The Mistress's Child Read Online Free Page B

was, then—a fool?
    Or was it that one night with her had simply not been enough? Like a starving man only being offered a morsel when the table was tempting him with a banquet?
    He looked into her eyes—their bright, clear aquamarine shaded a deeper blue by the half-light of approaching dusk. Her face was still pale—pale as the first faint crescent of the moon which was beginning its nightly rise into the heavens. Her lips looked darker, too. Mulberry-coloured— berry-sweet and succulent and juicy—what wouldn't he give to possess those lips again?
    'Maybe I wanted to see you again,' he murmured.
    It sounded too much like the kind of declaration which a woman dreamed a man would make to her, but there was no corresponding gentling of his tone when he said it. The deep-timbred voice gave as little away as the green, shuttered eyes did.
    'Why?' She forced herself to say it. 'To sleep with me again?'
    Philip's mouth hardened. He wasn't going to lie. I think you know the answer to that.'
    She let out a cold, painful breath as the last of her hopes crumbled. It was as she had suspected. The warm, giving

           
    Philip whose bed she had shared—that man did not exist. It had all been an act. He was merely a seductive but il-lusionary figure who had let his defences down enough to have sex with her, and then had retreated to his real world—a world which had excluded her because he'd had a wife.
    Not just cruel, but arrogant, too!
    'And you think...' She sucked in a deep breath. 'Do you really think that I've been sitting around, just waiting for you to come back and make such a—' she almost choked on the word '—charming declaration as that one?'
    'But I'm not telling you any lies, am I, Lisi?'
    She shook her head violently, and some of the thick, dark hair escaped from the velvet ribbon which had held it captive. 'No,' she agreed. 'Lies aren't your thing, are they? You lie by omission rather than fact! Like you omitted to tell me that you were married when you seduced me!'
    'Seduced you?' He gave a short laugh and his breath clouded the air like smoke. 'You make it sound as though we were both starring in some kind of Victorian melodrama! There was no wicked master seducing some sweet little innocent who knew no better, was there, Lisi? Quite the contrary, in fact. You were the one who stripped naked in my bed. You knew exactly what you wanted and what you were doing. So please don't play the innocent. That night you kept me delightfully and memorably entertained—something which is simply not compatible with someone who isn't...' he narrowed his eyes into hard, condemnatory slits ' ...experienced.'
    Lisi swallowed. He was insulting her, she knew that— and yet it was like no insult she had ever heard. The disparaging tone which had deepened his voice did not have her itching to slap the palm of her hand against that smooth, golden cheek the way it should have done.
    Instead, it seemed to have set off a chain reaction which

began with the quickened pace of her heart and ended with the honey-slick throb of a longing so pure and so overwhelming that she could have sunk down into the thick, wet clods of earth and held her arms open to him.
    But she had played the fool with Philip Caprice once before, and once was too often.
    She raised her eyebrows. 'You know, you really ought to make your mind up how you feel about me. On the one hand you seem to despise me for my so-called experience— while on the other you seem unable to forget what happened.'
    'Can you?' he demanded as he felt the heavy pull of need deep in his groin. 'Can you forget it, Lisi?'
    Of course she couldn't! But then, unlike Philip, she had a very tangible memory of that night.
    Tim.
    She thought of Marian's words—wise, kindly experienced Marian who had urged her to tell him, who had emphasised how much a child needed a father. But what if this particular man had no desire to be a father? What if she told him and ruined both her and