Sydney Harbour Hospital: Lexi's Secret by Melanie Milburne Page A

consequences would be?’
    Lexi turned away from his thunderous expression, her arms going back across her body, tightening like a band to hold herself together. He was a fine one to talk about consequences. He hadn’t had to face the biggest consequence of all. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said.
    ‘What was it like, damn it?’ he asked.
    She let out a shaky breath. ‘When we met … I felt something.’
    ‘Lust.’ There was no mistaking the disdain in his voice.
    She threw him a look. ‘Not just lust. Before you came along I didn’t feel ready for a relationship, not a sexual one at least. But it was different with you. From the first moment we met …’
    His eyes hardened to chips of ice. ‘Don’t,’ he said, a warning thread of steel in his tone.
    ‘Don’t what?’
    ‘Don’t try and dress up what we felt for each other as anything other than what it was,’ he said. ‘I know it’s not the most romantic fact in the world but sometimes sex just happens because of instinct. Chemistry. Animal lust.’
    ‘It wasn’t like that for me,’ Lexi said quietly.
    ‘Well, it was like that for me,’ he snapped back.
    Lexi turned away again, not willing to let him see how much he had hurt her. She had hoped … foolishly hoped that he had felt something for her back then, but their brief relationship had meant nothing to him.
    She had meant nothing to him.
    She had just been another name in his little black book. It was deluded of her to have expected anythingelse. His career was his priority. It had been back then and it still was now. She had been a temporary distraction that he deeply regretted. The breathtaking magic of their relationship that she had revisited so many times in her mind was an illusion, a flight of fancy on her part, romantic nonsense that had no place in the cold, hard world of reason. Emotion clogged her throat, a cruel strangulation of regret and recriminations. Tears were so close she had to blink to stop them from falling. The tattered remnants of her pride would not allow her to cry in front of him.
    She made a move for the door. ‘I have to go …’
    ‘Hang on a minute,’ Sam said. ‘We haven’t finished this discussion.’
    Lexi slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder from where it had slipped. ‘I think we have, Sam. There’s nothing more to be said.’
    ‘Wait.’
    He caught her arm on the way past, his fingers like a metal band around her wrist as he swung her back to face him, the sudden movement sending a Shockwave through her body.
    The skin on her wrist sizzled as if he had branded her with his touch. His long, strong fingers were like fire. They burned through the layers of her skin, setting nerves into a crazy, maniacal dance. She felt the strength of his grasp as she tried to pull away and her heart started to pound like a faulty timepiece.
    She breathed in the scent of him, the hint of aftershave overridden by the sexy musk of late-in-the-day male. She could see the pinpoints of stubble on his jaw and her fingertips tingled as she remembered how it felt to stroke that sexy regrowth with her own soft skin.
    Her lips, too, remembered how it felt to move overthat bristly surface. She wanted to do it now, to remind herself of how he tasted. She wanted to feel her tongue lapping at his skin the way she had in the past.
    Lexi looked into his dark, mesmerising eyes and it was like looking into them for the very first time. She felt the same electric shock rush through her, making every single pore of her body acutely aware of him. The raw physicality of it terrified her. It shocked her that her body could want one thing while her mind insisted on another.
    Her leg wasn’t supposed to be moving forward half a step to bring her body up against the rock wall of his.
    Her breasts weren’t supposed to be pressed against his chest, the nipples already tightly budded with desire.
    Her pelvis wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near his, certainly not flush against him and