Mistresses: Lethal Attraction: Uncovering the Silveri Secret / If You Can't Stand the Heat... / Sizzle

He cupped her face, his thumb stroking along her cheek in a slow caress. ‘What stuff do you worry about?’

Bella rolled her lips together. ‘The usual: my thighs, my stomach, my breasts.’

His frown was incredulous. ‘Bella, you’re beautiful. You’re perfect. How can you possibly worry about things like that?’ he asked.

‘I know, it sounds so … so shallow,’ she said.

‘Not shallow,’ he said. ‘Just insecure.’

‘Yep,’ Bella said with a self-deprecating twist of her mouth.

His thumb paused in its stroking action, his blue-green gaze steady on hers. ‘You have no need to be. You really don’t. You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.’

She gave him a tremulous smile. ‘Thank you.’

He brushed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. ‘This thing between us …’ He paused for a moment. ‘I want it to continue.’

Bella’s heart gave a little stumble. ‘For how long?’

He studied her expression for another beat or two. ‘I’m not one for putting a timeline on relationships,’ he said. ‘Let’s just see how it goes, shall we?’

Bella felt reality slap her in the face. She knew exactly how it would go: he would have his fun and move on. He wasn’t promising her anything—no emotion, no love, no future—just sex. Right from the start, all he had wanted to do was to stop her marrying before she was twenty-five. What better way than to temporarily distract her with the delights of his love-making? But how long would an affair between them continue? Even if it did continue for a few weeks, or even months, he wasn’t going to offer her the things she yearned for most. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ she asked.

His brows came together. ‘You’re surely not still determined to go ahead with that ridiculous engagement?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she asked.

He lifted himself away and got off the bed, one of his hands raking a pathway through his hair. ‘I’m offering you a relationship.’

‘You’re offering me a fling,’ Bella said.

His cheek moved in and out as he clenched his teeth. ‘That’s all I can offer you,’ he said.

‘It’s not enough for me,’ she said, swinging her legs over the bed to collect her clothes. ‘I don’t want to live like my mother, going from fling to fling. I want to settle down.’

‘How can you sell yourself so short?’ he asked, capturing her arm to stop her moving past. ‘You’re setting yourself up for a passionless life. Why can’t you see it?’

Bella tried to shake off his hold but he held her fast. ‘I want a normal life.’

‘What’s normal about marrying a man you don’t love?’ he asked.

‘I do love him,’ she said.

He gave a mocking grunt. ‘And yet you just had sex with me.’

‘It was just sex,’ she said. ‘It’s just a physical thing. It means nothing.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ he asked.

Bella wanted to believe it. She needed to believe it. ‘I should never have slept with you,’ she said. ‘It was a mistake. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘No, maybe not, but you were feeling,’ he said, pulling her closer, right up against his naked body. ‘Like you’re doing now. Can you feel what you do to me, Bella? What we do to each other?’

Bella could and it sent a wave of hot, pulsing longing through her. His erection was pressed against her thigh. She felt her feminine core tingling in anticipation, the nerve-endings still sensitised from their passionate coupling earlier.

His mouth came down and covered hers and in a heartbeat she was lost. Her arms snaked around him, holding him as close as she possibly could. She wanted to crawl inside his skin, to melt into him so that her body didn’t ache with this maddeningly feverish want.

Her hands delved into his hair, her fingers threading through the thick black strands. She breathed in the scent of him, that erotic mix of his maleness with the delicate overlay of her perfume and body musk.