Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  ‘You think that makes me feel better?’ she asked. ‘You may like to discuss your sexual preferences with all and sundry, but I prefer my sex life, even my imaginary sex life, to stay private.’

  ‘It can hardly be private from your lover. Who is your lover, Rose?’

  The twin bright spots on the apples of her cheeks deepened to carnation pink. ‘I can’t imagine a situation where that information would be any of your business.’

  His sardonic smile widened and she got a flash of even white teeth. ‘You can’t …?’

  ‘And it just so happens I don’t have a lover,’ she blurted. ‘I’ve never had a—’ She stopped dead and developed a sudden interest in the patina on the marble floor.

  ‘Never what? Had a lover?’

  She listened to him laugh softly at the idea and gritted her teeth. ‘Now you know my little secret.’

  His eyes drifted to her full lips. ‘And now I’d like an answer to my question.’ It was not the only thing he wanted. He had never in his life wanted a woman this much. He thrust his hands in his pockets to hide the fact he was literally shaking with need.

  ‘What question?’ She stopped as their eyes meshed. Mathieu raised one brow and gave a savage smile as he watched the colour climb to her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, that question.’ She dredged a laugh from somewhere. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t take you seriously.’

  ‘Yes, you did, and I was serious, deadly serious.’

  It was hard to maintain her flippancy in the face of his steady and disturbing silver stare but she did—just. ‘Look, Mathieu, you’re not paying me that much.’

  His upper lip curled. ‘Name your price. I might be willing to meet it.’

  Something inside her snapped. Her response was pure reflex. There was no conscious thought between lifting her hand and it connecting with a resounding crack with the side of his face.

  ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry …’ Tears sprang to her eyes as she watched him rub a hand over the area on his cheek that was already discolouring. ‘No, I’m not sorry, you deserved that. You’ve progressed from implying I’m some sort of tart to treating me as one.’

  Mathieu’s hand fell away. ‘Yes, I did deserve it. That was an unforgivable thing to say and I’m sorry.’

  The anger faded from her face. ‘You are?

  He nodded. ‘It’s no excuse, but I’m extremely frustrated.’ He placed a hand on the wall beside her head and leaned in, his smoky eyes drifting slowly across her face.

  Her chest felt so tight she could hardly breathe as two opposing instincts battled inside her. The sane area of her brain was telling her to back away; another was telling her to lean into him.

  Rose couldn’t back away because there was no place to go—her back was literally against a wall. The only thing preventing her from taking the second course was a fragile thread of control, but as the heat in her stomach spread and the hunger spiralled that control was stretching to breaking-point.

  ‘Mathieu,’ she groaned, turning her head and kissing the finger he trailed across the cushiony softness of her lips. ‘You’re … this is …’ She swallowed, her eyes drifting to his mouth. She was willing him to kiss her when the distinctive sound of voices raised in laughter drifted down the corridor. The sound seemed to mock her.

  What was she doing? With a horrified squeak she ducked under his confining arm and began to walk away at speed, praying as she did so that her knees would not buckle.

  His chest rising and falling in tune with his rapid, shallow respirations, Mathieu watched her walk away. In some women he might imagine that the sexy sashaying sway of the hips was contrived, but not Rose. There was no calculating flirtation or fluttering eyelashes with her.

  It seemed incredible to him, but she was genuinely oblivious to the fact she represented to the opposite sex a sexual ideal, the sort of woman that they dreamt about waking up beside in the morning.

  No wonder he lost all sense of perspective around her—the woman was a mass of contradictions.

  She had jumped naked into his bed and now she blushed like an inexperienced adolescent if the conversation turned to anything remotely intimate.

  She showed him a cold face and claimed not to be interested in him sexually. Yet he knew she was lying. He knew she felt the crackle of sexual tension between them as strongly as he did. He had seen her eyes dilate until they were black pools, felt her body tremble at the accidental brush of their fingers and felt the heat under her cool exterior.

  Had her idiot ex been too self-absorbed to teach her to enjoy her own body and celebrate her ripe sexuality? Humiliated by him, she had lost her confidence and tried to recapture it by getting drunk and having casual sex with a total stranger—him. Had his own rejection that night been the act that had made her retreat?

  He raised his voice and called after her. ‘You didn’t read the small print, Rose. No time off, not even for good behaviour, and, let’s face it, you were not good back there.’

  Breathing hard, Rose swung back, her eyes dilated as she found him standing almost at her shoulder. ‘I never said I’d lie for you and there is no small print, nor any print. You’re just making up the rules as you go along.’ She ached to wipe the taunting smile off his face, and it wasn’t a recognition that violence solved nothing that stopped her, but a suspicion that if she touched him for any reason it might be hard to stop.

  ‘You know what I think?’

  ‘I’m shaking with anticipation.’

  She was shaking too, Rose realised, registering with a scared frown this new development. Anger, she told herself. She was shaking with anger.

  ‘I think things are going exactly to your plan. You don’t want your father to approve of your bride.’

  ‘Interesting theory. Just why would I want my father to disapprove of my future wife?’

  ‘Because you take a sadistic pleasure out of doing the opposite of what he wants you to.’ Before she actually said it Rose didn’t have the faintest idea what she was going to say, but even before she saw the flicker of shock move at the back of his eyes she knew that she had intuitively hit the nail on the head.

  ‘My father…’

  ‘Oh, he’s just as bad as you are, I can see that. I’m really not concerned with who did what to who.’

  To hear his complicated and painful relationship with his father reduced to the level of a school-yard squabble reduced Mathieu to a stunned silence.

  ‘I just want out of it.’ She bit her trembling lip, cleared her throat and added in a flat voice, ‘You chose me because you knew that I’d never fit in.’

  Now why should that hurt so much?

  Shaking his head, Mathieu reached out his hand. Rose pulled back, her eyes wide and wary. With a shrug and a twisted smile he let his hand fall away. His eyes were flint-hard as he said dismissively, ‘I didn’t choose you. This was an arrangement of mutual convenience, though I have to admit there has not been a lot of convenience involved so far. The irony is that you were the perfect choice.’ His considering glaze slid over her. ‘If I had turned up with one of the usual suspects … he would have smelt a rat immediately.’

  ‘Usual suspects?’

  ‘Well-groomed, articulate …’

  ‘Everything I am not, presumably.’

  ‘Oh, you scrub up pretty well.’

  ‘You know, there being nothing in writing works both ways. If I choose to walk there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’

  ‘You underestimate my resourcefulness…’

  She stuck out her chin. ‘But not your total lack of scruples and ruthlessness.’

  Mathieu’s brows drew together in a dark disapproving line above his hawklike nose. ‘That’s what most people say about my father.’

  Ironically it was the familial likeness that he appeared offended by, not the insult … Not that this mattered to Rose—her objective had been to annoy him.

  ‘Most people haven’t been forced to spend as much time in your company as I have recently.’ She c
ould think of more than a few who would pay for the privilege.

  He pretended not to hear her muttered interruption and angled a curious look at her face. ‘My father … you’re not scared of him, are you?’

  ‘Scared?’ An image of the broad-shouldered Greek financier flashed through her mind. ‘Why should I be?’ Now his son, that was another matter. She turned her head sharply and gave a little shiver as her eyes brushed his profile.

  ‘He’s rich and powerful.’

  ‘He has nothing I want or need—why should I be afraid of him? You, on the other hand …’

  ‘You think I’m afraid of my father?’

  She had expected the suggestion to produce an offended denial, but the only reaction she got was an amused quiver of his lips.

  ‘I suppose you think fear is a sign of weakness.’

  ‘No, I think fear is healthy.’

  ‘Oh, will you stop sounding so impossibly well balanced? You made your living tied down in a metal box hurtling around in circles while people paid money for tickets to watch while they waited for you to crash. Someone who chooses to make their living that way—’ she tapped the side of her head ‘—has a few screws loose.’

  It was the families she felt sorry for—the ones who loved those men who risked their lives … and for what? The thrill, the money, the fame … or was it cheating death that hooked them? Either way it was the wives and mothers waiting at the sidelines that had her sympathy.

  ‘I…’ Mathieu closed his mouth with an almost audible snap, shock quickly followed by caution filtering into his expression as he realised what he had been about to do.

  Why should he feel the need to justify his life choices, redeem himself in her eyes? Why, when he never asked for anyone’s approval, should Rose’s good opinion matter so much to him? A man who normally did not duck issues, but met them head-on, he found himself pushing this particular issue to the back of his mind.

  ‘It was something I was good at.’

  She lifted her eyes in mock amazement. ‘You mean there are some things you’re not good at? I thought you were brilliant at everything. Except,’ she added with a wry twist of her lips, ‘being pleasant to your father.’

  ‘Me. You think it’s my fault?’ The resentment he told himself he had put aside along with other childish things surfaced and his jaw clenched.

  ‘Well, it takes two, doesn’t it? And you can’t deny you don’t go out of your way to be nice. There’s an atmosphere you could cut with a knife when you’re together.’

  ‘He thinks the wrong son died.’

  Mathieu, the most alive person she had ever met, dead. She shook her head in violent mute rejection of the idea and saw the floor moving up towards her.

  She gave a sigh of relief when the world steadied, but didn’t loose her grip on the ornately inlaid console table she had grabbed on to to steady herself.

  Of course he regretted saying it the moment it left his lips. He sounded like someone looking for the sympathy vote and nothing could be farther from the truth.

  He regretted it even more when he saw Rose’s amber eyes fill with compassion.

  She was just the sort of woman who would go for the damaged type, he thought irritably. It wasn’t by accident that the women he ended up having relationships with did not want to heal or mother him.

  Mathieu was scowling but, more significantly, he was avoiding her eyes. He wouldn’t look at her—was he afraid of what she would see?

  She felt like yelling, Your father hurt you, big deal, join the rest of the human race. She also felt like wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close, but she knew he was a man who would not appreciate the gesture.

  No, that would mean admitting he wasn’t totally invulnerable.

  ‘I’m sure he doesn’t think that,’ Rose said, wondering why it was that some men found it so hard to talk about their feelings. Half the family rifts in the world would be healed if men actually did more than grunt and look noble. ‘It’s not like he actually said that …’ She paused, her eyes sweeping his dark face. ‘He did!’ Her soothing expression melted into one of angry indignation.

  How could any man, no matter how much he was hurting, say something like that to his own son? She’d like to give the selfish old man a piece of her mind.

  ‘Alex was the exact opposite of me.’ He made it sound as though this was a reason, an excuse even.

  ‘Why does the memory of your brother have to push you apart? That’s the one thing you and your father have in common,’ she pointed out, shaking her head in exasperation. ‘You both loved him.’ You’d think that would draw people together, not push them farther apart.

  ‘Look, I didn’t bring you here to bring about a reconciliation between me and Andreos. I’m not paying you to be an agony aunt.’ He saw her flinch and hardened his heart against the hurt in her liquid-gold eyes.

  Rose stiffened. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t forget my place again.’

  ‘Your place is not in my head.’ He clasped a hand to his head and gave a frustrated groan. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Where is my place, Mathieu? Just so that I know.’

  His burning eyes swept her face. ‘In my bed, damn you,’ he said, turning on his heel and striding off.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ROSE knew Mathieu was in the room even before her nostrils flared in response to the scent of his body. His invisible presence was like an electric prickle under her skin.

  ‘You’ve been crying.’ The visible damage, her red-rimmed eyes and the tear marks on her cheeks made something inside him twist.

  ‘I always cry when I get mad,’ she said, keeping her eyes trained on the waves whispering on the moonlit shore. Behind her breastbone her heart was beating like a captive bird and as the last lingering effects of the wine at dinner had worn off she couldn’t even blame that for her response.

  ‘Did you cry because you thought I wouldn’t be back?’

  His voice warm like honey came from just behind her. Paralysed by the insidious weakness that was spreading through her body, she managed a negligent shrug and suggested coldly, ‘You forgot something?’ She turned her head and he nodded.

  She wanted to look away but she couldn’t stop staring. His glossy dark hair was sexily mussed as though he had just run his fingers through it. His jacket was gone, and his tie hung loose around his neck. But it was his eyes that made her stomach dissolve; they were burning like molten silver.

  She cleared her throat, but the words wouldn’t come. Her restless gaze moved over the shadow on his jaw following the line of his strong neck to the base of his throat, and lower then to the section of satiny golden skin revealed where the top buttons of his shirt had parted.

  She sucked in a deep breath and stuck out her chin as she gave a shrug … a yawn would have been overkill, especially as she had a horrible suspicion he knew exactly what havoc he was wreaking on her nervous system.

  The extra gust of wind that blew in from the sea ruffled his hair and made her shiver. The distraction enabled her to pull free of the sensual thrall that had held her immobile.

  She turned her back on him and closed her eyes. ‘Then get what you want and leave.’ Before I touch you … In her fevered imagination she already was; her hands were on his ribcage and sliding lower to his flat, muscle-ridged stomach. She put a stop to her treacherous thoughts.

  ‘That was my intention.’

  She felt the warmth of his breath brush the side of her neck. A shiver of excitement chased a path down her spine as her heavy eyelids closed.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’

  Her eyelids lifted abruptly when a moment later he took her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him. The lines of his face were taut with anger and frustration.

  ‘I’m waiting for you to stop pretending this isn’t happening.’ He looked down at her; the devouring hunger in his spectacular eyes sent a violent surge of bone-melting lust through Rose’s receptive
body.

  ‘Nothing’s happening except I’m catching a cold standing in this draught.’

  He lifted a hand and made a stroking motion that traced the outline of her head but did not make contact, although her nerve endings reacted as though he had.

  His voice normally had nothing more than the faintest trace of an accent, but when he spoke it was now thickly accented. ‘Your hair looks silver in this light.’

  Rose swallowed and shook her head. Things were moving too fast. At this rate the point of no return would have passed without her explaining that this wasn’t what she wanted.

  It was, of course, but that was irrelevant. As intellectual exercises went, the one where she had felt empowered and daring enough to plan being seduced by a man she had no emotional connection with—aman like Mathieu—now seemed totally ludicrous.

  For starters there was nothing intellectual about the things the scent of his warm body did to her. The danger in him aroused and excited her. Primitive, raw instincts, she was discovering, were not something you could intellectualise, and as for no emotional connection. As much as she wanted to believe he had just woken dormant sexual instincts within her, Rose knew what she was feeling was far more complicated than simple lust.

  A sensible woman like her didn’t waste feelings on a man who had no use for them.

  And she was sensible … wasn’t she? A month ago she would have had no problem replying in the positive, but now she knew, and it was a shocking realisation, that if she let herself she could fall in love with him. The question was could she stop it happening, and did she actually want to?

  But those were questions for later; her mind could not deal with them now.

  ‘And your skin looks like moonlight, so soft, so smooth.’

  The throaty rasp shuddered through her and though she struggled she couldn’t tear her gaze free from the burning silver of his deep-set eyes as they devoured her. A tremor rippled through her body as his fingertips grazed the side of her cheek. She closed her eyes and shook her head, desperately trying to cling to some semblance of self-control and sanity.