The Mills & Boon Stars Collection. Cathy Williams

Obviously she had made up that story in an effort to make him feel guilty while she played the poor little victim. And he didn’t do victims any more than he did relationships, did he? Delilah Moore was toxic for him. Hadn’t he suspected as much two years earlier? When had he ever wanted one particular woman that much? Any hunger that particular wasn’t healthy.

      Bastien headed for an exclusive nightclub to find another woman for the night. He had to prove to his own satisfaction that he was not remotely concerned by what he had learned about Delilah. She was not special in any way, he told himself furiously, downing his third drink in fast succession. She was like every other woman he had ever met: immediately...easily...replaceable.

      In the club, Bastien was surrounded by beautiful women eager to attract his attention. He waited for one to give him a buzz, studying a blonde and deciding she was too voluptuous. A brunette who had eyes that were too close together. A redhead who laughed like a hyena. Another wore a hideous floral dress, and yet another had enormous feet.

      Delilah’s were the very first female feet Bastien had ever actually noticed, he acknowledged abstractedly. She had very small feet, with teeny-tiny toes and nails like polished pearls.

      He settled into his fourth drink and wondered first of all why he was thinking about feet and then why he was still on his own. Why the hell was he suddenly being so fastidious? Any attractive woman would do. Hadn’t he always believed that? He did not, could not, still want a woman who had cheated on him.

      So what was he planning to do about Delilah?

      Bastien registered that he wanted to confront her, and that strange urge deeply unsettled him. After all, he had always avoided high drama, and he had never, ever argued with the women who’d shared his bed. Why would he argue when women who annoyed him were instantly banished from his life, never to hear from him again?

      He would send Delilah back up north, forget about her, cut his losses....

      * * *

      When the bedroom door opened abruptly Lilah was jolted awake. She sat up. Light was flooding the doorway to silhouette a powerful male figure. Instantly she knew it was Bastien, and instantly she was apprehensive.

      The light was snapped on, momentarily blinding her, and Bastien strode in. His lean bronzed features were clenched ferociously hard, and his eyes, dark as eternal night, glittered above high lancing cheekbones. Her tummy performed a nervous dance and she backed up against the pillows with her knees defensively raised.

      ‘I want a word with you.’

      Bastien sent the door behind him thudding shut and her throat closed over convulsively.

      A faint whiff of alcohol assailed her nose; he had been drinking. For the first time Lilah was appreciating that she knew very little about Bastien Zikos—basically only what she had read on the internet, none of which was reassuring. Did he drink a lot? Was he drunk now? Was he violent? Was such random temperamental behaviour the norm for him?

      ‘Stop looking at me like that...’ Bastien growled in frowning reproof, studying her from below the thick canopy of his black lashes.

      Clutching the duvet to her with a nervous hand, Lilah breathed out. ‘Like what?’

      ‘As if you’re scared!’ Bastien grated accusingly. ‘I have never hurt a woman in my life.’

      A tentative half smile stole some of the tension from Lilah’s triangular face. ‘You just walked in... You startled me... I was fast asleep,’ she explained, struggling to excuse herself rather than tell him the truth.

      And the truth was that Bastien was scary. He was very tall, very muscular, much larger and stronger than she was in every way. Moreover, although he had the hauntingly beautiful face of a fallen angel, his dark eyes currently had a piercing, chilling light that utterly intimidated her.

      ‘I want you to tell me where you were and who you were with last night,’ Bastien bit out harshly, taking up a brooding stance at the very foot of the bed. ‘Don’t leave anything out.’

      ‘I was out with a group of friends,’ Lilah almost whispered, wondering why on earth he could be demanding such an explanation. ‘We went for a meal and then to the cinema.’

      ‘Do you normally kiss your male friends and then climb into a car to go home with them at the end of the night?’ Bastien asked grimly.

      Her eyes widened and flickered in dismay, colour warming her pale face. ‘How do you know there was a kiss?’

      Bastien was watching her face, recognising the embarrassment and the sudden flash of resentment there but seeing not a shred of guilt. ‘I had one of my security team watching you last night. He lost track of you after you got into the guy’s car.’

      ‘Oh...’ It was the only thing Lilah could initially think to say, because she was hugely disconcerted by the idea that someone Bastien employed had been following her round before she’d even left her home town. How dared he invade her privacy like that? ‘You had no right to have anyone watching me.’

      ‘From the moment I let you into my life I had that right. Did you spend the night with him?’

      Battling to keep her temper over that far-reaching declaration of his rights over her, Lilah swallowed hard. ‘No, I didn’t. Josh dropped me straight home. There was one kiss, Bastien, nothing more.’ She frowned at him, dismayed by the depth of his distrust. ‘He’s never kissed me before, and I wasn’t expecting it. He was just trying it on.’

      ‘You didn’t try to stop him.’

      ‘He’s a friend and we had an audience.’ Lilah grimaced. ‘I didn’t want to make a big scene of rejecting him in front of everyone. It would have made us all feel horribly uncomfortable.’

      Bastien studied her, torn between belief and disbelief. His lean, strong features remained hard and set, his tawny eyes veiled by his lashes. The silence lay there, thick as a swamp between them.

      ‘You were too generous. You’re mine now,’ Bastien told her in a raw, gritty undertone. ‘I will not tolerate any other man touching you.’

      ‘Bastien...I don’t want anyone following me around, spying on me.’

      ‘It goes with the territory. It’s for my peace of mind and your protection.’

      ‘I don’t need protection.’

      ‘That’s my decision,’ Bastien decreed, snapping off the light in a sudden movement that made her flinch.

      ‘Bastien...?’ Lilah whispered.

      A powerful silhouette, he hovered. ‘What?’

      ‘Sometimes you really, really annoy me.’

      ‘That cuts both ways.’

      Bastien studied her slight figure in the bed and then strode into the room to flip back the duvet and scoop her up into his arms.

      ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped in consternation as he strode into the room next door to hers.

      Bastien thrust back the sheet on his bed and settled her on the mattress. ‘I want you where I can see you,’ he told her curtly.

      ‘You told me that I was getting my own room,’ she reminded him breathlessly.

      ‘For what remains of tonight, I’ve changed my mind.’ Removing his jacket, he cast it on a chair, a lean, strong band of muscle flexing below his shirt. ‘I’m going for a shower,’ he extended, without any expression at all.

      Lilah curled up in a ball on one side of the bed, too tired and wrung out to agonise or argue. So that was that? There was to be no further discussion?

      Bastien had assumed that she had slept with Josh last night. Did he believe that she hadn’t? Did she care whether he believed her or not?

      He was so...so...volatile. She hadn’t been prepared for that—had assumed that deep down