Something in Meg’s heart tugged, hard. Did he have any idea that rushing into marriage had been his way of replacing the family he’d lost? She doubted it. For an intelligent man, he didn’t have a very good handle on his own emotions.
Instead of lowering her opinion of him, the fact only made her warm to him further. His emotional ineptitude was actually quite endearing. ‘What happened?’ she asked softly, not caring if she got herself into trouble for her curiosity. He seemed in an uncharacteristic mood to talk about himself, and she was certainly in the mood to listen.
He looked down at the remains of his meal, as though not seeing it. ‘I brought up the subject of us having another baby. Isabelle refused. She said she’d hated being pregnant and had just gotten her figure back. I accepted that. We had Phillipa and I adored her. But despite it being Isabelle’s idea not to have another baby, she never seemed to have enough to occupy her. She complained about the long hours I was working, that I never took her to the theatre. I tried to make her happy, but then I found out something that made me stop caring whether she was happy or not.’
His voice became icy. ‘Her family’s money had been drying up for years. Her father was driving his company into the ground with gambling debts. Isabelle had seen the writing on the wall long before we started seeing each other. With hindsight I saw the way she pursued me so soon after my parents’ accident in a new light. I suspected that our meeting when we did was not due to chance at all.’
Meg was starting to get the picture and it made her livid. ‘You don’t really think she…’ What kind of woman would look at this man and see only dollar signs, and not the core of decency inside? The sexy, downright lovable persona?
‘When I asked her if she got pregnant on purpose to secure our marriage, her denials were transparent to say the least. After that, she stopped pretending she ever loved me and I stopped wishing I could make her happy. I should have divorced her then, but the thought of Phillipa kept me in the marriage. Then along came
Paolo
.’
‘Oh Bryce.’ Meg’s hand slid across the table and before she could think better of the move she covered his large, warm hand with her smaller one. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t believe she hurt you like that.’ She really couldn’t. Bryce Carlton was the catch of the century. It was astounding to Meg that a woman might not fall in love with him on the spot, let alone that she would be capable of using him for her own selfish ends.
Bryce looked down at their linked hands, a frown creasing his forehead. ‘I don’t want your pity.’
Rebelliously, Meg refused to release him despite the look on his face. ‘There’s a difference between pity and sympathy. Can’t I be on your side without you thinking I pity you?’
His eyes narrowed on her face. ‘Don’t you? Aren’t you right now wondering what I did, or didn’t do, to render a woman so unsatisfied that she looked for physical comfort elsewhere?’
Gulp.
‘No,’ Meg said, her voice raspy. ‘I th-think the fault was all hers.’
His brow quirked in an almost accusatory way. ‘How would you know?’
Was he insinuating that she had no experience with men and their ability to satisfy a woman? Okay, so maybe he was right. But, virgin or not, there were some things a girl knew. And that Bryce Carlton would be an attentive, tender and thoroughly satisfying lover was one of those things. She whispered, ‘I have a very strong feeling.’
He made a sound in the back of his throat, low and guttural. It was a shockingly uncivilised sound for such a civilised man. ‘You’re making this impossible for me, Meg.’
Meg blinked, at a loss to comprehend his meaning. ‘Making what impossible?’
‘This thing where I’m supposed act professionally,’ he spat out in self-disgust. He ran a hand through his hair and Meg recognized the frustration in the now familiar act. His gaze returned to hers, and there was glittering accusation in their dark depths. ‘The thing where I’m not supposed to be thinking constantly about touching you, kissing you, about smoothing back that crazy hair of yours and taking you in my arms and treating you like a woman, not an employee. If you weren’t so darned supportive and loyal and honest, I wouldn’t be having so much trouble resisting you.’
‘Well…I’m sorry!’ Meg sputtered, caught between defensiveness and exhilaration. Then she frowned. ‘Hey wait a minute, no I’m not. I haven’t been trying to…’ recalling the way she’d simpered over him at the piano that night, the way she’d instigated their kiss in the kitchen. The denial got caught in her throat.
‘I know.’ His voice was firm and warm. ‘Despite what my ex-wife claims, I know you haven’t been making me feel this way on purpose. That’s precisely why I have to do this — because I know you won’t and I’m sick to death of not sleeping.’
His eyes never left hers as he rose from his chair and rounded the table. He held out his hand and Meg found hers slipping into it, and the contact was new and exciting and natural all at once. He drew her to her feet and framed her face with his big, gentle hands.
Meg’s heart thudded in her throat as he dipped his head.
Sighing against his lips, Meg let hers fall open, inviting him inside with an astonishing lack of coyness. With his tongue he found the open seam of her lips and delved beyond. He didn’t merely kiss her — he took her mouth in a commanding act of proprietorship she didn’t think, not for a moment, to resist. He explored the caverns of her mouth as though he had every right to be there. Meg couldn’t have argued the point if she’d wanted to. He did have every right. For weeks, her heart had been waiting with quivering impatience for him to stake his claim.
Her hands landed on his shirt front. She grappled with it, bunching the fabric in her fingers as Bryce’s masterful kiss caused her toes to curl. Bryce uttered a groan that reverberated inside Meg. He sent his hands down to stroke over her back, over and over in feverish circles until he held a fistful of her blouse in a death grip.
Abruptly, Bryce released her lips, drawing back far enough so he could meet her eyes. He stared at her, his gaze as hot as freshly melted chocolate, his breathing as laboured as her own. The sense that they were on the verge of tearing at each other’s clothes hovered in the inches between them.
‘Fabric,’ Bryce said suddenly. ‘Paint.’
Meg blinked, her confused brain struggling. ‘Huh?’
‘This is a business dinner,’ he clarified gruffly. ‘Talk to me about paint colours and curtains so I’ll remember that.’
‘Oh.’ How on earth did he expect her to concentrate on such mundane things when her mind was spinning and her body was on fire? She cleared her throat. ‘Okay. I was, ah…thinking of using a neutral paint colour for the walls and adding vibrancy with some modern art works.’
‘Hmm, that sounds great.’ He wasn’t looking into her eyes. Instead he was watching her mouth. ‘Go on.’
Meg licked her dry lips. Bryce’s gaze focussed with hot precision on the movement of her tongue, while his hand wandered, skimming the curve of her waist until it finally settled on the top of her buttocks. When she spoke her voice was as wispy as a tendril of smoke. ‘You could do with some new furniture and you might want to get rid of those curtains altogether.’
He gathered the flesh of her bottom in his hand and drew her closer to him. Meg gasped when she felt the nudge of something hard against her stomach. ‘I’ll burn them if that’s what you want.’
Meg didn’t think she’d ever heard a declaration so romantic. ‘Oh, Bryce.’
‘It’s not working,’ Bryce groaned and dropped his head into the wild tangle of her hair. He nuzzled her throat, his hot breath causing Meg’s sensitive flesh to tingle. ‘Even when you’re talking about curtains you drive me crazy.’
When he took her earlobe between his teeth and gently nipped, Meg felt that she had become completely boneless. She wound her arms around Bryce’s neck to keep from falling to the carpet in a puddle of aroused goo. ‘Oh crikey, that feels good.’
Bryce muttered something into her hair, something harsh that sounded like ‘God forgive me’. Then he picked her up and carried her to the couch, where he settled her into the butter-soft leather with a deep, soul-touching kiss.
The feel of his warm, big body covering hers was so exquisite that Meg sighed into his mouth at the pleasure of it. He responded by deepening the kiss with a rumbled groan and shifting his body against hers. The solid weight of his thigh edged between her legs, pushing her skirt up. Meg snaked her calf around Bryce’s and fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, opening several of them in a passionate frenzy, utterly shameless in her response.
Really, it was shameful how shameless she was.
‘Bryce.’ His name was a plea on her lips when he pulled back. For a dreadful moment she thought he was going to recover his sense of nobility and stop kissing her. But he used the separation of their bodies to slip free the shirt buttons she hadn’t managed to get to, baring a strip of his solid chest to her avid gaze.
Taking her hand, he lifted it and placed it on his bare skin, an invitation to touch. Meg needed no further urging. She sent her hands on an exploration of his body, loving the feel of his skin, his silky chest hair against her fingertips, the tightly bunched muscles of his stomach. She rested her palm over the spot where his heart rapped out a frenzied rhythm and marvelled that she could induce such excitement in him.
Meg sought out his eyes only to find he had closed them, the angles of his face taut with strain. ‘Bryce, are you okay? Am I doing something wrong?’
He laughed, a short, sharp sound devoid of mirth. ‘No it’s just…it’s been a long time. Your touch feels incredible.’
Meg’s heart clenched and pounded, two things she wouldn’t have thought it could do simultaneously. He lived as though he were an emotional island, as though he didn’t need anybody, but the way his flesh trembled beneath her fingers spoke of a need so raw and powerful it drew a similar response from Meg. Her own flesh strained to be beside his, even as poignant tears pricked her eyes. It seemed a travesty to her that Isabelle, that stupid woman, had been this close to him when she’d never really loved him.
She ran her hands over his chest, lavishing the attention, the affection on him that he deserved. She said his name and waited for his eyelids to lift. She met the anguish in his eyes with the conviction in hers and grasped his wrist, making the same request as he had by placing his hand on her chest, against the buttons running down the front of her blouse. Her heart thundered against his palm, her breasts grew taut with anticipation, with the leaping hope that he would move his hand a little to the side…
‘I can’t do this Meg.’
Disappointment flared inside her. She stopped herself from demanding to know why on earth not by concentrating on the fact that, as though of their own volition, his fingers were releasing her buttons even as he spoke.
Talk about mixed messages.
Meg held her breath in her throat. ‘Okay.’
‘I mean it,’ he said, perhaps detecting the note of scepticism that had crept out. ‘Not here. Not like this.’
He parted the fabric of her blouse and stared at her, desire and appreciation hot in his eyes. His touch was tentative, reverent, when he reached out to gently cup her breast through the lace-edged cotton of her bra. ‘Where then? How?’
‘Not after I’ve wrestled you to the couch in my living room, that’s for certain.’
Meg didn’t think he’d had to do much in the way of wrestling, but she wasn’t going to argue that point. She thought of the sprawling view of one of the most beautiful harbours in the world to her left, the engaging, sexy man above her and shook her head. ‘This is nothing. I had a guy try and wrestle me into the back of his ute once.’
Swift fury rose to transform his features and Meg reached up to stroke his cheek. ‘I didn’t go of course. What I’m trying to say is…if that had been
you
in that grubby truck with the fast-food wrappers everywhere…I would have been happy to go.’
‘Oh Meg. You’re frighteningly good for my ego.’ He brushed his lips over hers several times before settling over her mouth and treating her to a thoroughly sumptuous kiss, a seductive kiss that fulfilled yet left her wanting so much more.
And Bryce delivered more when he moved his lips down to trail hot kisses over her throat, then over the swell of her breasts where her bra cupped them. He nibbled his way around there, gently kneading her flesh, until Meg thought she would explode from excitement. ‘Bryce…’ she pleaded, squirming beneath his mouth and hands.
‘Beautiful,’ he murmured against her breast. ‘So perfect.’
Before she could refute such an obvious exaggeration, Bryce’s hot mouth settled over the hardened crest of her breast, his lips opening, his warm, wet tongue advancing to dampen the fabric before he took her nipple fully into his mouth through the thin cotton.
Meg choked out a gasp, her eyes closing as gratification ripped through her. She’d never imagined such a simple act could be so erotic, so mind-numbing. Blindly she reached for Bryce, found his hair and tangled her fingers through it, pulling him closer to her as she arched with a moan that sounded throaty and sexy even to her ears.
His mouth settled more securely on her. His tongue vibrated against her as he answered her moans of ecstasy, the sensation only heightening the intensity of her feelings. It sounded as though an alarm was going off inside her head, a high-pitched pealing sound that joined the rush of her pulse in her ears…
The pealing sound grew more pronounced until Meg began to comprehend reality. The phone was ringing.
Bryce must have come to the same insight. He lifted his head, bringing an end to the delicious things he was doing with his mouth.
‘Ugh,’ Meg said, a nonsensical syllable and she was surprised she had even managed that. She was breathing as though she’d been on a treadmill for half an hour. Not that jogging had ever made her feel this wonderful.
‘Who in the hell…?’ Bryce’s words trailed off in an uncharacteristic epithet that would have made Meg laugh if she wasn’t so crushingly disappointed at being interrupted.