LITMIR.BIZ

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invited me here. I’d lobbed the ball into his court. So I waited for his move.

      The muted sound of a door opening heralded the arrival of a butler, bearing a silver tray with more drinks on it. While I was a little startled, Neo looked unruffled, as if nothing unusual had happened to interrupt his normal after-dinner routine.

      He accepted a glass of cognac, then glanced at me. ‘Nightcap?’

      I shook my head, surprised at his cordial tone. Then I snapped my spine straight. I couldn’t afford to lower my guard. He still hadn’t spelled out the parameters of my reparation. Nor given me a straight answer to my question…

      With a few words Neo dismissed the butler. The moment we were alone, he discarded his untouched drink and turned his piercing gaze on me.

      My eyes connected with his as if pulled by invisible magnets. As much as I was reluctant to admit it, the man was a superb specimen. His impossibly broad shoulders demanded attention, and the gladiator-like synergy of sleekness and power combined with an animalistic aura impossible to dismiss.

      The look in his eyes intensified, sending the distinct message that now we were getting down to the heart of whatever was on Neo Xenakis’s mind.

      ‘Come here, Sadie,’ he ordered, confirming my frenzied thoughts.

       Get up. Walk out. He can’t stop you.

      But temptation could. It wrapped its sinuous vines around me, hard and fast, left me breathless and speechless.

      This was theory testing. Curiosity satisfying. Nothing else.

      My life had taken a left turn this morning. Not that things had been rosy before… My mother and her gambling problem, my landlord’s growing threats, my jobless state… My life and plans were a world removed from what I’d imagined for myself back in the idyllic days when I had the illusion of a solid family. When a fulfilling career, perhaps eventually a family, wasn’t a laughable, ephemeral prospect.

      The dismaying sensation in the pit of my stomach that had arrived along with my father’s callously dismissive postcard and stayed all these years later, the sensation that mocked and questioned and poisoned my dreams, claimed I was as worthless as my father had deemed me, was very much present now, questioning my audacity to remain here, reaching for this temptation.

      Step back, it said. This isn’t for you.

      But I wasn’t ready to step back into my life just yet. I craved more time in this peculiar bubble with Neo Xenakis. Just for a little while longer.

      Before I could stop the motion, I swayed towards him.

      He didn’t reach out. Simply lounged against the velvet seat, the king of his shiny castle, awaiting his due. And, like a moth to a flame, I couldn’t resist the danger, the excitement, the otherness he offered.

      One taste. Then I could end this any time I wanted.

      One minute, then I could get back to why I was here, perhaps armed with the confirmation that he wasn’t impaired in any obvious physical way.

      The thought that I was attempting to slot this beneath the banner of research drew a hysterical chortle, quickly smothered beneath the pulses of lust swelling through my system.

      Before I knew it, my body hovered next to his, almost horizontal on the sofa as I heeded his command.

      ‘Here I am,’ I replied in a voice that sounded nothing like mine.

      Storm-tossed eyes traced every inch of my face, lingering longest and fiercest on my mouth.

      ‘Yes. Here you are,’ he replied.

      His warm, cognac-tinged breath washed over my lips, causing them to tingle wildly.

      Desperately, I slicked my tongue over them, then again when his sizzling gaze followed the wet path. His next breath emerged a touch harsher, his sculpted chest straining against his pristine shirt. The tingling flashed to my fingers, where the need to explore that mouth-watering expanse lashed harder and faster.

      ‘The invitation still stands, Sadie,’ he breathed.

      Stay. Explore. Indulge.

      I lifted my hand until it hovered mere inches from his skin. Until his heat caressed my palm, its gravitational pull tugging me with unrelenting force.

      Was I really doing this? Baiting a predator to avoid my own reality?

      Snatching a jagged breath, I hesitated.

      Eyes even fiercer, Neo shifted. My hand met the hard wall of his chest, rested on the powerful thundering heartbeat. Lust burst through like a hot ray of sunshine through fog, melting away the last of my reservations. I slid my fingers up superbly well-defined pecs, over the tie he’d loosened during dinner, to glide around his neck.

      The thought that I was headed in the wrong direction, going up when I should be heading down, evaporated as I explored him. He’d invited this. And I wanted to make sure my investigation was…thorough.

      His eyes grew hooded when my fingers speared the hair at his nape. Lustrous strands slid through my fingers, and that small act fired up the tempest coursing through me. Enthralled by the sensation, I repeated the caress.

      A gruff sound left his throat. His Adam’s apple moved in a strong swallow. Had he moved closer or had I? My gaze fell to his full lower lip, so temptingly close. Promising a heady reprieve from chaos, despair and uncertainty.

      One tiny, tiny taste.

      I strained another inch closer, watched his eyes turn darker, felt his chest expand with a heavy inhalation.

      One second ticked by. Two.

      Then, with a rush of breath and a growl of impatience, he breached the gap between us, fused his lips to mine in white-hot possession.

      Indecent. Heavenly.

      Outrageous and masculine and, oh, so powerful.

      Neo took control of the kiss, brazenly swept his tongue along the ultrasensitive flesh of my bottom lip before delving in between to taste me. With a whimper of urgent need, I parted my lips wider, welcoming him with the eagerness of a starving woman granted a feast.

      But even while his lips clung to mine, his hands remained where they were, maddeningly removed from my body. The challenge was too much to resist. Crawling closer, I wrapped both hands around his neck, drew him deeper into the kiss. Dared to meet his tongue with mine on the next sweep.

      His body jerked and another growl left his throat as our tongues found a unique dance of decadent delight, of thrilling desire that built with each ferocious second.

      Dear God, he could kiss. Even when he wasn’t putting his complete effort into it, even when he wasn’t touching me, I was nearly driven out of my mind.

      In another heartbeat that was all I wanted. Neo Xenakis’s hands on me.

      Then I would stop.

      Because this was getting out of control.

      As if he’d heard my silent plea, he finally dropped his hands from the back of the sofa. They glided over my shoulders, down my ribcage, in slow, sensuous exploration to my waist. After the merest hesitation, he wrapped his large hands around my hips and pulled me with supreme masculine ease into his lap.

      No need for any southern exploration.

      The unmistakable evidence of his proud manhood was imprinted, hot and thick, against my bottom.

      At my muted gasp he broke the kiss and edged me back, long enough to deliver a smouldering look of arrogant confirmation.

      ‘Now you know,’ he breathed.

      ‘Y-yes…’

      A look flickered through his eyes—one that seemed to ask and answer a question in the same heartbeat. Then he was tugging me back into his body, one hand spiked in my hair, the other

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