And he had failed.
More than failed. He’d left her on her own in there.
Nick skidded around the corner into the drawing room. Alex was on her knees, curled into a ball, her arms wrapped aroundher body and the candlestick lying on the ground before her, the flame out.
Crashing to his knees in front of her, Nick grabbed her and pulled her into his embrace. Her hands felt like ice, as he rubbed the skin as if he was trying to summon life itself back into her.
‘Alex? Talk to me.’
For a moment she didn’t reply. Perhaps she couldn’t hear him. Perhaps she didn’t want to. But then, slowly, she seemed to come back to herself.
‘It’s you,’ she whispered, her voice shaking. ‘Oh Nick…I thought…I was so scared. I thought…’
Before he knew what was happening, she surged forward to kiss him, her hands pulling free so they could tangle in his hair and close on his shoulders. Her kiss stole his reason, just as it had before. His reason and his will. She was all he wanted. She was all he had ever wanted.
Had Sally known it would be like this? Had Theo? Had it been like this for the two of them? Was that why he had tried to warn Nick off? Or had he meant Chambers?
And here in this house, right now, in the middle of a storm, with the power gone and the spirits of the place on the rise, was the wrong time and the wrong place. But he didn’t care. How could he care?
Alex held him, kissed him with all the focused intention that he had dreamed of since the first moment he laid eyes on her.
She pushed the wet jacket off his shoulders and slid it down his arms. His t-shirt went next, pulled up and over his head to expose his torso to her exploratory hands.
‘Alex, slow down,’ he tried to say, but she bit the words from his mouth.
‘I don’t want to slow down,’ she said, the smile a torment. ‘I want you. Just you. We have unfinished business. You owe me, Nick Walker.’
Firelight glittered in her eyes as she pulled off her clothes. Such reckless abandon. It stole his voice, stole his reason.
‘Do you want this?’ she asked, so simply. ‘Do you want me?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Well then.’ She smiled and opened his jeans, pushing him back so she could free his cock. Nick gave in and struggled out of the restrictive clothes. It was like breathing again.
Because he did want this, more than anything. Maybe even more than he had ever wanted anyone else. He didn’t just want Alex. He needed her.
A moment later his breath caught in his throat as Alex’s mouth sank onto his shaft. He groaned out her name, unable to help himself. She was softness and warmth, her teeth grazing ever so gently against his most sensitive skin, drawing out his pleasure and leaving him helpless, needing, wanting, a creature of pleasure and nothing else.
He fought to focus and glanced down to find her looking up at him, her eyes wicked with reflected desire.
Not her eyes, something in the back of his mind tried to tell him. Those weren’t her eyes. They were dark and endless, glimmering with firelight.
Her hands claimed him again and he couldn’t fight her. He didn’t want to.
Alex pushed his helpless body back onto the carpet. Both of them were naked now and he couldn’t tell anyone how that had happened. It had been a flurry of fingers and fabric and then they were twined together again. Breath on skin, lips and teeth and need, so much need. She dragged her body up the length of him and settled herself astride him, pinning him down.
‘Tell me you’re mine,’ she said. Her voice trembled with desire.
‘Alex… are you… are you all right?’
Was she? Was he? This was all so overwhelming. He didn’t want it to stop. But he wasn’t sure he had any kind of control over what was happening. It felt…primordial.
And God, the hunger in him was almost out of control, but something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. The heat of the flames brushed over his body, and it was all he could do not to lose himself completely, to flip her over and take her like some kind of animal, all ravenous hunger and wild desire.
‘Say you want me,’ she whispered.
‘I do. Of course, I do but?—’
