The Gold Collection. Maggie Cox

he said grimly as he slid his hand under her bottom, lifted her and effected one deep, shockingly powerful thrust that made her gasp in awe at his potent strength.

      It had been a long time since she had done this, but the ministrations of his hands and mouth had brought her to the peak of sexual arousal and she welcomed the full, rigid length of him as he slowly filled her. As her muscles stretched around him to form a tight, velvet sheath, Zac gave a low growl of satisfaction, eased back a fraction and then thrust again and again, setting a rhythm that she eagerly matched.

      Each strong, deep stroke was sending Freya closer to the edge and she lost all sense of time and place as his male scent swamped her senses while the only sounds she could hear were her breathless cries for him to thrust faster and harder.

      ‘I’ll hurt you,’ he muttered against her throat when she wrapped her legs around his back and urged him on.

      In the dim recess of her mind she recognised the truth of his words—not that she feared he would cause her physical pain, but emotionally he had the power to destroy her. But she blanked out the thought as her whole being focused on the exquisite sensations that were unfurling deep inside her. ‘You won’t,’ she assured him huskily as she arched her hips in mute supplication for him to loosen his hold on his self-control and take her with the primitive force she knew he was capable of. ‘I want you, Zac…I want…’ The rest of her words were lost beneath the pressure of his mouth as he captured her lips in a fierce, drugging kiss that drove everything but her desperate need for fulfilment from her mind.

      Zac’s shoulders and brow were beaded with sweat and his face was a taut mask. He was a skilful lover who knew exactly how to give pleasure, but the time for playful seduction was long past and he was driven by a basic urge to satisfy his hunger. He slid his hands down Freya’s slim body and gripped her buttocks as he drove into her, his jaw clenched as he felt her muscles contract around him.

      He could feel his pleasure building to a crescendo, but just when he feared he could hold back no longer, she gave a sharp cry and her whole body convulsed beneath him in a shattering climax. The sensuous pleasure-pain of her nails raking down his back tipped him over the edge and he paused for an instant before giving one last forceful thrust that annihilated his control and sent shock waves through him as his body shuddered with the power of his release.

      Freya clung to Zac’s sweat-damp body and revelled in the weight of him as the lingering ripples of sensation drained from her. Recriminations were already mustering in her head, taunting her with her abject stupidity, but she was determined to ignore them for a few more blissful minutes. She could feel Zac’s heartbeat thudding through her and she screwed her eyes shut and breathed in his musky, male scent. Making love with him topped the list of mistakes she had made—in her life that seemed littered with them—but she couldn’t regret it. Despite his mistrust and suspicion and his unshakeable opinion of her, she loved him, she acknowledged sadly, and it seemed likely that she always would.

      Eventually he rolled off her to lay flat on his back, his silence growing more ominous to her ears by the second.

      ‘I’ve decided that I want you back,’ he said in a voice devoid of all emotion, ‘to live here as my mistress the way we once were.’ He turned his head on the pillows and stared at her coldly. ‘You’re like a drug in my veins and, although I despise myself, I seem to be addicted to you,’ he grated harshly. ‘I’m prepared to overlook your…indiscretion with Brooks, and if you stay I’ll accept your child and provide for her as if she were my own. But if you ever look at another man the way you looked at Lucien Giraud tonight, so help me, chérie, I will not be responsible for my actions.’

      For a few seconds Freya stared at him in stunned silence while her brain assimilated his words. Bitterness, humiliation and rage congealed her blood and she closed her eyes for a moment, shocked by the level of pain he could still inflict on her. How could she love him when he seemed determined to shred her heart into a thousand pieces? She obviously possessed a masochistic streak, she thought as agony swept through her.

      ‘If—overlooking my indiscretion with Brooks—is your way of saying that you forgive me for having sex with Simon, you’re wasting your breath,’ she said tightly, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘At a risk of repeating myself, I never slept with him or anyone else—ever.’ She pushed against his chest with a force borne of desperation, terrified that she was actually going to be sick. ‘How dare you! How dare you take that high and mighty tone with me? Your arrogance sickens me—you sicken me,’ she flung at him.

      All this time she’d struggled as a single mother, juggling work and childcare and using her few precious hours of free time while Aimee slept to study for her degree, in the hope that she could improve her financial situation. And all the while Zac had lived here in his luxury penthouse apartment, refusing to accept that he was the father of her child while he thought the worst of her. Not for much longer, she thought furiously. The results of the DNA test would force him to accept the truth and she hoped he suffered an overdose of remorse when he realised how cruelly he had misjudged her.

      He was staring at her through narrowed eyes, his jaw tense, but she no longer felt overawed by him. Her pride had finally come to her rescue and, although it was way too late to salvage her self-respect, she had to try. With jerky movements she dragged her negligee over her head, ignoring the pain in her wrist. The pain in her heart was a thousand times worse and she scrambled to her feet, desperate to escape before she broke down in front of him. ‘I don’t need anything from you, Zac, certainly not your arrogant assertion that you’ll overlook something I didn’t even do,’ she told him fiercely. ‘But one day soon you’ll come crawling to me on your hands and knees, and hear me now—I will never forgive you for your treatment of me.’

      Freya woke with a start as sunlight filtered through the blinds and slanted across her face. Dazedly she stared at the clock on her beside table and gave a disbelieving frown—surely it couldn’t really be ten a.m.? She sat up and groaned as she quickly fastened the front of her nightgown, her cheeks flaming when she recalled how Zac had stripped her last night before he had pushed her flat on her back and taken her with a savagery that had escalated her excitement to fever pitch.

      What did that make her? she wondered dismally as she recalled her wanton response to him. And how could she have been so stupid and so utterly lacking in pride? He had looked down his arrogant nose at her while he’d stated that he was prepared to overlook her affair with Simon Brooks, but she was innocent and his lack of faith hurt as much now as it had two years ago. Every day that she spent with him he stripped away another layer of her protective shell, leaving her raw and vulnerable, and she knew she had to leave before the damage to her heart was irreparable.

      A hesitant tap on the door heralded the arrival of the maid. ‘Ah, you are awake,’ Elise said with a smile. ‘Shall I bring you breakfast in bed?’

      ‘No, thank you, Elise.’ Freya jumped to her feet. ‘Where is my daughter?’

      ‘She is in the pool with Monsieur Deverell.’

      Freya snatched up her robe and paused on the way to the en suite to stare blankly at the maid. ‘Zac has taken Aimee swimming?’ she queried, her voice sounding sharp as panic and confusion mingled. To her chagrin, Aimee had developed an instant fascination with Zac and, to give him credit, he treated the little girl with a gentle patience that he never revealed to anyone else—certainly not her, Freya thought bleakly.

      Elise nodded. ‘Madame Lewis is with them. Monsieur Deverell said that you’d had a disturbed night, and should be left alone to sleep,’ she told Freya innocently. ‘I’ll tell him you are awake now. He wishes to see you in his study as soon as you are dressed.’

      The temptation to pass on a message to Zac telling him to go to hell was so strong that Freya had to bite her lip. It wasn’t fair to involve the penthouse staff in their private war, she reminded herself, and had to be content with cursing him beneath her breath as she stormed into the bathroom.

      After the quickest shower on record, she dressed in a simple skirt and blouse suitable for travelling in, although her injured wrist still made it impossible for her to fasten