Passionate Scandal. Michelle Reid

hand touched her shoulder. She reacted violently, his unexpected touch coinciding so closely with her thoughts that she took a jerky step back, and felt the riverbank tilt dangerously beneath her feet.

      ‘You stupid fool!’ he growled, fingers digging into her shoulders as he yanked her on to safer ground. ‘What do you think I’m going to do—rape you?’

      Rape? A noise left her throat like a hysterical choke. Since when had he had to resort to rape with her? Surely it had been the other way around.

      ‘Let go of me,’ she insisted, disgusted with herself because even now, after four long years, one look at him and everything she had in her was clamouring in hungry greeting, sending her pulses leaping wildly.

      His eyes still looked down at her with that same passionate intensity; his mouth was still firm-lipped and sensual. He still stood eight inches above her, still exuded that same hardcore sexuality that had always driven her mad with wanting—and still had the ability to stir her wayward nature.

      She hated him for that. Hated him for making it happen.

      His hands left her instantly, and she almost sagged in groaning relief. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said tightly. ‘I want to touch you probably less than you want to feel my touch on you.’

      ‘W-what are you doing here?’ she demanded, wanting to rub her arms where his fingers had dug in—not because he’d hurt her, but because her flesh was stinging as if she’d just been burned.

      ‘To see you, what else?’ He moved back a step to thrust his own hands out of sight in the tight pockets of his jeans. ‘Four years is a long time not to set eyes on the woman who made a public spectacle of me.’

      She had made a public spectacle of him? Madeline almost laughed out loud. ‘As I remember it,’ she smiled bitterly, ‘it was the other way around.’

      ‘Not from where I was standing, it wasn’t,’ he grunted. ‘Humiliated by a spoiled if beautiful black-haired brat who has never given a care for anyone but herself!’

      ‘Thank you,’ she drawled. ‘It’s so nice to know how fondly my then fiancé thought of me.’

      ‘As nice as it was for me to find out what a faithless fiancée you were to me?’

      Madeline visibly flinched, guilt and shame four years in the nurturing holding the breath congealed inside her lungs. And she had to look away from him, unable to defend herself against that ruthless thrust. There was just too much truth in it.

      Silence fell hard and tight between them, and they stood stiffly in the moonlit clearing, neither seeming to know what to say next to hurt the other. It was amazing how the antipathy was still there throbbing like a war drum between them. It should have dulled a little by now, at least withered into a mutual dislike maybe, but it hadn’t. And this meeting could be happening the night after the country club ball for the way they were reacting to one another, and the intervening years might as well as not have gone by.

      The moon hung like a silver lantern above their heads, etching out each harshly handsome line of his smooth lean face: the silky black bars of his eyebrows, almost touching as he glowered down at her; his eyes glinting at her from beneath those dark thick lashes; his slender nose, long and arrogant, just like the man. And his mouth, she noted lastly. Just a thin taut line of contempt which even then could not disguise its in-built sensuality.

      ‘Four years,’ Dominic muttered suddenly. ‘And you still look the same bewitching child. Still more beautiful than any woman ought to be.’

      Something inside her twisted in pained yearning, and she went to turn away from him, only to find her arms caught once again in his bruising grip. ‘Not yet,’ he bit out. ‘You’re not going to escape again just yet. Tell me, Madeline...’ He pushed his angry face closer to her own so that she could see the bitterness burning in his eyes, feel it pulsing right through him. ‘Did you do it just to punish me? Or was it that you simply did not care?’

      ‘Your desire to know comes four years too late,’ she threw back, lifting her chin to let her cool gaze clash with his angry one.

      He looked ready to shake her out of her coolness, and certainly his fingers tightened their grip on her arms. Then he suddenly seemed to think better of it. ‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘Four years is a long time to await an answer which really does not interest me. But what does interest me, Madeline,’ he persisted harshly, ‘is whether Boston and those damned four years have managed to make a woman out of the wilful child I thought I loved!’

      She should have expected it, Madeline realised a moment later. She should have read it in the sudden flash of those coldly burning eyes, seen it in the tension of his hard mouth just before it landed punishingly on top of her own. But she hadn’t, too shaken by her own disturbing reactions accurately to interpret his, and his warm breath rasped against her cold mouth as he went from the verbal attack to the physical in one swift angry movement.

      Stunned into total stillness, she just stood in front of him, his fingers biting into her arms through the padded warmth of her sheepskin coat as he held her tight against him. And the angry pressure of his mouth crushed her lips back against her teeth, forcing them apart and drawing memories from her that she would far rather have left banished to the dark recesses of her mind.

      And as each lonely sense began to stir inside her, awakening to the only source ever to bring them to life, she began to fight, fight like hell for release—aware of his angry passion, of her own reaching up to match it, and wanting neither.

      Never again! she told herself desperately as she strained frantically away from him. Never again!

      ‘Home half a day,’ he muttered, lifting his head to glare at her through eyes shot silver with a strange mixture of rage and anguish. ‘And already I can’t—’

      The words died, choked off by a thickened throat as his mouth came back to hers. He lifted a hand to bury his fingers in the silken softness of her hair, drawing her head back, forcing her face up to his own. His other arm was like steel around her waist, clamping her to him, and the helpless groan he gave against her mouth wrenched an answering one from herself.

      The kiss went on and on, nothing kind or loving in the cruel assault, but slowly she felt her control slipping away from her, felt her senses begin to hum with a need to respond. And suddenly they were kissing frenziedly, straining against each other, lost in the turmoil which had always been an exciting part of their relationship four years ago. When Dominic had allowed it to happen, that was, which wasn’t often.

      Reality came crashing back with the memory, and she dragged her mouth away from his, her own bitterness aimed entirely at herself because once again she had fallen for his easy passion—a passion she knew from experience he could switch on and off like a tap.

      ‘It’s funny how we should both end up on this particular spot by the river tonight of all nights,’ he murmured against the heated smoothness of her cheek. ‘I seem to still possess that special antenna where you’re concerned, Madeline. I think I knew the moment you stepped back on to British soil. What does that admission do to your quaking heart, I wonder?’ he taunted silkily. ‘Does it make it beat all the faster?’

      The flat of his hand suddenly came out to press firmly against the heaving mound of her breast where her heart was racing madly beneath the thick padding of her sheepskin coat. And she gasped.

      ‘Stop it,’ she hissed, trying to push him away. ‘Stop it, Dominic—please!’

      ‘Why?’ he taunted. ‘You love it! You always did!’

      His mouth crushed down on to hers again with one last angry kiss, then suddenly she was free, standing dazed and swaying in front of him as he pushed himself away from her as violently as he had taken hold.

      ‘The next plane to Boston leaves in the morning,’ she heard him say quite coldly. ‘If you aren’t on it, Madeline, I shall take it that you’re prepared to stay and fight this time, instead of running away like the coward I never thought you to be.’