The Tycoon's Hidden Heir

by Yvonne Lindsay

  Then, his senses went on full alert. The air in front of him moved with a shimmering heat. A question rose in his throat, only to stall, unsaid, as small warm hands cupped his balls, stroking and kneading with a firm, gentle rhythm. Anticipation almost made him jump out of his skin as the hot, wet stroke of her tongue started at the base of his arousal, the merest touch enough to make his body jerk and thrust forward.

  He’d been a fool to keep the lights off. Right now he’d give anything to watch her, to see her expression as she stroked her tongue in tiny flicks from base to just below the tip of his penis. Then her lips closed over the head. She stilled and for a moment he simply relished the heat of her mouth, the texture of her tongue as she swirled it about his shaft. He was about to explode. He had to hold back—he hadn’t waited for her for twelve years merely to lose it in twelve seconds.

  With a raw growl he pushed his hands in her hair—fighting the urge to plunge against her—instead withdrawing from her heat and reaching for her, to pull her upright.

  “I want to be inside you, to feel you.”

  “Like the last time?”

  Her voice was unsure and he briefly felt a twinge of unease, a hint of regret for how he’d treated her the last time they were so intimate.

  “No. Like the first.”

  He swept her into his arms again and carefully made his way in the dark to the bed. Laying her down on the covers he knelt down on the bed next to her. Helena’s voice whispered through the darkness.

  “If it’s going to be like the first time, then you have to pretend to be asleep.”

  “Pretend? I wasn’t pretending.”

  “So pretend now.” Her breath stroked across his cheek.

  “Is that an order?”

  “If it needs to be.”

  His skin raised with goose bumps as her breath travelled down his chest, over his nipples, past his navel. Small deft fingers sheathed him, then, mercifully, the mattress shifted as she positioned herself over his body. Without hesitation she slid down the full length of him until they were joined, almost seamlessly. Sensation poured through him, pushing at the edges of his control. He had to last the distance.

  A deep sense of rightness rocked through Helena as she settled her body over Mason’s, as she drew him deep inside to her inner core. He completed her physically. Their joining felt so right. Gently she undulated against him, feeling the restraint within him that held him still as she increased the depth of her movements. Swells of pleasure grew in intensity, rising and falling through her body until she no longer felt in control. Only felt the instinctive need to ride the current of longing that craved release.

  Mason’s hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging into her skin, holding her firmly, not allowing her to withdraw from the journey they took together. Suddenly, she could bear it no longer. All control fled as sensation built to a peak and then poured, molten through her veins. Her body slicked with perspiration as she rocked harder, every movement silently imploring for release.

  As slowly as the tension had risen, pleasure began to radiate through her body, her climax growing in strength, building like a giant wall of colour, heat and light until it crashed with terminal velocity through every nerve in her body. Mason thrust upward then shuddered against her as she collapsed against him, her body vibrating with the eruption of release.

  Mason wrapped his arms around her, holding her so close she felt as though she were moulded to him. Against her ear, his heart thudded in rapid beats in his chest. His lungs drew in great gulps of air. Helena sighed in satisfaction, her eyelids drooping in sheer physical exhaustion. As she drifted off to sleep hope began to grow within that maybe, finally, she could start to make things right with him.

  More than that, she wanted to make things right with him. It went beyond the sex. She wanted much more than that. She wanted the chance to make up to him all she’d inadvertently denied him—from his lost years with Brody, to the lost chance she’d had to love him as he deserved to be loved.

  Eight

  Mason woke to rumpled sheets and an empty bed. Despite the fact they’d slept little during the night, somehow he felt more rested—more satisfied—than he had in years. He got up and made his way into the guest bathroom, taking a quick hot shower before dragging on the clothes that lay strewn about the room.

  Downstairs, he found Helena in the family room—her fingers wrapped tight about a large coffee mug and a stack of books in front of her on the coffee table. A flush of colour painted her cheeks as he came in, brightening the green glitter of her eyes. His gut clenched. She was an incredibly beautiful woman. Her looks deceptively fragile. Although she’d lost weight since Patrick’s death, and looked as though it would take little more than a strong sou’-westerly to knock her off her feet, he recognised that her backbone was made of pure steel. She was strong, she was tough, she was smart. If they’d met under the right circumstances who knew where they’d be now?

  “Good morning.” He leaned down and kissed her, hard. Desire flamed instantly. Even after their lovemaking last night he still hadn’t slaked his hunger for her. He wanted her now even more.

  “Let me get you some coffee.” She started to get up but he gently pushed her back down in her seat.

  “No problem. I can help myself. You look like you’ve been busy.” He gestured toward the stack of books on the coffee table in front of her.

  “I gathered some albums I thought you might like to go through.”

  “Albums?”

  “Of Brody. You didn’t come over much after Patrick and I married. You missed so much.”

  A searing shaft of anger stabbed through him, quenching his desire as effectively as an extinguisher on a fire. Did she seriously think a few photographs would make up for the lost years if Brody proved to be his son? Mason swallowed back the retort he knew would flay her to shreds.

  “Take a seat. The albums are in chronological order.”

  “Look, Helena, now’s probably not a good time. Why don’t we wait until we know for sure?”

  Helena rose from her seat and tipped the remnants of her coffee in the sink. He saw a shiver go through her body. She kept her back to him as she spoke, her hands gripping the bench, her face staring out the kitchen window.

  “Are you afraid of the truth, Mason? Is that why you won’t look at the albums?” She turned abruptly and locked her temptress’s green gaze with his. “He’s more like you than you could imagine, you know. Now that I know the truth, I can see it in him. He is your son.”

  As far as he could tell there was no guile, no deception in her clear-eyed stare. No, there was nothing there but challenge. Damn her. She knew he wouldn’t ignore the gauntlet once thrown down. Even their lovemaking last night had been like that. Challenge, counter challenge. Driving one another to new heights of pleasure.

  He was having a hard enough time adjusting to the fact that taking her body hadn’t eased the driving hunger in his—was even beginning to wonder just how much it would take before he’d had enough of Helena Davies. And now she wanted to throw this into the equation.

  Fine then. He’d pick up the challenge. He threw himself into the comfortable sofa in front of the coffee table. Late morning winter sun beamed watery rays across the table, illuminating the collection of albums there, each painstakingly labelled in Helena’s copperplate-style handwriting with Brody’s name and the dates. Mason slid the album nearest him off the stack and flipped open the pages. A photo of her—almost naked and proudly displaying her swollen bare belly—sucked every last vestige of breath from his lungs.

  The picture was deeply intimate, yet sensual at the same time. The joy in her eyes and the possessive touch of her hand on the lush curve of her stomach were both offset by a forest green strip of satin that was swathed lovingly across the fullness of her breasts and around her body, trailing under the mound that protected the new life inside. The shimmer of light and dark on the fabric drew his eye across her figure in a way that celebrated the joinin
g of two bodies to result in new life and motherhood.

  Desire flowed with thick heat through his veins as his eyes devoured the flush of warmth on her creamy skin, the hidden promise of her beauty beneath the satin, of the ripe enticing shape of her. If Brody was his, she’d cheated him of this—of watching her grow full with his baby, his son. No matter what came now, he’d never have that time back.

  He could finally identify his anger toward Helena for what it really was. She’d taken a vital piece of him with her the morning after he’d saved her life. She’d taken his hope, then she’d encased it in ice as cold and brilliant as the diamonds of the wedding band placed on her finger by another man. A man she should never have married.

  Mason slowly worked through each album, turning the pages one by one, his vision blurring as the pictures of a newborn baby with indistinct features firmed and shaped as Brody matured, until Mason knew without a doubt that he was staring at his own image in a younger form. He blinked away the moisture from his eyes, refusing to give in to such weakness in her presence, determined instead to feed on the energy that welled in frustrated fury from deep inside him.

  He closed the final page on the album and looked up. Words failed him. Across the table from him, Helena sat, silver tear tracks shining on her cheeks.

  “I wish I’d known then,” she said, brokenly. “You deserve more than this. More than a photographic summary of Brody’s life.”

  “That still remains to be seen.” Even though he knew the words for a lie, he had to give them voice. In his heart, to the depths of his soul, he understood this child was his, and understood why he’d fought so hard to deny it. Feeling cheated didn’t even begin to describe how raw he felt inside right now.

  “Why are you so stubborn? Why can’t you just accept it?”

  “Accept it? Accept that the man I admired more than my own father betrayed me? Accept that you slept with me, allowed me to impregnate you, and then married someone else and let him raise my son as his own?” Mason pushed back his chair, the legs skidding across the terracotta-tiled floor with the force with which he stood. “You ask too much.”

  He covered the distance between the kitchen and the front door in a haze of anger, oblivious to the soft pad of Helena’s bare feet on the floor as she followed him.

  “Mason, wait!”

  He ignored her and pulled open the front door with a wrench that did little to assuage the tension that controlled him. He had to get out of here. Away from the memories of Patrick Davies, away from Helena and as far away as possible from the truth he couldn’t deny.

  It no longer mattered how long the paternity test results took. He would put matters in motion today to ensure that he attained sole custody of the boy. By the time he was through with Helena she would wish she’d never been born.

  Several days later, Mason stood in his office at Black Knight Transport and turned an envelope over and over in his hands. The discreet logo of the diagnostic laboratory taunted him. Now that the moment of truth had come, for some crazy reason he was reluctant to know the outcome of the paternity test. Not that it mattered anymore, anyway. In his heart he knew he was Brody’s father. The albums he’d leafed through last week had convinced him beyond a shadow of a doubt and had made the family gathering he’d endured at his father’s place this past weekend, together with his brothers and their expanding families, all the more stilted and painful.

  At Connor’s suggestion, he’d spoken with one of Auckland’s foremost solicitors in family law. He had an outside chance, at best, of removing Brody from Helena’s care, but as far as he was concerned a chance was all he needed. It was all he’d ever needed to succeed and this was one matter he was determined would go his way, no matter what.

  His finger slid under the flap of the envelope, tearing the adhesive strip away and pulling out the folded sheets of paper. His eyes skimmed the report—assimilating the data quickly before shoving the papers back into the envelope and grabbing his keys off the surface of his desk.

  It was time to face Helena with the truth.

  As he pulled up outside her house he noticed another car off to the side of the parking bay. The bright red European sports car shrieked money. Had Helena bought the car for herself? If so, what with?

  The auditors had presented him with an interim report this morning. Money had been siphoned off systematically for years—starting at about the time Helena had taken up her position there, when Brody had started school. Everything pointed to her, but still he had no actual proof as to who the culprit was.

  Something kept niggling at him, though, and begged the question—why had she come to him for help? If she had something to hide he was the last person she should have come to. He knew that it had been Patrick’s instructions that had sent her to him. Patrick had to have seen the money trickling away. Maybe he’d even suspected her already but lacked the wherewithal to confront his beautiful young wife. He certainly wouldn’t be the first older man to be hoodwinked by a pretty face and a lithe body.

  Or the first younger one either, Mason reflected bitterly.

  One thing was patently clear. Patrick’s indulgence of Helena had cost the company dearly.

  He wandered over to the car, taking a look inside. A sale and purchase agreement lay on the passenger seat. He picked out the name on the agreement. Evan Davies.

  Evan? What the hell was he doing here? Heavy morning dew lay in big round droplets on the showy red paintwork. From the looks of it he’d been here a while. All night?

  The money Mason had paid out to Evan would make him a fine candidate for Helena’s apparent insatiable financial hunger.

  An ugly black rage rose within Mason’s chest. Was she still sleeping with him? An even more unpalatable thought crossed his mind—had she ever stopped?

  Mason ground gravel beneath his foot as he pivoted and made for the front entrance, ignoring the doorbell and hammering his fist against the heavy wooden door. He forced himself to calm down. What did it matter to him if she was still in bed with Evan anyway? It would only serve to make his case stronger—to give him the additional leverage he’d need to petition the family court.

  The sound of someone pounding down the stairs from inside filtered through the door. He heard locks tumbling open, then the door swung wide.

  Evan Davies stood before him—hair dishevelled, dressed only in a loosely-fastened robe, with a stain of lipstick on his unshaven cheek. Bile rose in Mason’s throat at the thought of Helena’s body meshed with this man’s. Of her hands entangled in his hair. Of her lips against his skin.

  His hands clenched into fists and Mason was hard-pressed not to drive one of them into the smug, sleepy features of the man standing before him.

  “I thought I told you to stay away from her.”

  Evan’s smirk widened into a smile. “Can I help it if the woman’s insatiable?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Showering. I was just about to join her. We’re both kind of…dirty.”

  Mason clenched his teeth so hard he thought his jaw might snap. It didn’t matter, he kept telling himself. None of it mattered. He’d gotten rid of Evan Davies before, he’d do it again.

  “You might like to reread that contract you signed,” Mason growled warningly.

  “What contract?”

  “The one where you waived independent legal advice and sold me your shares to Davies Freight.” Mason hesitated a moment before continuing, his voice low and dark with fury. “The one where you agreed to forfeit the money if you went near Helena again.”

  “That’ll never stand up in court.” Evan paled markedly.

  “Won’t it?” Mason narrowed his eyes.

  “That clause was absurd and you know it. The lady’s fair game.”

  “Let’s just see about that then.” Mason reached into his pocket and withdrew his cell phone but before he could flip it open Evan began to speak again.

  “Don’t bother. I concede. To be honest, she’s not worth it. After all,
if she was, you’d still be tucked up in her bed instead of hammering at her front door, now wouldn’t you? So what happened? You weren’t man enough for her that she had to call me back?”

  Mason saw red. He took a step toward the other man, his shoulders bunched with suppressed rage. Evan scooted back on bare feet and reached out to the hall table where he swiped up a set of keys.

  “Don’t waste your energy, mate. Look, I’ll get out of here and you can sort it all out together.”

  Dressed only in a robe, Evan jogged to his car and took off down the driveway, leaving a few feet of twin strips of rubber in his wake.

  Mason stepped in through the front door and closed it with a resounding thud. Every instinct screamed at him to take the stairs, two steps at a time, to burst into Helena’s room and wipe the remnants of her night with Evan from her body with his own. He thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and rocked on his heels, his fingers brushing the envelope he’d pushed in there on his way out the office. The crunch of the paper reminded him what he was here for.

  Brody. His son.

  “Who’s there?”

  Helena’s voice echoed from the top of the stairs. Mason looked up. Her hair was swathed in a towel and she was encased in a neck-to-ankle thick towelling robe.

  “Your lover’s gone,” Mason said as he started up the stairs toward her.

  “What are you talking about?” Confusion marred her forehead with a frown.

  “Evan. He just left.”

  “He’s not my lover!”

  “No? That’s not what he said. And,” Mason leaned forward to flip the lapel of her robe, “given the evidence, I believe him.”

  “What is it with you? I’ve already told you, he’s not my lover.”

  “You want to know what it is? I’ll tell you. Quite frankly, you disgust me. We all know he’s going to burn through that money I paid him for his share in Davies Freight. Is that your plan? Are you going to help him through it? Is your thirst for money so great that you’ll sleep with anyone, anytime?”