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‘It’s pitch-black outside even though it’s morning.’ He strode past her to pull back the curtains and the shutters before turning to look at her. ‘I’ve been up dragging anything that could move to safer quarters.’
‘You should have got me up!’
Nico was in a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, which belatedly drew her attention to her attire, an oversized tee shirt and nothing else. Bare feet. A pair of lacy knickers under the tee shirt. Underneath her always sober practical clothes she had always worn sexy underwear. She wrapped her arms around herself and as she walked towards him the sudden crack of thunder was so sharp and so dramatic that she physically jumped.
Sudden panic bloomed inside her.
Nico dropped the wooden shutters, plunging the room into a twilight darkness before turning on the standing light.
‘The winds are going to gather pace,’ he said curtly. ‘It’s important to stay away from the windows. Don’t be tempted to look out because the window panes might shatter under the force of the wind. And don’t, under any circumstances, venture outside to see what’s happening.’ He frowned. ‘You look terrified.’
Grace gulped and then jumped again at another crack of thunder and then the sound of rain, racing along the walls and on the roof, as ferocious as the sound of a thundering waterfall. She felt as though the entire structure of the building was going to cave in.
And the temperature seemed to have dropped. Or was that her imagination? She couldn’t move a muscle.
‘I’m fine,’ she breathed, her voice staccato with fear. She could hear the unexpectedly loud sound of the gale gathering strength, could almost feel it battering against the hotel walls, desperate to find a way in so that it could sweep everything away in its destructive path.
They were in this hotel on their own because the few remaining guests had been dispatched to safety and the employees had been sent to their own homes to batten down the hatches.
She stepped towards Nico. She was barely aware of doing so.
She cried out when thunder ripped through the room again and lightning flashed as bright as a sudden blaze of fire.
And just like that, several things happened at once. She moved at the same time as her boss, fear meeting strength, panic rushing into the arms of calm, and he enfolded her.
Everything faded. The howling of the wind...the clatter of rain...the terrifying darkness of day that had suddenly turned to night.
Grace held onto him. Her arms snaked around his whipcord-lean body and she felt the hardness of muscle pressed against her, strong and comforting.
His clothes rasped against her almost but not quite naked body. Her breasts were squashed against his chest but she could still feel the tightness of her nipples blooming at the contact, tingling, making her want to whimper.
‘Are you?’ Nico husked, tilting her chin so that their eyes met. ‘Fine?’
‘I will be.’ Grace couldn’t look away. Her breath was catching in her throat and just getting those words out was an effort. She was no longer the efficient secretary always in control and, even though part of her knew that she should be doing her best to return to that person, right now that felt more like an aspiration than reality. Reality wasthis. ‘I... I’m scared...’
Nico felt her vulnerability and it went to him like a shot of adrenaline.
Fire and ice...remote yet direct...strong yet vulnerable. All her complexities lent her a sexiness that might have been latent before, a tantalising suggestion lying just beneath the surface, but here and now they coalesced into something irresistible although he continued to fight it, common sense struggling to win the battle, even as he lowered his dark head, his lips searching for hers.
He kissed her. The second his mouth found hers, anything gentle disappeared under the force of an eroticism that knocked him sideways.
He tasted her hungrily, greedily, his tongue pushing into her mouth and his arms tightening their grip so that he could feel every bit of her pressed against him.
A hurricane was whipping into a frenzy outside and yet all Nico was aware of was the meshing of their tongues and the feel of her peachy bottom as he cupped it in his big hands.
She wanted him.
Was it just fear of the elements that had thrown her into a temporary state of recklessness? Had it blurred the lines between them to the point where she was reacting in a way she would regret? Would the scrabbling slide of her fingers trying to find a way to his bare skin retreat in horror the minute the rain eased off?
Nico knew that any hint of regret, any passing thought that he might have taken advantage of an unusual situation, would be anathema to him and he detached from her with effort but didn’t release her, just lightened his hold.
‘I want you, Grace,’ he said in a driven undertone. ‘And it’s not just...’ he nodded vaguely to encompass the room although his eyes didn’t leave her face ‘...the hurricane outside making me behave out of character.I want you.What Idon’twant is for you to fall into my arms because you’re scared and then, when you’re no longer scared, you somehow throw the blame on my shoulders.’ Nico raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Tell me to stop,’ he grated, his voice barely audible over the shrieking of the weather, ‘and I’ll stop. Immediately. And never again will this happen or be mentioned. It will have been a...temporary, fleeting blip.’
Grace shivered. Her mouth was still tingling from his and she could still taste him. It felt surreal because this was what she had fantasised about for such a long time. Fantasy had somehow become reality and if in her wildest dreams she had felt her body burn at his touch, it was nothing compared to the reality of what she was feeling now. As though she was alive, lit from within, every sense heightened to a point where she could scarcely credit that this washer,Grace Brown, whose life had always been so cautiously lived.
Between her legs was a fierce itch that made her want to rub them together.
Made her want him to touch her down there, to stroke until the itch was gone.
