Australian Outback Kings / The Cattle King's Mistress / The Playboy King's Wife / The Pleasure King's Bride by Emma Darcy

Author:Emma Darcy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises Pty Ltd, Australia

CHAPTER TEN

SAM STARED AT Tommy, all her yearning for him mixed with the panicky doubt that this might not be the real thing. His desire for her right now was real. It was burning in his eyes, making her churn with the treacherous excitement that had gripped her earlier this evening. Except she knew now that just having sex with him wouldn’t be enough. She wanted it all…what Miranda had with Nathan…and if Tommy was only wanting to be satisfied on some libido level…

He took a step towards her, emanating unshakable purpose. It propelled Sam into dashing away from the bed, frantically, instinctively, needing time and space to sort out what was happening. She caught sight of herself in the dressing-table mirror and jerked to a halt, momentarily mesmerised by the reflection of a stranger to her real self—huge eyes smudged with make-up she never normally used, skin unmarred by freckles, sophisticated hairstyle, expensive jewellery, sexy dress.

“It’s not me!” The words burst out of her painful confusion and gathered a hysterical momentum. She swung to face Tommy, to confront him with the real truth. “You never wanted me before. It’s this…” She lifted her hands and flung them down in a fierce dismissal of how she looked today. “…this get-up!” she finished contemptuously.

“I did want you,” he declared without batting an eye. “I always wanted you.”

Oh, no! She shook her head at such a terrible lie. She didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it.

He took another step towards her. Another step.

“Stop it, Tommy!” she commanded, her voice shaking in violent protest. She knew there was a box of tissues on the dressing-table. Blindly grabbing, she pulled out a bunch of them and wiped them over her painted face, savagely destroying the work of the beautician. “See? This is me!” she hurled at him. “The Sam who isn’t worth a second look from you.”

He kept coming at her.

She dropped the tissues and attacked the pins holding up her hair, tearing them out, throwing them away, messing up the artificial sophistication. “You never wanted this, and this is who I am…the carrot mop-top…not to be taken seriously as a woman…the pesky squirt in the background…the freckle-faced…”

He caught her wrists and dragged her hands down, forcing them to rest against his chest, holding them there. “The feisty, freckle-faced girl I wanted to impress but never seemed able to,” he said, his voice like a burr in her ears, determinedly penetrating the chaos running through her.

“The fellow spirit who feels as alive in the sky as I do,” he went on, the words making her temples throb. “The woman whose beautiful, burnished curls are like magnets to my fingers…and my need to touch them could only be covered by a teasing manner because I believed you didn’t want to be touched by me.”

His chest expanded as he inhaled a deep breath, and his eyes seared hers of any further covering up by either of them. “But that’s not true, is it, Samantha?”

She crumpled, unable to hold up the shields she’d hidden her feelings behind for so long.

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