Carole Mortimer - His Scandalous Mistress

She couldn’t do this…

She wouldn’t do this!

‘No, Rogan!’ she gasped, even as she pushed against the hardness of his chest. ‘No!’ she cried again, entangling her fingers in his over-long dark hair and pulling his head back and away from her when her verbal protest had no effect on those questing, arousing lips. ‘No,’ she said again firmly, and she looked up appealingly into the unfocused darkness of his eyes.

Eyes as wild, dark, and dangerous as those of the lethal predator she had initially thought him to be!

The very air between them seemed to crackle with tension, and Elizabeth could only wait tensely to see if her pleas would have any effect. Because if they didn’t then she knew she was seriously in danger, crushed as she was be-tween Rogan and the desk, every hard muscle and sinew of his body imprinted upon her own. There was no way, absolutely no way, that she would be able to physically fight off a man as large and fit as Rogan undoubtedly was. And at this moment, breathing in his scent, still weak from the touch of his hands against the bareness of her flesh, she wasn’t sure that she really wanted to…

She continued to stare up at him for long, timeless seconds, not breathing, not moving, the palms of her hands damp with tension, her legs trembling beneath her.

His jaw clenched even as the fierceness slowly left the dark unfathomable depths of his eyes. He stepped abruptly away from her, the muscles still tense in his back as he turned away from her to smooth the wildness of his hair back from his face and draw deep, controlling breaths into his lungs.

Allowing Elizabeth to draw in a couple of much-needed breaths herself.

What on earth had happened just now? More to the point, how had it happened?

She rarely even dated, let alone allowed men to get close to her in this way. This totally physical way!

She hadn’t exactly allowed Rogan to get close to her; he had just taken the opportunity.

And she had responded…

Responded to that animal magnetism that drew her like a moth to a flame. To the hunger of his lips on hers. To the caress of his hand against the bareness of her skin. To the fierceness of his hard and demanding thighs pressed so intimately against hers…

Elizabeth felt another warm rush of heat between her legs just at remembering the hardness of Rogan’s thighs pressed against the throb of her own arousal. An arousal he had found with unerring accuracy as he rubbed himself against her and took her ever higher, ever nearer to a release she had never known.

She had wanted Rogan just now. Desperately. So much so that she wouldn’t have been able to stop him if he had chosen to continue kissing and touching her. If he had thrown off their clothes before laying her back on the desk and satisfying their desire for one another.

Dear God… !

ROGAN was still breathing raggedly as he turned back to face Elizabeth. ‘Well, that was—’

‘Stupid!’ she supplied forcefully, her cheeks flushed and her eyes brightly accusing, her breasts rapidly rising and falling beneath her blouse in her agitation.

His mouth compressed. ‘I was going to say unexpected… ’

This spiky woman—a lecturer in History who catalogued libraries in her spare time, for heaven’s sake!—simply wasn’t his type. Absolutely not.

Except it had aroused Rogan just to be able to pierce through all that prim self-righteousness. To see this obviously controlled woman totally come apart in his arms…

Rogan lived his life as he wanted. As he chose. And where he chose. With no involvements, emotional or otherwise. That had worked for him for the past fifteen years, and he fully intended for it to continue working for him for the foreseeable future.

Even if Elizabeth Brown had succeeded in getting to him, in breaching his guard, in a way Rogan couldn’t remember any other woman ever doing before…

His mouth thinned. ‘You’re right, it was stupid,’ he ac-knowledged harshly. ‘Let’s just forg—’ He broke off as his mobile began to vibrate against his hip. ‘Excuse me.’ He took the mobile off his belt to take the call—no doubt a telephoned answer to one of the e-mails he had just sent.

Elizabeth didn’t know which of them she was most angry with. Herself for having responded to Rogan in the way she had. Or Rogan for the way he had so readily agreed their behaviour had been stupid.

The latter, probably…

‘Tell her I’ll call her when I have the time,’ Rogan said decisively into his mobile, even as he kept his coldly dark gaze fixed steadily on Elizabeth. ‘I don’t give a damn what she wants, Grant; you can tell her I’ll call her when I’m good and ready!’

Her? Don’t give a damn what she wants? I’ll her call when I’m good and ready…

Rogan couldn’t have told Elizabeth any more clearly that there was already a woman in his life. No doubt a woman who also lived in NewYork. A woman who had believed she could trust Rogan to be apart from her for the few days he would be in England without the fear that he would end up with another woman in his arms.

Another woman who had allowed Rogan to kiss and touch her in a way she had never been kissed and touched before!

‘What did I do wrong now?’

Elizabeth had been so full of self-condemnation for her own gullibility that she hadn’t even realised Rogan had ended his call and was now studying her from between narrowed lids. ‘Who said you had done anything wrong?’ She glared at him.

He scowled. ‘Your disgusted expression said it for you.’

Elizabeth scowled at him. ‘I can’t imagine what makes you think that.’

‘Male intuition?’

‘Men don’t have intuition!’ she flashed back.

‘Ah.’ He grimaced. ‘You’re one of those.’

Her eyes widened. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Rogan shrugged. ‘A man-hater.’

Elizabeth felt heat in her cheeks at the taunt. ‘I don’t hate men.’

‘Just me, hmm?’ he said knowingly.

Elizabeth only wished that she did hate this man. But the truth was just being in the same room with Rogan disturbed her more than any other man ever had. As for being kissed by him, touched by him… !

‘Not at all, Rogan,’she denied coolly. ‘But I had no sooner walked in here and found you using my laptop than you began kissing me—which begs the question, how did you get past my personal security code?’ Elizabeth frowned as she suddenly realised access to her computer was supposed to be protected by that code. Supposed to be. It obviously hadn’t been enough to stop Rogan from accessing it.

So much for Rogan’s thinking that kissing Elizabeth might divert her attention away from the fact that he had been using her laptop earlier!

‘You really don’t want to know.’

Her stance became one of stubborn determination. ‘Oh, I really think I do.’

Rogan smiled nastily. ‘I have a doctorate in Computer Analysis, remember.’

Auburn brows rose challengingly. ‘And that allows you to violate another person’s personal laptop any time you feel like it?’

It actually allowed Rogan to access almost any computer system anywhere in the world any time he felt like it!

He grimaced. ‘More or less.’

Elizabeth folded her arms in front of her chest. ‘How much more or less?’

Elizabeth Brown was dogged as well as intelligent, Rogan acknowledged ruefully. ‘Give me a computer, almost any computer, and I guarantee that in a matter of minutes I will have access to all its stored information.’ He gave an unapologetic smile.

‘Isn’t that illegal?’

Rogan’s smile widened into a hard grin. ‘Some might call it that, yes.’