Dominic, however…
Mattie glanced sideways at him, met his eyes and shivered.
Dominic Drecos was no child. He was all, one hundred per cent man. He could hurt her in a different way. She knew that at some instinctual level, but at that same level she knew that he was an irresistible force.
‘Stop finding excuses for the man,’ he now said impatiently. ‘You may have gone back a long time with him, but that didn’t stop him from being a noose around your neck.’
‘You’re so cold and calculating,’ she murmured.
‘I’m realistic. We’re both adults and we’re attracted to one another. More to the point, neither of us is looking for commitment and marriage. Are we?’
‘I definitely am not,’ she said fiercely. ‘You needn’t fear that you might become tangled up with a woman who’s totally unsuitable for you.’
‘Is that what you think?’ It was taking all his massive self-control not to reach out and touch her. He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman as much as he wanted her, or being forced to control himself the way she did.
‘That there would be no chance of wanting a serious relationship with you because your background isn’t the same as mine?’
Mattie gave a cynical little toss of her head. ‘Not,’ she said, ‘that it makes any difference to me. Just trying to clarify the situation.’
‘You mean you wouldn’t be hurt if you thought that that was the case?’
The minute he said that, homed in with his usual accuracy on that vulnerable side of her that she had grown so accustomed to keeping under wraps, Mattie’s hackles rose in immediate self-defence.
‘Why should I be?’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve been pointing out our differences from the first moment we met. Just call it satisfying my curiosity.’
‘And, as I’ve told you every time you’ve begun with your tired old arguments about us coming from the opposite sides of the tracks, your background makes no difference to me.’ He gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘Maybe it’s because I’m not English so I haven’t been inculcated with all that rubbish about social class. No, I don’t want involvement because…’
‘Because what?’
He looked at her in silence for a few fleeting seconds and then raked his fingers restlessly through his hair.
‘Potted history, please,’ Mattie told him. ‘You’re very good at dodging questions you don’t want to answer and I’m tired of it.’
‘You’re…what…?’
‘Well, you can’t blame a girl for wanting to know just a bit about the man who wants to get her into bed.’
Dominic laughed and looked at her appreciatively. ‘I’m beginning to think you put on that me-working-class-girl act just to get your own way. Am I right?’
‘Bad relationship?’ Mattie pressed. ‘Some poor woman got a little too involved and became the proverbial noose around your neck, which is what you accused Frankie of being?’
‘You turn me on.’
‘You’re changing the subject.’ But those four words made her breasts ache and her body go to liquid.
Dominic looked at her thoughtfully, shifted a bit so that he was leaning against the side of the car, looking directly at her. If there was one thing this woman wasn’t it was coy, and he was discovering, to his amusement, that he liked that.
‘Six months ago I broke up with a woman called Rosalind.’ And you are the first person I’m talking to about this, he could have added, but didn’t. ‘We had been going out for nearly a year and over that year she changed from an easy-going, enjoyable companion into a clingy, possessive woman who wanted to know my every move.’
‘Which must have been a serious blow to a free spirit like yourself,’ Mattie said drily, and in the darkness of the car Dominic flushed darkly at the well-honed dart.
‘Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice?’
‘If the cap fits… So then what happened?’
‘Do I have to go into the details?’
‘Yep.’ She was enjoying this. ‘What’s good for the goose and so on and so forth.’
‘Spare me the proverbs.’ He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and wondered, not for the first time, why he was so taken with a woman who seemed to see a hurdle and automatically assumed it was there to be demolished.
‘Spare me the evasion.’
‘Well, if you must know, she began making calls to the office. Not just one call a day, or two, but literally dozens. In the end, I had to instruct my personal secretary to block them. When I tried to speak to her about it, she would cry. That famous fallback that women use with such alacrity when it suits them.’
‘Excuse me. The women you know.’
‘And you’ve never shed a tear?’
‘Not as a form of emotional blackmail,’ Mattie said with distaste.
‘Well, she did. Later on, there was worse. Later on, she moved from tears to anger. Didn’t I want to be with her? Eventually, I told her that it was finished, at which point she began stalking me. I would get home in the evenings to find her car parked outside, where she would be waiting for me to get home. It was a nightmare.’
Mattie reflected on this in shocked, subdued silence. ‘What did you do?’
‘I confronted her, told her that if she didn’t stop I would be forced to go to the police, that her parents would get to know about it. Thankfully that worked, but that’s why I’m, let’s just say, a little cautious about further involvement with the fairer sex. So you see, our potted life stories have more in common than you think.’
They had reached his apartment block without Mattie really even realising they had been travelling. She got out, waited for him to join her, and then said, thoughtfully, on their way in, ‘And how did you feel, you know, about…?’
‘How did I feel?’ This time there was no awkward sitting in the lobby. He was leading her straight towards the elevator, although, ludicrously, he still didn’t know whether they would end up in his king-sized bed together. It frustrated the hell out of him.
‘Yes, feel,’ she was saying now. ‘Were you in love with her?’
‘I was very fond of her in the beginning.’
‘What about love?’
‘What about it?’ The elevator doors slid shut. The mirrored sides reflected them. He could see those forth-right green eyes watching him from every angle. And, in her head, Mattie was already climbing down from pushing him for an answer to that one, because she realised she didn’t want to have an answer. She didn’t want to imagine him hurting because he had fallen in love with a woman who had turned out to be the wrong woman for him. She preferred to stick with the option that he had been fond of her because…because…
She sighed with relief when the doors opened, but relief was short-lived, soon replaced with the steady beat of her heart, racing faster as he slipped his key into the door and pushed it open.
‘History, Mattie,’ he murmured, standing aside to let her brush past him. ‘This is the present. For both of us, wouldn’t you say…?’
CHAPTER SIX
HE MADE such perfect sense. Two people, disillusioned from their past relationships, helplessly drawn towards each other, both knowing the undesirability of becoming too involved.
Once bitten, twice shy, Mattie thought now. She seemed to be thinking in proverbs.
From all accounts, she and Frankie should have made the ideal match. They had gone from childhood friends to childhood sweethearts. They should logically have ended up as blissfully happy adults with the statutory two children and pet dog. Instead, it had all unravelled like a ball of wool.
And Dominic hadn’t needed to tell her what she had assumed for herself. That Rosalind had breathed the same privileged air that he did, and that, despite that, the relationship had collapsed under the weight of its own inadequacies.
So here they were now, not looking for anything beyond the present.
And heavens, how she wanted him, wanted him with every fibre in her body.
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br /> She refused his offer of a drink, met his eyes steadily and felt shaken but delirious at the molten heat of his gaze.
‘No drink for Dutch courage?’ he asked, moving towards her, then at last giving in to his need to touch her, but only delicately, only capturing her face between his big hands so that he could stroke the sides of her cheeks with his thumbs.
‘I only need Dutch courage if I’m about to do something I don’t want to do,’ Mattie said. She placed the flat of her hands on his chest and then began to unbutton his shirt with trembling fingers. Each undone button gave her a glimpse of his hard, bronzed torso and the muscular strength of his shoulders.
‘You’d better stop that,’ Dominic told her roughly, ‘or you might find that we don’t make it to the bedroom.’
He scooped her up and carried her towards one of the rooms, kicking open the door with his foot.
He made his way to his bed and deposited her gently, then proceeded to look at her for a few heart-stopping seconds, before switching on one of the lamps on the low chest of drawers that covered almost the length of one of the walls.
Then he returned to where he had been standing. That look. Mattie wanted to stretch like a cat and bask in the heat of it. She squirmed a little, sighed and then watched in fascination as he began undressing.
Anyone would think that she was a virgin witnessing her first glimpse of the male body in all its glory. Not that many were as glorious as his. If any at all.
He tugged off his shirt, exposing broad shoulders, a firm, hard stomach, flat brown nipples and then, as he slowly unbuckled his belt, Mattie’s gaze drifted to where he was now unzipping his trousers and sliding them down over his lean hips.
‘You do know,’ he said with a low laugh, ‘that when I’m done, it’s going to be your turn…’
‘I may have worn tight outfits when I worked at the club, but performing a striptease is not my kind of thing.’ Her mouth felt dry as she watched him slip his fingers beneath the elasticated waistband of his boxer shorts and then a smile of pure, wicked satisfaction curved her lips at the sight of his impressive manhood.
‘Well, we’ll have to work on that, won’t we?’ He bent over her and began undressing her, savouring every second of his gradual exposure of her body.
Her skin was as smooth as satin. First her shoulders, then the rest of her with only her lacy bra modestly covering her breasts. A clasp at the front and it was undone. Dominic pulled aside both halves of the bra and groaned as he saw the generous pale mounds spill out, saw the rosebud circles that he had imagined caressing.
Mattie lay perfectly still, watching him watching her, and felt a swell of desire so powerful that she half closed her eyes and sighed under the force of it.
She wanted him to touch her. Her breasts were positively aching to be touched.
Instead he finished what he had started doing, removing the rest of her clothing until she was completely naked.
‘Happy?’ he asked unevenly. He covered her body with his and just looked at her for a few moments. More than anything, he wanted her to be happy, to know that she was coming to him with every part of her soul open and willing, no doubts, no shadows.
‘Happy,’ Mattie agreed, in a similarly unsteady voice. She reached up to coil her hands behind his head, and brought him down to kiss her. The kiss seemed to go on forever, slow, tantalising. The exploratory, leisurely kiss of two people for whom time had finally stood still.
‘I feel like a teenager,’ she finally laughed breathlessly, and he smiled at her.
‘We should have met when you were.’
‘Oh, at sixteen I was besotted with Frankie.’ Mattie reached up to deliver a series of fluttery kisses on his mouth, moving her body sinuously beneath him and loving the feel of his hardness pressing against her.
‘Because you hadn’t yet met me.’ He moved down, trailing his tongue against her collarbone and along the cleft between her breasts. Mattie held her breath, arched back and then released a long groan of utter pleasure as his mouth finally circled one nipple and he began sucking on it, tugging the tight bud into his mouth, grazing it with his tongue.
He captured her restless hands with his, splaying them out to either side while he continued to play with her breasts and tease them with his mouth. First one, then the other until her nipples were throbbing from the onslaught.
When she cried out, it seemed to be someone else’s voice, coming from some other place.
This languorous seduction was like nothing she had ever experienced before. She knew that she was writhing beneath him, wanting more and wanting it now.
Although he was taking his time.
He had waited for this woman. Touching her, feeling her move, hearing her whimper for him—it felt as though he had been waiting for her all his life. He wasn’t going to rush things now, even though if she so much as reached out and touched him he felt that he might have a struggle not to come. He was no long the master of lovemaking. The lovemaking was controlling him.
He released her hands and moved lower, feeling the taut flesh of her stomach with his mouth, then the indentation of her belly button, knowing that her body was responding instinctively now, her legs parting to accommodate his mouth.
Mattie gasped as his hands gently rested against the soft inside of her thighs, allowing him unfettered access to the honeyed moistness of her femininity.
Then his tongue was playing games with that small bud, flicking across it until she wanted to scream with the exquisite agony that wanted release. Every so often, when he had taken her to the brink, he pulled back, waited for sensation to subside before starting again, tasting her, licking her, sending her to another planet, one she had never visited before.
Was it because he had had to wait for her to come to him that he felt so wildly and uncontrollably turned on? Dominic had no idea. Just looking at her, lying supine on the bed in all her glorious nakedness, had given him such a powerful charge that he had been momentarily bereft of thought.
And now, tasting her, feeling her move under him…
He eased his long body up and swivelled her so that she was lying on top of him. Her breasts dangled provocatively by his face and he captured one nipple in his mouth and sucked hard even as she sank neatly onto him, a tight, warm fit, moving with a perfect rhythm that matched his.
Their bodies were attuned to one another. United, as one, and when they finally soared upwards they soared there together in a shuddering orgasm that left him shaking.
Mattie collapsed onto him with a little sigh and eventually rolled off so that they were lying next to one another, then she turned to her side and propped herself up on one elbow so that she could look at him.
She could have feasted her eyes on him forever. Then she reminded herself that never was not a word that existed in her vocabulary, at least not when it came to him. Nor was it one she would give house room to. Young she might be, but stupid she most certainly wasn’t.
Dominic turned so that they were looking at one another, and he gently pushed her hair back, then pulled her onto him, tucking her head just under his chin so that he could kiss her fine blonde hair.
‘I suppose I should be thinking of heading back home,’ Mattie eventually said. She made a few circles on his chest with her finger, then delightedly traced the outline of his nipple.
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s usually where I spend the night?’
‘Usually?’
‘Well, always.’
‘There’s no need for you to go back there,’ Dominic told her, and Mattie laughed.
‘What, you mean ever?’
She was teasing, he knew that, but even so the throw-away remark provoked a thought that flashed across his mind like a shadow, leaving as quickly as it had come, too quickly for him to reach out and take hold of it to analyse.
Dominic frowned slightly. ‘I mean…’
‘Don’t worry, Dominic. I know what you mean.’ Mattie’s voice was dry but the reply
was very quick and very unequivocal. She attempted to sit up and he tightened his grip so that she snuggled back down against him.
‘Frankie’s not there. All that’s waiting for you is an empty house. Why go back there tonight? You can stay here, share my bed with me.’ His voice was husky. ‘I may be an old man but my stamina would surprise you.’
‘You’re not an old man. How old are you anyway?’
Old enough to be cynical, Dominic thought. ‘Thirty-four.’
‘Ten years older than me,’ Mattie said lazily. ‘The…’ The perfect age gap, she nearly said, and then caught herself in time. Now, that would have been a dangerous observation, and she couldn’t figure out why she would have made it anyway. ‘The age when most men are married off,’ she amended. ‘Aren’t your parents frantic for you to be settled and having a few grandchildren for them to coo over?’
‘Frantic is a strong word. These aren’t the Dark Ages any more.’ His voice was laced with amusement. ‘Keen, might be a better adjective. I’m an only child. My father would like to see something being done about the blood-line continuing and my mother thinks that I need a woman to anchor me. From my past experiences, I can say with my hand on my heart that anchoring is the last thing a woman has managed to achieve for me.’
Hence the perfection of their situation, Mattie thought. He had laid his cards on the table with her and now he could relax, safe in the knowledge that she wasn’t going to pursue what was unattainable.
Which left her feeling just a little depressed.
‘How is it that you didn’t marry that boyfriend of yours?’ Dominic asked. When he looked down, he could see the smooth line of her thigh curving across his and the push of her soft breast against his chest. He felt a moment of complete and pleasurable peace.
‘Oh, just never got around to it,’ Mattie said airily. ‘These aren’t the Dark Ages, you know.’ She threw his cliché back at him and felt the rumble of his laughter under her. It was a good feeling. Too damned good. ‘We ended up living together but then things weren’t right between us. It would have been wrong to marry. My parents weren’t overjoyed at us living together, of course, but they didn’t press the issue.’
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