Free A Little Seduction Omnibus by Penny Jordan

and his desire.
    But that desire was faked, flawed, a lie, and Beth knew it.
    ‘I can’t. I’ve already made arrangements for this evening,’ she told him coolly.
    Ridiculous to feel that she was at fault just because of the way he managed to fake those dark shadows in his eyes and that male look of hurt withdrawal in the tightness of his mouth. She was the one who was being badly treated, not him.
    * * *
    ‘You’re not going to find what you’re looking for at any of the factories on your list,’ Alex informed Beth as they left the third factory.
    ‘No. I’m coming to realise that,’ Beth said testily. She felt both tired and disappointed, but that was not the real cause of her defensive anger and she knew it. Five hours of being cooped up in a small car with Alex was beginning to have its effect on her equilibrium—and her emotions.
    She had done everything she could to hold him at a distance, but to her chagrin, instead of recognising that she had guessed what he was up to, he’d seemed to think that she wasn’t very well, anxiously asking her in some concern several times if she was suffering from a headache or feeling unwell. Only her own cautious nature had prevented her from telling him that if she was suffering from any kind of malaise then he was its cause. But there was more to what she was experiencing than that, she was forced to acknowledge honestly.
    Had she simply been able to feel for him the contempt and disdain she knew he deserved then there would have been no need for her defensive and protective anger. But against all logic, and certainly against any cerebral desire on her part, she was unable to deny her body’s physical reaction, her body’s physical response to him; that was why she was getting so uptight and angry.
    Every time he made some comment about wanting her, every time he alluded to how much he desired her, she could feel herself starting to react to him. And she had even, at one morale-lowering point, found herself wishing that he would put his softly suggestive comment about longing to silence her sharp tongue with his mouth into action.
    ‘You’re so prickly that a man can’t help but feel tempted to wonder what it would take to make you purr,’ he’d informed her outrageously when she had refused his suggestion that they find somewhere to have lunch.
    ‘You’re right,’ he had agreed, when she had told him shortly that she didn’t want to eat, his eyes suddenly dark and hot. ‘ My appetite isn’t for food either. What I really want to taste is the sweet softness of your flesh. Its juices will be like nectar, honey to my lips, whilst—’
    ‘Stop it,’ Beth had demanded frantically, unable to screen out the mental images his erotic words had provoked for her. How could she dislike him so much, distrust him so much, and yet, at the same time, want him so much?
    It was just sex, she told herself fiercely. That was all. For some reason he had aroused within her a hitherto unexperienced need, a desire she had never suspected herself capable of feeling. The hesitant and awkward experiments of her teenage years had simply not prepared her for what she was feeling now—and that was all it was, a quirky build-up of the sexual desire she should perhaps have felt at a younger age but which, for some reason, she had not, and which was now manifesting itself in this totally unacceptable reaction to Alex Andrews.
    Yes, that was what it was, she decided in relief. It was just sex...just an itch that needed scratching... Shocked by the unfamiliar directness of her own thoughts, Beth tried to concentrate on the countryside they were driving through. Just because she now knew the cause of her disturbing reaction to Alex, that didn’t mean she had to give in to it, she warned herself. And at least it meant she no longer had to worry about it, she told herself in relief.
    ‘Look...I’m sorry if I seem to be crowding you or rushing you,’ Alex was saying gruffly at her side.