The door beside him clicked open and then the one beside her. She climbed out onto a well-lit driveway fronting an ultra-modern villa of quite astonishing size. The cool night air hit her hard and she felt slightly dizzy. A large glass of wine topped up by champagne had been too much for her system, she acknowledged heavily. Alcohol always hit her hard.
‘We’ll discuss this indoors,’ Jax ground out impatiently. ‘Come on...’
How had she got herself into this situation? Lucy asked herself with angry self-loathing. She didn’t know where she was and had no idea how to get home again. She should have kicked up a major fuss when Jax had lifted her out of her chair at the bar but she had let him get away with it sooner than cause a public scene. In certain moods, Jax was as unstoppable as a juggernaut. He didn’t care what anybody thought. The only opinion he cared for was his own.
‘I want a taxi home,’ she informed him. ‘Right now...’
‘I thought you were dying to tell me about the assault on the yacht,’ Jax murmured, shooting her a politely enquiring appraisal that she immediately distrusted.
Lucy hovered uncertainly, noting the security team standing around and the older woman waiting to greet them at the front door. Compressing her lips, she forced herself to follow Jax, carefully picking her path up the steps into the contemporary hall. The preponderance of mirrors and multiple reflections confused her and she didn’t object when Jax rested a light hand on her back to guide her into a huge reception room furnished with sofas and monochromatic modern art works.
‘Assault...yacht,’ Jax prodded expectantly. ‘When did this happen?’
‘About two weeks after I last saw you in Spain—’
‘I had already left the country by then. Tell me what happened.’
‘I went looking for you and I was told you weren’t on board the Sea Queen—’
‘Which was true.’
‘The crew member that dealt with me was horrible. He called me names and manhandled me—’
Jax had fallen very still. ‘In what way were you “manhandled”?’
‘I said that I wasn’t willing to leave until I was given a phone number or an address where I could contact you. Maybe that was foolish,’ Lucy muttered ruefully. ‘Anyway, this big bald guy got really aggressive and called me a whore and just dragged me across the deck and pushed me down the gangway. I fell at the foot, bloodied my knees and my elbows and nobody helped me. And someone had called the marina security to escort me away and they accused me of trespassing in a restricted area. It was hideous.’
A frown line had drawn his fine ebony brows together. ‘I refuse to credit that any member of the crew would be so rough with a woman—’
Lucy bridled. ‘Well, believe it...it happened!’
‘Nor can I accept that there was verbal abuse. But I can confirm that you would not have been given my phone number or address because I left that instruction,’ he admitted grimly.
‘Why was that necessary? What did you think I was going to do?’ Lucy framed in an angry rush. ‘Spring a terrorist attack on you? Turn into a stalker?’
‘I didn’t want you making a nuisance of yourself,’ Jax advanced flatly, turning away from her for an instant, memories interfering with his thoughts.
What she had made him feel had been too intense. In the aftermath of his discovery of her true nature, he had overreacted, he acknowledged with hindsight, stepping back and instinctively protecting himself from further exposure to her. It had seemed imperative that he neither speak to her nor see her again.
‘I can’t understand why you went to the yacht or why you tried to contact me again,’ he said drily, swinging back to her with his brain fixed firmly in the present.
Bitter recriminations bubbled on Lucy’s lips and she swallowed them back because she didn’t want to make an announcement about Bella in the midst of a heated dispute. And Jax might be poised in front of her as ice cool and expressionless as a glacier but the atmosphere felt combustible and the tension was horrendous.
‘Obviously I tried to contact you...but you simply vanished. I didn’t hear from you again. Most people would seek an explanation—’
‘There was a very obvious explanation. I’d grown bored,’ Jax murmured with derision.
‘Sometimes you are a very nasty piece of work,’ Lucy mumbled shakily, appalled that he could throw that humiliating statement in her face.
‘Put your cards on the table, koukla mou. And maybe I will too.’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at—’
‘Stop acting like a poor little victim—stop faking it,’ Jax urged with stark impatience. ‘You told me a lot of lies back then—’
‘No, I didn’t!’ Lucy broke in furiously.
Exasperation gripped Jax. She was moving agitatedly round the room, luminous blue eyes fixed intently to him. The floor lamp behind her turned that pale dress almost transparent, clearly delineating the rounded swell of her small, succulent breasts and the shadowy outline of her pink areolae. He went hard, his reaction instantaneous.
‘What lies?’ Lucy demanded hotly, watching the fluid movement of his long, lithe body as he paced the tiled floor in front of her.
He was so beautiful he still took her breath away. It wasn’t merely his lean, strong face and stunning green eyes. Jax simply radiated masculine power from the aggressive angle of his arrogant head to the square swing of his wide shoulders and the decisive gait of his long, muscular legs. She was so busy staring, so busy drinking him in with greedy eyes that she couldn’t concentrate. A prickling sensation assailed her nipples and tightened them into hard little nubs while a sliding, pulsing warmth began low in her pelvis.
‘What lies?’ she mumbled afresh, her brain in a fog.
Throbbing with arousal, Jax compressed his sculpted lips. He was done with conversation. Lucy would verbally twist and turn and prevaricate and embellish and evade until he was ready to strangle her. And why was he even bothering? He didn’t ever travel an emotional road with women these days. He wasn’t interested in their motivations and their deepest secrets. He kept it simple, straight. So, why wasn’t he being straight with himself? He hadn’t brought Lucy home to talk to her, had he? His mouth quirked into a flashing sardonic smile as he studied her.
It was the bad-boy smile Lucy had seen Jax wear a dozen times in glossy photos. It wasn’t the smile that had once made her heart jump and fill to overflowing with love. It was a dark edgy smile with a sensual hint of threat in it.
A forbidden tingle of anticipation infiltrated what remained of her defences. She took a sudden step back, struggling to keep her distance and stay in control. But Jax reached out a hand and closed it round hers in a sudden movement, pulling her to him before she could back off. He wrapped both arms round her, lifting her easily off her feet to hoist her high against him.
It was a decisive moment and she knew it, knew she should push her hands down on his shoulders to force him to put her down and release her. But nothing was ever that simple for Lucy when it came to Jax. As he brought her down he nuzzled against her neck, dark stubble scratching her tender skin, and a shudder of awareness powerful enough to leave her dizzy enveloped her. The scent of his cologne laced with clean, husky male flared her nostrils; he smelled so unbelievably good she wanted to bury her nose in his hair. Her hands went round his neck and for a split second as he worked his erotic path towards her parted lips she clung like a limpet.
Just one kiss, she bargained with herself, just one, but the man who had once seduced her with kisses had no intention of breaking his perfect track record. He always knew what she wanted and he gave it to her, all the seething passion he had taught her to crave. He kissed her and she went up