Annie West - Undone by His Touch

Then, with an abruptness that floored her, his hands dropped and he stepped back, his shoulders stiff, his face a forbidding mask not even the smear of shaving cream could humanise.

‘I don’t want you here.’

The statement, so simple, so unambiguous, stuck in her dazed mind as if he spoke in a foreign tongue.

When she didn’t move, his brow pleated in a ferocious scowl. His hands curled into tight fists.

‘Get out of here, Chloe.’ Words spat from him like bullets. ‘Now!’

DECLAN paced the empty boardroom his staff had scurried to leave. The pace of the China project was too slow and he hadn’t minced his words.

He felt so bloody powerless, managing from a distance. Unable to see the figures for himself, view the footage of the site, read the faces of the consortium partners during the video hook-up.

He spun on his foot and strode down the room, registering the faint heat from the long windows beside him. They gave a spectacular view over the Domain and the no-doubt sparkling waters of Sydney Harbour, right to the Heads where the sea swell surged in from the Pacific.

A multi-million-dollar view he’d never see again despite the doctors’ talk of possible recovery. They said there was no lasting physical damage to keep him blind.

As if he chose not to see!

He shoved back the hair flopping over his forehead and turned to pace. At least with the room’s simple layout he wasn’t going to trip over furniture and make himself a laughing stock.

Maybe he should be grateful for that too.

Chloe’s words rang in his head—that there were people worse off than himself.

Did she think he didn’t know that? There was barely a minute ticked by when he wasn’t acutely aware that Adrian was dead, not merely maimed and blind.

Or that Declan was the one who’d failed to save him.

How dared she accuse him of feeling sorry for himself?

Who was she to lecture him? To talk in platitudes about something she didn’t understand?

She was young, too young surely for the responsible job of running Carinya. Her skin still had the smooth, taut texture of youth. Unblemished and perfect.

Declan clenched his fists, recalling the pulse of need that had shot through him as he’d traced her features, learnt the high curve of cheekbones and delicate point of her chin. Her silk-soft hair, pulled back from her face. Her neat nose and soft, plump lips.

Damn! His fist pounded the toughened glass window with a dull thud that did nothing to ease the turbulent roil of emotions churning his gut.

Anger—yes.

Impatience—that was a given.

Frustration—that word had taken on a whole new meaning since Chloe Daniels had entered his home. Before that he’d been frustrated merely with his blindness, his incompetence in this world of darkness, his inability to find and punish the callous woman who’d driven Adrian to his death. That failure ate like a canker at his soul.

Now Declan’s frustration had the keen edge of sexual hunger. The ever-present hint of Chloe’s vanilla-sunshine scent in his home tantalised his nostrils and fed the gnawing hunger in his belly.

For too long his dreams had been haunted by Adrian’s fall. Now they’d changed, waking him nightly, sweating and with his heart pounding.

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