‘And perhaps you shouldn’t!’
‘Another Oscar would be nice,’ he conceded huskily. ‘But at this moment I’m damned if I wouldn’t settle for a night in bed with you!’
Colour flared suddenly in the paleness of her cheeks, her lips full and inviting, her breasts moving with the same rapidity of her breathing.
‘I wasn’t aware that was an option,’ she retorted, the nerve pulsing in her raised jaw giving lie to that challenge.
Because Nik was experienced enough to know that, no matter how she might try to deny it—and she was denying it!—Jinx was as physically aware of him as he was of her.
‘Not as an instead of, no,’ he admitted gruffly, moving closer to her, not quite touching, but nevertheless feeling the heat given off from her body. He reached up to touch the pouting softness of her mouth, feeling the quiver his caress invoked. ‘You want me too, Jinx,’ he said with certainty.
Her eyes were so dark now they appeared black, her mouth trembling moistly, a becoming flush to her cheeks, the hardened nubs at the tips of the gentle sweep of her breasts visible beneath the thin material of her dress. And Nik was sure, if he could have touched the very centre of her desire, that she would be moist there too, as ready for him as he was for her. And they hadn’t so much as kissed each other yet! But that was easily rectified, Nik decided, no longer able to resist the urge to take her into his arms, to mould her body fiercely against his, to let her feel the surge of his desire against her warm thighs, before he bent his head and his mouth took hers—and his previously wellconstructed world fell apart!
Drowning.
It was like drowning.
Every other woman he had ever known was instantly consigned to a black void and could never be recalled. Only Jinx existed, only the touch, the warmth, the smell, the taste of her.
This woman, this tiny, stubborn, five-foot delicacy of a woman, was taking possession of him, body and soul…!
CHAPTER THREE
WHAT was she doing?
Whatever it was, Jinx knew she couldn’t stop it. Not yet. Oh, please, not yet!
Nik was kissing her as if he wanted to make her a part of him, to devour her, to take her completely inside him. Or for him to be completely inside her. His thighs were moving restlessly against hers, rubbing, tormenting, frustrating, until Jinx wanted nothing more than to throw off all their clothes and be taken by him right now, the two of them lost in the heat of the sexual arousal that drew them nearer and nearer to a climax that was completely beyond their control.
‘Let’s go to a hotel!’ Nik managed to take his lips from hers long enough to groan achingly, long hands framing her face as he looked down at her with glittering silver eyes. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing to me, Jinx Nixon, but if I don’t make love to you soon then I’m going to self-combust!’
She knew it, could feel the force of his need. A need she easily matched.
‘Feel it, Jinx.’ Nik’s thighs moved erotically against her, hard, pulsing with desire.
A desire that made her own thighs moist, burning, aching, throbbing with a need that she knew would explode if Nik’s flesh should so much as touch hers.
But she couldn’t just book into a hotel with a man—especially not this man! And while her body might think that it recognized and knew his, she knew she had every reason to distrust him. More reasons than he realized.
‘No!’ Nik protested as he seemed to feel her moving emotionally away from him, his arms tightening about her as he tried to hold onto the moment. ‘Jinx, I know you want me too!’ he groaned.
Oh, yes, she wanted him. But she would never give in to that want—she had too much to lose if she ever did.
She straightened determinedly away from him. ‘And do you always get what you want, Nik?’ She sighed.
‘Almost always,’ he confirmed, his arms falling back to his sides.
‘Then a little self-denial could be good for you.’
‘It isn’t self-denial, it’s Jinx-denial,’ he corrected huskily. ‘And men have been known to go insane trying to draw back from the brink you just took me to!’ His eyes glittered with the intensity of his feelings.
‘Women too, or so I’m told,’ she came back dryly, some of her own normal reserve returning now that she was no longer held in his arms. Although the desire he had aroused hadn’t abated in the slightest…
‘Then why—’
‘Because it would be a mistake!’ she cried frustratedly. ‘Can’t you understand?’ she continued as he looked at her blankly. ‘You are positively the last man on earth I ever want to become involved with!’
He became very still, his expression guarded now, a shutter coming down over grey eyes, his mouth a grim line. ‘Because I want to make a movie of No Ordinary Boy?’
‘Because you want to film No Ordinary Boy,’ she agreed flatly.
‘Damn it, woman—’
‘Nik, swearing at me isn’t going to help this situation one little bit—’
‘Maybe not,’ he admitted grimly. ‘But it makes me feel a hell of a lot better!’
She gave him a bleak smile. ‘I’m sure it does,’ she conceded. ‘But it isn’t going to change a thing. Because I’m not stupid enough to go to a hotel or anywhere else with you. Neither do I have any intention of taking you home with me—’
‘You really are the most stubborn—’
‘And if you attempt to follow me home,’ Jinx continued as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘then I shall contact the police and have you arrested for stalking me.’
‘Wouldn’t that rather null and void this phobia you have about your father’s privacy?’ he mocked. ‘I’m quite well known, Jinx; there is no way having me arrested wouldn’t appear in some tabloid newspaper or other.’
Nik Prince’s much-photographed face and highly recognizable profile were aspects of this situation that she was well aware of. They were yet more reasons she intended avoiding him at all costs.
‘That’s your problem, not mine,’ she dismissed with much more confidence than she actually felt. ‘My priority is to keep any publicity from even touching my father. It’s the reason a pseudonym was used, for heaven’s sake!’ Her eyes flashed warningly.
Nik’s frown deepened. ‘What exactly is wrong with your father?’
Jinx turned away. ‘Just stay away from us, Nik.’
‘And if I can’t do that?’ he challenged.
She shrugged. ‘Watch this space.’
‘Damn it, he wrote the book; surely it must have occurred to him, to both of you, that it might be a bestseller—’
‘Of course it didn’t occur to us!’ Jinx protested heatedly, the colour back in her cheeks now. ‘Writing a book is a very personal thing.’ She shook her head. ‘Who could possibly have imagined that No Ordinary Boy would be as popular as it was?’
‘As it still is.’
‘Yes,’ she conceded quietly.
‘Aren’t you being just a little selfish, Jinx?’ he pursued relentlessly. ‘You’ve made your own feelings about my filming No Ordinary Boy more than clear, but until I’ve actually spoken to him I have no way of knowing that’s your father’s opinion too…’
Jinx looked up at him, tears glittering in her deep blue eyes.
‘Why don’t