LITMIR.BIZ

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      To be allowed to set foot inside her boyfriend’s home shouldn’t have felt like a major achievement, but somehow it did. Was that what happened when you went out with a man like Guido? she wondered. You began to normalise abnormal behaviour?

      He bent to retrieve her hat from the floor of the limousine. ‘Want me to put it on for you?’

      She felt her cheeks growing pink as she shook her head. ‘I hate that hat,’ she said, more fervently than her opinion on a hat really warranted, but she could read the expression in his eyes perfectly well. He was remembering how she had come to lose the hat, and what had happened subsequently, and despite her reservations already she could feel the renewed rush of desire.

      ‘It looks tre`s chic on you,’ he whispered. And then, because he wanted her very badly, he took her hand and kissed it. ‘Come. Let us go inside. The driver will bring your bags.’

      ‘Are you quite sure about this?’ she murmured, as they rode up in the elevator towards the penthouse.

      Actually, Guido had suffered a couple of reservations—until he’d told himself that he was in danger of becoming some fabled recluse. And he knew instinctively that he could trust Lucy not to gossip about his home.

      Idly, he stroked his finger along the indentation of her waist. ‘I want someone to sample my cooking.’

      This time Lucy couldn’t hide her surprise as she tried and failed spectacularly to imagine him in the kitchen. ‘You mean you cook?’

      ‘Actually, no, I don’t.’ His black eyes gleamed. ‘Do you?’

      Lucy nodded solemnly. ‘Oh, yes. I adore cooking. In fact, I adore waiting on men in general. So I do hope you’ll let me run round after you just as soon as we get there. You will, won’t you, Guido?’

      It took about three seconds for him to register the sarcastic note in her voice, and he pulled her into his arms. ‘You are a wicked witch of a woman, Lucy Maguire,’ he growled, and began to trail his lips over her cheek.

      She closed her eyes, the raw and lemony feral scent of him invading her senses like a potent drug. The teasing comment pleased her, for in his voice she had heard the faintest note of puzzlement.

      He couldn’t work her out; she knew that—and she had actively encouraged it—but it was much more than a game to her. He closed himself off from her, so why should it fall on her shoulders to provide a one-way emotional show?

      At the moment she had an air of mystery which he found alluring. If she allowed him to twitch that curtain of mystery aside, to let daylight come flooding in, then who knew what would happen?

      She turned her head so that her lips brushed warm and soft and provocatively against his, and his eyes widened, surprising her with their hectic glitter.

      ‘I want you,’ he ground out.

      ‘I should hope so, too,’ she answered demurely.

      ‘I want you so badly I could do it—’

      ‘Here?’ she pre-empted, brazenly cupping him once more. Only this time he didn’t push her away. This time he groaned. She continued to trickle her fingers against his rock-hard shaft, pressing her lips close to his ear, as he had done to her at the airport. ‘Do you want me to unzip you, Guido?’ she questioned softly. ‘To free you and then to slowly take you into my mouth? To lick my tongue up and down until you can hold back no longer and—’

      He gave a roar like an angry lion as the lift pinged to a halt, buckling back the doors as if they were the enemy and unlocking his apartment, thanking God that he had had the foresight to dismiss all his staff for the rest of the day.

      He slammed the door shut behind them, and Lucy—for all her carefully suppressed curiosity—didn’t get a chance to notice any princely artefacts, for Guido was taking her by the hand in a way which broached no argument. But there again, who wanted to argue? Certainly not her.

      He stopped short of actually kicking the bedroom door open, but his punch to it was so forceful that he might as well have done. Only when it was shut behind them did they stand facing one another, like two protagonists squaring up for a fight.

      His breathing was laboured, and Lucy’s heart was beating so rapidly that she felt faint. She was blind to the beauty of the New York skyline captured outside the enormous window—blind to anything other than the beauty of his face. She drank in the stark hunger which momentarily made his features look almost cruel, and the knowledge that she had him on a knife-edge of desire filled her with a sense of daring.

      He had awoken in her a sense of passion and experimentation which not one of her other—laughably few—lovers had come even close to.

      Or was it, mocked a small voice in her head, simply because he was such an accomplished and experienced lover that she felt she had to keep pushing back the boundaries in order to match him?

      She put her hands on her hips and surveyed him from between slitted eyelids, her provocative pose at odds with the starchy, almost prim appearance of her navy blue uniform.

      ‘Would you like me to strip for you…sir?’ she questioned, in a tone of husky subservience.

      Guido groaned. Could he bear to wait? And yet could he bear not to? For a man whose hunger had become jaded over years of having exactly what he wanted, this new and acutely keen appetite was something he wanted to savour.

      For did not the sensation of hunger make you feel more alive than when you satisfied it? Had the blood ever sung in his veins quite as much as it was doing at the moment? Or the hard ache in his groin threatened to make him fall to the ground in front of her in complete surrender?

      He nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a moment as he walked towards the giant bed and lay back against the pillows.

      ‘Yes, strip,’ he ordered curtly. ‘Strip for me now.’

      Lucy let out a sigh as her thumb and finger rubbed at the lapel of her jacket, caressing the material as sensuously as if it was skin. In a way, it was almost a relief to be able to play this game—for the game detracted from reality, and the reality was that Lucy suspected she was falling in love. Dangerous. Oh, so dangerous.

      At least while she was acting the sultry siren she was able to stop herself from running over to him and cupping his hard, handsome face between her hands with a sense of wonder, then smothering it with tiny heartfelt kisses, telling him over and over that he made her heart sing and her senses come to vibrant and stinging life.

      But that was not what he wanted from her. A man didn’t have to spell it out for you that he was happy with just a casual affair, and Lucy was perceptive enough to have worked it out for herself in any case. And because she wanted to stay in the game she followed the rules that he had set. Did that make her weak? Or simply responsive?

      Guido saw her hesitation and groaned, fighting back the urge to have her join him on the bed.

      ‘Strip.’ His voice rang out, the word a single, clipped command.

      His voice was hard, she thought, but his eyes were as she had never seen them before—on fire with need and desire, and she had to steel herself against that look, to stop herself from melting. She slipped the jacket from her shoulders and hung it neatly over the back of a chair.

      ‘Oh, Lucy,’ he murmured.

      She surveyed him steadily. ‘Am I going too slowly for you, Guido?’

      He heard the challenge in her voice. Say yes and she would take even longer! He shook his head, not daring—not able—to speak.

      She began to undo the buttons of her crisp white shirt and saw him run his tongue over his lips as the garment joined her jacket. Slowly she unzipped the slim navy skirt and let it fall to the ground, so that it pooled by her feet. She stepped out of it. She heard his sharp inrush of breath as she stood before him, wearing just her bra and panties, stockings, suspender-belt and high navy shoes.

      She

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