LITMIR.BIZ

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pulsating and spilling into her for what felt like for ever.

      * * *

      As hot sexual encounters went that one hadn’t quite delivered on its promise, thought Lily, her heart thumping, her breathing skittery and her body twitching and aching with unfulfilled desire while Kit collapsed against her.

      But that was OK. She didn’t have to be up until seven and she had plenty of experience at recovering after burning the candle at both ends. Later she had a ten-hour plane ride during which she could catch up on sleep, and Kit spending the rest of the night making it up to her would be well worth any fatigue she suffered.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Kit muttered, his voice muffled against her neck.

      ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said softly, stroking the back of his neck and smiling at the thought of what was to come.

      ‘How could I not worry about it? That hasn’t happened to me since I was sixteen. I didn’t even take my coat off.’

      A sense of pride surged up inside her at the memory of how keen he’d been. ‘Anyone would think it’s been a while.’

      ‘Anyone would be right.’

      ‘Really? How long?’ Surely it couldn’t rival the eighteen-month drought she’d had.

      Not that she particularly wanted to think of him with a string of girlfriends, but the undeniable fact was that he was gorgeous, about to enter some rich list or another and, according to the gossip columns that she definitely didn’t read, single. A man like Kit wouldn’t lack company.

      He sighed and her skin tingled beneath the warmth of his breath. ‘Five years.’

      Lily stopped stroking his neck, frozen with astonishment. ‘What?’

      ‘Don’t make me repeat it.’

      ‘You haven’t had sex for five years?’

      ‘Not since our divorce.’

      ‘Truly?’

      He grimaced. ‘You think it’s something I’d make up?’

      It wasn’t. Who would?

      And because it wasn’t and because of what it meant Lily felt instantly sick. Her blood went cold and her body went numb and her throat went tight.

      Not because she’d weakened and let herself fall under Kit’s spell. And not because she was feeling twitchy with need and could feel him still hard inside her.

      No. What was making her want to throw up, what was making her suddenly all shivery and achy and what was making her suddenly desperate to get him the hell out of her body and her house was the realisation that the last person he had had sex with before her just now must have been the woman he’d picked up at some work do while their marriage lay in ruins.

      The knowledge triggered a deluge of memories. The devastation she’d felt when he’d told her what had happened. The excoriating hurt and agonising sense of betrayal. And then the pain and the disillusionment and the realisation that they really were over.

      As the memories hit furious and fast she could feel a great wave of emotion begin to roll towards her, could feel herself about to break apart and she had to swallow hard to free her throat of the lump that had lodged there.

      Unwinding her legs from around his waist, she shifted herself off him just as fast as she could. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have thrown away five years of protecting herself with such abandon? She’d fallen back into Kit’s arms without a care for herself. What the hell had she been thinking? How could she have resisted so little? How could she ever have imagined that they might be able to make another go of things? How could she have even wanted to?

      Unable to look at him because God knew what he’d see in her eyes or on her face, she pulled her dress down and then used her fingers to smooth her tangled hair.

      ‘Lily?’ asked Kit, the concern in his voice showing that he’d sensed something had changed.

      ‘What?’ she said blankly, casting her gaze around the floor for her knickers and dimly aware that he was fixing his clothing and tucking his shirt into his jeans.

      ‘Are you all right?’

      She bent down and swiped them up. ‘I’m fine.’

      As she straightened he reached out to touch her face and she recoiled as if he’d struck her. Frowning, he pulled back and stared at her. ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘I think you’d better go.’

      She needed space. Time. Privacy to examine the wounds, the scars of which had just been ripped off.

      ‘Not until you tell me what’s the matter.’

      ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ she said flatly. ‘You got what you wanted. Now go.’

      He blanched at the bite of her tone. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t wait.’

      As if that was what was upsetting her. ‘Forget it.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Look, I was wrong,’ she said, bracing herself and looking up at him. ‘This was a mistake. An awful mistake that should never have happened and now I’d really like it if you went. Please.’

      He must have heard the finality in her voice, must have sensed her weariness or something else, because for a long time he just looked at her. Then he nodded. ‘OK, fine,’ he said with a frown. ‘I’ll call you in the morning.’

      And with that, he turned on his heel, opened the door and left.

      * * *

      Lily was avoiding him. That was the only explanation for it.

      Kit sat at his desk in his office in the penthouse apartment of his London flagship hotel and the place he called home, and glowered at his phone, which might have been broken for all the use it had been so far.

      All morning he’d been trying to get hold of her, but infuriatingly her home landline just rang and rang before the answer machine eventually kicked in, and her mobile went straight to voicemail. The brief email he’d fired off asking her to call him had also gone annoyingly unanswered.

      Rubbing a hand along his jaw, Kit reflected back to the way things had ended last night and thought he could sort of understand why Lily might not want to speak to him. He’d had the time of his life and she hadn’t. She must have been disappointed. Frustrated. Exhausted. It had sounded as if she’d had a busy night even before he’d shown up, and what with such an anticlimax perhaps everything had simply got too much.

      In his albeit out-of-date experience, Lily’s way of dealing with an emotional overload had always been to shut down, so actually the way she’d responded hadn’t been all that unusual.

      Nor had the way he’d responded to her. As he’d done so often in the past, he’d given her the space he thought she needed and left her to it, even though he hadn’t really wanted to.

      But that wasn’t the right way to play it. With hindsight it probably never had been. It was entirely possible that the fact that she’d always withdrawn whenever things had got too heavy going and he’d basically let her, under the guise of giving her space, was how things had got so bad so quickly between them.

      He should have been firmer all those years ago and insisted that they face things together, however hard. Lily had been right when she’d said that they’d neither talked nor listened; they hadn’t.

      Well, whatever had happened in the past, things were going to be different now, he thought, clicking on his inbox for the dozenth time in as many minutes to see if she’d replied. Now he was going to insist on both talking and listening, and that was why her going off grid was so frustrating.

      Because apart from deciding that their inability to communicate needed to be fixed, over the course of the night he’d been struck by a truckload of

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