hopes of getting what you want out of me?”
“Oh, I’m far from clumsy. I know exactly what I’m doing when it comes to seduction.” The hard tone was coupled with a look that might as well have swept the towel from her body and left her as nude as she’d been in the shower.
Had she really wished over the years for him to notice her? Really notice her? This was a horribly defenseless feeling! Every single occasion of testing a flirty glance or enticing him with a smile came back to her as mortifyingly obvious behavior that was now giving him the chance to get the better of her.
“You’re having a go at me,” she accused, as much to remind herself as to let him know she saw through him. “I’m sure other women wither at your feet when you bring your best game, but I’m not one of them. Act solicitous all you want, but I know you don’t care. You don’t want me. You don’t even like me.”
He took a moment to smooth a plaster over her second palm, finally asking with detached interest, “Do all of those things have to be in place at once?” He met her gaze with a look of cool consideration.
She pressed her lips into a tight line, stung by the implied agreement that he didn’t like her. Yet still wanted her. That shouldn’t excite her, but her blood seemed to slow and thicken in her arteries, making her feel hot and full of power.
“Since when did you even think about me before you decided I was in the way of something you wanted?” she managed, trying to ignore the internal signals bouncing with anticipation inside her.
His shoulders went back and his jaw hardened. “One has nothing to do with the other. I may want you to sign some papers, but that has nothing to do with physical chemistry.”
“Chemistry that cropped up today of all days?” she scoffed, flushing with anger because her reaction to him had been torturing her forever. “It certainly wasn’t there two years ago, was it?” she prodded, thinking, Shut up, Rowan.
“You want to go back to that?” With a flash of the tested anger he’d shown her then, he reached forward to cup the back of her wet head and pulled her forward to meet the crush of his mouth over hers.
“N-n-n …!” She almost got the word out, but it turned into a whimper of surprise, then disintegrated under the assertive rake of his very knowledgeable mouth.
No champagne or the romance of a windswept beach this time. This was raw, unapologetic and incredibly beguiling. He kissed with the same command and purpose that emanated from the rest of his being. He was in control. He would take what he wanted. Their last kiss and the biting lecture that had followed had been a warning she should have heeded. Nic was a powerful, dangerous man.
Who knew how to level a woman with a kiss.
She brought her hands to his wrist and shoulder, overwhelmed yet helpless to the enthralling press of his lips over hers. There was no fighting him as he took her mouth—not because he was stronger, but because he made it so good. She could practically taste his contempt, his selfish demand that she give up everything to him, but there was skill here, too. A wicked appeal to the primitive in her. He drew her into the kiss even when she knew she shouldn’t let herself be drawn.
Her inner being expanded toward him, tendrils of heated pleasure reaching for connection. She moaned, unfamiliar imperatives climbing with primal force in her. This was Nic. He didn’t want her. He was messing with her. But this was Nic. She’d fantasized about him for years.
The light scrape of his teeth suffused her with heat. The proprietorial thrust of his tongue, the captivating taste of his mouth over hers, stabbed excitement through her, nudging her into a dark world of wild sensations and ravenous desire. Her limbs curled toward him like stems toward the sun, wanting more. It was crazy. Distantly she recognized this possession of her mouth had a purpose: arousal. He intended to take her all the way.
Her heart skipped. She shouldn’t let this happen, but she wanted to. And he wasn’t a force to be stopped. He reached to her lower back and pulled her hips toward him, forcing her knees to part and bracket his waist. Her shin struck the register. A ringing pain slashed through her wanton stupor, making her jolt in shock. Her towel slipped.
Oh, God, what was she doing?
Nic checked the urge to overpower Rowan’s recoil and drag her back into the kiss. Into the bedroom or onto the floor. Anywhere. She was flushed, and her breath was stuttering from between glossy kiss-swollen lips. Her eyes were still cloudy with desire, the honeyed taste of her sexual appetite still tangible on his tongue.
The beast ran hard in him, fighting against being steered back into its corral. Nic’s chest heaved and the hot coil of pressure behind his fly demanded release. He had one hand braced on the wall and used the other to reach for her jaw, ignoring the mental warnings trying to penetrate his fog of carnal hunger. This time he’d let it happen.
Before he could tilt Rowan back into the direction they’d been headed, her pale expression and the flash of a worried look downward stopped him. She leaned cautiously to examine her leg, her hand pressing the middle of his chest to push him back.
He followed her gaze and the sight froze him. Not the scrape on her knee. That was little worse than a tumble off a bicycle would produce, but the scars down her shin were horrific.
“What the hell?” He sat back on his heels, physical arousal taking a backseat to shock. The depth of her injury, communicated by the crisscross of thin white lines, revolted him. He reached one hand behind her knee and had to school his clenching muscles to take care as he lifted her ankle in the other hand, studying the full extent of the damage.
Her shin wasn’t the only issue. She had old scars all over her feet, framing knobbly toes with cracked nails that were only partially healed.
Rowan flexed her foot. “Don’t.”
“Hurts?” It had to. The marks spoke of repeated injuries.
She snorted. “I’ve lived with pain at that end of my body for so long I don’t even notice it. I don’t like anyone looking at my feet.” Her lashes swept down in self-conscious dismay. “They’re ugly.”
“They’re not pretty,” he agreed, smoothing the pad of his thumb over an old callus, astounded by the time and effort it would have required to form the thick bump. “This is from dancing?”
“We all get them,” she defended, and attempted to pull from his grip.
He held on. He hadn’t meant to sound so appalled, but he was inexplicably angered. The big scar was bad enough, but at least it was understandable. It had been an accident. These others …
“Why would anyone do this to herself?” he questioned, channeling an unexpected surge of concern into impatience. “I’ve seen foot soldiers coming off a month-long march with better feet.”
She flushed and pushed her damp hair behind her ear. “It’s part of the process. They’ve gotten a lot better since I’ve been off them.”
“Because your leg was broken.” He looked again at the long scar. Everything Rowan did was superficial, but suddenly he couldn’t be dismissive of what she’d been going through. Her remark about being in constant pain echoed in his head along with her old claims of “doing the best I can” to Cassandra’s livid, “How can you not be ready?”
It occurred to him that his impression of Rowan as a slacker was largely based on those overheard accusations that Rowan wasn’t trying hard enough. That perturbed him. He generally formed his own opinions, but he’d been seeing her with a skewed view to hold her at a distance. He didn’t often mislead himself like that.
“How many surgeries have you had?” he asked, setting her cut foot on his thigh.
“Three. I’m a little concerned about the pins, actually,” she confided hesitantly. “I think they’re killing me right now because they got cold. Does anything feel out of place?” She bit her lip, the apprehensive pull of her brow more concerning than her actual words. She was suppressing very real distress.
A chill took him as he carefully felt up and down her calf. The male in him was aware of lean muscle under smooth pale skin, and fascinating shadows beneath the drape of the bathsheet across her thighs. He’d got a too brief glimpse of her through the steamed walls of the shower and was dying for a proper study of her form. He focused on determining whether she’d rebroken something, but that thought filled the pit of his stomach with ashes—not unlike the defeated fury that had taken him as he’d run up the beach, afraid he wouldn’t reach her in time.
He turned his mind from that raw terror.
“It seems okay. Will you dance again?” He already knew the answer, and tension gathered in him, resisting the truth.
She leaned forward to palpate the shin herself, brushing his hands off her calf, remaining silent. He lifted his gaze from watching her massage her torn muscles. Her mink lashes formed a pair of tangled lines.
“On tables,” she finally replied with a tough smile, “but not on the stage.”
Expecting the answer didn’t make it easier to hear. He was taken aback by a surprisingly sharp stab of sympathy. As a journalist, he’d spent his life asking people for their reactions to events, but he had never asked anyone How do you feel about that? He wanted to ask Rowan, but her snarky response grated, compelling him to say, “You never wanted to dance anyway. It was a bone of contention with your mother, wasn’t it? Her insisting you go to that fancy school? You must be relieved.”
She gave a little snort of cynical amusement and dipped her head in a single nod that left her damp hair hanging. “Yes, I can honestly say I was relieved when they finally admitted I would never get back to my old level and asked me to leave so someone with whole bones and genuine passion could take my spot.”
His heart kicked as he disagreed with anyone claiming Rowan lacked passion. He was still tingling from their kiss a minute ago. He didn’t let the sensation escalate, though, sidetracked by her bitter revelation.
“When they admitted?” he repeated. “You wanted to quit and they wanted to rehabilitate you?” He reached for a bandage to cover her knee, aware of his sympathy dwindling. She was a shirker after all.
“Madame is a close friend of Mum’s. She knew Mum wouldn’t want all those years of training to be for nothing, but she also knew as well as I did that I had reached my potential before the accident and that I’d never be good enough. She pushed me anyway, and I tried until my ankle gave out. We finally agreed I was a grand failure and the silver lining was that my mother would never know.”
He didn’t want to be affected by the wounded shadows of defeat lurking behind her sparking eyes and pugnacious chin, but he was. Rowan might have quit, but because she was a realist about her own limitations, not a quitter. He wondered what else he’d failed to see in her before today.
“If you didn’t like dance, why did you pursue it?” he asked.
A brief pause, then a challenging, “Why did you go into the same field as Olief?”
It was a blatant deflection from his own question—one that deepened his interest in her motives. He answered her first, though. His reason was simple enough.
“I was curious about him so I followed his work. You can’t read that many articles on world events and not feel compelled to discover the next chapter.” He shrugged and began patching her other knee. “I wasn’t trying to emulate him. Were you? Trying to emulate Cassandra?”
Rowan made a noise of scorn. “Not by choice. Count yourself lucky that no one knew you were related to Olief when you started out. You were able to prove yourself on your own merit and do it because you wanted to. I was pushed into dancing as a gag. It was a way for my mother to stand out, because she had this little reflection of herself beside her. She was allowed to quit when she and Olief got together, but I still had all this ‘potential’ to be realized.”
Nic had never framed his abandonment by his parents as good fortune, but he’d never taken a hard look at Rowan’s situation and seen it for misfortune either.
He frowned, not enjoying the sense that he’d been blind and wrong. None of Rowan’s revelations changed anything, he reminded himself. He still wanted full control of Marcussen Media. She still needed to sign the petition forms, grow up, and take responsibility for herself—not party her way across Europe at his expense.
Rowan watched Nic’s concentration on her fade to something more familiar and removed and suspected she knew why. She dropped her gaze to the bandaged hands she’d clenched in her lap, the fetid crown of disloyalty making her hang her head. In her wildest dreams she had never imagined Nic would be the person to crack this resentment out of her. She’d anticipated taking her anger to the grave, because only the lowest forms of life said anything against Cassandra O’Brien. A good daughter would certainly never betray her mother when she was gone
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