It Happened in Sydney: In the Australian Billionaire's Arms / Three Times A Bridesmaid... / Expecting Miracle Twins. Margaret Way
breath … only he was back to kissing her. He had never kissed a woman so passionately. He hadn’t even known he could reach such a level of wanting, needing. He was desperate for her response. His fingers twined in a handful of her hair, holding her face up to him. Her mouth was so sweetly, so silkily lush he couldn’t drag his own away.
Stop. You’ve got to stop. Or be damned.
The voice in his head had increased to a warning blast.
This is the woman Marcus has come to love.
Madness to continue to hold her, but he was losing the battling against this wild rage of emotion. He wanted to sweep her up and carry her down the corridor to her bedroom. He wanted to strip her dress from her, ablaze with the desire to feel skin on skin. He wanted to kiss and caress her all over her naked body with its satiny white skin. For minutes there it had felt so completely right.
But it was hopelessly wrong. The verdict cold and hard.
How could he see people hurt? The future of the three of them was in jeopardy. The eternal triangle. Marcus, himself and Sonya, the woman they both wanted. Yet hadn’t it been inevitable from the first moment their eyes met?
With a monumental effort he forced himself to let her go, aware he was breathing as heavily as if he had run the four-minute mile. Her beautiful hair was in total disarray, fanning out like a halo around her emotion charged face. She looked so vulnerable, so young, his heart smote him.
“Sonya, forgive me. I hadn’t meant that to happen.” They were like a pair of conspiratorial lovers filled with as much agony as ecstasy.
Her voice shook so badly, it betrayed her. Could it be possible he had deliberately engineered this, seeking her reaction? “You rich people are so ruthless!” Her distressed mind turned to tactics. “Who are you to drag me into your arms? What is your agenda? We both know you have one.” She had lost sight of her own.
“Agenda? Don’t talk rubbish.” His response was curt. “You know damned well I’m attracted to you.” He could have laughed at the sheer inadequacy of the word. Magnetized? Mesmerized? Spellbound?
“Now this is very interesting.” She was transformed into a state of the utmost hostility. “You’re attracted to me!” The entrenched defence mechanisms were back in place.
“Neither of us sought it,” he said. “Neither of us wanted it. It just happened.”
“Just happened?” she cried. “Oh, you’re very convincing.”
“So were you, just then, beautiful Sonya. Okay, I admit my mistake. I was the aggressor. But it’s too late now to make a fuss. I’m sorry if I hurt you.” His dark eyes moved slowly over her body.
She took a deep shaky breath, feeling weak and ashamed. “You are mad, mad, mad!”
“You’re so damned right,” he agreed tonelessly, his handsome face taut.
“You are leaving.”
It was a statement, not a question.
Still he turned back. “You’d prefer me to stay?” There was hard mockery in his brilliant eyes when the temptation to stay was overwhelming.
“You are leaving,” she repeated. ‘This is not your finest hour, David Wainwright.”
“I agree. I’m afraid I overestimated my powers of self-control. So how do I go about making reparation? I’m too much of a gentleman to ask you to account for your behaviour. There’s a lot of passion dammed up behind the Ice Princess façade, isn’t there, Sonya? Floods of it!”
She felt as if she were thrashing about in a cage. “I’ve had enough! I know what you’re up to. You are not exonerated. You are wanting me to fall in love with you. That is your strategy. I should have been prepared. After all, men have been preying on the weakness of women since the dawn of time. Your precious Marcus would be safe from my greedy clutches. How could dear sweet Marcus compare to you? I can’t deny your sexual power. But I can refuse to succumb to it. I’ve had no ordinary life. I’ve had years and years of—” She had to break off, sick with herself, sick with him. She took a strangled intake of breath. “Don’t ever touch me again!”
“But we can’t forget the here and now.” Some demon was in him. The way she spoke to him. The combative glitter in her emerald eyes. Who did she think she was? She affected him so powerfully in all the right ways. And all the wrong ways. Anger engulfed him. He pulled her back into his arms, outrage overcoming his natural protective feelings towards women. His sexual power? he thought grimly. What about hers?
His kiss was like a brand. Sonya tried to grit her teeth, but his tongue forced entry into her mouth. An avalanche of dark pleasure had her near collapsing against him.
Equally furiously he drew back. “I’d say you returned my kisses, you little fraud.”
Without a second’s hesitation she lifted her arm, hellbent on leaving the imprint of her fingers on his handsome, hateful face.
He caught her wrist mid-flight. “Don’t mess with me, Sonya,” he rasped.
“And blessings on you too!” she cried. “Maybe I will marry your Marcus. Outrage your entire family, Lady Palmerston who has been so kind to me, your friends, your whole circle, that witch of a Paula Rowlands. Go grab her if you want to grab a woman. She’s desperate for you to do it. But you can’t have me.”
He shot out a hand to grasp the door knob. “You sure about that?” he asked with a lick of contempt. “Are you sure you can cross me?”
She laughed, throwing up her chin. “Trust me, David Wainwright. I’ve had plenty of experience of villains.”
It was an admission that sobered him entirely. “I suggest if one shows up, Sonya, you give me a ring.” He couldn’t have been more serious.
“What use are you to me?” The stormy expression in her green eyes became uncertain.
He opened the door. “If you’re in trouble—any kind of trouble—you had better contact me,” he said. “Whatever else I am, Sonya, I’m no villain.”
CHAPTER FIVE
SONYA had never thought to see Paula Rowlands come into her shop, given Paula’s vehement promise that would never happen, but lo and behold there she was!
Another catastrophic day?
And the timing was terrible! She was having lunch with Camilla in just over a half-hour. Paula wasn’t alone. An older woman was with her, both of them stern faced, dressed to the nines. This was the mother from hell obviously. Family resemblance was apparent; the expressions were identical. They might have been called as witnesses in an unsavoury court case involving her.
Sonya acknowledged them with a calm nod, although her stomach muscles were tensing. She finished off wrapping a large bunch of stunning yellow heliconias. She had added some ginger foliage that had very interesting yellow strips for effect. She passed them across to her valued customer with a smile. “There you are, Mrs Thomas. You might use a few dark philodendron leaves if you have them at home,” she suggested. “See how it goes.”
Maureen Thomas nodded, very happy with the unusual selection. “These are splendid, thank you so much.”
“My pleasure.”
Mrs Thomas glanced in pleasant fashion at the two very uppity looking women as she walked to the door. She might have been invisible. It amused her.
Marilyn Rowlands swooped to the counter, a mother protecting her young. “Look here, young lady,” she said without preamble, “it’s wrong what you’re doing. You’re only creating serious problems for yourself.”
“Do I know you?” Sonya’s brows arched.