One Night With The Enemy. ABBY GREEN

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      She heard a rushing in her ears, but she ignored it and tossed her head. ‘Don’t worry. You won’t see me again. I think we can safely say this farce is over. I came tonight because I was curious to see what you were up to. You’ve seriously underestimated me.’

      She was turning away again when she forgot that she still had one shoe off. She stumbled into thin air, and would have fallen if Nicolás hadn’t caught her and hauled her back against him. One strong arm was wrapped around her ribcage, just under her breasts, and the other was across her shoulders. Adrenalin pumped through Maddie’s veins. She immediately tried to remove his arms but they were like steel bands. And they were completely alone.

      She had an urge to shout out, but a hand came over her mouth as if he’d read her mind. Panic gripped her—not at the threat of violence but at the threat of something much more potent. The evidence of Nicolás de Rojas’s hardening body at her back was liquefying her insides. A silent scream sounded in Maddie’s head: No! Not this, please. He would expose her vulnerability in seconds if he touched her.

      She bit down on the fleshy part of his hand and heard him curse—but not before she’d tasted the salty tang of his skin. Her belly swooped and fire danced along her veins. He moved her effortlessly in his arms and now she was facing him, his arms manacling her to his body, her hands behind her back. She was completely powerless. And, to her absolute disgust, the predominant thing she was feeling was excitement.

      ‘Let me go.’

      He shook his head, eyes glittering down into hers. Maddie felt as if she’d completely lost her footing. Past and present, everything was mixing, and she felt seriously overwhelmed.

      ‘I’m not finished with you, Maddie.’

      Maddie’s heart lurched painfully at hearing him use the diminutive of her name. She could remember with painful clarity telling him that she preferred Maddie to the more stuffy-sounding Madalena. He had touched her cheek and said, ‘Maddie it is, then …’

      He smiled, and it was the smile of a predator, forcing Maddie back to the present moment. ‘One thing you should know is that if I’ve underestimated you, then you’ve seriously underestimated me. We have unfinished business—and ironically enough it’s got nothing to do with business.’

      Before Maddie had even properly taken in his words or read his intent he’d hauled her even closer. His head descended and his hard mouth pressed against hers. For a second Maddie had no reaction except numb shock. And then sensation exploded behind her eyes—hot and urgent.

      Desperately she tried to cling onto reality and not let that hot urgency take over her need to stay immobile and unresponsive. But she might as well have been hoping that the sun wouldn’t rise in the morning.

      Being in this man’s arms again was like seeing a beacon of light strobing across a choppy ocean and reacting to it with an unthinking instinct to seek harbour. Maddie felt the inexorable and overpowering urge to follow it, even as everything rational was screaming at her to stop, pull herself free, not to react. But a much bigger part of her was aching all over with the effort it took not to react.

      As if sensing her turmoil, Nic freed her hands and lifted his own to her head, fingers caressing her skull, angling her head so that he could better plunder her mouth. His tongue flicked against the closed seam of her lips and at that touch Maddie felt her resistance falling away. Her free hands hovered for a long moment. She knew in some dim place that she should use them to push him away, but when she put them between their bodies and felt the taut musculature of his torso underneath his thin shirt they clung … didn’t push.

      He growled low in his throat at her capitulation and became bolder, his tongue prising open her soft lips to seek the hot interior of her mouth. The devastation of that simple intimacy made Maddie sway against him. She could feel her breasts crushed against the solid wall of his chest.

      One of his hands was on her waist, digging into her flesh, anchoring her solidly against him. She could feel the bold thrust of his arousal against her belly, and between her legs she felt hot and moist.

      The world was turning into a hot furnace of sensation and desperate wanting—and then suddenly a cool breeze was waking Maddie as if from a drugged trance and she was blinking up into Nic’s impassive face. It looked as if it was carved from stone. Maddie felt like jelly. Her mouth was swollen, her heart beating like a piston. Her hair was tumbling down over sensitised skin.

      ‘You …’ She couldn’t even formulate a word beyond that.

      In a voice so cold it woke her up more effectively than anything else, Nic said, ‘What do you want to say, Maddie? You want me to believe this act? That I’ve effectively rendered you speechless with passion?’

      A look crossed his face that was so bitter it took Maddie aback. For a moment she was distracted from her growing humiliation.

      ‘You forget that you already tried that once with me. I’m not stupid enough to fall for it again. You can’t, however, deny that you want me. As much if not more than when you were hot and trembling in my arms eight years ago. I could have taken you that day and you would have been with me every step of the way. You might have seduced me out of boredom, but there was nothing bored about your response then—or just now. And you’ve never been able to handle that reality.’

      The sheer arrogance of his tone and expression revived Maddie from the fugue she’d been in. She moved out of his embrace with a jerky movement and saw dark colour flash along his cheekbones.

      ‘I am not interested in your hypotheses, or your take on the past. The past is in the past and that’s where it’ll stay. This …’ she waved a hand to encompass what had just happened ‘.is nothing but evidence that physical chemistry can be dismayingly arbitrary. That’s all.’

      Nic smiled. ‘If I hadn’t stopped when I had I could be taking you right here, just feet away from one hundred guests, and I’d have had to put a hand over your mouth to stifle your screams of pleasure.’

      The sheer carnality of his words made Maddie raise her hand—he’d pushed her too far.

      Before it could connect to his smug face he’d caught it in a steel-fingered grip. Shock washed through Maddie in a wave. She’d never raised a hand to anyone in her life. The line of Nic’s mouth was impossibly grim.

      ‘I was merely proving that you’re no more in control of your desire for me now than you were eight years ago, no matter how much you tried to convince me that you’d found what we had done so abhorrent it made you physically ill. You came here tonight to test me as much as I tested you. My bed is free at the moment … you’re more than welcome to join me there and we can indulge this arbitrary chemistry until you’ve come to your senses and decided to sell the Vasquez estate to me.’

      Maddie ripped her hand free of his grip and had to curb the urge to try and strike him again. His version of what had happened that cataclysmic afternoon was very different from hers. She knew she’d given him the impression that what they’d shared had disgusted her … and for a while she had found what they’d done abhorrent. But not for the reasons he obviously believed.

      And she couldn’t tell him. As much as she hated him right now, telling him the truth would only expose her even more. He would know that that week had meant everything to her, that she hadn’t set out coldly to seduce him just for her amusement. There was no way she could disabuse him of that belief now. It was her only defence against him.

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