But she’d tried.
And he had made it clear—very clear—he wasn’t interested.
Maybe down the track she would write to him from Australia. Explain what Maria had told her. Then he could decide whether to use the information or discard it.
The taxi pulled up outside the ferry terminal and Jordan put the photo away. The driver helped her retrieve her backpack, and then it took her a moment to sort out the right bills and coins to pay him.
Once he was happy she hoisted her pack onto her shoulder, turned towards the terminal—and slammed into a wall of solid muscle.
The impact combined with the weight of her pack threw her off-balance, and she stumbled backwards with a startled cry.
Strong hands caught her by the upper arms, stopping her from falling.
She looked up and her mouth dried.
‘Xavier!’
‘Running away, Jordan?’
She tried to focus on what he’d said instead of the heat of his hands, which felt like branding irons on her bare arms. ‘Wh-what?’
In her peripheral vision a big, dark-suited man emerged from inside the terminal and strode towards them.
Juan.
He lifted his hand in the air and signalled to someone she couldn’t see.
She turned her attention back to Xavier. His expression was inscrutable, but the hard glint in his gunmetal gaze told her he wasn’t happy.
Her mind spun.
Rosa. Rosa must have called him. How else had he known she’d left? Where she’d gone?
Her voice was a croak of confusion. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You left without saying goodbye.’ His tone was mild, as though he’d dished out nothing more than a gentle rebuke, but she sensed the pull of a dangerous undercurrent in the air.
She sucked in her breath, ignored the stab in her belly that felt a bit like guilt. Did he really think she’d buy into the idea that he was the wounded party? If anyone had reason to feel slighted it was her. He’d invited her to his home under false pretences. He hadn’t trusted her. He’d had her investigated. And then he’d messed with her in the cruellest way possible. He’d kissed her and left her wanting more, then rejected her and left her feeling like a fool. Humiliated.
She hiked up her chin. ‘I left you a note.’
A muscle flickered in his cheek, and this time his voice was not so smooth. ‘Do you think a note is the best way to finish things between us?’
Her heart thumped against her ribs. Finish things? What things? There wasn’t anything to finish.
Was there...?
‘Xavier—’
‘Not here.’ He dropped one hand, but kept the other on her arm, turning her away from the busy terminal.
A big black SUV pulled up to the kerb and she eyed it with a growing sense of déjà vu. Too fast for her to stop him, Juan took her tote bag from her hand and slipped the backpack off her shoulder.
Her heart lurched into her throat. ‘Wait—stop.’
Both men ignored her. Xavier opened the rear door and she braced her palm against the top of the frame. Her initial shock was receding. In its place came agitation—and anger.
A shrill note entered her voice. ‘I said stop.’
Xavier stilled. Then he released her arm, slid his hand around her waist and tugged her in close.
Anyone watching would have seen an intimate embrace, would have been unaware of the tension in the taut lines of his body beneath the tailored suit, or the tacit warning in the strong press of his fingers at her waist.
‘I would prefer you didn’t make a scene,’ he murmured, and his mouth was so close to her ear she felt the warmth of his breath feather over her skin and caught his citrus and sandalwood scent.
Her senses reeled. It took all her strength to keep her knees locked so she didn’t give in to temptation and lean into all that male hardness and heat.
She controlled her voice. ‘I can’t go with you.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
She glared. ‘I need to check in for the ferry. I’ve already bought a ticket for the next sailing.’
‘I’ll buy you another one.’
She opened her mouth, but then a taxi driver honked his horn and gesticulated out of his window at the SUV, which idled in a drop-off only zone.
Juan yelled at the driver and the driver bellowed back.
People started to look.
‘Jordan,’ Xavier urged, his mouth tightening, the fingers at her waist sinking deeper.
She flung her hands up. ‘Fine! I’m getting in.’
And then she was going to tell him exactly what she thought of his arrogant, domineering behaviour.
Or at least she would have done, she assured herself ten seconds later, if he hadn’t climbed in from the other side and at the same time pulled his ringing phone from his jacket and answered it.
She wanted to snatch the phone and throw the damned thing out the window.
Instead she bit her tongue while he conducted a conversation with someone else. Someone far more important than her, obviously. She folded her arms and focused on her anger as the car pulled away from the port.
She needed to stay mad.
If she stayed mad then maybe she could ignore this fluttery, breathless sensation in her chest that felt an awful lot like excitement.
Excitement?
Honestly. What was wrong with her? He’d virtually abducted her off the street. Again. The only thing she should be feeling was outrage.
He didn’t end his call until they were descending into the basement of the Vega Tower, by which time her anger was a low simmer that rapidly changed to dismay and a faint sense of panic.
As soon as he’d slipped his phone back into his jacket she blurted, ‘I can’t go into your offices dressed like this!’
She could just picture the beautiful, flawless Lucia, looking at her in her denim cut-offs and tank top with barely concealed horror.
His gaze slid over her, settling briefly on her bare thighs before lifting back to her face. For a second, as their gazes meshed and her breath snagged, she thought she saw a flash of heat in those metallic grey eyes before his features grew shuttered again.
‘We’re not going to my office.’
They went instead to the very top of the tower, via a dedicated lift that ran from the underground car park and gave access to two other levels: the forty-fourth floor, where the executive offices were located, and the floor above, which housed the corporate apartment that Rosa had mentioned as being where he sometimes stayed when he worked long hours.
The lift was one of those super-fast types that made her feel as if her stomach had relocated to her knees, and yet every second of the brief ride felt more like a minute, and every one of those was excruciating.
Because Xavier couldn’t behave like an ordinary person and face the doors. No. He had to stand with his back to one of the side walls, so that no matter where Jordan stood she couldn’t escape his incisive gaze.
As if she was going to perform some kind of Houdini act and disappear from under his nose while the lift was moving!
He stood tall and silent, his hands in his trouser pockets, her bags sitting on the floor beside him.
And he watched her.
She knew it—could feel his gaze like the stroke of a warm hand across bare skin even as she concentrated hard on the toes of her tennis shoes.
Coward. Look at him. Show him you’re just as mad at him as he is at you.
And he was angry. She didn’t need to sneak a look at the tight clench of his clean-shaven jaw to know it. When irritated or frustrated he pinched the bridge of his nose, but when he was angry—truly angry—he simply went very, very still.
Like he was now.
It gave her a small shock to realise she knew all this abou
t him. She’d known him for—what? Five days? Somehow it seemed longer.
So what? Stay mad, she reminded herself—an instruction she promptly forgot as she stepped from the lift straight into the expansive glass-walled living area of Xavier’s penthouse apartment.
Wow.
It was nothing like the beautiful stone villa on the coast, but just as spectacular with its panoramic bird’s-eye view of the sprawling city and the wide blue of the ocean beyond.
Automatically she moved to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows for a better look. From up here she could see the port in the distance and a number of berthed ships, one of which was probably the ferry that would have taken her away from here.
Away from him.
Away from this overwhelming attraction she didn’t know how to handle and away from the danger of humiliating herself again.
She glanced at her watch. There was still over an hour until the ferry was scheduled to leave.
‘Forget it, Jordan.’
She turned and frowned. ‘Forget what?’
‘You’re not taking that ferry.’
It annoyed her immensely that he could read her thoughts as easily as she could read the idiosyncrasies of his body language.
She felt equally annoyed at how devastatingly gorgeous he looked, standing there in the middle of his living room in his dark grey suit, every bit as sleek and expensive-looking as the designer decor and stunning pieces of artwork that lined the interior walls.
She licked her lips, but there wasn’t enough moisture in her mouth to alleviate their dryness.
‘Why am I here?’ she challenged, choosing to skip the more obvious Why are you angry?
She didn’t need a psychology degree to work that out. Anyone who spent time with this man would see he had a penchant for control—and people who liked being in control didn’t like surprises...unless they were doing the surprising.
She guessed her upping and leaving without saying goodbye in person had surprised him.
Throw a hefty dose of male ego and dented pride into the mix and you had all the ingredients for a grown man’s temper tantrum.
So, yes. She wanted to know what he planned to do now.
Vent his anger?
Yell a bit?
Yell a lot?
She shook off any lingering cowardice and raised her chin, giving him a bold, defiant look.
Do your worst.
Because, really, how frightening could his worst be? She was a trauma nurse who’d worked the weekend night shift in Accident & Emergency. She had placated belligerent drug addicts. Fended off breast-and-butt-grabbing drunks. Had the unmentionable contents of a bedpan thrown at her...
A billionaire in a bad mood? Pfft. Child’s play.
His eyes narrowed. And then he did something surprising and removed his suit jacket, shrugging his broad shoulders out of the expensive fabric and dropping the jacket onto the end of the long, coffee-coloured sofa behind him.
Jordan’s eyes widened, but he didn’t stop there. He upped the surprise factor another notch by lifting his hands to his throat, working his tie loose and sliding it out from under his collar.
Her breath shortened, and for one slightly hysterical moment she wondered if they were playing some kind of bizarre game of one-upmanship. Because when she thought about it they’d been surprising the hell out of each other from the moment she’d walked into his office last week and told him her late stepmom was his biological mother.
If she were keeping score she would have said before yesterday that they were level pegging. But then Xavier had stormed into the lead with that blistering, spine-loosening kiss she was trying very hard not to think about right now.
He threw the tie onto the sofa, then undid the button of his collar one-handed. His gaze stayed on hers, direct and unsettling, and she couldn’t for the life of her look away.
‘We have unfinished business.’
She swallowed, but her throat was dry and her voice came out husky. ‘What business?’
He stalked across the plush carpet towards her and she stood like a deer in headlights, trapped by the silver snare of his gaze. On some deep, instinctive level she understood what was happening. Understood that beneath the ruthless self-control there wasn’t only anger and ego railing against their restraints but something much more primal and volatile. Something that, if he chose to unleash it, neither of them would escape from unscathed.
And yet her conscious mind couldn’t process it. Couldn’t reconcile the hot, glittering intent in his eyes with the cold slap of his words from last night.
‘It was a mistake—and it won’t happen again.’
He stopped in front of her and she felt her pulse spike and her entire body tremble. But, even knowing what he intended, she couldn’t make herself move. She felt as if she were in the grip of some sort of delirium—like a storm chaser standing in the path of a destructive tornado, torn between excitement and terror.
His hands came up and bracketed her head, his long fingers splaying into her hair. ‘This business,’ he said, his voice rough and deep. And Jordan had scarcely a second to snatch in her breath before his mouth rocked savagely over hers.
She didn’t feign shock. Didn’t make any token attempts to resist. The simple, irrefutable truth was that she’d yearned for him to do this, ached for him to touch her again, and denying it was like trying to hold back a storm.
Impossible.
She wanted to run into the storm. Wanted it to sweep her up and consume her in its chaos. Drown out the voice of sanity that would tell her all the reasons why they shouldn’t do this.
His kiss wasn’t gentle and she didn’t want it to be. It was searing and fierce. Dominating and deep. He cradled her skull and prised her lips apart, driving heat and sensation into her mouth, demanding a response that she gave with a bold flick of her tongue against his.
She felt his tiny jerk of surprise, heard a small growl of what she hoped was approval in his throat, and then she was kissing him back, and it was wild and passionate. An urgent, breathless clash of lips and tongues unlike anything she’d experienced before.
Driven by instinct, and a feverish need for greater contact, she clung to his shoulders and arched against him, revelling in the delicious rub of hard male muscle against her softer curves.
When his strong hands curled under her buttocks and lifted her it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for her to wrap her legs around him and continue kissing him as he carried her effortlessly across the room.
He stopped at the sofa and she unhooked her ankles as he lowered himself to a seated position on the cushions, bringing her with him so that she sat astride him, her bare legs straddling his muscular thighs. The slightly rough landing bumped their mouths apart and she sat back, hands braced on his wide shoulders to steady herself, and looked at him.
His eyes glittered under heavy lids and dark colour slashed his cheekbones. Like her, he was breathing hard. ‘Dios,’ he said, his voice little more than a harsh whisper. ‘What spell have you cast over me, woman?’
His ragged words and the heat in his eyes sent a ripple of heady pleasure through her. To know that he felt as helplessly compelled by their attraction as she, that his desire for her pushed him to the limits of his control, made her feel sexually powerful and confident in a way she’d never felt before.
She licked her lips and leaned forward, eager to have his hot mouth on hers again. But he stopped her, putting his hands on her rib cage, tantalisingly close to her breasts.
He eased her back and said, ‘I want to look at you,’ and her flushed cheeks grew even hotter.
Reaching up a hand, he stroked the tip of his forefinger over her bottom lip, then trailed his fingers along her jaw, igniting a shower of sparks beneath her skin. Light as a feather, his touch continued down her throat, over the ridge of her c
ollarbone and lower, eliciting a shiver of delight she couldn’t suppress.
‘Like silk,’ he murmured, and then closed his hand over her left breast and squeezed in a way that was brazen and possessive and made her a gasp aloud. ‘Take your hair down,’ he commanded, and it didn’t even occur to her to take exception to his tone. She was too far gone, too aroused, and for some reason the arrogant air of authority that normally rubbed her the wrong way only turned her on.
His hands had already played havoc with her ponytail, leaving it slightly askew, with long strands hanging loose about her face. She pulled the elastic band off and freed the rest, shaking her head until the wavy tresses tumbled over her shoulders and down her back.
Xavier lifted his hands and smoothed the hair back from her face, then drifted his long fingers through the silky ends and murmured something in Spanish. Voice husky, he reverted to English and said, ‘Take off your top, Jordan.’
There was something deliciously risqué about his ordering her to strip for him. Before her confidence could waver, she pulled her tank top up and over her head and let it fall from her fingers, watching his eyes darken as they focused on her breasts, encased still in the cups of her cotton bra. She saw his jaw lock tight, as if he waged some fierce internal battle, and again she became aware of the power she wielded, even though he was the one issuing commands.
Emboldened by the knowledge that she could so easily drive him to the brink of his control, she removed her bra and at the same time rocked her hips forward so she rubbed intimately against the hard ridge of flesh inside his trousers.
He sucked in his breath, then hooked his arm around her waist and flipped her on her back on the sofa. ‘Temptress,’ he growled, looming above her, his eyes shimmering with hunger and the promise of retribution as he palmed one of her breasts and dragged his thumb over the extended nipple.
Sensation arrowed from her breast down to the place between her legs where she ached with need. She gasped and arched her back in a wordless plea for more—more than just that fleeting, teasing caress of his thumb—and a smile of sensual satisfaction curved his mouth.
It was an utterly masculine smile that said he knew exactly what she wanted from him, exactly what her straining body craved and needed, and the dark glitter in his eyes promised to deliver.
A Mistress, a Scandal, a Ring Page 10
