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CHAPTER 1
“I’ll drink my Champagne like a man. No’ like some silly lass sipping at pish with her nose scrunched and her wee pinkie wagging in the air!”
The male pronouncement boomed loud in the room.
Elaine looked hard at the indignant face of her nemesis of seven long years. But she wasn’t the least intimidated, either by his towering height, or by the heavy timber of his voice thickening into a brogue, which was proof of his lost equilibrium.
She was dressed in an old pair of jeans and a sunny top, and had come downstairs to the twilight room after attending an important call from New York, only to find him gulping down mouthfuls of McBain House’s best Champagne straight from the bottle – much like an uncivilized brute he always appeared with the scowl he’d reserved just for her.
The refined cut of his dove grey suit did nothing to tone down the potent rawness of his bold stature. Everything about him was too overwhelming. His eyes, on that chiselled face, blazed with a glint of blue. He had hairs so deep a brown, they appeared black if not in light of day. But this darkness paled before the blackness of his heart.
And Elaine, decked in her own high angry colour was fuming right back at him. Her creamy skin was tinged with pink indignation. Every delicate feature on her face complementing her svelte figure of five feet three inches was tense in that moment; and hair the hue of brewed chocolate were setting off amber eyes that sparked with contempt for him.
She’d come to Scotland for a breath of fresh air, a change of scene, whatever one might call it before she turned a new leaf in her pitiful life.
But it hadn’t even been a full twenty-four hours yet when Trevor McBain, the bane of her life, had followed her here as well.
His toxic presence effectively contaminated her delight in the untouched, rugged beauty of the Scottish Highlands. Seeing him here had sucked all the fun out of her stay at this imposing mansion in the lap of the great mountains.
“What are you doing here?” She tried to keep a levelled voice, which was in itself a big feat since he never failed to bring her dander up.
He looked her down with an imperious glare.
From his height, it certainly wasn’t hard for him to make someone feel small. And it rankled Elaine. Sometimes she got this bloodthirsty urge to chop his legs from the knees. But she feared, even then, he would tower over many – including her.
“Do I have tae remind you whose roof yer standing under?” He asked of her, reeking with arrogance. “This place for generations had belonged tae my family.”
He moved a little too close for her comfort, palling the welcoming warmth of the great hall with its opulent tangerine walls. “And besides, I should be putting that question tae, you.” The hand holding the Champagne pointed one clean masculine finger to the tip of her nose.
Elaine watched him take yet another infuriating swig from the bottle before continuing, “So, waif, what are you doing here?”
Waif. It rang over and over in her ears. She should have known he would throw that in her face. He had never missed an opportunity to remind her that she had been nothing more than white trash before his mother took her in, bringing her from a run-down orphanage, a children’s home, to a real home. It hurt to hear that word. Even a lifetime of hearing it wouldn’t lessen her pain.
She needed to strike back. This self-righteous… Pig!
“Why? Is my presence an impediment? Were you planning to bring here some unsuspecting girl so you could mutilate her trust? Maybe heap humiliation she’d never be able to forget for the rest of her life.” Elaine huffed through her nose in disgust. “Apparently, generations of impeccable breeding could not guarantee a lineage free of scoundrels.”
“What the hell are you talking ‘bout?”
Elaine thought he was very convincing as a clueless man. But she knew him too well. She wouldn’t waste her breath and give him the satisfaction of having bought his act.
“You’ll answer me.” Trevor sneered into her face. Nonetheless, he realised quick enough she wouldn’t be cowed.
“If this is ‘bout that night,” his gaze sharpened, “then you doona have tae make up stories. I was drunk, but no’ that drunk.”
“Oh, really?” Elaine’s eyes had accusation in them, but her next rejoinder came over a cold, blithe shrug. “If that’s the excuse you use to help you forget and sleep at night.”
If the killing glare he was shooting her was anything to go by, then it became needless to say her barb had struck right where it counted most.
Well, good! She was seething equally inside. And after the phone call she received earlier, it felt as though her world was coming to an end. And Elaine blamed him.
He was the cause of all her miseries.
Oh, how she hated him! All the pain in her heart rose to brim as though raked to bleed openly. It exhumed ghosts of those aphrodisiac dreams where his long lazy kisses, breathy strokes had kindled hopes of an innocent, inexperienced girl.
Trevor might not have given her florid words then, but his body had spoken how much he needed her, cared for her. Wave after wave of dizzying pleasure he gave Elaine that night were like an unspoken promise to love her for ever.
Lies! All lies.
Elaine shuddered, those pictures were seared in her mind as if they were from yesterday.
She had believed what she wanted to believe with the starry, desperate, pathetic naivety of an innocent girl with her first infatuation. In return, she’d got what such an offense deserved – hurt and humiliation galore. And along died her happiness and dreams of love.
A torrent of strong, fierce emotion threatened to drown Elaine. She felt disoriented, unable to distinguish past from present. Lost to what she really wanted.
She wanted to hurl in his face the shards of her broken heart. She wanted him to take her in his arms, kiss her as if the hatred, the petty squabbling of the long years had been nothing but a bad dream – shake her up from this nightmare.
If he hadn’t.. If she weren’t in..
The turmoil churning within her was proving beyond her control. And before she could judge the wisdom of her next action, her hands from either side lifted of their own volition to grab hold of his lapels.
“You.. stupid, stupid Scot.” With that rasped epithet she pulled his big, tall frame down to meet her mouth.
It was a catastrophic mistake. The mere touch of his warm lips set her adrift, uprooting all anchors. It opened a gateway of despair that brought back empty nights and lonely days she’d spent striving to bury her longing for him.
The dull thunk of the Champagne bottle hitting the expensive carpet was the last thing of the world about her she registered. Trevor’s violent, fervid response blew her off her feet.
Solid arms crushed her to him, leaving Elaine no choice but to link her hands up and round him to hold him closer for balance. The mouth opening over hers was rough in its demand. Still, she pressed back, wanting more, the force of his invasion grinding their teeth together.
Molten heat from his tongue flowing down her insides thawed to life the lust and passion she had let freeze in her until now.
Her breasts thrummed and ached to be soothed. They wanted his rowdy hands, that electric tongue on them so much, it was unbearable. When he nipped at the soft inside of her bottom lip, beads adorning those perfect globes hardened, begging their share in his attention.
Trevor tilted her jaw higher, gaining better access to her kiss, increasing the thrilling pressure, and Elaine just helplessly complied. Too much of him was inundating her. Even the air coming into her lungs was drawn from his fired breaths caressing her face. It sapped her of her will.
This weakness to his mere touch had always been her downfall. No one had ever come close to what he could do to her with it. Elaine’s one and only intimate knowledge of sex between two people had come from him. It was he, who had ever stoked and fed this consuming fire within her.
But while she had lost everything of hers in the biggest gamble of her life, his prize in that game had been her virginity.
In her twenty-third year, Elaine was still not a day more experienced than she was at the time of her first sexual awakening. And this inadequacy she’d never regretted more since it rendered her innately vulnerable and susceptible to his prowess. Which, he was unbeknownst exploiting to his advantage now.
Trevor played havoc to her senses, and Elaine was drifting like a twig in the dark currents of lust.
Only when her back touched a wall, did she realise they had moved.
As his hands seizing her waist brought their straining hips into fuller contact, her quivering breasts blatantly rubbed against the cool wide expanse of his suit, the suit that sinfully covered every inch of this tall, gorgeous man of well over six feet.
It frustrated her, the barrier their clothes proved. She wanted more, more to melt in him, over him, skin to skin.
Elaine ran her fingers through the silken waves of his hair. He had taken possession of her in the tight circle of his one arm, while the other slid a kneading hand down to her round bottom. Even through the cover of her sturdy jeans, she could feel its impression leave her flesh branded there.
An answering heat gushed her core, eliciting a whimper of ecstasy too long denied her.
Trevor’s groan of approval reverberated in her mouth. It rippled all the way down her spine so acutely, she couldn’t prevent her nails from clawing into the powerful lines of his shoulders.
Not a hair’s breadth separated the two. He kept her pinned between the wall and his solid frame. But then there was no other place Elaine wished more to be. When his hand undid the button on her jeans, pulled the zip down, and stole inside her scarlet panty, trailing to the nub of her desire for him, she knew what he would find.
Slick, soft core clenched for his touch.
And when he gave it a delicious glide of his finger to savour, uhmmph..God.. Elaine was never this short on breath.
Thoughts clamoured in her mind, but nothing made sense.
Mercifully, he released her mouth, leaving it to pant in the fire of her own arousal. Though soon, he found another sensitive spot in the delicate curve of her neck and shoulder to tease.
His mouth.. Oh, that hand. She was falling headlong into a salacious ravine as Trevor’s fingers wove gossamer spell at the apex of her legs, spread apart by one of his strong thighs wedged in-between.
This languid joy, her pleasure, however, wasn’t simple and unaffected. Something close to a frantic haste, which Elaine couldn’t decipher, was prodding her to snap out of this dream she was so loath to abandon.
Why? She thought. Why there was this sense of wrong, an impending doom, when everything felt so good and right?
“Christ, Elaine, you still feel like liquid heat in my arms.” His lust thickened growl penetrated her desire hazed mind to hit in the dead centre of her consciousness.
Her eyes flew open.
The grand twilight hall with its domed ceiling and beautifully panelled walls, under the onslaught of her tumultuous past with this man closed in on her. It cooled within seconds every last vestige of her unwise, rekindled yearning for him.
Oh, how did I allow this to happen?
Tears threatened to betray the weakness she’d always struggled to hide where he was concerned.
No, she hadn’t shed one tear then – at least not in front of any audience – and she wouldn’t shed one now. It was all because of that phone call that she was so out of sorts!
Elaine pushed at him as hard as she could manage to with him plastered to her. It seemed Trevor didn’t feel a thing. She tried again, somehow, harder this time. Her haphazard wiggling, coupled with a spatter of girly punches must have finally made a mark, since he loosened his hold and let her step away from him.
“What the-”
Before he could complete his sentence, Elaine hurled at him, “I hate you, Trevor McBain!”
A dam of resentment threatened to explode inside Elaine, wanting to recount him all the ways he had ever wounded her. But her dependable pride once again came to her rescue. Though how long it could withstand the battering of her turbulent emotions that was uncertain.
And Elaine would rather die, than let Trevor know he held such power over her. He had ruined her once, but if things repeated themselves to end the way it did the last time, then nothing could save her. She would be destroyed for ever.
Elaine couldn’t look him in the eye. Not right this minute, so she whirled on her heels and swept out of the hall.
Some would consider it cowardly. But she trusted in the wisdom of the old saying, live today, fight tomorrow.
Brilliant Strategy, one she was only too happy to adopt.
***
Elaine might have believed herself safe behind the barred doors of her own room, but the man left standing down in the hall was struggling, only a trigger away from tearing after her. Every fibre in him was screaming to take what was his.
Things her body had told Trevor just now, couldn’t be lies.
She had wanted this. Elaine had wanted him.
*****