Miranda Lee - Modern Romance - The Best of the Year

‘You want me,’ Acheron breathed a little raggedly. ‘I want you.’

‘Weird, isn’t it...? I mean, we can’t even be civil to each other,’ Tabby pronounced shakily, still as out of breath as he was, recalling that wild entanglement and the fierce need he had sent powering through her and then suppressing the uncomfortable memory before standing up, smoothing down her dress with careful hands.

‘Yet you burn me up, hara mou,’ Acheron breathed huskily, springing upright with easy grace.

Tabby turned her head away. ‘Let’s not talk about that...you and me? It would be a very bad idea. We have as much in common as a cat and a dog. I’d like to see my room,’ she completed, moving back with determination towards the hall.

‘I’ll show you. We’ve frightened off the staff,’ Acheron volunteered with an unconcerned laugh. ‘I think that noise was someone bringing us coffee and we were seen.’

‘Yes, I can imagine what they saw,’ Tabby cut in stiltedly, wishing he would drop the subject.

‘Well, that’s at least one person who will believe that we’re genuine honeymooners,’ Acheron replied nonchalantly, refusing to take the hint as he led the way up the marble staircase.

‘But we’re not,’ she reminded him doggedly.

‘You’re not a very flexible personality, are you?’

‘You’d roll me out like pastry if I was,’ Tabby quipped. ‘I’m still mad at you, Acheron. You took advantage of my ignorance.’

‘I’m an alpha male, programmed at birth to take advantage,’ Acheron pointed out with unapologetic cool. ‘But you called me on it, which I wasn’t expecting.’

He pushed open double doors at the end of the corridor and exposed a small hall containing two doors. ‘That’s my room.’ He thrust open one door and then the second. ‘And yours...’

Tabby worried at her full lower lip. ‘Do we have to be so close?’

‘I don’t sleepwalk,’ Acheron murmured silkily. ‘But you’re very welcome if you choose to visit.’

‘I won’t be doing that.’ Tabby strolled in the big room, glancing into the en suite that led off and then into a dressing room to slide open a wardrobe, only to frown at the garments packed within. ‘Didn’t your last girlfriend take her clothes with her?’

‘Those are yours. I ordered them,’ Acheron explained. ‘You’ll need summer clothes here.’

Tabby spun back to study him with simmering violet eyes. ‘I’m not a dress-up doll.’

‘But you know that all I want to do is undress you, moraki mou.’

Tabby went pink again and compressed her lips.

‘You blush like a bonfire,’ Acheron remarked with sudden amusement as he strode off to make use of another door on the opposite side of the room that evidently led to his suite.

Tabby thought about turning the lock and then decided it would be petty, for surprisingly on that level she trusted him and had no fear that he might try to take what she was not prepared to offer. If she withstood his appeal, she was quite certain he would withstand hers and find some far more amusing and experienced quarry to pursue. Unfortunately, she didn’t like the idea of him with another woman in the slightest and she told herself off for that because she knew she couldn’t have it both ways. Either they were together or they were not; there was no halfway stage to explore.

Acheron stripped off for a cold shower. He was still ragingly erect and wondering when a woman had last turned him down. He couldn’t remember, and the shock of Tabby’s steely resolve still rankled. But it was a timely warning to steer clear, he reflected impatiently, his sensual mouth twisting as he stifled the urge to fantasise about having her tiny body wrapped round him while he satisfied them both. If she attached that much importance to sex, he definitely didn’t want to get involved because sex meant no more to him than an appetite that required regular satisfaction.

Tabby rifled through the new wardrobe he had acquired for her without even mentioning his intent. She tugged out a long cotton dress that looked cool and, more importantly, covered up anything that she imagined a man might find tempting. If he kept his hands off her, she would keep her hands off him. She worried at her lower lip with her teeth. She had wanted to rip his clothes off him on that sofa, and the incredible strength of the hunger he had awakened still shocked her in retrospect. But nothing more was going to happen, nothing, she stressed inwardly with more force than cool. She could handle him, of course she could. He might be a very rich, very good-looking and very manipulative male but she had always had a good gut instinct about how best to look after herself.

Buoyed up by that knowledge, Tabby got changed, freshened up and went off to find out where the nursery had been set up.

CHAPTER SIX

‘IT’S TIME YOU told me something about yourself,’ Acheron declared, settling back into his seat and cradling his wineglass in one elegant hand.

Tabby was ill at ease. The grand dining room and the table festooned with flowers and fancy dishes for the first meal they were to share as a married couple made her feel like Cinderella arriving at the ball without a prince on hand to claim her. He had watched her watching him to see which cutlery to use, and the awareness had embarrassed her, making her wish that she had never confessed her ignorance. ‘What sort of something?’

Acheron raised an ebony brow. ‘Let’s be basic—your background?’

He was so relaxed that he infuriated her, sheathed in tight faded denim jeans and a black shirt left undone at the throat. She had assumed he would dress up for dinner much as aristocrats seemed to do on television shows and, if she was honest, that was probably why she had picked the long dress. But instead of dressing up, Acheron had dressed down and, maddeningly, he still looked amazing, black hair curling a little from the shower, stubborn jaw line slightly rough with dark stubble, lustrous dark eyes pinned to her with uncompromising intensity and she couldn’t read him, couldn’t read him at all, hadn’t a clue what he was thinking about.

‘My background’s not pretty,’ she warned him.

He shrugged a shoulder in dismissal of that objection.

Tabby clenched her teeth and stiffened her backbone. ‘I imagine my conception was an accident. My parents weren’t married. My mother once told me they were going to give me up for adoption until they discovered that having a child meant they could get better housing and more benefits out of the welfare system. They were both druggies.’

Acheron no longer seemed quite so relaxed and he sat forward with a sudden frown. ‘Addicts?’

‘I warned you that it wasn’t pretty. Their drug of choice was whatever was cheapest and most easily available. They weren’t parents in the normal sense of the word, and I don’t think they were even that keen on each other because they had terrible fights. I was simply the child who lived with them,’ Tabby proffered tightly. ‘And I got in the way...frequently because children have needs and they didn’t meet them.’

Acheron forced his shoulders back into the chair, his astonishment at what she had told him concealed by his impassive expression. He almost told her then and there in a revelation that would have been unprecedented for him that they had much more in common than a cat and a dog.

‘Have you heard enough?’ Tabby enquired hopefully.

‘I want to hear it all,’ Acheron contradicted levelly, slowly comprehending the base level of painful isolation and insecurity from which that chippy, aggressive manner of hers had undoubtedly been forged. Tabby had been forced at an early age to learn to fight for her survival, and that he understood.