An Inconvenient Obsession by Natasha Tate Read Free Book Online

quite reach his eyes. “Though, to be honest, I’m not sure it’s what you had in mind.”
    “It’s not.”
    “Success grants me control, Cate. Power. Influence,” hesaid. His eyes, sharp with intent, didn’t match the easy, composed tone of his voice. “It lets me get what I want, whenever I want it.”
    Disappointment in his hard, ruthless words tightened her features, made her tongue feel thick within her mouth. “You’re not like that.”
    “I’m not?” Though she hadn’t been aware of him shifting closer, there was no denying his sudden, looming nearness. He didn’t touch her, but the solid bulk of his torso, the heat of his stare, burned her with acute intensity.
    Within the protesting storm of emotions, a raw physical wanting clenched and fluttered and yearned. She went weak with the hunger to touch him, to pull his head to her breast and soothe the harshness from his brow. She shouldn’t have allowed him to follow her up here, she thought wildly. She should have run from him the moment she’d left the dance floor. “Don’t,” she warned him feebly, her heart filling her throat.
    “Don’t what?” he ground out. “Buy the island? Donate money to all those helpless little babies?” His glance traced her eyes, her cheeks and her mouth, warm and close and terrifying. “Make the Carrington auction an unrivaled
success?”
    “I …” She couldn’t think with him so close. Couldn’t string one coherent thought together with his big body hovering so intimately over hers.
    “You brought this on yourself, Cate,” he told her, his icy blue gaze trapping hers. “The minute you decided to sell the island, you invited me here.”
    Cate forced her eyes to stay open, to remain outwardly unaffected by his outrageous words. “I did no such thing,” she protested on a scandalized whisper.
    “You’re telling me you didn’t put it up for auction because you wanted me here?”
    Fire seeped into her cheeks. “Of course I didn’t!”
    “Ah, Catydid,” he breathed, his fingers lifting to graze her cheek. “You always were a terrible liar.”
    A wave of wanting flooded her limbs, tugged deep within her stomach. “I don’t want this, Ethan. I swear I don’t.”
    “Too bad, sweet, because
I
do,” he said, lifting hooded eyes to hers. “Only this time, I won’t scurry off with my tail between my legs just because you’ve changed your mind about us.”
    Flame kissed her skin, tinged with a hint of guilt. “Ethan, I didn’t …” she started, before her denial trailed off into a futile, damning silence.
    His smile flashed again, predatory and triumphant. “We have unfinished business.” His voice was low with soft, dangerous menace. “You know it as well as I.”
    “No,” she managed, her heart leaping within her throat. “You said it was in the past. Surely you don’t intend to pick up where we left off.”
    “Oh, but I do,” he said quietly, his breath skimming her mouth with searing intent. “And you won’t stop me, either, because you want me just as much as I want you.”
    “I don’t,” she blurted, needing to call a halt to the dizzying implications of his words. “This is crazy.
You’re
crazy.”
    “Maybe. Maybe not.”
    Rational thought scattered as Ethan leaned to lift a strand of hair from her cheek. One hand braced against the arm of the chair and his knee pressed against the seam between hers. Cate felt her self-control waver, his closeness stripping her of her resistance. His scent filled her nostrils—the clean smell of his flesh, the hint of mint and cologne mixed with the warm, heady essence she’d never, ever forgotten. Inhaling deeply, the impact of his nearness jolted her on an elemental, cellular level. How could she fight him when he was so close?
    Tethered to him by her own longing, she remained immobile as his knee nudged hers apart and his fingers tucked thehair behind her ear and then trailed down to the side of her neck. Before she realized the