The Boss's Virgin by Charlotte Lamb (i am malala young readers edition .TXT) 📗

then. She had grown up, learnt a lot more about the world. She had been a romantic, wide-eyed, innocent child four years ago. Now she was a woman and Randal Harding was nothing to her.

‘How long have you known your insurance salesman?’ he asked, and she looked up, her heart crashing like an exploding plane as she met those brilliant grey eyes.

How could she keep telling herself he was nothing to her if her body kept betraying her every time she met his eyes? The minute she’d seen him again, the night of the accident, she had been instantly overwhelmed by those old feelings. She had tried to convince herself she had forgotten him, but she had been lying.

‘Four years,’ she said curtly.

‘Since you ran away from me, in other words?’

‘I didn’t run away!’ she crossly denied, resenting the way he put it.

‘You walked?’ he dryly mocked.

‘I just decided to get another job,’ she corrected, her green eyes defying him. How dared he talk to her like that when he was planning to get married again himself? ‘And I found this job with the insurance company, and started working for Tom.’

‘How long before you went out with him?’

She bristled, her face hot, her nerves jumping. ‘Why do you keep on at me like the Inquisition? My private life is nothing to do with you at all.’ It had, in fact, been a very long time before she accepted a date with Tom, but she knew what Randal would make of that confession, so she was not going to admit it.

‘Are you in love with him?’

‘I’m not answering any more questions!’ She leaned over and picked up the coffee pot. ‘I’m going to have some coffee—would you like some?’

‘Please. Black, no sugar.’

She poured the coffee and gave him his cup, took her own cup over to the couch. As she sat down and put her cup on the coffee table in front of her she realised she should have sat down in a chair, but it was too late. Randal had followed her and was sitting down beside her, his long legs stretched out, one thigh touching hers. She would have felt stupid if she had got up and moved to a chair; it would have been some sort of betrayal.

‘If you aren’t in love with him, why are you marrying him?’ he murmured.

‘I didn’t say I wasn’t in love with him!’

‘Ah, but you didn’t say you were! And that was as good as an admission.’

‘I didn’t answer because you had no right to ask the question!’

‘If you were in love, why wouldn’t you want to admit it?’

Conversation with him was like trying to make your way through a minefield. She was terrified of every step. Furiously, she looked round at him, glaring. ‘Will you stop asking me questions?’ But that was a mistake, too, because he was closer than she had realised. She found herself looking into grey eyes which were just inches away, and swallowed convulsively.

‘What’s the matter, Pippa?’ he silkily asked.

‘Nothing! I don’t know what you mean!’ she blustered.

‘Oh, yes, you do,’ he whispered, and before she could back away his head swooped down; his mouth took hers with fierce demand.

She struggled in a desperate effort to get away, but his body shifted to hold her back against the couch, his wide shoulders pinning her down. She pushed him away without making any impact on him at all. He was far too powerful and she was shaking too much to be able to make him shift.

The heat of his mouth was burning her up. Her lips parted, her eyes closed, her pulses beating wildly.

It was like rushing back through time to the day when he last kissed her; she couldn’t think, could only feel, given up entirely to the pleasure and intense sweetness of his mouth on hers, his body lying across her. Her hands went round his neck and closed in his thick, dark hair. The pressure of his chest, his thighs, deepened; his fingers caressed and stroked, moving from her shoulders to her breasts, awakening her body to sensations she had never felt before. She wanted to be naked in his arms, to feel his touch with even more intensity.

From time to time in the last four years she had had dreams like this, woken from deep sleep drowsily, still trembling from the passion of his kiss, lain there crying, aching. She had suppressed the memory of those dreams, refused to think about them, or him, and gradually they had come less often—but they had not stopped entirely, and now they were visiting her again, but this time the dream was reality. This time she was in his arms, giving in to the temptation to kiss him back, to yield.

Randal lifted his mouth slowly to look down at her. Pippa kept her own eyes shut, trembling violently. She dared not meet his stare. She knew what he would be seeing, how she must look to him—weak, flushed, her mouth still parted and swollen from his kisses, still drowning in the desire pulsing through her.

‘Now tell me you love him,’ he huskily challenged.

She forced her eyes open, their pupils distended with passion. ‘I’m going to marry him!’

‘You must be insane. You won’t be happy, either of you. He’ll soon realise you don’t love him and then he’s going to hate you. He’ll feel conned, trapped, and your lives together will be hell.’

‘You don’t know enough about us to make a prophesy like that!’

‘I know about bad marriages,’ he said flatly, and she winced.

‘Just because you had a bad marriage doesn’t mean Tom and I will. We’re very different people. Tom’s sweet and kind and caring, and I wouldn’t hurt him for worlds. I certainly won’t have affairs with other men. I’m not the type.’

‘I could have an affair with you,’ he said huskily, his mouth brushing the soft lobe of her ear, and she shuddered.

‘Don’t kid yourself! You may be vain enough to think you only have