Ruthless Revenge: Passionate Possession. Cathy Williams

was electric, sizzling around them, so that the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

      ‘Consequences? What consequences?’ Javier pressed in a dangerously soft voice.

      ‘Nothing,’ Sophie muttered, turning away, but he reached out, circling her forearm to tug her back towards him.

      ‘You don’t get to walk away from this conversation after you’ve opened up a can of worms, Sophie.’

      There were so many reasons this was a can of worms that she didn’t want to explore. On a deeply emotional level, she didn’t want to confront, yet again, the mistakes she had made in the past. She’d done enough of that to last a lifetime and she especially didn’t want to confront those mistakes aloud, with Javier as her witness. She didn’t want his pity. She didn’t want him to sense her vulnerability. He might no longer care about her, but she didn’t want to think that he would be quietly satisfied that, having walked out on him, she had got her comeuppance, so to speak.

      ‘It’s not relevant!’ she snapped, trying and failing to tug her arm out of his grasp.

      ‘Was he...? I don’t know what to think here, Soph...’

      That abbreviation of her name brought back a flood of memories and they went straight to the core of her, burning a hole through her defence mechanisms. Her soft mouth trembled and she knew that her eyes were glazing over, which, in turn, made her blink rapidly, fighting back the urge to burst into tears.

      ‘He could be unpredictable.’ Her jaw tightened and she looked away but he wouldn’t allow her to avoid his searching gaze, tilting her to face him by placing a finger gently under her chin.

      ‘That’s a big word. Try breaking it down into smaller components...’

      ‘He could be verbally abusive,’ she told him jerkily. ‘On one occasion he was physically abusive. So there you have it, Javier. If I’d tried to interfere in his gambling, there’s no accounting for what the outcome might have been for me.’

      Javier was horrified. He dropped his hand and his fingers clenched and unclenched. She might have fancied herself in love with the guy but that would have been disillusionment on a grand scale.

      ‘Why didn’t you divorce him?’

      ‘It was a brief marriage, Javier. And there is more to this than you know...’

      ‘Did you know that the man had anger issues?’ Javier sifted his fingers through his hair. Suddenly the kitchen felt the size of a matchbox. He wanted to walk, unfettered; he wanted to punch something.

      ‘Of course I didn’t, and that certainly wasn’t the case when... You don’t get it,’ she said uneasily. ‘And I’d really rather not talk about this any more.’

      Javier had been mildly incredulous at her declaration that her descent into penury had been tougher to handle than his own lifetime of struggle and straitened circumstances. She, at least, had had the head start of the silver spoon in the mouth and a failing company was, after all, still a company with hope of salvation. The crumbling family pile was still a very big roof over her head.

      Now there were muddy, swirling currents underlying those glib assumptions, and yet again, he lost sight of the clarity of his intentions.

      He reminded himself that fundamentally nothing had changed. She had begun something seven years ago and had failed to finish it because she had chosen to run off with her long-time, socially acceptable boyfriend.

      That the boyfriend had failed to live up to expectation, that events in her life had taken a fairly disastrous turn, did not change the basic fact that she had strung him along.

      But he couldn’t recapture the simple black-and-white equation that had originally propelled him. He wondered, in passing, whether he should just have stuck to his quid pro quo solution: ‘you give me what I want and I’ll give you what you want’.

      But no.

      He wanted so much more and he could feel it running hot through his veins as she continued to stare at him, unable to break eye contact.

      Subtly, the atmosphere shifted. He sensed the change in her breathing, saw the way her pupils dilated, the way her lips parted as if she might be on the brink of saying something.

      He cupped her face with his hand and felt rather than heard the long sigh that made her shudder.

      Sophie’s eyelids felt heavy. She wanted to close her eyes because if she closed her eyes she would be able to breathe him in more deeply, and she wanted to do that, wanted to breathe him in, wanted to touch him and scratch the itch that had been bothering her ever since he had been catapulted back into her life.

      She wanted to kiss him and taste his mouth.

      She only realised that she was reaching up to him when she felt the hardness of muscled chest under the palms of her flattened hands.

      She heard a whimper of sheer longing which seemed to come from her and then she was kissing him...tongues entwining...exploring...easing some of the aching pain of her body...

      She inched closer, pressed herself against him and wanted to rub against his length, wanted to feel his nakedness against hers.

      She couldn’t get enough of him.

      It was as if no time had gone by between them, as if they were back where they had been, a time when he had been able to set fire to her body with the merest of touches. Nothing had changed and everything had changed.

      ‘No!’ She came to her senses with horrified, jerky panic. ‘This is... I am not that girl I once was. I... No!’

      She’d flung herself at him! She’d practically assaulted the man like a sex-starved woman desperate to be touched! He didn’t even care about her! She’d opened up and on the back of that had leapt on him and had managed to surface only after damage had been done!

      Humiliation tore through her. She went beetroot-red and stumbled backwards.

      ‘I apologise for that.’ She immediately went on the attack. ‘It should never have happened and I don’t know what came over me!’ She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to remain calm but she was shaking like a leaf. ‘This isn’t what we’re about! Not at all.’

      Javier raised his eyebrows and her colour deepened.

      ‘There’s only business between us,’ she insisted through clenched teeth. ‘I must have had... I don’t normally drink...’

      ‘Now, isn’t that the lamest excuse in the world?’ Javier murmured. ‘Let’s blame it on the wine...’

      ‘I don’t care what you think!’ How could he be so cool and composed when she was all over the place? Except, of course, she knew how. Because she was just so much more affected by him than he was by her and she could see all her pride and self-respect disappearing down the plug hole if she didn’t get a grip on the situation right now.

      She cleared her throat and stared, at him and through him. ‘I... We have to work alongside one another for a while and...this was just an unfortunate blip. I would appreciate it if you never mention it again. We can both pretend that it never happened, because it will never happen again.’

      Javier lowered his eyes and tilted his head to one side as if seriously considering what she had just said.

      So many challenges in that single sentence. Did she really and truly believe that she could close the book now that page one had been turned?

      He’d tasted her and one small taste wasn’t going to do. Not for him and not for her. Whatever her backstory, they both needed to sate themselves with one another and that was what they would do before that place was inevitably reached where walking away was an option.

      ‘If that’s how you want to play it.’ He shrugged and looked at her. ‘And from Monday,’ he said with lazy assurance, ‘bank on me being around most of the time. We both want the same thing, don’t we...?’