Free Far From Perfect by Portia Da Costa Page B

issue, Anna.” As he came to his feet, he inclined across the table, the cups and the cloth towards her. “It proves that you want me.” He paused, his rapier glance settling momentarily on her lips and making them feel as if they’d been licked by fire, “And that I want you.”
    Anna couldn’t move. Theoretically, she could have pulled away, but in every way that mattered, he’d immobilized her. She couldn’t look into his eyes—they’d break her apart if she did, crack her right open and reveal her every last secret to him.
    But looking at his mouth was worse.
    Just to see those sculpted lips was to feel them upon hers. Pressing, bewitching, tasting, controlling. Unconsciously, she licked her own lips in panic, then burnt with shame when he laughed softly and wickedly.
    “Stop it!” Managing to break free of his spell at last, she straightened up, almost knocking over her chair. “How can you say you want me? You didn’t want me four years ago. Not really. You left me in no doubt whatsoever about that.” She edged away, knowing she should run, run like the wind, but still unable to summon the larger action.
    Moving with that strange, phenomenal speed of his—the diametric opposite of his customary watchful stillness—Nick shot around the table and in front of her.
    She stepped back.
    He stepped forward.
    She stepped back and back and back until she felt the wall behind her, no retreat. Nick matched every pace until he was so close that she could see the night stubble on his skin, smell his elusive cologne and the faint and even more fugitive odor that was purely and savagely man.
    His hands settled on her shoulders, fingertips curling, gripping lightly but unrelentingly.
    “It’s not that I didn’t want you,” he murmured low, his breath warm against her temple as he sought to press a single light kiss in her hair. “Never believe that I didn’t want you, Anna.” Another kiss, even more delicate, on the line of her brow. “It’s just that I knew that I shouldn’t have had you. Not then. Not like that. You were too young and too trusting.”
    “That’s ridiculous. I was twenty, for God’s sake. I’ve got friends who were married at that age, even with children. And even if I was virgin, I was an adult.”
    “I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you,” Nick persisted, steely for a moment, as if she hadn’t even spoken.
    Anna felt as if she were going to collapse but for Nick’s strong hands upon her. “And now?” she heard herself saying, as if from a great distance, “Do you think it’s okay to take advantage of me now?”
    “Now things are different. It’s not taking advantage of you. It’s what you need,” he growled softly, then brought his mouth down on hers with a singular authority.
    I should shake him off , she thought faintly, amazed how insubstantial her outrage at his highhandedness felt. I should wriggle free, get away, do anything but succumb.
    But she couldn’t.
    Nick’s devilish tongue was in her mouth and she was lost, lost, lost. Protest, good sense, self-preservation, everything but the feel, the taste, the power of Nick and his beautiful mouth had as good as vaporized into nothingness. She put up her hands to slide her arms around him and pull him closer, but he prevented it. Instead, his own hands went quickly to work, unfastening her sash, then parting the panels of her robe. With the thick velour out of the way, and just his layer of silk and hers of brushed cotton between them, he pressed the full length of his imperious body against hers and made her know him.
    His erection was like a knot of heated stone, jutting against her belly, and she knew that he’d be able to feel hard puckered tips of her breasts against his chest. Pure longing almost made her faint. For four interminable years this was what her body had cried out for, and she gasped and moaned aloud for it now. In a helpless female instinct, she rocked her hips.
    Nick laughed deep in his throat,