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Then, slipping a hand under her, he unclipped her bra with a deft flick and brushed the lace aside.
His breath caught.
Ella’s brea**sts were full and high. The dark nipp**les stood proud. He touched them with reverent fingers. “Are they tender?” he asked.
She shook her head.
His index finger traced a light blue vein beneath the taut, pale skin. This was life. This was the very essence of womanhood—and Ella’s nurturing of Holly.
Her hands were on him now, stroking up his chest, along the apex of his shoulders and down his arms with soft, feathery caresses.
Immediately he became aware of his body’s response to her touch. He was hard and quivering. Ella placed a hand on either side of his hips and pushed his underpants down his legs.
As the full aroused length of him was revealed, he heard her breath catch.
He flung his head back.
Her fingers were sure and clever. She touched him in ways that drove him to the end of madness...then summoned him back.
When he could take no more, he fell back on the bed and pulled her with him, the satin smooth against his skin. Pushing off the last remaining bit of lace, he gently eased two trembling fingers into her slick warmth. Her flesh stretched around him. He moved his fingers, fluttering them, seeking the hard nub that made her breath stop.
When her breathing was ragged, her eyes wild, he shifted over her. With great care, he sank into her, then withdrew. Entered again. And pulled away.
Her arms came round his back, and her fingers dug into his buttocks. “Don’t go,” she pleaded. “Stay with me.”
“Show me what you want,” he demanded as passion ripped his heart apart.
Ella didn’t hesitate. Within minutes she’d torn any control he’d had to shreds. He felt himself going...going...
As Ella’s body clenched around him, he felt the first shudder. She arched beneath him, bucking and twisting, and he could no longer hold on as pleasure flooded them both in a torrent of sensation.
* * *
“Will you marry me?”
Whatever Ella had expected him to say on opening her eyes this morning, it was not this.
Her mouth dropped open. “M-marry you?”
His face filled her vision as Yevgeny nodded slowly.
She rolled away from him and dropped her legs out over the edge of the bed. Her naked back to him, she pressed the scarlet cover over her bare brea**sts and scanned the floor frantically for some sort of clothing.
“This proposal is a bit sudden.”
Was this the point of the invitation to the ballet...and the romantic restaurant dinner he’d planned afterward? Had the whole evening been nothing but a staged seduction to get her to do what he wanted?
Except a date to the ballet followed by dinner need not have ended up in bed. She’d been the one to veto dinner. In all fairness to Yevgeny, he’d only invited her to his penthouse at her prompting. Ella shook her head to clear the confusion and struggled to focus.
Why had he asked her to marry him?
“Why?”
He didn’t answer. But she sensed a distance between them that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
The idyll had been shattered.
It had been such a beautiful night.... Ella had felt transported. From the moment the ballet had begun the magic had wound itself around her. As though she’d entered a hidden, undiscovered world of possibilities she’d never imagined. As for the night that had followed...
Not once but twice he’d made love to her.
The beauty of it had called to her. That feeling of exploring an intimate link she’d never dared dream existed. A moment of pure, blistering ecstasy. Then freedom. She’d encountered a facet of herself that she had never known—a facet that fitted perfectly, in fairy-tale fashion with—
She shook her head again, her hair whipping around her face.
There was no such thing as fairy tales—she of all people should know that.
Behind her he spoke in a low voice that breached all the barriers she was rebuilding. “Come back to bed.”
Oh, she was tempted. To give in, to give up all her tightly held defenses and surrender to pleasure.
To the vision he offered.
“Say yes, Ella. Come lie with me again. Make love. We have time.”
That seductive purr...
Then reality snapped in.
He had time. She didn’t.
She was supposed to be meeting Jo Wells and the family who hoped to adopt Holly in—she squinted at the clock beside the bed struggling to make out the numbers without her glasses—an hour. And all she had to wear was a skimpy black cocktail dress, which she couldn’t even find.
She would also have to explain to the night nurse and to Deb—who would be arriving at her town house by now—why she hadn’t come home last night. The round-the-clock care she’d hired for Holly would mean the baby was fine.
