Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      SABRINA opened her eyes to the morning light and closed them again as images of the previous night came flickering back.

      What had she done? Placed herself in the most precariously vulnerable position in the world—that was what she’d done. Given herself to Guy, heart, body and soul.

      ‘Good morning, princess,’ came a murmured greeting, and her eyes snapped open to see Guy standing, towering above her, already shaved and dressed for work in another exquisitely cut dark suit, and she felt a great wrench of longing.

      ‘Hello,’ she whispered, her heart thundering at the sight of him.

      He smiled. ‘You were sleeping so beautifully that I couldn’t bear to wake you.’

      She sat up and saw his eyes darken as her bare breasts were exposed, and some protective instinct made her gather the sheet around her.

      ‘You’re going already?’ she asked him.

      ‘Wish I didn’t have to, but I have an early meeting,’ he said softly, and sat down on the bed beside her.

      Of course he did. Guy the workaholic. Guy the driven. He might have spent most of the night making exquisite love to her, but that didn’t change his priorities, did it? And work came first. It always would.

      Well, she might have been compliant in his arms last night, but that didn’t mean that she had to exist in a passive state of insecurity now.

      ‘This changes things, doesn’t it?’ she said slowly.

      There was an imperceptible pause as the grey eyes narrowed. He’d hoped to avoid any kind of analysis. ‘How come?’

      ‘Oh, don’t be obtuse, Guy, you’re much too intelligent for that,’ she told him crossly. ‘If I’m living with you…’ She saw the wariness on his face and wished she’d phrased it better. ‘If I’m living here and we’re having—’

      ‘Sex?’ he put in, with a wicked grin.

      Thank goodness he’d interrupted her. She’d been about to say ‘a relationship’, but his drawled one-word question had brought what had just happened between them down to the lowest common denominator. And shown her more clearly than anything else could have done just how different their agendas were. She might love Guy—but that didn’t mean he felt the same way about her. Men didn’t need to be in love to make love the way he had done.

      ‘Yes, sex.’ She swallowed.

      ‘Good sex.’ He trickled a finger slowly from shoulder to breast, and she let the sheet fall. ‘The very best,’ he added slowly.

      It should have been a compliment, so why did it sound little short of an insult? ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly.

      He flicked softly at one rosy nipple, feeling it surge into instant life beneath his finger. God, he felt like just getting back into bed with her and forgetting the damned meeting. His face hardened. He hadn’t got where he was today by letting a woman trap him with her honeyed sweetness.

      ‘Why should it change anything, except for the better?’ he questioned softly. ‘We carry on as we were, only now you share my bed at night. I can’t think of anything I’d rather have.’

      ‘No,’ she said sadly. Of course he couldn’t. He didn’t want commitment, or even a relationship. He wanted sex, pure and simple—and obviously he thought that was all she wanted, too. And who could blame him? Hadn’t she always demonstrated the sensual side of her nature around him?

      He reluctantly moved his hand from her breast and cupped her face instead. ‘What’s the problem, Sabrina?’ he asked gently. ‘Why the long face? Let’s just enjoy it, huh?’

      And when she came to the end of her stay with him, what then? But consenting adults didn’t make unnecessary emotional demands, did they? Guy didn’t love her—and wouldn’t he doubt her feelings if he had any idea what they were? Wouldn’t he consider her fickle if she told him she’d fallen in love with him—only months after the death of the man she’d been due to spend the rest of her life with?

      But love could strike without warning. It wasn’t exclusive. Just because she’d been in love once before, that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen again. What she’d felt for Michael hadn’t been what she felt for Guy. Her feelings were different, but that didn’t make them any less valid. And they were all-consuming.

      She wanted him, she realised, on whatever terms he was prepared to take her.

      But he wouldn’t know that. She would keep her dignity and play at being a modern woman, not a lovesick fool who would settle for anything—just as long as it included him.

      ‘OK, let’s just enjoy it,’ she echoed, and slanted him a smile.

      Her look was one of pure provocation, and just for one second Guy wavered, itching to undress and climb into bed with her and lose himself in her body.

      But he’d broken so many rules where Sabrina was concerned—wouldn’t one more be his downfall? Hadn’t he controlled his life according to a rigid plan laid down by the circumstances of his youth? It would be nothing short of recklessness to go in deeper than he already was. Her fiancé wasn’t long gone, he reminded himself. For Sabrina, this was a purely physical affair on the rebound. It had to be. Logic told him that.

      He stood up quickly, not trusting himself to kiss her. Just being this close to her and knowing she was stark naked underneath that sheet was playing havoc with his senses. ‘Time I was out of here,’ he said abruptly, and then softened to give her a smile. ‘I’ll see you tonight, princess.’

      She watched him go, heard the front door slam, shatteringly aware that he hadn’t even kissed her. Maybe she should be grateful for that. At least he wasn’t filling her head with false promises of happy-ever-after.

      She sighed. They would carry on as before. Living together—only this time, as Guy had so unromantically put it, with sex as part of the equation.

      The next three weeks ticked away like a time-bomb, with Sabrina alternating between giddy elation and wild despair but determined to show neither emotion.

      Guy took her to the theatre, and to concerts. He even skipped work on the Saturdays when she was off and they explored London together, like tourists.

      And at night…

      At night he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her. And it was really quite disturbing how one dark, sensual look levelled mockingly at her across the sitting room was enough to send her running straight into his arms.

      While sometimes she despised herself for her instant surrender whenever he touched her, at least she had the comfort of knowing that it didn’t seem any different for him. She could reduce him to putty in her hands.

      Why, she had even made him late for work this morning, and thrown his careful schedule into disarray. All because she had strolled into the bathroom one morning, wearing nothing but a pair of silver camiknickers while he’d been combing his hair.

      Guy had stilled as he’d seen her reflection in the mirror, the pale swell of her breasts and the long curve of her legs beneath the frivolous lace trim. A pulse had begun to beat steadily at his temple.

      ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, in an odd kind of voice.

      She batted him an innocent smile as she bent down to retrieve a book from where she’d been reading it in the bath the previous night while waiting for him to get back from Rome.

      ‘I forgot this,’ she said, and straightened up.

      But the sight of the silver silk stretching