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everything over with her. She wanted to be loved like that.
    She raised her eyes suddenly on the last mouthful of dessert and looked straight across the table at Zeke, and the narrowed grey eyes were waiting for her.
    She stared at him, considering him almost as though he were a stranger. He’s magnificent! Her brain told her what she really didn’t want to hear. She would never, ever meet another Zeke; no man could follow him. It wasn’t just the dark good looks, or the brooding magnetism that still had the power to make her weak at the knees, the brilliant force of his personality or the dangerous, almost savage quality to his sensual attractiveness. It was the other side of him, too, the tender, coaxingly soft side that only she saw which in itself made it all the more precious.
    He loved her. In his own way he did love her, she told herself silently, but whereas he was all her world she was only one small segment of his. She had to decide whether she was prepared to put up with the status quo or insist on change—change that could mean she would lose him altogether. And there was Liliana—and plenty moreLilianas, no doubt—waiting in the wings should this go against her. She had to remember that.
    But she still wanted more than this…this cage he’d manufactured around her. If he really loved her he would understand that, wouldn’t he?
    The waiter arriving with their coffee broke the eye contact and Marianne almost slumped back in her seat before she brought herself up straight. She had to be strong; she couldn’t let him intimidate her in any way, this was too important. This situation with Liliana, it had somehow brought to a head everything that had been fermenting under the surface for months.
    She had expected Zeke to go for the jugular the moment the taxi dropped the Mortons off at their attractive mews house in Kensington, but after the goodbyes had been said, and they were on their way again he merely settled back in the seat, drawing her arm through his. ‘Tired, sweetheart?’
    Marianne’s reply was lost in his leisurely kiss, a kiss that had her dizzy and flushed and warm by the time he’d finished. She had never met anyone who could kiss like Zeke. She had never met anyone who was such a master of manipulation as Zeke! She took a deep breath and prayed for the right words. ‘Zeke, we have to talk. You know that, don’t you?’
    ‘I can think of better things to do, but if you insist…’ He smiled at her, a slow, sexy smile, and she hoped he couldn’t see the effect it had on her. ‘Wait till we get home, okay?’ he drawled softly. ‘We can have a brandy and talk all you want.’
    He smelt delicious—Zeke always smelt delicious; it was one of the first things she had noticed about him—and as Marianne rested her head against his broad shoulder she found herself praying she wouldn’t capitulate to his charmas she had done so many times in the past. It wasn’t that she had set her heart on being a career woman to the exclusion of everything else—she wanted children, Zeke’s children, and a family home and slippers in front of the fire; of course she did—but in this day and age it didn’t have to be one or the other.
    He kissed her again once they were in the lift, and she closed her eyes, her arms snaking up round his wide muscled shoulders and her hands tangling in the spiky short hair at the back of his head. His hands swept over her breasts, her thighs, before coming to rest on her neat rounded buttocks as he urged her against his hard maleness until she could feel every inch of his powerful arousal.
    ‘You’re incredible, do you know that?’ he murmured against her lips. ‘I can never get enough of you.’
    The lift slid to a halt and she pushed him away slightly as sanity returned. ‘Zeke—’
    ‘I know, I know.’ He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners as his thick short lashes swept down, hiding his expression from her. ‘You want to talk first.’
    They