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‘But what if this is what she wants?’
‘You don’t know her.’
‘But you do,’ she insisted quietly. ‘Which do you think she’d prefer?’
He pressed his lips together, regarding her for several long, charged seconds. His eyes were like black lagoons, so dark and deep she almost felt as though she could dive into them.
‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘But—’
‘Submit something else,’ he ground out, lifting a hand between them, as if to placate her or reassure her. But then, his hand moved, falling to her shoulder and staying there. His eyes dropped, studying his fingers, moving them slowly and frowning, as if he couldn’t quite believe that he was touching her. She held her breath, wanting more, but too gun-shy to show that. After all, he’d already rejected her: twice. ‘Anything else.’ The words rumbled out of his chest, wrapping around her, all gravelled and hoarse.
But Lucinda didn’t want to come up with just any proposal. She wanted to nail this. And yet...a job was a job, and this job had the potential to change her life. She bit down on her lower lip, her eyes latched imploringly to his. She could work something else out. She was great at events. She’d grown up living and breathing this sort of thing. Okay, her next proposal wouldn’t be as perfect as this, but it would still be better than anyone else’s. She just had to go back to the drawing board.
‘Okay,’ she agreed softly, nodding slowly.
He expelled a slow breath, relief obvious on his features. His hand stayed where it was and a thousand little darts danced through her bloodstream, radiating from her shoulder to her limbs and pooling in her abdomen. Warm heat flooded her nervous system and, without her consent, her body swayed forward, her breasts brushing his chest.
His only reaction was a soft groan, just low enough for her to catch.
‘But I don’t want to send it via email,’ she said quietly, finding it difficult to speak. ‘Let me present it to you in person.’
‘No.’ The denial was immediate and fierce.
‘Why not?’ She tilted her face up to his, her eyes sparking with his, her lips parted expectantly.
‘Because I don’t want to see you again.’ And yet, in direct contradiction of that sentiment, his lips brushed hers, so lightly it was almost as if she’d imagined it. Her stomach knotted tightly, and she went to pull away, but the hand on her shoulder tightened, and his other wrapped around her back, drawing her to him. This time, when he kissed her, it wasn’t soft or light, it was demanding and desperate, the same kind of desperation that had been rolling through her since the first moment they’d met.
When they’d kissed before, she’d seen stars, but there’d been an element of caution within Thirio, as though he were holding back. She felt none of that now. It was, if anything, quite the opposite. His total surrender to their passion was obvious.
He swore into her mouth, lifting her easily, wrapping her legs around his waist as he carried her into the lounge room, kissing her as his hands fondled her bottom. She groaned softly, pleasure spreading through her at the madness of this. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the Lucinda she ordinarily was, the woman who wouldneverbehave like this, was screaming at her to stop being so careless and impulsive. But, heck, impulsive felt so good, how could she resist? He laid her on the sofa, his body over hers, his strength and weight sublime.
‘Why did you come here?’ It was a rhetorical question, asked as he pulled away, his fingers finding the hem of the sweater she wore and pushing it up, revealing her flat stomach as his fingers grazed her flesh. Goosebumps lifted, covering her skin, his touch like silk, torture for how light it was, and how much more she wanted. When he grazed the fabric of her bra she arched her back and a low whimpering sound formed in the base of her throat. Pleasure sparked like fireworks, just beneath her skin.
‘I shouldn’t—’ he muttered, lifting the sweatshirt over her head and tossing it onto the floor beside them. He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he straightened, staring down at her, the look on his face impossible to interpret.
She didn’t know what he was waiting for, but she knew that she wanted him, come what may.
‘Yes, you should.’ She sat up and dragged him down on top of her, kissing him with her soul’s desire, tongues lashing, hands roaming, feeling his back through the softness of his shirt. When she reached beneath it, to lift it off him, as he had done to her, he flinched, and pulled it back down with one hand, his kiss growing more desperate, more urgent. She moved her hands lower, curling them into the waistband of his underpants, curving around his buttocks and pinning him close to her.
She had never wanted anyone, or anything, more than she wanted Thirio in that moment.
‘I’m not going to have sex with you,’ he said darkly, almost as though he were speaking to himself. The words acted like a whip on her spine. She froze, shifting a little so she could see his face, then moved again, feeling the hardness of his arousal between her legs. Of their own accord, her hips lifted silently inviting him, contradicting him. His eyes closed, but when he blinked open, there was fierce determination in his gaze.
‘I can’t.’
He dropped his mouth to hers, then moved it lower, dragging his lips over her chin to her décolletage, flicking the sensitive flesh there so she whimpered. But that was nothing to the sensations she felt when he lifted one of her breasts from the silk bra, brushing a nipple with his thumb, so millions of sparks flooded her system.
‘Thirio,’ she groaned, still stuck on his insistence that he wasn’t going to have sex with her. Until he’d verbalised that, she hadn’t realised that was what they’d been building to. Not just from their first kiss, but from the moment their eyes had met and something had lodged deep in her gut. Desire of the most soul-changing type. For the first time in Lucinda’s life, she wanted something for herself and was reaching out to take it. The idea of being denied stuck in her throat like a bone.
His mouth moved to her other breast and through the soft fabric of her bra he took it in his mouth, pressing his teeth to the outline of her nipple with just enough pressure to make her pulse throb hard and heavy in her body.
‘Thirio.’ God, she loved his name. She loved the way it sounded, the way it felt. She loved the way he reacted when she said it. She loved the way his mouth felt on her breast, the way his arousal pushed against the cotton of her underpants. When he moved his mouth lower, kissing her stomach, her breath became light and rasping, and when he lowered the elastic of her knickers, she almost laughed, a soft, throaty sound of disbelief and desire, choked from her throat. But when his mouth teased her sex, she didn’t laugh. She couldn’t. Flames leaped through her, made all the more urgent when his tongue flicked her clitoris, sending shock waves through her.
Never before had she been kissed there, in her most sensitive place. His mouth was magic, pushing away any doubts she might have, tormenting her, pleasing her, making her see stars.
Her fingers drove through his hair, clinging on as if for dear life, and then, she was arching her back as tension grew, spinning through her, until she couldn’t handle it any longer and she exploded in a flash of blinding light, white hot and incendiary. He held her hips still as the waves rolled through her, moving his mouth back to her breast and flicking it lazily with his tongue, then pushing up onto his hands to watch her, to stare at her, as pleasure flushed her face and her eyes took on a fevered sheen.
