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‘Yes, all right, all right…it was from Rose’s collection,’ she confessed miserably, staring out at the glorious view to the distant hills of the south, sure she was confirming herself in his disgust.
‘I asked Peter and he let me borrow it for a few days. He knew it was to help my grandfather, but he didn’t even ask why. You probably think I took advantage of him, when Rose was so ill, and I did. I know I did. So many things could have gone horribly wrong…but when I told Peter about it afterwards he forgave me—he said he understood…’
She had little faith that Ethan would take such a compassionate view, so she was stunned when after a sizzling pause he murmured: ‘You really are a hardened little crook, aren’t you, Emily?’
She blinked up at his face, dappled by the shade from the canopy of twisting vines so that it was hard to read his expression in the shifting patterns. She moved back, tugging him out into the bright sunlight so that she could better interpret the strange nuance she had heard in his voice. ‘So you were right about me all along,’ she told him bravely.
‘Was I?’ he said, lowering their joined hands as he stepped closer, twining his fingers with hers. ‘You mean from the first moment I saw you at that party?’
‘Oh, God…’ Her fingers curled over his hard knuckles. ‘That awful party…it was like a bad dream—’
‘And I walked right into the middle of your nightmare—’
‘Looking like an avenging angel—’
‘Oh, believe me, I was feeling far from angelic at the time…’ He gently swung her arm across his body, brushing the back of her hand across the front of his trousers, and then back again, so there was no mistaking his deliberation—or the bold evidence of his arousal. ‘Any more than I am now…’
She gasped, her hand jerking, inadvertently pushing against the firm resilience and feeling it thicken and stir, prompting a low groan from Ethan as he turned her full against him, rolling his hips across hers in explicit invitation.
‘Shall we, Emily?’ he whispered huskily into her upturned face, pink with shocked excitement. ‘Shall we absolve each other of past sins, and replace the nightmare with a lovely, wild, wet dream…?
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t fantasised about it, about what would have happened if I’d taken you up on your invitation that night,’ he rasped with searing insight into the heart of her forbidden desires. ‘I have, and this is how it always starts…you and I—and this…’
CHAPTER SIX
ETHAN’S HANDS SLID into Emily’s hair, his mouth nibbling across her sun-warmed cheek to meet her lips, stroking them apart with his tongue, each kiss deeper and slower than the last until they were both swaying to a silent rhythm, drunk with the taste of each other. The rich, sensual perfume of the roses was suddenly more intense in the air around them, heady with notes of sweet musk, the lazy hum of the foraging bees blending with the sexy hum of Emily’s body to make her very bones seem to sing with pleasure.
Her arms wrapped around his lean waist as she gloried in the freedom to touch him the way she had imagined touching him in the secrecy of her lonely bed. The hands cupping her head drifted, stroking down the sides of her neck to the hollows of her throat, splaying sensuously across the soft triangle of skin bared by the open collar of her blouse, and toying suggestively with the top button.
She ached for him to go further, but the distant drone of a small plane suddenly made her aware of their exposed surroundings and she pulled back, glancing nervously up at the verandah of the house, the flat rail of which was just visible above the banked terraces, half expecting to see Mrs Cooper peering down at them in shocked disapproval.
‘Someone might see us…’ she murmured reluctantly, brushing his fingers from the button, disappointed when his hands obediently dropped to rest on her waist. His eyes gleamed at the sight of her sulky lower lip.
‘Not if we lie down,’ he said, tumbling her down onto her back on the thick, silky grass that curved around the base of the low stone wall of the terrace.
She lay startled, panting, her short curls splayed out on a carpet of fallen rose petals as he followed her down, dropping to his knees, uttering a husky growl when he saw the tantalising gap open up between her cropped blouse and the band of her jeans. Shunting backwards, he bent and buried his face against the narrow band of honey-coloured flesh between the two st
rips of fabric, rubbing his rough jaw against the satiny softness, his mouth opening over her neat belly button, his warm tongue darting in to stroke and suckle at the tiny hollow.
Shivers of delight prickled across Emily’s abdomen and she plunged her hands into his fire-flecked dark hair, half in protest, half encouragement.
‘Ethan!’ Her fear of discovery mingled with a thrill of reckless abandonment as his tongue painted a delicate line from hip to hip across her lower belly, before going back to play in the sensitive little dip. ‘We shouldn’t…’ she quavered. ‘What if somebody comes?’
She heard the deep burr of his laugh, felt it whisper damply across her quivering flesh and reverberate through his well-shaped skull.
‘I’m counting on it,’ he said wickedly, turning his head in the cradle of her hands and nipping at the fleshy part of her thumb. He prowled up her body on all fours, caging her with his long limbs, hovering above her and watching the fresh wave of fascinating colour sweep into her unadorned face as she realised his meaning, her up-tilted eyes the same mesmerising blue as the cloudless vault of heaven above them. At first glance she wasn’t much more than ordinarily pretty yet there was something innately sensual about her that had more to do with her guarded passions than the deliciously soft, rounded body she seemed slightly embarrassed to possess. He had made a mistake, judging her on superficialities. Like the porcelain she handled with such sexy delicacy and patience, she had been tempered by her experiences into a vessel that was strong and practical, but at the same time brittle and vulnerable to careless treatment. One side of her personality was clever, cautious and controlled, but the secret, inner Emily was a bold, adventurous minx who rose spiritedly to every challenge, a tactile creature whose desire to touch and be touched was her downfall.
Even now she was revealing the dichotomy in her nature that had confused his predatory suspicions, her wide eyes expressing growing feminine apprehension while her supine body vibrated with excited eagerness, her hands absently moulding the bulging biceps of his supportive arms, teasing him with images of her massaging another swollen part of his male anatomy.
Her lips parted, silently begging him to end the sizzling suspense, and he instantly obliged, sinking down to find her mouth again, shifting his lean body to one side so that his fingers had access to dance over the front of her cotton shirt, tracing the pintucked darts that shaped it to the generous contours of her body and again finding the little mother-of-pearl button.
Emily made a little murmur, nervously tangling her hand with his, but he kissed away her conscience and dripped honeyed enticement over her brief flare of shyness.
‘You’re not going to make me wait any longer, are you? I wanted to do it on the first night I saw you…when you danced against me with your hands over your head, your gorgeous breasts spilling out all over me…inviting me to play. But I couldn’t—I was a man on a mission…’
He was on a mission now, too, his clever fingers dipping into the vee of the fitted shirt and slipping the first few buttons free so that it split apart like the skin of a ripe red fruit to reveal the seamless white bra beneath, leaving the rest of the fastened buttons straining for release across her lower torso. For a fleeting moment Emily was embarrassed that her underwear was plain and practical rather than feminine and sexy, but Ethan seemed to find it intensely erotic, his face blurring with hunger as he looked down at his hand stroking over the smooth contours of the bra, lingering to trace around the circular shadow of her nipple, faintly visible through the opaque white fabric. He uttered a ravishingly sexy purr when it puckered at his insistent touch, pushing wantonly against the stretchy fabric, and she watched in breathless anticipation as he slowly moistened his lips, as if already savouring the taste of the dainty morsel against his tongue. Her fist clenched on his shoulder, instinctively pressing him down, but instead of lowering his head and easing both their torment his hand moved on to explore her other breast, to softly toy and tease at the burgeoning peak until she couldn’t bear it any longer—hungry for everything that he had to offer…everything that she had to give…
‘It opens here,’ she said, impatiently guiding his fingers towards the flat plastic clip that lay between her breasts, feeling giddy as his eyes registered their lascivious approval.
