Authors: Kate Walker
Caitlin nodded silently, automatically, unable to do anything else. She was still staring at the mess on the floor; the shattered glass spread far and wide, the photograph of Josh’s face crushed irreparably beneath his heel. And she was waiting for the pain to start.
Surely there should be some pain? Something to remind her that Josh had once been all her world, to tell her that he had carelessly broken her heart and walked away without a backward glance?
But the startling, the unbelievable thing was that she felt
nothing
. She didn’t care that the frame had been destroyed; that the photograph was beyond repair. She couldn’t even remember what the picture looked like under the firm, crushing pressure of this man’s heel; couldn’t begin to imagine Josh’s once loved face in her mind.
‘Caitlin?’ he prompted roughly when she didn’t speak. And she lifted her head, meeting the burn of those sapphire eyes head-on without hesitation.
‘You and me,’ she echoed steadily, unemotionally.
And it sounded wonderful. It felt amazing just to say it. It was as if a door had suddenly closed on the past and a new one had opened, wide and welcoming, drawing her onwards.
With her eyes locked with his, she took a step forwards, and then another, then paused, frowning as his hand came out to halt her.
‘Careful!’ he warned, and the movement of his eyes drew hers down to see how the glistening shards of glass lay on the floor around him, threatening her vulnerable, soft bare feet.
The next moment he had come towards her, reaching for her and swinging her up into his arms. A couple of swift, long strides took him out of the danger zone and to the opposite side of the bed. As he lowered Caitlin to her feet once more he kissed her long and hard, wiping the brief interlude from her mind and setting her heart beating in a very different way in a split-second.
‘Now, where were we?’ he murmured against her lips. ‘Ah, yes—those kisses you owe me…I’ll take them now.’
Caitlin was already losing her grip on reality after the first potent caress of his mouth. By the end of the second one, longer, harder, hungrily demanding, she felt as if the floor was tilting underneath her feet, forcing her to grab at the broad strength of his shoulder and hold on tight.
The third kiss was different again. Soft and slow and infinitely seductive, it beguiled her lips open, touched tongue to tongue in delicate enticement, made her want to weep for the delight of it, then reduced her to tears, of loss this time, as he gently lifted his head.
‘You and me,’ he said, low and deep and huskily intent.
‘You—you and me,’ she echoed, her control of her voice wavering as she felt his fingers on the back of her neck unclasping the long zip of her dress and sliding it all the way along her spine. The peacock-blue silk slithered down her body, pooling softly around her feet. Beneath it she wore nothing more than the laciest strips of underwear in the same rich colour, tiny suspenders holding up cobweb-fine stockings.
‘Deliberate provocation…’
A strong male finger traced the fine line of skin around the top of one stocking to emphasise what he meant, and Caitlin writhed in sensual response to the heat of his touch on her flesh.
‘Do I get to take them off?’ His voice was pure seduction, rich warm honey flowing smoothly over polished gravel.
‘Only if you lose a few clothes first,’ she whispered. ‘You’re wearing far too many.’
‘I am,’ he agreed on a note of shaky laughter. ‘So would you like to help me with that?’
She was already busy doing so. The touch of his hand on her leg had set her body on fire, yearning hungrily for more. She wanted,
needed
to feel him properly, know the heated sensation of skin on skin, the slide of satin over satin, the contrast of his dark, crisp body hair with the smoothness of her own limbs.
She tugged at the buttons on his shirt, opening them with more urgency than finesse, pulling his tie loose and away with her other hand. With a low, rough sound in his throat, Rhys helped her, shrugging himself out of shirt and jacket at the same time, not heeding where they fell on the floor. It seemed to take only moments, but they were some of the longest seconds she had endured, before he was as close to naked as she was, and he tumbled with her down onto the peach-coloured cover on the bed.
‘This will have to go…’ he muttered, unfastening the strapless turquoise bra with a speed and skill that spoke of much practice and tossing it away to one side.
His hands took the place of the delicate lace, hard fingers hot against her yearning flesh, and immediately the atmosphere changed, tightened, becoming electrically charged with a new and urgent tension. He lifted her breasts to his mouth, kissed the rich curves, ran his tongue in erotic circles around the pouting nipples, making her catch her breath and writhe in hungry response.
‘Caitlin…’
The murmur of her name against her skin was even further sensual torment that had her clutching at the crisp darkness of his hair as she strained against him.
‘That feels—it feels…’
She struggled for words to describe the sensation of his lips tugging at her nipple, but abandoned the attempt on a choking cry of abandoned delight that did the job much better. A second later any hope of thought had left her as he kissed his way downwards, over the softness of her stomach, his fingers busy with the final slip of silk that kept her most feminine centre from his touch.
‘That is— Oh!’
Now she could only lie back, her body tensed in concentrated delight, focusing totally on the touch of his knowing fingers on the most sensitive spot of all, driving her higher and higher, almost to the point of losing all control. But then, just as she thought she would splinter into ecstasy under his touch, he eased away, kissing a path back up her trembling body to smile down into her face.
‘Ready?’ he questioned huskily.
Could he doubt it? Did he have to ask? She couldn’t find the words to answer him. But it seemed that after all he hadn’t needed them because even as she tried to nod he raised himself slightly, pushing her legs open wider with the pressure of his own powerful thighs, and thrust himself into her in one hard, powerful movement.
‘Yes,’ he added on a note of slightly shaken laughter. ‘Oh, yes, you were ready.’
Caitlin’s eyes seemed to be losing focus. Looking up into his face, she could see only the darkness of his eyes in the shadowed room, the flare of colour marking the high, carved cheekbones, the wicked curve to his mouth as he began to move. Instantly her whole body responded, bursting into flame again, soaring, burning, reaching…reaching…
‘Oh!’ The choking sound of stunned surrender was pushed from her lips by wave after wave of pure amazement that something could feel this good, this fast.
‘Oh—oh, Ma—’
His impatient, almost cruel mouth cut off her use of his name, stopping her breath too as he crushed her lips under his. But even as he stopped the words, his body pounded into hers, taking her out of any degree of control and over, over into a world where no thought was possible and the feeling of shattering into pieces was all she knew.
With a wild cry deep into his controlling mouth she clenched her hands hard over the strength of his shoulders, nails digging wildly into the powerfully bunched muscles, and lost herself in his embrace.
It was the start of a long, almost sleepless night.
In the heated darkness of Caitlin’s bed they came together again and again, unable to have enough of each other. Each time their bodies reached new and higher levels of release, the satisfaction only seemed to serve to waken a further hunger that had them reaching for each other when their breathing had not fully had time to ease, the sheen of sweat barely dry on their skin. And each time they lost themselves in each other, only to know when thought re-surfaced that they had only eased and not assuaged the stinging hunger that held them in its unrelenting grip.
The coming of the dawn had them finally tumbling into the heavy, numbing sleep of satiated exhaustion, not waking for hours until a loud, persistent noise from somewhere on the floor finally penetrated Rhys’s stupor, forcing him to groan and stir.
‘What the…?’
Very slowly, thought came back to him. And with thought came the recognition of the sound.
His mobile phone. Lying somewhere in a pocket of his jacket. The jacket he had discarded on the floor in such haste the previous night.
‘Go away!’
He tried to close his eyes, tried to recapture the welcome oblivion of the sleep from which he was being so rudely dragged, but failed miserably. The impatient summons went on and on, refusing to be ignored.
And when, at his side, the sleeping woman who lay curved against him, her skin soft and warm against his, began to stir he knew he had to act. Another minute and the sound would waken her. And he knew that if he felt shattered after the firestorm of emotions and physical exertion that had assailed them in the night, she must be totally worn out.
She wouldn’t thank him for being disturbed.
‘Oh, all right!’
Leaning out of bed, he could just reach the jacket, just snag it up and bring it within reach. Fumbling in a pocket, he reached the phone, pulled it out…
Only to have it lapse into total silence as soon as he had it securely.
‘Hell and damnation!’
Letting the jacket go again, he dropped his head back onto the softness of the pillows and closed his eyes wearily, the phone still in his hand.
Just as well they’d given up, really. He didn’t feel in the least like talking to anyone right now. His brain was still pleasantly scrambled from the mind-blowing sensations he had experienced, his thoughts impossible to put in order.
The only thing he could think of was Caitlin—Caitlin and her long, silky hair, her peach-soft skin. The woman with eyes like those of a wild lioness and a kiss like drug-laced honey. The woman who had taken his body and his soul and…
The shriek of the phone in his hand slashed through the sensual reverie, making him curse swiftly and savagely.
Pressing the answer button with the automatic reaction of long experience, still with his eyes half-shut, he lifted the phone to his ear.
‘Rhys Morgan,’ he said impatiently, the clinging shreds of sleep still slurring his words. ‘Yes?’
It was Sarah Nicolaides, his invaluable personal assistant who was also a friend. Sarah, who, although now two months pregnant with her first child, had agreed to take charge of the gallery for him until he found his daughter and brought her back to London with him.
The only person he would trust to do that. And the only person he would find himself able to speak to now without blasting their head off in anger at being disturbed.
So he forced himself to answer her questions, even managed to ask after her health and that of the wild, arrogant Greek who was her husband, before he extricated himself from the unwanted conversation, switched off the phone and lay back against the pillows again, closing his eyes with a heartfelt sigh of relief.
It was only then that he noticed a change in the position of the woman beside him.
Caitlin no longer lay relaxed and warm and deeply, luxuriously asleep at his side. She had moved, turning over slightly, so that she was lying on her back. And her slender frame was no longer curved close to his but held stiffly and tautly straight, a calculated distance across the sheet away.
It was that and a subtle change in the quality of the silence in the room that warned him. The absolute stillness in the way she lay, and some secret sixth sense that told him she was no longer asleep, but very definitely awake, and with her head turned in his direction, watching him.
And that was when he remembered.
Rhys Morgan.
He had answered the phone without thinking, switching it on and giving, as he always did, his name.
His
real
name.
‘Oh, damn,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Oh, damn, damn,
damn
!’
As he forced himself to open his eyes and meet the blaze of fury, the burning reproach in those molten golden eyes, he knew that there was no way back.
She knew.
She knew exactly who he was and why he was here.
And now all hell was very definitely going to break loose. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.
‘G
ET
out!’
She didn’t shout, she didn’t even raise her voice above a conversational tone, but she used the words with such deadly intent that Rhys felt the sting of them more than any more openly furious attack.
‘
Rhys Morgan
— You’re Rhys—
Get out!
Get out of my bed, out of my home and out of my life!’
‘No.’
It was the weirdest situation he had ever been in. Lying there naked under the bedclothes, with an equally naked woman only inches away, her brown hair still tumbled and tousled from their lovemaking in the night, her lips still swollen from the shared passion of their kisses—and with her golden eyes spitting hatred at him.
‘I’m not going anywhere until we’ve talked this out.’
‘And I’m not talking to you about
anything
! Get out!’
‘Look, can’t we be civilised about this?’
‘Civilised?’
The word was a sound of pure disbelief. Of total, absolute rejection of even the hope of a possible discussion or anything coming close to peace negotiations. She wasn’t even prepared to listen. And he knew that he shouldn’t blame her.
She had every right to be furious. To hate the deception he had practised on her. And he could see that fury, that hatred in her expression right now. He’d been prepared for that, and could handle it.
But what he hadn’t expected, and couldn’t cope with anything like as well, was the bitter sense of betrayal that was there right under the fury. Betrayal was the last thing he had expected her to feel and it didn’t square well with his conscience at all.
‘Can you tell me what is
civilised
about lying your way into my life—into my bed—into my body? And taking them without a second thought. Using me for your own selfish pleasure and then discarding—’
‘No!’
He couldn’t allow her to follow that line of thought. He could be accused of a lot of things, things he didn’t want to look at too closely right now, but that was not one of them. ‘That isn’t true and you know it! I never used you! If you want to be strictly accurate then we—’
‘Oh, yes,’ Caitlin cut in with bitter cynicism. ‘Let’s be
strictly accurate
by all means. I suppose you’re going to tell me that we used each other.’
‘Well, didn’t we?’ Rhys flung back. ‘From where I was standing the whole thing was definitely mutual. You’re not trying to claim that I forced you—or even put undue pressure on you?’
That took something of the angry fight out of her, making her shield the blazing eyes behind hooded lids, white teeth worrying at the fullness of her bottom lip.
‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘No, I’m not saying you
forced me
—’
‘Good.’
‘But…’
‘But what?’ Rhys prompted unwisely when she hesitated for a moment.
Unwisely because his interjection brought the anger flaring again, turning her eyes molten as they looked up and burned into his.
‘But you sure as hell didn’t tell me the truth, and that means you got yourself into my…my bed under false pretences.’
He didn’t like the way that made him sound—or the way it made him feel.
‘If we’re talking about the truth, lady, then the
truth
is that you didn’t give a damn who I was last night. You wouldn’t have cared if my name is Matthew Delaney—’
‘Which it isn’t!’
‘Which it is—Rhys Matthew Delaney Morgan! So at least I have more right to the name than you have to my daughter!’
There, it was out. At last the real truth was out in the open. But strangely he didn’t feel any better for it. In fact, seeing the way she flinched back against the pillows twisted something savagely inside. He just wished his damn conscience wasn’t quite so touchy.
After all, she was the one who had started all this by keeping his daughter from him.
‘Your…’
Abruptly she caught herself up, shaking her head faintly.
‘I should have known that was what this was all about.’
Her voice was low, flat, empty of emotion, and her eyes had lost all the fire of just moments before, looking shockingly dull and clouded.
‘Of course that was what this was all about. You don’t think that when I heard, I would have just shrugged off the idea that I had a kid and said, Oh, well, I hope she’s happy with whoever has her—with this cousin that I’ve never met and I don’t know from Adam.’
‘Who told you?’
‘A friend. And what does it matter who the hell told me? That child is my baby. My daughter—and you kept her from me. You…’
How had he come to be leaning over her like this, raging into her face while she tried to shrink even further back down into the mattress, pulling the sheets right up to her chin? Dear God, she had got him so furious that he had forgotten the most basic facts about the way he believed it was right to behave.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered roughly and unwillingly, and forced himself back to his own side of the bed.
She was not appeased.
‘Get out!’ she said again, with more force and infinitely more venom than before. ‘I said get out!’
‘I know what you said, but if that’s your only answer to everything, then it isn’t going to work.’
‘Are you going to get out of here?’
‘No.’
It was his turn to lean back against the pillows, but this time his arms were folded tight across his chest and his eyes threatened her with all sorts of retribution if she dared to risk trying to move him.
‘I’m going nowhere until I see my child. If you can’t stand the heat—then get out yourself.’
‘All right.’
She flung back the covers, swung her legs to the side, then paused and turned to glare at him furiously.
‘You might at least have the decency to look away.’
‘Why?’
Black fury wasn’t the best foundation for perfect manners and he didn’t feel like being polite. He was furious at the way that she hadn’t acknowledged that she’d been the one in the wrong, keeping his daughter from him. But then, what had he expected? That she would suddenly come over all repentant and beg him to forgive her?
‘There’s nothing I haven’t seen before—I paid very close attention last night.’
The fiery wash of colour that flooded her cheeks revealed just how much he had needled her.
‘That was under very different circumstances!’
‘We’re still the same people.’
‘No,’ she muttered, low and fierce. ‘No, you’re not at all the person I thought you were. You’re light-years away from being him.’
And after one last searing glare from those wild cat’s eyes, she got to her feet, and stalked, holding herself tall and proud, her head arrogantly high, round the side of the bed and across the room to the door to the bathroom.
She had courage, he had to give her that. After that one burning look, she allowed herself no sign of discomfort or embarrassment at knowing that he was watching her. Even the hot colour had fled from her face, leaving her cool and, outwardly at least, calmly in control as she walked past him.
‘I’m going to take a shower. A very long, very hot shower.’
The tone of her voice expressed only too clearly the way she felt—that she wanted to wash off his touch and the feel of his hands and every other part of his body that had been close to her in the night.
‘If you have any decency at all, then you’ll get dressed and be gone by the time I come out.’
She didn’t quite slam the door behind her, but the firm way it was closed had a finality all of its own.
Decency be damned, Rhys told himself, still staring hard at the white-painted wood that had come between them. He wasn’t going anywhere. He’d said he was staying here until he saw his daughter and he meant it.
He was staying, and if that meant fighting dirty with Ms Caitlin ‘Get out of my life’ Richardson, then that was the way he’d have to go.
Though it was a great pity.
The thought caught him sharply by surprise, making him shift uncomfortably beneath the covers.
So they had shared a great night together. A hot, hungry night. He had experienced some of the greatest, most fulfilling sex he had ever known—bar none. But was that a reason to start going soft on her? To start wondering if there could be more to it—maybe even a future?
‘A
future
be damned!’
Now it was his turn to throw back the covers and fling himself out of the bed. He was too restless to lie there, in the bed they had shared, with the perfume of Caitlin’s skin and hair still saturating the sheets and the pillows.
Was he going soft? Totally out of his head? Could he even want to consider a future with the woman who had connived with his wife to keep his baby from him? Who would have kept the child for herself if he hadn’t found out by accident?
No way!
And yet—and yet…
Through the door he could hear the sound of the water rushing in the shower and the images it conjured up had him prowling restlessly round the room, gathering up his scattered clothing, too uneasy to stay still.
She might need a hot shower, but he needed a cold, cold one—cold enough to freeze his thoughts as well as his body.
He had to get dressed—or at least pull on his trousers if nothing else. Perhaps then his mind would stay strictly on the straight and narrow and not keep wandering off to memories of just how wonderful Caitlin had looked just now as she’d stalked past him, head high, graceful and proud. And totally defiant in her nakedness.
All he’d wanted was to grab her and get her back into bed with him and make mad, passionate love to her.
And the dangerous words in there were
mad
and
love
. Because he would have to be totally mad to do it. He had been crazy enough last night, but this morning things were so much more complicated, and he could just imagine Caitlin’s reaction if he’d so much as tried it. And there was nothing even remotely like
love
in what he felt. It was another, totally different four-letter word.
Lust, and only that.
Lust had been what he had felt for Amelie. Lust that he had so foolishly, so naïvely mistaken for something deeper, longer-lasting—permanent. He had felt lust but he’d acted as if he were in love, and look where that had got him.
No. Wanting this woman came with too many entanglements, he told himself as he pulled on his trousers and zipped them up with a ferocious determination. He’d taken too many risks last night as it was. From now on that hunger was going to have to be put aside, kept permanently under lock and key.
It was as he reached for his jacket that the realisation of just how stupid he had been came home to him with a force that rocked his sense of reality, making him groan aloud.
‘Oh, no. Oh, hellfire…’
His hand had only brushed against the pocket, feeling the faint outline of the shape inside, but he didn’t need any further information, any more proof. The box of condoms that he had slipped into his jacket pocket before last leaving his room, just in case, was still there. Exactly where he had left it. Still completely unopened. Still totally unused.
‘Hell and damnation! No!’
What had he done now?
From the bathroom the sound of the still running shower made him turn his head and stare hard at the firmly locked door.
‘Oh, Caitlin, Caitlin, is it too much to hope that
you
were prepared? That you were protected?’
But with her in this mood, hating him as she did, how was he going to manage to ask her that all-important question? And wasn’t it too late for questions anyway?
What the hell was he going to do if the answer was no?
Caitlin had no idea how long she had been standing under the shower, letting the hot water pound down onto her head and body. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. The only thing that registered in her thoughts was the belief that she would never, ever feel clean again.
She felt sullied, dirtied—
used
.
And so desperately, desperately betrayed.
How had she let it happen again?
How had she let herself come close to a man, come to start feeling, start
caring
for him, only to find herself totally let down? Totally deceived.
Totally destroyed.
Last night she had felt so wanted. So needed. For the first time since Josh had told her that he no longer loved her, that he had fallen for Amelie like a ton of bricks, she had actually found herself coming out of the protective cocoon in which she had been hiding as a result. She had let herself feel an interest in, a need for another man.
She had let herself care for him enough to go to bed with him. They had made love together, not once, but many many times…
‘No!’ She said the word aloud. It seemed to have more force that way.
But the truth was that no force in the world would wipe away what had happened. Just as no amount of hot water would ever wash away the feeling of being used.
‘Making love—ha!’
Reaching up, she switched off the hot-water flow with a snap of her wrist, finally admitting that standing here in the shower was getting her nowhere at all.
‘Making love had nothing to do with it,’ she muttered, scrubbing at her face and hair with a towel. ‘It was sex and nothing more. Sex pure and simple.’
Unprotected sex.
‘Oh,
no
! Please, no!’
If she had suddenly turned the shower gauge to ‘Cold’ and deluged herself in water that was the temperature of ice, she couldn’t have shocked herself more thoroughly or more devastatingly.
Unprotected sex.
She had had sex—she refused to honour it with any other name—with Rhys Morgan last night. So many times that she had lost count. And not once in any of those hot, passionate—go on, yes, admit it—
fulfilling
sessions had either of them used any form of contraception.