She wasn’t really aware of Sol taking charge, winding the conversation up in a natural, easy way, but she knew he must have done, because the next thing she knew he was guiding her gently but firmly through the crowds without commotion. Or, certainly, no one seemed to be paying her any more or less attention than they had been before.
It was only when she found herself in a quiet anteroom that she felt herself starting to come to.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘SORRY.’ SHE BARED her teeth in what she desperately hoped would pass for a wide smile. Her stiff cheeks screamed in protest. ‘Don’t know what happened there.’
‘I think you do.’
It was soft, compassionate even. Something pulled, like a painful band, in her chest. She could deny it, but what would be the point?
‘So, Noukie Hartwood? I never knew.’
She really didn’t want to answer and yet she found herself speaking. Why was it so much easier to talk to Sol?
‘I always hated Noukie,’ she managed.
‘And the surname?’
She lifted her shoulders.
‘I shortened it to Hart when I came to the UK.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ That was a lie. ‘To put some distance between myself and my mother, I guess.’
‘Because she’d died?’
‘She took an overdose,’ Anouk clarified brusquely as she shot him a sharp look. ‘I thought everyone knew that.’
‘I’m aware of the story,’ he acknowledged after a moment.
There was no need for her to say anything else, and yet she found herself speaking, her voice high and harsh.
‘Of course, she probably didn’t mean to. She had a new movie coming out and I think it was her attempt at a publicity stunt gone wrong. That’s who she was.’
She could practically feel the emotions dancing inside her. Or stomping inside her. Not that it made much difference; either way, they were having a field day.
What was she doing, bleating on?
‘Anyway.’ She shook her head back, straightening her shoulders. As if that could somehow make her feel stronger. ‘I don’t want to talk about this any longer.’
Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t the quiet observation that he came out with.
‘No one ever does, which is part of the problem. Why do you think we’re here tonight, Anouk? At this obscenely lavish ball, which costs so much per head that we could probably fund a young carers’ centre for a year?’
‘Maybe because people have cared enough to come out?’ she bit back.
‘No, because too many people as rich as most of the guests here tonight would rather throw money at an issue and get back to enjoying themselves guilt-free, than actually look at a problem and talk about it.’
She couldn’t say what it was about his tone that made her ears prick up.
‘That sounds remarkably like someone who has come from nothing and been on the wrong side of those issues.’ She eyed him curiously, glad of the opportunity to set her own personal problems aside for a moment. ‘I thought you and Malachi were millionaires? Family money or something?’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘And you’re evading my question,’ she countered.
He contemplated her for a long minute. The band was pulling tighter around her chest with each passing second. So tight that she could barely breathe. Anouk swung around, forcing one leg in front of the other, until she found herself by an exquisitely carved writing desk with a stunning leather inlay.
She reached out to pick up an unusual-looking paperweight as if it could distract her mind, and pretended to herself that her hands weren’t shaking.
‘I’m not changing the subject, I just don’t want to discuss it. I put that chunk of my life behind me a long time ago.’
‘If that were true then you wouldn’t have gone so white in that ballroom that I feared you were about to keel over. Besides, you don’t just lock it away and pretend it doesn’t exist. It informs what you do in later life. It’s why you’re a doctor now.’
She hated that he sounded so logical.
‘You think you know me so well,’ she threw at him caustically.
‘So tell me I’m wrong.’
The worst of it was that they both knew she couldn’t do that. So, instead, she spluttered a little.
‘Because of course, of all people, you’d understand.’
‘More than you’d think.’ His voice was still impossibly even whilst she felt scraped raw.
‘Then you talk.’
‘I’m not the one who is struggling right now.’
It was odd, but the more empathetic he sounded, the more she wanted to throw the damn paperweight at his head. Carefully, she used her free hand to prise it out of her clamped fingers and set it back down before turning around. Her teeth hurt from clenching them so she struggled to loosen her jaw, too.
‘You think you can help me?’ she managed testily.
‘Maybe...’ he shrugged ‘...but more likely just talking about it will allow you to help yourself.’
‘It was a lifetime ago. It’s dead and buried.’ She jutted her chin out stubbornly, hoping her whole body wasn’t shaking as much as she feared it was.
‘I told you, it doesn’t work that way. Don’t underestimate the monsters inside, Anouk. They exist. They’re real. They know where your vulnerable spots are and they know just when to hit you for maximum effect. If you can’t even admit they are there, how will you ever defeat them?’
‘That’s the sort of thing I imagine you say to your patients. Do you really believe that? Have you ever actually practised what you preach, Sol?’
‘I’ve never needed to.’ His voice raked over her skin. ‘I’m fortunate that my life has been...uneventful.’
She narrowed her eyes, trying to decide whether he was telling the truth. Something in her whispered that he wasn’t but he looked so easy, so calm, that she thought she might be wrong. So if he was deceiving her then he had to be one of the most convincing liars in the world.
She wasn’t sure which truth disappointed her the most.
She stared at him, not trusting herself. She hadn’t talked about this in over a decade. The only person who knew the truth—or at least, the sanitised, abridged version—was Saskia.
Solomon Gunn should be the last person in the world she would ever talk to about her past. And yet there was a crazy part of her that wanted to open up and spill out every last truth. Right here, right now.
‘The term is confront to get closure,’ he added nonchalantly.
She wanted to gouge that part of her out with the letter opener lying on the desk behind her. And she hated that she felt this way. So out of control.
‘The term—’ she narrowed her eyes ‘—is sod off.’
He watched her for a moment, his eyes so intense that she had to drop her gaze to his mouth to protect herself from plunging right into them.
‘You know it’s funny, everyone says you’re this gentle, sweet-natured, conservative person. They obviously don’t see this other side of you, but I do. Why is that?’
She felt as if she’d been caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar. Her heart pounded loudly in her chest and all she could do was be thankful that he couldn’t hear it.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She was impressed at quite how haughty she managed to sound.
Sol, it seemed, was more amused than intimidated.
‘Oh, trust me, I do. I know women well enough. I seem to push all your buttons, Anouk Hart.’
‘You wouldn’t know my buttons if I waved them in your face,’ she retorted, congratulating herself on her quick wit.
It was only when he laughed—a deliciously rude and decidedly dirty sound—that she realised quite wh
at she’d said.
Again.
‘I do admire a good double entendre. First the invitation to get you out of that dress, and now this. I would say that I believe your subconscious is trying to tell you something, Anouk. But I see you’ve cleverly managed to manipulate the subject after all.’
‘There is a silver lining, then,’ she managed, perching on the edge of the desk, her legs stretched in front of her, her arms extended either side of her with her hands resting on the polished wood, too.
It had been a move intended to show she wasn’t as cornered as she felt, but she hadn’t been prepared for Sol’s reaction.
His eyes dropped down her body, as though taking in every new curve she had inadvertently revealed, from the deep plunge of her dress to the way the fabric clung to her thighs. Even the skyscraper heels that she had borrowed from Saskia.
She folded her arms over her chest, realising too late how it made her cleavage appear to swell and threaten to spill over the glorious blue fabric. But then she saw the effect it was having on Sol and her entire body burned.
It was thrilling, the way his eyes raked over her as though he couldn’t tear his gaze from her. As though he ached to do so much more than simply look.
It was empowering, too.
Anouk didn’t think—she couldn’t afford to talk herself out of testing her theory—she just acted. And so what if she didn’t believe it when she told herself that all she was trying to do was prevent him from asking any more questions?
Pushing herself up from the desk, she stood and faced him, and Sol didn’t miss a moment. His eyes turned molten, his body—all six-foot-three of broad-shouldered, sculpted, wholly masculine beauty—looked suddenly taut and the room started practically humming with sexual tension.
The silence in the room was almost deafening.
Had she ever felt so desired? So confident? So reckless?
‘Are you seducing me?’ he demanded, the hoarseness of his tone making her blood actually tingle in her veins. ‘Because if you are, I can tell you that you’re going to need to be a little more persuasive.’
He was lying and they both knew it.
‘That can be arranged,’ she murmured before her brain even seemed to have kicked into gear.
It was as though someone completely separate to her had taken control of her body, a confident, sexually assertive persona that she herself had never felt in her life before.
It was exhilarating.
With exaggerated care, she reached around and unzipped the low back of the dress.
‘What are you doing, Anouk? This isn’t you.’
Another hit of triumph punched through her at the slightly raspy tone to his usually rich timbre.
‘I’m shutting down any more of your conversations about my past, in the only way I know you’ll respond to,’ she replied, shocked at how controlled her voice sounded when inside it felt as if a thousand fizzing fireworks were all going off at once.
‘I thought you told me you were only coming tonight on the premise that it wasn’t a date, and that you wouldn’t be sleeping with me?’ he bit out, but she could see him clenching his fists at his sides.
As if he was trying so desperately to keep himself in place and maintain that distance between them. Her heart hammered in her chest, every fibre of her body on edge.
‘Oh, believe me, I have no intention of either of us doing any sleeping.’
She could see him, coiled and ready. Just about holding himself in place.
‘This isn’t who you are, or what you do, Anouk,’ he growled. ‘I’m trying to be a good man here, but there’s a limit to how far you can push me.’
‘So this isn’t what you wanted tonight?’ She flicked a tongue out over her dry lips.
She had expected him to break by now and seduction wasn’t really one of her skills. How did she convince him that she wanted this, too?
‘I’m sick of playing the good girl,’ she bit out. ‘The responsible girl.’
Noukie Hartwood, the reliable, responsible, boring child of the amazing Annalise. Tedious, joyless, a killjoy. And all the other words her mother had flung at her throughout her childhood that had suggested that she didn’t have a fun, daring, spontaneous bone in her body.
‘Maybe I’ve decided it’s time I had a bit of fun.’ She shrugged, almost starting when her dress slipped and threatened to expose her completely, but just about catching herself in time. ‘With you.’
‘Consider this your last warning, Anouk,’ he growled, his gaze riveted on her gaping bodice.
With a final grasp of that confidence she seemed to have acquired for one night only, Anouk shimmied and let her dress slide gracefully down her body to puddle at her feet. She had no idea how she managed to make her legs move enough to step elegantly out of the pool of blue fabric, her eyes locked with Sol’s.
‘Duly considered,’ she murmured.
He moved so fast she was barely aware of it, crossing the space between them to haul her to him.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you, zolotse,’ he growled.
And then suddenly his lips were on hers, only for a fraction of a second, brushing them softly, almost as if he was testing her. It was startling, and it was dangerous, not least because it didn’t unsettle her so much as thrill her. Yet still she didn’t pull away, not even when he laced his fingers through her hair, met her unblinking gaze again and held it as he slowly—torturously slowly—lowered his mouth to hers and everything...shifted.
It wasn’t just a kiss. Or, at least, it wasn’t like any kiss Anouk had ever known before. It was the most powerful, intense, head-rush kiss that she had ever believed possible. He was claiming her, teasing her, torturing her. There was something so primal, so raw in his tone that every thought melted out of Anouk’s head and it seemed to go on for ever. Dipping and tasting, scraping and teasing. Electrifying her like nothing Anouk had ever experienced before.
But then, Sol was like no one she had ever kissed before. With every slide of his lips, hunger seared through her, white-hot, torrid. With every sweep of his tongue she was rent apart. With every graze of his teeth she struggled to control a slew of fracturing sensations, too many to contain. Too much.
With each drugging drag of his mouth, and every divinely wicked slide of his tongue, he detonated something inside her. Over and over. Until he angled his head for a better, deeper fit, his hands dropping down her back, skimming the skin, tracing her sides, spanning her lower chest, just under her breasts.
It was how she imagined an initial bump of ketamine would feel, giving her a sudden head rush, making her feel giddy and fluffy. And yet, inconsistently, she was also entirely too aware of herself.
Too hot. Too jumpy. Too everything.
He drew whorls on her bare skin, leaving the rest of her body resenting the material that barred him from drawing them everywhere else. And when he returned to cup her face, her entire body ached for him.
Sol was too much. And yet she simultaneously couldn’t get enough. She placed her hands on his chest as if to anchor herself, realising too late her mistake. The solid wall of warm steel beneath her palms only served to detonate even more fireworks within her. It was impossible to stop her fingers from inching across, exploring and acquainting herself with all the care that her old grandmother used to take reading her braille books. Anouk’s imagination filled in all the blanks of the utterly masculine body that lay beneath the slick, tailored suit. Every ridge, dip, and contour. In stunningly vivid technicolour.
How she longed to see it for herself. She felt helpless, and aching, and desperate. Her body entirely spring-loaded with a kind of wanton desire.
When had sex ever been quite like this? So charged, so full of expectation and need? She didn’t have an abundance of experience, it was true; but she wasn’t exactly an untried virgin, either.
Without qu
ite knowing what she was doing, Anouk flattened her body to his, crushing her suddenly heavy breasts to his chest as though it might afford them some relief. And then Sol let one hand glide down her collarbone, over her chest, and all he did was gently graze one thumb pad over a straining peak and pleasure jolted through her as if he’d just shocked her.
She arched into him, a silent plea for more. She couldn’t seem to get close enough. Perhaps she couldn’t.
‘If you carry on like that, we’re not going to stop,’ he warned, his mouth barely breaking from hers and yet she felt the loss acutely.
Looping her arms around his neck, Anouk pressed herself closer to him. If she was going to do something so outrageously out of character, then she was going to enjoy every single second of it.
‘Promises, promises,’ she muttered.
‘Not a promise,’ rasped Sol. ‘Fair warning.’
‘Warning taken,’ she muttered, her lips tingling as his mouth continued to brush her. ‘Now you just need to prove it.’
* * *
It was insanity.
Not the fact that he was in a side room at a party with a beautiful, practically naked woman in his arms—he shamefully had to admit this had happened many times in the past—but rather, the insanity was that he was here with Anouk and she was making him feel more out of control than he’d ever felt with anyone else.
As though he couldn’t have resisted her inexperienced seduction even if he’d wanted to. As if she had that kind of power over him. Which, of course, was sheer nonsense.
But he wasn’t about to put it to the test and try to pull away from her now. Not when his whole body was igniting at the feel of her smooth, silky skin and scraps of lace beneath his palms; the taste of her skin on his lips and tongue; the way she shivered so deliciously when he grazed his teeth down that long line of her neck.
Unwrapping the Neurosurgeon's Heart Page 5