Carole Mortimer Romance Collection

She didn’t know how she did, she just knew, as her body and senses responded to his caresses, that she had never stopped loving him. In spite of it all, she loved him! He was the reason she had never been able to feel any emotion stronger than liking for any other man.

She pulled away from him with a choked sob. ‘Stop it, Wolf,’ she told him shakily, pushing at his chest. ‘I don’t want this.’

‘I need this!’ he claimed determinedly, his head lowering to hers once again.

She was too weakened by his closeness to protest this time when his mouth claimed hers, his lips sipping and tasting, his tongue dipping and caressing, and her arms moved up about his neck as she pulled him down to her.

It had always been like this between them, this wild racing of pulses, this wild cry of every nerve-ending for the caresses that would drive them towards the edge of fulfilment.

Wolf was filled with the same sense of urgency as his hands roamed restlessly over her body and the kiss deepened and lengthened, the pulsing of his thighs telling her of that need he had claimed only minutes earlier.

God, how she loved the feel of his hair beneath her fingertips, those fingers becoming entwined in the long silky blondness as she held him against her, the tip of her tongue meeting the quest of his in answering longing.

What was she doing? What was Wolf doing? This was wrong, so very wrong, for both of them! It hadn’t worked out between them seven years ago, wouldn’t work out now either, and Cyn knew she had no intention of becoming just another conquest to Wolf. And she could never be anything else. Had never been anything else, not really— Was that why he was doing this, because she had been the one to end things between them all those years ago? God, she was so stupid...!

She wrenched away from him, his fingers biting painfully into her arms preventing her from moving away from him completely, his expression slightly dazed as he looked down at her questioningly; and no wonder, for seconds ago she had been pliantly aroused in his arms!

‘What’s the matter, Wolf?’ she said scornfully. ‘Can’t you be without a woman in your life for more than a couple of hours?’

He blinked, his brain still slightly fogged by the passion they had shared only seconds ago. ‘What—?’

‘Your fiancеe had gone away for the weekend last night, so you invited not one woman but two to join you for dinner!’ Cyn accused disgustedly. ‘Now today, when it seems Rebecca’s panicked completely and called off the wedding, you don’t go chasing after her claiming your undying love for her and trying to convince her the two of you do have a future together—oh, no, you come to my cottage and try to make love to me. It seems to me Rebecca’s had a lucky escape!’ As she had, she told herself angrily.

Wolf’s hands dropped away from her arms as if he had been burned, the dazed expression replaced by chilling anger as he listened to her scathing words.

But Cyn was beyond caring about how he felt about what she was saying. This anger wasn’t only for Rebecca, but for herself too, for all the past pain Wolf had given her, and all the heartache she knew was yet to come; getting over Wolf this time was going to be much harder than it had been the first time!

‘Now get out of here, Wolf,’ she told him with steady dignity. ‘Get out, and stay out!’

‘You’re twisting things round to suit what you want to believe,’ he rasped harshly, his mouth a taut line, his jaw tightly clenched.

‘I want to believe you’re going out of that door!’ Her eyes flashed deeply violet.

‘Cyn—’

‘Why don’t you ask yourself why I want to believe those things, Wolf?’ she challenged, her eyes over-bright with unshed tears; she would not cry in front of him, she wouldn’t! ‘It’s because I don’t want you here. I’ll never want you here. I don’t want you!’ The last came out slightly shrill as she willed him to go away, knowing she didn’t have the physical strength or ability to actually make him go if he chose not to. But why should he want to stay somewhere he so obviously wasn’t wanted?

His eyes glittered ominously, his face looking as if it were etched from granite at that moment. ‘We have to talk—’

‘We have nothing to say to each other,’ she snapped tautly. ‘Go and cry on some other woman’s shoulder!’ Barbara’s. She had always been more than willing to listen to his problems. And anything else he chose to tell her.

Wolf’s mouth tightened. ‘As you’ve already pointed out, I’m hardly in a desperate state about the wedding being called off,’ he rasped grimly. ‘And that’s because—’

‘You didn’t love her!’ Cyn finished accusingly. ‘I already knew that. You’re incapable of loving anyone! That’s why I—’ She broke off as she realised she had been about to admit to having encouraged Rebecca to think very seriously before she committed herself to a marriage she wasn’t sure of; that would be all the ammunition Wolf needed to rip her to pieces!

‘Yes?’ Wolf prompted, silkily soft.

Her cheeks were no longer pale now but darkly flushed. ‘Why I didn’t marry you myself seven years ago!’ she substituted defiantly, knowing by the icy glitter to his eyes now that he was absolutely furious. Well, so was she, dammit, furious at the way he had thought he could just walk back into her life—and her bed!

‘All right, Cyn,’ he ground out harshly, a nerve pulsing in his rigidly clenched jaw, ‘I’ll go. But if I ever find out you were instrumental in Rebecca’s sudden flight I’ll—’

Cyn never found out exactly what he would do to her if he realised she had spoken to Rebecca—although she could surely guess!—because at that moment he turned with forceful strides towards the door, obviously forgetting the low height of the ceiling, as he cracked his head on one of the beams, while at the same time seeming to catch his foot on something too as he went sprawling across the room, narrowly missing hitting his head again, this time on the dresser that stood against the far wall.

It was all over in a matter of seconds, and Cyn could only stand by helplessly as she watched the series of events, totally baffled as to what had actually happened—although she moved quickly enough once she realised Wolf wasn’t about to get immediately back up on to his feet.

He lay on the carpet lengthways across the room, and part of her marvelled at the fact that he had actually managed to avoid crashing into any of the furniture, the small two-seater sofa behind him, the coffee-table in front of him. Not that she thought he was going to be in the least grateful for that—when, or if, he got up.

Cyn quickly moved the coffee-table out of the way, going down on her knees beside Wolf. His eyes were closed, and he still wasn’t moving. Oh, God, he hadn’t been knocked out, had he? What were you supposed to do with someone who was knocked out? Perhaps she should telephone for an ambulance? For a doctor, at least?

But when she picked up the receiver to dial the emergency number it was to discover the line was dead. And no amount of pressing down on the connection made any difference to that eerie silence.

‘You’re wasting your time with that; it’s what I tripped over!’

The harshness of Wolf’s voice in the otherwise silent room almost made Cyn drop the receiver and fall over herself. She turned to him with wide eyes, relieved to see he was now sitting up, at least. But from the grim expression on his face, he couldn’t see anything to feel relieved about!

She put down the useless receiver. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘How—!’ He drew in a controlling breath, shooting her an impatient glare. ‘How the hell do you think I’m feeling, with half a mile of telephone line wrapped around my ankle!’

That was when Cyn saw what he had meant by his first remark; her telephone line wasn’t just wrapped around his ankle, he had actually ripped the socket out of the wall. No wonder the line had been dead just now. So much for calling him a doctor!

‘I was trying to get help for you—I don’t think you should move until a doctor has looked at you,’ she told him quickly as he seemed to be trying to get to his feet. Trying, because he didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of it; he was obviously in pain somewhere as he gave a low groan. ‘You were only unconscious for a few moments,’ she acknowledged as she put her hand on his shoulder to stop him from moving any further. ‘But it was long enough to—’

‘I wasn’t unconscious at all, Cyn,’ Wolf rasped, the expression in his eyes no longer just impatient; the furious glitter was back in the golden depths. ‘I was lying down here with my eyes closed counting up to a hundred so that I didn’t immediately strangle you for the fact that you always did like a mile of telephone line so that you could move from room to room while you talked on the telephone!’

She moved back as if she had been stung, colour darkening her cheeks as she remembered the fact—as Wolf obviously did too!—that seven years ago he had had to call in an engineer to his apartment to put in a longer telephone line after she had ‘moved from room to room as she talked on the telephone’ and pulled the wire from the socket several times and disconnected her calls. It was disconcerting to realise this man knew her so well...

‘Obviously you only need half a mile of extra line in this doll’s house,’ Wolf continued disgustedly, having managed to untangle the line from his leg now, and impatiently throwing it to one side. ‘But it’s still enough for me to have almost broken my neck on it!’

Cyn didn’t think now was the time to tell him that this was a cottage, that they were supposed to be small. Character, the estate agent’s blurb had called it, and she happened to like it exactly as it was.

All of which was totally irrelevant to what had just happened, she accepted ruefully. If it had been anyone else but Wolf...!

But of course it wouldn’t have been—would it?—not the way her luck had been going lately. If things had been going her way at all at the moment Wolf wouldn’t have turned out to be Rebecca Harcourt’s fiancе in the first place, and then she wouldn’t have met him again at all.

Not that that was really relevant either; she had met him again, and he was now prostrate on her sitting-room floor—apparently unable to get up again, she realised with horror, as he attempted to move and could only give that pained groan once again.

Cyn was on her knees beside him, looking him over worriedly; it seemed as if they were going to need a doctor after all. ‘Where does it hurt?’ she frowned. ‘Is it your head?’

‘My head just has a lump on it—the size of an egg!’ he muttered with a pained wince after he had put up a hand to the side of his head and discovered the lump there. ‘But maybe that will have knocked some sense into me—at last!’ he grated, glaring at her once again. ‘It’s my ankle that seems to be preventing me from getting up.’ He shook his head with self-disgust at his inability to be able to do such a simple thing as get to his feet.

Cyn looked down at the injured ankle, inconsequentially noting as she did so that both Wolf’s socks were black; obviously he was no longer ever so distracted that he put on odd socks. She knew it was a stupid thing for her to have even noticed, but it was nevertheless yet another indication that this man wasn’t the Wolf she had known in the past; unless she had been there to remind him, that Wolf had often—as he had told her at their very first meeting that he did—gone out with odd socks on.

‘I solved that particular problem by buying all black socks,’ Wolf spoke gruffly as he obviously guessed her thoughts.

She gave him a sharp look, quickly looking away again at the rueful humour she saw in his eyes. ‘I’m sure that’s more sensible, with all those dark business suits you wear,’ she dismissed abruptly. The Wolf of the past had never been sensible. But then that Wolf hadn’t worn business suits either, would have dismissed any suggestion that he should do so.

Once again Cyn wondered what had happened to him during the last seven years. And she refused to believe, no matter what he had said to the contrary, that it had anything to do with her; nothing she could have done would ever have turned him into a businessman. And she wouldn’t have wanted it to. She had been proud of his painting, so sure he was going to succeed.