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never begged!’

      ‘Then perhaps it’s high time you did. Shall I make you beg this afternoon, my love?’

      Serina knew she had to fight the insidious desires that were already invading her. For if she gave in to what he wanted…

      She shuddered to think of the consequences, both to her life and her future happiness. Not to mention the happiness of her child.

      ‘How can you possibly put words like love and beg in the same sentence?’ she argued fiercely. ‘You have no idea what love is, Nicolas Dupre. You never really loved me. I meant no more to you than your piano. I was just an instrument to be mastered. You practised making love to me the way you used to practise your scales. Till your technique was perfect. But you never cared for me enough to make me any kind of priority. Your career always came first. When our relationship became difficult, you chose your career over me and moved on.You did the same thing when fate intervened and cut short your concert career.You moved on. Very successfully, too.Yet if you’d truly loved playing the piano, that accident would have come close to destroying you. But it didn’t, did it? You rose again, like the Phoenix, and made an even greater success of your life. Which is commendable in a way. But it shows a certain ruthlessness of character, which I know I can’t live with. Or love.’

      Her stomach contracted a little at this last lie. Because, of course, she did love Nicolas. Always had and always would. But the other things she’d just said weren’t lies. He was not the kind of man a woman could rely on to make her happy. Serina hadn’t reached the age of thirty-six without becoming a reasonable judge of character.

      Nicolas was selfish and self-centred. He might not have come back for revenge, but he had come back to win. She was the one who’d got away. That was why he’d been so angry with her at his mother’s funeral. Because she’d rejected him, not once but twice. A man like Nicolas didn’t take rejection lightly, a fact made obvious by the expression on his face.

      ‘So you won’t give me another chance,’ he said grimly.

      ‘I don’t see any point, Nicolas. Your life is in New York, or London, or wherever your latest show is being staged. My life is here, in Rocky Creek, with my daughter and my family. We have nothing in common anymore, not even the piano.’

      ‘We have this in common, Serina,’ he growled, and in the twinkling of any eye, he captured her startled face in his hands and swooped with his mouth.

      No! She might have screamed aloud if she’d been able to scream. But actual screaming was impossible with his lips clamped to hers and his tongue already pushing past her teeth. All she could manage was a low groan, which sounded more like the sound of surrender than any kind of protest.

      It was a brutal kiss, punishing and powerful, demanding and devouring, irrefutable and irresistible.

      Serina knew, soon after Nicolas started kissing her, that she didn’t have a hope in Hades of resisting him. Her body had always had a mind of its own when it came to Nicolas. From the first moment he’d touched her, she’d been his. Whenever they’d made love, he’d evoked feelings in her—both physically and emotionally—that had both consumed and enthralled her. Being with him had quickly become an obsession and an addiction, which only the tyranny of distance had put a halt to. Whenever he’d come home, she’d been there, waiting for him.

      So when his head finally lifted, she didn’t bother to voice any further protest. She just looked up into his eyes and said breathily, ‘All right, Nicolas. You win. I’ll go to bed with you one more time. But that will be the end of it,’ she added before he could look too triumphant. ‘The end of us. There will be no more.’

      ‘Are you quite sure of that, Serina?’ he murmured, his hands turning soft and seductive around her face.

      ‘Quite sure,’ she lied in steely tones…

CHAPTER NINE

      NICOLAS was taken aback by Serina’s tough stance. This wasn’t the girl he remembered. She would have just melted into his arms and agreed with whatever he wanted.

      But then he remembered the Serina who’d come to him that night at the Opera House. She’d melted all right. For a while. But she’d solidified quickly enough after she’d had what she wanted.

      ‘So it’s just sex you want from me again, Serina,’ he growled, his fingertips tightening on the soft skin of her flushed cheeks.

      Something flickered through her large brown eyes. A momentary shame, perhaps. But she didn’t look away. Her gaze stayed steady, and strong.

      ‘That’s all you’re good for, Nicolas,’ came her stunningly hurtful words.

      He did his best not to show any visible distress, finding a slow smile from somewhere. ‘If you think insults can save you, Serina, then think again. I haven’t come all this way to go home without seeing the way you look when you come. And I will make you beg for it this time, sweetheart.’

      Her eyes glittered wildly in return. ‘You’ll be the one doing the begging, lover,’ she spat back at him.

      His fingers slid down to caress her throat. ‘Is that a challenge?’

      ‘It’s a promise.’

      His eyes narrowed whilst hot blood rushed along his veins. ‘I suggest you ring that daughter of yours and let her know that you won’t be home by four,’ he snarled.

      ‘And I suggest you stop making suggestions and just drive!’

      As Nicolas glowered down into her flushed but feisty face, it came to him that the adult Serina was exciting him much more than the teenage girl ever had. Or even the wildly frustrated creature who’d come to him that night thirteen years ago.

      She was a woman now, he saw, more experienced and confident. More… interesting.

      He smiled again.

      ‘Excellent idea,’ he pronounced, and turned his attention to doing exactly what she’d suggested. Thirty seconds later, he was whizzing along the Oxley Highway, pushing the speed limit to the max as he sped towards their destination.

      Serina leant back in the passenger seat and turned her head away to stare blankly through the passenger window.

      She’d done it now. Not only had she agreed to have sex with him again, but she’d also challenged him and provoked him.

      Nicolas was not the sort of person one challenged, or provoked. As a teenager he’d been one angry young man, with tunnel vision and a quick temper. He’d hated being teased. Hated anyone who told him he couldn’t do something. As an adult male, she had no doubt that, down deep, he wouldn’t have changed all that much.

      But it was too late now. It had been too late the second he leant over and kissed her. There was nothing to do but to go through with what she’d agreed to. Which, of course, she secretly wanted. She wanted it so much she was already trembling inside.

      Suddenly, and with typical female thinking, Serina was glad that she’d taken trouble with her appearance today. Glad she’d shaved her legs last night and painted her nails, and worn a pretty set of lingerie under her new dress.

      Not that she’d be wearing any of it for long. Nicolas had never been fond of making love under or around clothes. Her accusation earlier that Nicolas was wicked was probably right. But if he was wicked then so was she. She felt wicked now—and terribly turned on.

      The next fifteen minutes went agonisingly slowly, despite Nicolas not keeping to the speed limit. Once he reached the outer parts of Port Macquarie, however, the traffic forced him down to sixty, his frustrated mutterings echoing her own feelings.

      ‘I’m not stopping anywhere for lunch,’ he growled once he turned the corner that led into the main street of Port. ‘I don’t want to waste any of the miserably short period of time I have with you.’

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