Undone by His Touch

by Annie West

  She shuffled up onto her elbow so she could see Declan’s face fully.

  ‘Did I imply otherwise?’ His brows rose.

  ‘You wondered. I could hear it in your voice.’

  His mouth quirked up at one side. ‘A mind reader, are you, Chloe?’

  ‘You made it pretty obvious.’ Appalling how much that hurt. How easily Declan’s words could wound her.

  ‘Then I apologise.’ He wrapped his warm hand around the back of her neck and pulled her down to him. ‘Forgive me?’ His lips brushed hers and her breath caught at the strength of her compulsion simply to sink into his arms.

  Declan kissed the corner of her mouth, licked her bottom lip, and she shuddered. ‘Please, Chloe?’

  If he’d ordered she might have withstood him. As it was she surrendered with a sigh of pleasure.

  But when his hands moved purposefully, one to her breast and the other to her bottom, she rolled away onto her side. Sex with Declan was wonderful, but what she really wanted was the comfort of being held close, sharing more than their bodies.

  Was she crazy to believe this could lead somewhere?

  ‘No?’

  Her lips curved at the disappointment in his tone.

  ‘Soon,’ she promised. Despite her caution Chloe knew she couldn’t resist him for long.

  ‘Tell me about you,’ she urged, wanting him to share with her as she had with him. She needed to know their intimacy was more than skin deep.

  ‘Nothing to tell. My life’s an open book.’

  ‘Really?’ She couldn’t ignore a bubble of disappointment. ‘Nothing at all you want to share?’

  He shook his head. ‘Unless you count the fact that I’ve been having x-rated daydreams about my housekeeper.’

  Chloe stifled hurt at his blatant diversion. ‘Is that so?’ Her hand drifted to his face, stroking his cheek, the rough line of his scar. She reminded herself he was a man who kept his own counsel. Sharing wouldn’t come easily to someone so self-contained. What had made him like that?

  ‘Yes. She has this prim and proper voice that’s a complete turn on. Just listening to her read out the notes of a meeting makes me hard with wanting.’

  Suddenly he grabbed her hand and held it in his, palm flat against his scarred cheek.

  ‘This really doesn’t bother you?’ The light-hearted tone disintegrated and for the first time there was an edge to Declan’s voice that hinted at emotion.

  ‘I told you it doesn’t.’ Her chest cramped as she read the confusion on his face. The desolation.

  She’d wanted real. This was it. The accident had changed his life and his scars were the least of it.

  ‘Do your injuries hurt very much?’

  ‘No. Just a bit of stiffness and an occasional headache.’

  Liar. Chloe had walked in on him more than once when he’d been struggling, his face tight with pain as he pushed himself to the limit with his rehab exercises.

  A wellspring of emotion bubbled up, filling her with the need to comfort him and herself.

  He’d lost so much. And she … She feared she’d lost the safe, peaceful world she’d built for herself now this frustrating, intriguing man had burst into her life.

  She laid her head on his shoulder, wrapping her arm over him and her thigh across his legs, as if to protect him from the demons that plagued him.

  Yet who would keep her safe now the defences she’d painstakingly constructed after Mark’s death had been scoured away?

  ‘Chloe?’

  Declan felt her blink against his chest. Was that moisture on his skin? Was she crying? The astonishing notion confounded him and stole his breath.

  He couldn’t remember anyone crying over him. He must be mistaken.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked, his voice rough.

  ‘Never better.’ She tightened her hold and he was hard put to concentrate on not responding physically.

  ‘It must have been a terrible accident,’ she murmured. ‘For you both to have fallen from that cliff.’

  Instantly Declan stiffened. Too often sympathy had been a ruse to elicit gory details of the tragedy that had taken Adrian’s life.

  Yet Chloe said no more, just held him close.

  Perversely it was her silence, her refusal to ask, that loosened his tongue on a topic he never discussed. Or maybe it was the need finally to share—not just with anybody, but the woman he’d begun to care for.

  He’d kept the truth of that day to himself. He’d held his friends at a distance since the accident. Even if he’d had family alive he wouldn’t have burdened them with the knowledge of Adrian’s despair. It was enough that Declan shouldered the guilt for not saving him.

  ‘It was terrible,’ he said finally, his voice scratchy, dredged up from a throat raw with pain. ‘Like a nightmare.’

  Surely it had happened in slow motion? Adrian’s words, his cutting of the rope … So slow Declan should have realised sooner what he’d had in mind. Should have been able to prevent …

  His hold on her tightened, her soft warmth balm against the hammer blows of guilt.

  ‘It was a hard climb,’ he recalled. ‘Too hard.’ He should have guessed that after years of soft living in London Adrian hadn’t been up to it, despite his assurances.

  ‘Hindsight’s a wonderful thing.’

  Declan tensed. ‘That’s no absolution.’

  ‘Do you need it?’ Her whisper lifted the hair on his arms.

  There could be no absolution. Thinking of that day made his gut burn with familiar, hellish guilt. Every day, every hour trapped in this closed off darkness, haunted him.

  ‘I’m … I was the elder, the more experienced one.’

  ‘And your brother always did what you told him?’

  Declan’s mouth curled at the thought of Adrian taking advice. He’d always had to find out for himself. He’d been almost as stubborn as their father, or Declan.

  ‘That doesn’t excuse—’ He shook his head. ‘When I looked down and saw where Adrian had fallen …’

  Chloe snuggled closer, her body a living blanket that surprisingly shaved away a fraction of the keen edge of pain. Remembering was anguish, but it was almost bearable.

  ‘You didn’t fall together?’

  ‘No. My brother fell. This …’ he gestured to his eyes and ruined face ‘… came when I climbed down trying to get to him.’ They said Adrian hadn’t survived the fall, yet Declan should have been with his brother at the end.

  ‘You did your best. That’s all anyone could ask.’ The words feathered his throat as she rose up to kiss him. Her nipples brushed his chest and his arms closed hungrily around her, tugging her tight into him.

  Chloe was the only real, sane thing in his world. She was safe harbour against the nightmares and the screams of conscience and he clung to her desperately.

  He’d let his brother die and still hadn’t brought the woman responsible to justice. Maybe, if he could do that, it would be some recompense for his failure.

  With Chloe in his arms, a warm, sweet bundle of femininity, the raw gash of pain eased to a dull ache.

  Declan took her mouth hard, demanding a response he was almost afraid she wouldn’t give. But, as if sensing his desperation, she melted into him, yielding as his fingers bit into soft flesh and he tumbled her onto her back.

  She didn’t protest as he pressed her into the mattress, kneed her legs open and pushed into her honeyed warmth.

  She didn’t complain even when, with no foreplay or gentleness, he thrust hard and sure, again and again, slipping deep into her beckoning heat. Instead she wrapped herself around him, drawing him close. She rocked with him in a primal, desperate rhythm that beat in his blood so hard it obliterated guilt and memory and blasted away everything but them: Declan and Chloe.

  He woke slowly, disinclined to lose the soul-deep wellbeing that came from a sated body, a warm woman and a comfortable bed. Not just any woman. Chloe. His Chloe.

  Declan’s hands twitched as if to hold her longer,
seeking the peace, comfort and ecstasy she’d brought.

  Slowly Declan made himself slide away, knowing if he stayed he’d wake her, demanding more. She needed sleep.

  He shook his head. He’d never known anything like the cataclysmic sex they shared. The intensity of each touch, each breath, each shattering climax that ripped him asunder yet, conversely, seemed to rebuild him stronger each time.

  He wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, grimacing. He could tell himself blindness had its compensations: sharpening his other senses so physical delight took on a whole new meaning. But deep inside he knew the difference was Chloe.

  She refused to let him sink completely into the well of guilt and pain. She dragged him towards the light, making him want more. Making him dare to hope.

  He’d never felt dependent on a woman till now. Instead of it being a weakness, Declan knew his feelings for her made him stronger.

  Beside him she slept on and his conscience stirred.

  He’d been rough that last time, with no finesse. Yet she hadn’t demurred, had simply clutched him close and ridden the wild surge of passion with him. Never, even in the throes of youthful exuberance, had he so lost control.

  That worried him.

  Better to get up now before he changed his mind about resisting temptation.

  If he wasn’t mistaken, the sun was out. He could feel it on his bare body as he swung his legs out of the bed. He could …

  Declan froze, his sleep-slitted eyes opening in instinctive shock.

  One deep breath. Another. He dragged them in, forcing air into lungs that threatened to collapse. His fingers clawed at the sheets till the blood throbbed in his veins.

  Was this some trick? An illusion?

  Or had the doctors been right?

  He’d spent so long dismissing their hopes as a ruse to keep his spirits up; the chance they’d been right seemed impossible.

  Yet there it was: a strip of light. He could see light. If he lifted his head it grew brighter, too bright for his long-dead eyes.

  Hastily he lowered his gaze and there another shock awaited him: hardwood floor, rich with a century or more of polish. The hand-loomed rug in gold and black he’d purchased a decade ago on one of his first business trips to Asia. Bare legs, familiar, but for the wide scar that ridged one thigh.

  He put one trembling hand to his leg, watching his fingers clench on skin, feeling his grip tighten as if in proof that what he saw was real.

  Almost he was afraid to shut his eyes in case it was a dream. Like those mornings early after the accident when each awakening was a blow, a new reminder that he couldn’t see, no matter how vivid his night-time dreams.

  Air hissed from his lungs as he forced his eyes shut. His heart pounded against his ribs with fear and dreadful hope.

  Carefully he opened them and the shock of sight froze him anew.

  He could see! Hazily, not perfectly, but he could see. For days he’d imagined hints of light but had passed that off as wishful thinking.

  His whole body shook in reaction. Thoughts flew through his brain too fast and incoherent to grasp. It was momentous, astonishing. He needed a witness, someone to share it with. He needed Chloe. She’d be ecstatic. He knew the hopes and concern she hadn’t been able to hide, despite her brisk attitude.

  Declan swivelled, shoving aside the sheet as he turned to her, his mouth already forming the words.

  They disintegrated on his tongue, elation turning to bitter disbelief in an instant. He gasped, his breath constricting in reaction to an unseen blow that bludgeoned his chest, crushing his ribs.

  It couldn’t be. With a super human effort he dragged a breath into oxygen-starved lungs.

  Frantically his gaze roved the woman asleep on his bed. She lay turned towards him, oval face tinted with the delicate flush of a well-loved woman. Fine, pale brows arched over closed eyes. Her long eyelashes were tinted darker than her brows, fanning ivory and rose skin. Her lips were as full and lush as he’d expected, reddened now, as was the delicate flesh near her lips and at her throat from his kisses and the abrasion of his stubbled jaw.

  Something hard lurched in his belly as he saw how he’d marked her skin, branding her with his possession.

  His hands clawed at the sheet as he catalogued her straight nose, neat jaw and cloud of wavy hair, rose-gold and glowing with life.

  Declan slammed shut his eyes, forcing away the queasiness that stirred.

  It couldn’t be. It was impossible.

  Yet even before he opened his eyes again he knew it was.

  One final look and he catapulted off the bed, backing away to stand in the shadows, the thrill of restored vision eclipsed by the fact that he recognised this woman.

  He’d seen her picture on Adrian’s phone. Her sexy, slumberous smile had haunted his dreams for too long. Her identity had been a mystery he’d determined to solve from the moment Adrian had killed himself.

  Chloe Daniels was his brother’s girlfriend. The one Declan’s investigator had failed to locate. Not surprising, as she wasn’t a visitor to Carinya but lived here.

  His brother’s woman.

  His breath stalled and his chest cramped as a leaden weight dropped through his belly. His flesh chilled.

  She’d targeted Adrian then dumped him when she learned he’d lost his fortune. Declan had seen first hand how her betrayal and desertion had driven Adrian to suicide.

  Nausea rose in his throat as he surveyed her naked allure, his numbed mind fighting instinctive denial.

  This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t real.

  Chloe was his. She was special. What he felt for her had even eclipsed the years of cynicism and distrust engendered by a false paternity suit and a scheming, avaricious ex-lover.

  Chloe had taught him to trust again. She’d stood by him when he was vulnerable …

  Most vulnerable.

  Slowly his brain engaged. Nausea swirled anew and the world tilted as it all began to make sickening sense. Hadn’t Adrian said she’d left him to find herself a rich man? Wasn’t Declan one of the wealthiest men in Australia?

  He braced himself against the wall, his belly churning.

  Chloe had tangled up his feelings. She’d pushed aside a lifetime’s doubts engendered by watching his parents’ less-than-close union. For the first time Declan had actually welcomed the idea of a long term relationship.

  He remembered Chloe’s patience despite his churlish demands for privacy. Her tenderness, well beyond the demands of her job. Her determination. The way she’d insinuated herself into his life, even his dreams.

  Declan shook his head against the voice inside that screamed she was genuine, that she cared for him.

  The evidence couldn’t be shut out. She’d made herself indispensable to him while he was weak and grieving. When his defences were down.

  What sort of coincidence was it that the woman who’d captured Adrian’s heart then rejected him had become Declan’s lover? He’d given up believing in coincidence when a smarmy lawyer had slapped him with a multi-million-dollar paternity claim for a child who wasn’t his.

  Abruptly he stumbled from the room, lungs labouring with each sawing breath. He needed space and time to confront this new nightmare. He couldn’t think straight.

  The only reality in Declan’s world right now was the sound of his illusions crashing around him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHLOE woke to the roar of a helicopter. It blasted her consciousness with a heavy thud-thud-thud reminiscent of how her pulse had thundered when she and Declan made love. Instinctively she reached for him, but the bed was empty. Her heart dipped.

  The vibration of the chopper’s blades was so close it must be on the estate. She opened her eyes. The sun was so high she guessed it was afternoon.

  On a surge of frantic energy she shot out of bed, only to discover her legs wobbled like jelly after a long night’s loving. The realisation shocked her. She’d never experienced anything like the night she’d spent wi
th Declan. Not even in the first flush of her relationship with Mark had passion been so all-consuming.

  Chloe shoved the disquieting thought aside and stumbled to her feet, hauling her wrap on.

  ‘Declan?’ No answer from the en suite bathroom. He must have gone down to see who was arriving.

  She cringed at the thought of being caught naked, emerging from her boss’s bed. Last night they hadn’t been employer and employee. But nor had they spoken of where their changed relationship might lead.

  Chloe wished he was here to reassure her. So she could read the tenderness in his touch. A tenderness that had delighted her and eased her nerves.

  Last night had been the culmination of weeks of tension building like a storm head in a summer sky. Yet the depth of her feelings shocked her.

  When Declan had revealed his injuries had come from trying to save his brother, her heart had cracked at such tragic waste and desperate loyalty. She’d wanted to hold him till all his wounds, physical and emotional, had healed.

  Did she love him?

  Her heart thudded so loud it blocked the roar of the chopper.

  Chloe waited for panic to engulf her. Instead a sense of peace settled. Whatever this was, it was right.

  Finally she remembered the need for clothes and moved. She was almost to the top of the stairs when movement out the window caught her eye.

  The chopper was on the helipad beyond the tennis court. As she watched two men walked towards it, heads bent. One she didn’t know. The other was unmistakeable—wide shoulders, wind-tousled black hair, imposing frame.

  It was Declan in jeans and a dark shirt she’d laundered yesterday. His gait was clipped, uneven, as if his leg pained him more than usual.

  Hot guilt stabbed her. Last night neither of them had made concessions for his injuries.

  Then she realised Declan was getting aboard!

  Her blood drained away. He was leaving? Chloe clutched at the window sill as she slumped in shock.