CHAPTER 1

“What the hell are you doing, Veronica? What kind of sick game are you playing right now? Stop it!”

          Sasha looked at her angrily as he removed her hands, releasing her fingers from his shirt where she had unconsciously curled them in her attempt to get him to listen to what she wanted to say, to understand that she was no longer a child, that she was now completely and totally a woman... A woman who was totally and completely in love with him and wanted to be his.

“Sasha, trust me, I know what I’m doing… And this isn’t a sick game,” Veronica protested, her eyes starting to fill with anguished tears as he thrust her away. “Sasha, I want…”

“Oh, I know exactly what you want, Veronica! Believe me, I know it quite well!” Sasha interrupted her savagely. “You want me to have sex with you. But right now, what I feel more like doing…”

          He broke off, said something she couldn’t quite catch under his breath, and then turned to look at her so that the light fell sharply across his face, outlining the aristocratic arrogance of his profile.

“Veronica, your stepbrother is one of my closest friends and my employer and…”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Henry,” Veronica protested frantically. “This is just between you and me, Sasha.”

“You and me? There is no you and me,” he told her cruelly. “You are just a schoolgirl, Veronica, whilst I’m a fully adult man.”

“But Sasha… I am absolutely in love with you,” Veronica pleaded desperately, throwing everything she had left into one last attempt to make him see how she felt. “Sasha, I love you!”

“Really?” Sasha drawled mockingly. How much? As much as the pop star you were ready to die for six months ago, or the prom dress you bought three months before that?”

“That was before I was properly grown-up,” Veronica told him.

          So very little space separated them… a few feet... that was all. If she let him walk away from her now without at least trying... Boldly, Veronica closed the distance between them, taking him off guard as she placed her body close to his and wrapped her arms possessively around him, possessively and far too tightly for him to remove them as he had done so easily a few moments ago.

“Sasha... I thought so much about this moment… I dreamed of it day and night…”

          Veronica pleaded with him, lifting her face to him, her mouth trembling.

“Sasha, please... For the first time, I’m seeing things clearly… like never before… My Sasha…”

          She felt something that could have been a shudder galvanize his body before clumsily and inexpertly she pressed her mouth against his in a closed-lipped, untutored kiss.

          His mouth felt hard and hot, his skin where he had shaved thrillingly rough against her own. Fireworks ignited and exploded deep within her body. Her heart was beating so fast she thought she might die of the excitement.

“Sasha…” Veronica moaned passionately against his mouth as she twisted with innocent provocation against his body.

          Suddenly, his own arms were around her, not pushing her away as he had done earlier, but holding onto her, his fingers biting hard into her slender arms as he slid one hand into the back of her hair, holding her head still whilst his mouth started to move on hers.

          Veronica felt her head start to spin and her knees go weak. If she had thought that her heart was beating fast before, that was nothing to the way it was pounding now. Her whole body ached and pulsed with the intoxication of what was happening.

          Sasha! Powerful, sexy, gorgeous Sasha! My Sasha!

          She loved him so much, wanted him so much. Eagerly she pressed her still coltishly youthful body even closer to his. She could feel every nerve-ending in her skin aching with the intensity of her yearning for him. The tip of his tongue was caressing the softly swollen outline of her mouth. She wanted him to make love to her so desperately.

          These last few weeks, whilst they had been working together clearing the overgrown stagnant lake in the woods on her stepbrother’s estate, working on a conservation project which Sasha, as her stepbrother’s estate manager, had been overseeing.

          Veronica had come to see him in a new light and in doing so, she had fallen head over heels in love with him, with all the passion and intensity of her almost eighteen-year-old nature.

          And now, after the scarring hurt of all his recent rejections, all his painful refusals of her attempts to make him realize how she felt, here he was holding her, kissing her... wanting her...

          A fiercely sharp thrill of feminine excitement spun through her. Her breasts ached for the touch of his hands, to be held and caressed by him as she had read about, seen in films. The thought of their two naked bodies entwined in the sensual privacy of Sasha’s bed was almost too much for her.

          Eagerly she opened her mouth, inviting him to probe deeper with his tongue, but then abruptly, to her shock, Sasha was suddenly pushing her away as quickly as he had taken hold of her, his face dark with anger.

“My love… W-what is it... what’s wrong?” she stammered.

“What’s wrong? Oh, for God’s sake...” Veronica heard Sasha mutter. “The fact that you even need to ask that kind of question shows just how... You’re a child still, Ronnie... Six months from now...”

          She bit down hard on her bottom lip when she saw the irritation in his eyes as he ran his hand through his thick dark copper hair.

“I’m sorry... I should never have done that...” he told her tersely.

          Veronica felt her eyes fill with vulnerable tears.

“You kissed me,” she protested shakily. “You wanted me... You can’t deny that…”

“No, Veronica,” Sasha told her grittily. “Listen to me! What I wanted,” he added bluntly, “wasn’t you, but what you just offered me. I’m a man, and when a woman comes on to me, offering me sex...”

          He stopped and shook his head.

“My God, Ronnie… You’re a child still...”

“I’m almost eighteen… I bet if we were in bed together you wouldn’t be saying that,” Veronica challenged him boldly and added recklessly. “I’m not a child at all, Sasha, and I could prove it to you if only...”

          She heard the savage hiss as Sasha expelled the air from his lungs.

“Jesus! Have you any idea of what you’re saying... suggesting...?”

“I do… I want you, Sasha... I love you... I want to be yours… forever.”

“Well, as sure as hell I don’t want or love you,” he told her ferociously, his face suddenly shockingly pale underneath its weather-beaten tan. “And let me give you a little warning, Veronica… If you continue to go around offering yourself to men, sooner or later one of them is going to take you up on your offer and I promise you that the experience won’t be a pleasant one. You’re far too young to be experimenting with sex, and when you are old enough it should be with someone of your own age and not... I’m a man, Veronica, not a boy to play with,” he told her brutally.

          Veronica looked at him like he just slapped her.

“And... well, let’s just say that the idea of taking some over-excited and inexperienced little virgin to bed and playing touchy-feely games with her isn’t my idea of a particularly satisfying relationship. Not sexually, not mentally, and certainly not emotionally... Go and find someone your own age to play with, Veronica!” he told her grimly.

          For a moment, she was tempted to protest, to argue and plead, or even more daringly, to throw herself back into his arms and prove to him that she could make him want her despite her age and her lack of experience.

          She wasn’t normally so easily defeated or diminished, but something deep down inside, some very new sense of womanliness, shrank from enduring another rejection from him.

          And so, instead, swallowing back the tears she was aching to cry, Veronica lifted her head and tilted her chin to him defiantly.

“Yes, I think I will...” she said with a bitter smile on her lips.

          There had been one boy in particular in the party of co-workers involved in the conservation campaign who had shown a very marked interest in her. At the time, newly, wildly in love with Sasha, she hadn’t paid him very much attention, but now...

          A militant sparkle illuminated her eyes. She could see Sasha beginning to frown.

“Ronnie,” he warned her.

          Angrily she refused to stop and listen to him. He had no jurisdiction over her. The bright delicacy of her newly emergent tender love was already tarnishing and fading as resentment, pride and enmity took its place.

          Her Sasha!

          Veronica loved Sasha Neville-Talbott but now she felt as though she could very easily come to hate him… She certainly wanted to hate him just to stop her heart from hurting so much.