Return of the Forbidden Tycoon

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Now what are you thinking?’

  ‘Not about you!’

  It was a childish and dangerous denial, as foolish as the instinctive fear that made her turn and run towards the door. The drawing-room was a comfortable size, but with Dominic in it with her the air inside the room had suddenly become impossible to breathe.

  He caught her by the door, turning her and slamming her hard against his body, his face a mask of sexual excitement and anger.

  ‘You’re lying to me, Kate. You were thinking about me…about this!’ he told her fiercely, claiming her mouth before she could speak, thrusting his fingers into her hair and clamping her head so that she could not avoid the punishing, drugging force of his kisses.

  When she refused to open her mouth he tugged painfully on her hair, making ruthless use of her sharp cry of protest.

  He was like a man possessed, she thought feverishly, unstoppable, determined to take what he wanted with or without her consent. She should have hated and despised him, but she didn’t. Her body was shaking against his, but not with shock. The fierce intensity of her answering desire totally engulfed her. She wanted to be here like this with him for ever, her mouth dominated by the hunger of his, all her senses alive. He leaned further into her and she shuddered as she felt the intimate contact of his body against her own.

  He moved slightly, and she moaned primitively deep in her throat, frustration shimmering in her eyes as she was robbed of the contact with his body, her head moving tormentedly from side to side as his mouth lifted from hers, leaving her bereft.

  ‘Shush…shush… It’s all right.’

  The thick whisper was meant to comfort, but it only aroused her more, and her flesh quivered in mute pleasure as his hand found her breast.

  ‘Kate… Kate, you don’t know what you do to me.’

  She could hear the tension and excitement in his voice and mindlessly she responded to it.

  Where she had been cold now she was burning… on fire with the need to have the satin firmness of his flesh against her own without the hindrance of clothes.

  She heard him curse as his fingers fumbled with the buttons of her shirt, expelling her breath in an aching sigh of pleasure as he finally cupped the bare skin of her breast. His hips moved against her, his mouth hot and shaking slightly as it touched her throat. The ache of need inside her was something totally outside any previous experience she had had.

  Instead of quenching her desire for him the fact that they had already been lovers had only increased it. This was what she had dreaded all along; this terrible searing imprisonment not only of her heart, but also of her body.

  His head bent, and she gave a tiny sharp cry of pleasure as she felt his teeth graze delicately over her breast. She was consumed by heat and need; both of which he shared. She could see it in the topaz eyes as she looked down to where his head lay against her breast, his mouth hot against her aching flesh.

  A terrible sense of desolation spilled its bitterness inside her.

  ‘Kate… I want you…’

  She heard the words and her heart went cold. She shook like someone held in the grip of a fever. Numbly she dragged herself away from him, inching along the door.

  ‘Kate?’

  She caught the edge of violence in his voice, as he suddenly realised what she was doing.

  ‘What the hell are you trying to do to me, damn you?’ His voice shook, his face a bitter mask. ‘Is that what turns you on? Building me up and then dropping me flat?’

  Kate couldn’t speak. She watched him study her in silence, and then with a tinge of colour creeping up under his skin he said flatly, ‘You’re doing this to punish me, aren’t you…? Aren’t you, damn you?’

  His hands were closed, the heat coming off his body undermining her defences. She could sense the violence in him and knew that somehow she must dissipate it. Now without him touching her she was starting to function normally again. She was bitterly ashamed of the way she had responded to him. He had every reason to be annoyed.

  ‘No… No, I wasn’t trying to punish you,’ she said slowly at last. Dominic had turned his head away as though in repudiation of her words, and impulsively she reached out to touch him, blenching as he turned his head and looked wordlessly at where her fingers lay against his arm.

  ‘Don’t do that unless you want us back where we were ten minutes ago, Kate,’ he warned her expressionlessly. And then withdrawing completely from her he pushed his fingers through his hair. ‘God, what is it about you that brings out the worst in me? And what is it about me that makes you deny the physical desire you feel for me?’

  Kate took a deep breath.

  ‘If I deny it, it’s because I don’t trust it, Dominic. After all, you want me, but at the same time you resent that wanting…you resent me.’

  ‘Kate, you’re wrong.’

  She shook her head. ‘No… Vera’s told me about your mother…about your upbringing.’ She avoided his eyes as she said calmly, ‘Right from the first you despised me, Dominic…I think you wanted to despise me. You’ve told me yourself that you resented wanting me. I’m still the same person I was before…I haven’t changed.’ She was finding it difficult to articulate her thoughts, but amazingly he seemed to understand.

  ‘You mean you can’t trust a desire that’s based on resentment…that you think at some point, if there was any relationship between us I would revert to character and turn against you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She heard him sigh. ‘Listen to me, Kate,’ he said quietly. ‘What Vera told you about my childhood was true, but with one amendment. Since the first time you and I met, I’ve been in touch with my mother.’ He saw her surprise and smiled bleakly. ‘I didn’t want to…not at first, but once I did, I was glad. You see, from her I got a different view of the story; my mother is a very loving, warm person, unlike my father who was basically extremely cold. She tried to make the marriage work, but it was no good. Eventually after a nervous breakdown her doctor advised her to get a divorce. My father would only agree if she allowed me to stay with him. She didn’t want to, but her lawyers advised her that with her mental history of a breakdown, and my father’s wealth, she would not stand any chance of being allowed to keep me.

  ‘It’s true that the first time we met I did want to believe the worst of you…not so much because of my upbringing, but because I was so appalled to discover how much I wanted you…the wife of a friend. It shook to the foundations all I had believed about myself; and brought on the identity crisis that eventually took me in search of my mother. Kate…’

  He made an appealing gesture towards her, but she shook her head and shrank back. She didn’t want to hear any more. She wanted to keep as many barriers between them as possible. That was the only way she could stay safe. Dominic wanted her merely on a physical level, but she loved him.

  ‘Kate…’ he was frowning now, concerned by her lack of response, and she rushed wildly into speech to protect herself.

  ‘Dominic, I’m tired… I’d like to go to bed… I…’

  She saw the disappointment in his eyes and it convulsed her with remorse. Something almost approaching pain shadowed them and she longed to go to him and take him in her arms, but she could not afford to be weak. She had far too much to lose.

  ‘Very well.’ His face looked strained, his smile forced. ‘I had hoped we might talk, but if you’re tired…’

  ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned his back and walked over to the fire, and ridiculously Kate found herself wanting to linger…torn between common sense and desire. If he turned round and looked at her the choice would be made for her, and she trembled, waiting…but he did not. Quietly she opened the door and slid through it, telling herself that she had made the wisest choice.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SOMETHING was pressing down on her, stifling her, threatening to deprive her of breath.

  Kate came awake with a jolt. Her heart was pounding vi
olently, her breathing erratic. She had been having a nightmare. She shivered, suddenly cold where she had been hot, and then froze as her ears picked up an alien sound. Sitting tensely in her bed, hands clasped round her knees, she listened, hardly daring to breathe.

  Yes…that had definitely been the kitchen door to the hall opening, she would recognise its squeak anywhere.

  Terror galvanised her into action, taking her out of bed and towards her door before she even had time to think properly. The landing was in darkness, of course, but she knew it so well she did not need any light. Her pulse was drumming against her skin, fear releasing adrenalin into her blood.

  Someone had broken into the house. She had to tell Dominic—that was the thought that was uppermost in her mind as she stood poised by her open door, judging the distance to Dominic’s room, trying to remember if there were any boards likely to creak. The air she breathed seemed heavy and thick with tension, her lungs expanding only with difficulty. God, she was so frightened! As she moved out on to the landing it crossed her mind to wonder at what her fear would have been if she had been alone in the house.

  She was halfway there when something made her tense and turn to look back towards the stairs. The fine hairs lining her skin prickled upwards in atavistic terror as she saw the dark, bulky shape coming slowly towards her.

  For a moment she was too shocked to do anything, and then her paralysis broke, a sharp scream tearing the muscles of her throat as she realised the intruder had seen her and was coming towards her, reaching out to her.

  A black void opened up beneath her and she felt herself falling dizzily into it. In the distance someone called her name, the voice deep and familiar. She struggled to respond, but the darkness whirled faster and faster around her, sucking her down with a noise like a train going through a tunnel.

  * * *

  ‘Kate?’

  Behind her closed eyelids patterns broke and re-formed. She frowned, recognising the voice, but knowing that its urgent note of concern was alien to her knowledge of it. She wanted to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt like lead. In fact her whole body felt heavy, and very, very weak.

  ‘Kate, it’s all right… You’re quite safe.’

  Safe! Unexpectedly she shuddered, her eyes flying open as panic hit her.

  She was in the guest-room, in Dominic’s bed, in fact, and he was crouching down beside the bed, his eyes almost on a level with her own. Urgency overwhelmed everything else as she reached towards him, tugging on the rough towelling of the robe he was wearing, her voice sharp and high with anxiety.

  ‘Dominic, there’s someone downstairs. I heard them…’ She shuddered again, and then frowned, remembering. ‘I saw them… I…’

  ‘You fainted, Kate. No, it’s all right.’ He stood up, bending over her, his fingers curling comfortingly round her arm. ‘No one’s broken in,’ he told her reassuringly.

  ‘But…but I saw them…’

  ‘You saw me, Kate,’ he corrected her gently. ‘I couldn’t sleep and I’d gone to make myself a drink. I’m sorry I frightened you so much.’

  Dominic…it had been Dominic all the time. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking—a physical reaction to the shock, she recognised dizzily.

  ‘When you fainted I brought you in here because this room was the nearest.’ His fingers left her arm, and she could have cried, she felt so bereft. He straightened up and in the lamplight that illuminated the room she saw that his legs and chest were bare where they were not covered by his robe.

  The knowledge that he was naked beneath it made her stomach twist in aching heat, the blood surging up under her skin.

  ‘I’ll go down and make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘No.’ She shivered again and closed her eyes. ‘Please stay with me, Dominic… God, I was so frightened!’

  She opened her eyes in time to catch the remorse in his. She felt so extraordinarily weak, as though her whole life had suddenly shifted focus, and all that was important now was that he never left her alone again.

  She refused to analyse her feelings, clinging instead to his arm.

  ‘Kate!’ His fingers covered her own, gently prising them away, his voice rough but warm. ‘You know if you stay here that I’ll make love to you.’

  Did she know that? Yes, she did, she discovered as her muscles turned to jelly and her flesh to fire.

  Her eyes slid away from his. ‘I can’t go back to my own room now…I’d never sleep.’ She shivered, her voice little more than a whisper before it broke completely as she begged huskily, ‘Hold me, Dominic…please hold me…’

  She couldn’t bear to look at him, her body tensing completely as she realised what she had said. Eight years ago she had come to this man and begged him to make love to her. Had she forgotten what had happened then?

  She made a movement towards the opposite side of the bed to where Dominic was standing, but it was swiftly arrested as his fingers closed on her arm, and then he was bending over her, his hands framing and imprisoning her face as he looked down at her.

  ‘Kate, what have I done to make you so afraid of me?’

  You’ve made me love you, she screamed silently inside. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’ Her lips framed the words almost before her mind thought them. ‘You rejected me once, Dominic,’ she reminded him huskily. ‘You refused to make love to me…’

  ‘But I’m not refusing this time.’

  She felt his breath against her skin, his mouth touching hers lightly, coaxing her lips apart. This was what she wanted…this was what she had been born for. Nothing else mattered. She sighed softly into his mouth, shivering in voluptuous pleasure as his hands drifted down her body removing her cotton nightdress. She knew that he looked at her, she could feel the warm path of his eyes as they caressed her body.

  Beneath his regard she grew supine, drifting on a soft swell of pleasure.

  She opened her eyes and saw him looking at her. His skin was flushed like that of a man deep in the grip of a fever, his eyes glittering febrilely over her skin.

  ‘Kate!’

  The raw need in his voice splintered her indolence, desire, hot and urgent, leaping through her. She reached up to him instinctively, her hands curling inside his robe as she pulled him down towards her.

  Their mouths met and fused in explosive passion. His hands touched her breasts, finding their tight peaks and stimulating them to the point where they ached for the hot possession of his mouth. Her fingers curled into his hair as she tugged him down to her arching body, tiny whimpers of need exploding in her throat.

  ‘Kate… Kate…’

  Her name was a chant he muttered into her skin as he responded to her need, his mouth fastening over her nipple and tugging delicately on it.

  His robe had slipped off his shoulders and in a frenzy of pleasure she bent her bead to run her tongue over the hardness of his skin, feeling his body clench and his control splinter, and the pressure of his mouth against her breast became deliciously savage.

  Dominic moved, rolling on to his back and taking her with him, his hands savouring the fullness of her breasts as his lips caressed the fragile bones of her shoulders.

  ‘Kate, I want you to touch me. Touch me, Kate.’ He groaned the words into her throat, making her shudder and ache deep down in the pit of her stomach. The belt of his robe had come loose and she reached to free it completely, holding her breath as the towelling slid free of his body, quickly averting her head from his nudity.

  He reached up, cupping her face with his hands and turning her head back.

  ‘Look at me, Kate,’ he instructed softly. ‘I want you to look at me.’

  Inside she was a mass of quivering sensations, her eyes dark and solemn as she followed the muscled line of his legs, hard and firm, up to his thighs, and then stopped.

  ‘Kate.’ His voice was gentle, coaxing almost. ‘Do you really find me so repulsive that you can’t look at me?’

  Her eyes flew to his, and what she saw in them reminded her that when they
had made love before his body had been partially covered, and that she had not touched him below the waist. Her reticence sprang from the fact that Ricky had never allowed her to see him completely naked, had hated her touching him.

  ‘Well?’

  He was smiling at her, looking perfectly relaxed and at ease, but at the back of his eyes she could see a tiny trace of apprehension and her love for him immediately overwhelmed her fears.

  ‘I don’t find you repulsive,’ she told him shakily.

  ‘Then look at me,’ he insisted softly. ‘I want you to see what you do to me.’

  She took a deep breath and let her eyes drift slowly down his body, following the line of black hair that narrowed over his belly and then flared wider. Her breath caught and held, her attention mesmerised by the sheer physical perfection of him. Idiotically she felt tears sting her eyes. He was so…so beautiful. She wanted to reach out and touch him. To trace that dark arrowing of hair and…

  She moved like someone in a dream and then froze as she bent towards him, shocked by what she had been going to do. His hand gripped hers and guided it down to the flat hardness of his stomach.

  ‘Yes, Kate… Yes!’

  He said it harshly, violently almost, her body jerking as her eyes locked with his and saw the febrile topaz glitter of them. He wanted her…he desired her… She had aroused him. It was then that Ricky, and all the inferiority he had made her feel, slipped completely away. Beneath her fingers Dominic’s skin burned and tensed, a thick groan of pleasure stifled in his throat as she stroked her fingernail lightly up and then down that enticing line of hair. His body tensed and then shuddered as he reached for her, pulling her down against him, his mouth hot and hard where it touched her skin. Her hand was wedged flat against his thigh and when she moved it caressingly against him, he shuddered violently and muttered into her throat, ‘Kate… Kate. I’ll teach you to torment me!’