AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When her dress suddenly felt looser around her chest Orla barely noticed; it was only when she felt a tug that she realised that he’d pulled the dress down her arm and half off. He finally broke away from the kiss.
Orla felt dizzy. She opened her eyes reluctantly to see Antonio’s flushed face, his burning gaze on her lace-covered breast.
His arousal was hard against her; he brought up a big hand and cupped that lace-covered mound of flesh and squeezed gently. She almost whimpered. When his fingers pulled down the delicate material and her breast popped free, and he pinched her tight nipple, she couldn’t keep the feral sound in.
He swallowed that whimper of need with another kiss, grinding his hips into her, making her want to spread her legs. But she couldn’t in the confines of her dress. As if sensing her frustration, Antonio reached for and pulled up the bottom of her dress, over her thighs. Manoeuvring her with powerful ease, he sat her back on the edge of the desk and came between her legs, his erection now moving rhythmically against her swollen and moist mons covered only by the thinnest of cotton barriers.
Antonio broke away and muttered thickly, ‘I need to be inside you.’
Orla’s heart clamoured. She was ready to plead, beg, for him to do exactly that as fast as he could and then something interrupted their heavy breathing. A phone ringing. Her mobile.
They both stilled, the piercing ring cutting through the fog of heat and lust, finally defusing it and bringing back sanity. Even so, Orla had to acknowledge how close she’d been to begging this man—whom she’d only met today for the third time in her life—to take her on the side of his desk, in his office. If she’d ever had a chance of regaining some tiny sliver of dignity after last week, it had just melted.
Orla pushed at Antonio’s rock-hard abs and scrabbled to pull her bra and dress back up, hands shaking. With a guttural curse Antonio took a step back. Orla realised her hair was down around her shoulders. She felt acutely sensitised all over, skin tingling, a dull throbbing ache between her legs.
‘Orla,’ he began, and she looked up, glaring at him, trying to do her zip up with clumsy hands.
‘Don’t,’ she got out fiercely, ‘say one word.’
‘Let me help you at least,’ he said tightly.
Cursing out loud because she knew she couldn’t reach her zip by herself, Orla turned around. Antonio lifted her hair out of the way, and that made a violent shiver run through her body. The backs of his knuckles skimmed her spine
as he drew the zip all the way up.
As soon as he was done she bent down and retrieved her jacket and put it on. She would just have to leave her hair down. Antonio walked around to the other side of his desk. When Orla had her jacket on and was holding her bag she looked at him. His face was stark, unsmiling, and something suspiciously tender inside her tugged. She clamped down on it. She had no desire to see this man smile—where had that come from?
‘Don’t look at me like that.’ He growled softly, making Orla’s skin tighten all over again.
‘Like what?’ Her voice felt rusty.
‘Like what just happened wasn’t mutual.’
Orla glanced down at the sheaf of papers. So much for keeping things businesslike. She looked back up. ‘I need to get back.’
Antonio did smile now but it didn’t reach his eyes. Again that funny tug near her heart.
‘Running away, Orla?’
Orla grabbed her bag in front of her with both hands. ‘Not at all. I’ve said what I came to say. I’ll leave you to think about it, but we both know you don’t have much choice … if you want my agreement for this takeover to happen.’
Antonio leant forward and put his hands on the table. Now he seemed positively devilish. ‘There’s one aspect of this takeover I’d be most happy to explore further right now.’
His gaze dropped insolently to her breasts where they rose and fell with her jagged breath under her dress and Orla hissed, ‘You’re disgusting.’ But to her chagrin it came out without much conviction. More as a breathless entreaty.
Antonio stood tall again and his gaze turned cool. ‘Run along back to your hotel, Orla. I’ll be in touch when I’m good and ready.’
Antonio watched Orla’s exquisite face suffuse with colour at his blatantly patronising tone. But to give her credit, she controlled her temper and merely turned on her heel and stalked out of the room, that vibrant silken fall of hair like a splash of fire against the green.
When she was gone, Antonio couldn’t relax. She filled his mind’s eye. She’d been undone just now, before she’d turned to go. Clothes creased, hair down, eyes huge and glittering. Mouth swollen. And it had been the hardest thing in the world to taunt her, but making her eyes flash venom at him had been the only thing stopping him from smashing the table aside between them, locking the door and putting her back on the desk to finish what they’d started.
If her ringing phone hadn’t interrupted them, he’d been about to free his aching erection, slide aside her panties and thrust so deep into her he would have seen nirvana. And she’d been with him all the way, about to beg him for it. Despite her words last week that she wouldn’t even if he were the last man on the planet. It was cold comfort now.
Antonio went to the window and looked out. For the past decade of his life he’d lived by a strict code. A code that had saved his life and the lives of many others over and over again. But as soon as that red-haired siren came within a mile radius of him, that code went out the window and he was reduced to some primeval being. Snarling, full of craven base desires. Inarticulate. Insulting. Less than a gentleman. Indeed, he deserved that accusation. The Legion had made him rough. It had broken him down and rebuilt him and along the way he’d lost the smooth veneer that a life of privilege had given him.
However, he could still fake it when he needed to. But not with her.
This made him nervous. Because the control he wielded in his life now was fragile on many levels. In many ways he was still recuperating from things that he would never breathe a word of to a living soul. They were things that he would take to his grave.
