LITMIR.BIZ

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to deepen and speed. She could feel their slow and relentless pounding in her temple, her wrists, and somewhere deep in her groin. This is sheer craziness, she told herself. But she couldn’t move; she didn’t want it to end.

      He heard her sigh, and his hard mouth glimmered in a brief smile, his eyes drifting over the tight, firm curve of her bottom.

      ‘Am I sending you to sleep?’

      ‘Well, yes,’ she murmured drowsily, knowing that was only half the story.

      ‘Then I’d better stop. We can’t have that.’

      He took his hands away. ‘Oh!’ Lara whispered disappointedly.

      ‘Turn over,’ came the soft command.

      Somehow she managed to, even though her body felt so deliciously lethargic that it took all her energy.

      Her hair was all mussed, her cheeks pink and flushed, and behind her half-hooded eyelids her blue eyes glittered hectically. He read in them self-doubt and utter confusion and, almost without intending to, dipped his head and brushed a featherlight kiss over her lips, felt her shiver in response.

      ‘Darian—’

      ‘Shh.’ He kissed her again.

      This was dangerous. The brush of his lips was barely there and then gone again, only to return. Tiny, butterfly kisses which coaxed and maddened. ‘Oh,’ she murmured instinctively.

      His mouth smiled against hers, and this time his lips stayed longer, teasing and caressing until hers opened beneath his and her arms came up to wind around his neck, like tendrils of ivy clinging to sun-warmed brick.

      ‘Darian—’

      ‘You don’t like it?’

      She grazed her lips over his, unable to stop herself. Just once, she told herself. She would kiss him just once. But she kissed him again, and again, and then again, and his low laugh of delight made her want to do it some more.

      She tried to speak, but her lips were so dry and her head so spinning that the words came out as a parched kind of whisper. ‘It isn’t a question of not liking…’

      ‘But that’s the only important question, darling. Nothing else is worth asking.’ He drifted his mouth along the line of her jaw. ‘Is it?’

      Her head fell back and his lips moved immediately to her neck. Lara shuddered. In her befuddled state of desire his words seemed to make perfect sense, and this was dangerous indeed. Very dangerous.

      She should pull away and ask him to take her home. If he wanted her that much then he would be prepared to wait—and wouldn’t that be what any woman in her right mind would do? Wait at least until she had told him the momentous news she had?

      So why were her fingertips running over the back of his head as if learning him by touch? Why was she doing nothing to stop him when he ran the flat of his hand down over one breast and then back again, where it lingered, and she could feel it growing tight and hard against him.

      Because she couldn’t, that was why.

      She lifted her head, which felt as if it was weighted with some heavy metal—like the gold which matched the hot, molten colour of his eyes. Two flares of colour ran along each aristocratic cheekbone, and at that moment he looked like a pure Marabanese, with all the accompanying pride and arrogance that went with that ancestry.

      Yet his hard mouth had been softened by her kisses, so that for one second he looked unexpectedly vulnerable. It was like having a curtain twitch and seeing behind it a glimpse of a man you dared not dream existed. A man with softness beneath the hard, polished exterior, making him utterly irresistible. And with something approaching shock Lara realised that she wanted him now, no matter what the consequences.

      She remembered the first time she had seen Khalim and had almost melted into a puddle on the floor. Was she just one of those women who were suckers for arrogant and exotic-looking men who seemed to make most normal men look like a pale imitation of the real thing?

      Darian sensed her reservations melting away and smiled lazily as he ran his hand down over her stomach, which curved faintly beneath the clinging cream fabric of her dress, and then down further still, until it edged up beneath the thin material. He splayed his fingers with arrogant possession over the space of cool flesh above her stocking top and Lara felt her thighs part, as if no power on earth could have stopped them.

      ‘You do like it,’ he purred approvingly, and the pad of his thumb stroked the silken flesh there. He felt her squirm, enjoying the look of helpless pleasure which made her lips form a disbelieving little Oh!

      She tried one last, futile time. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she protested half-heartedly.

      ‘Want me to stop?’ This as his fingertips floated tantalisingly close to the moist, filmy barrier of her panties, and she shook her head distractedly.

      ‘No!’

      He kissed her, and his words were muffled against her lips. ‘You just want me to know that you aren’t in the habit of leaping into bed on a first date, is that it?’

      Lara felt her cheeks grow hot. ‘Well, I’m not—’

      ‘And neither am I,’ he murmured silkily. ‘So we’re equal, aren’t we?’

      If only he knew!

      ‘And now that we’ve established that…’ He pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her—only this time he really kissed her, deep, searching seeking kisses, which dissolved away everything but the need to be joined with him.

      ‘Darian,’ she moaned weakly as he started to unbutton her dress, little by little, bit by bit, lowering his head so that where his fingers led his mouth followed, annointing her skin with gentle kisses which made her squirm with pleasure. He slipped the dress from her shoulders and it slid away unnoticed, so that she was lying there in a tiny cream bra and knickers, her stockings and black leather boots.

      Darian sucked in a hot, ragged breath. Women only ever wore undergarments like that if they were expecting to be seduced. This was what she wanted. What she had obviously expected. The heat built up inside him. ‘Undress me,’ he urged. ‘Take my clothes off, Lara.’

      But Lara felt almost kittenish in her helplessness. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons of his shirt until he made a low sound that was halfway between a groan and a laugh and tipped her chin up with his fingertip, unbearably excited by the beguiling contrast beween wanton abandon and a kind of sweet shyness.

      ‘Your hands are shaking,’ he said gravely.

      Her whole body was shaking—surely he could see that?

      ‘Yes.’

      He pulled at his shirt with a hunger so sharp he scarcely recognised it. What invisible buttons was she pressing? he wondered distractedly as he yanked it off and impatiently threw it aside.

      She saw the tension on his face and managed to undo his belt, but he unzipped his trousers himself, as though not trusting her to do so. Her lips were parched with both fear and excitement as the last of his clothing was removed, and she gave an instinctive sigh as she feasted her eyes on him.

      His body was as beautiful as she had known it would be—his skin the colour of deep honey, his limbs long and lean and strong. And he was very, very aroused…

      He ran a slow finger over her leather boot and up along her thigh, and felt her shudder in response. ‘Do you want to wrap these round my back?’ he whispered.

      It was one of those questions which told her exactly what the score was. A deliberate and studied celebration of sensuality and nothing more than that. But Lara was too much in thrall to back out now—and what reason could she possibly give? That she was afraid he was going to hurt her as no man had ever hurt her before nor would again?

      Instead, she reached her arms up to pull him close, and as he lowered his body down onto hers she had the strangest

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