A Forbidden Passion. Kelly Hunter

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