On the First Night of Christmas...

‘That’s okay.’ She should have been relieved. He was letting her down gently. But she didn’t feel relieved, she felt disappointed. What had he meant by ‘take this further’? How much further?

He shifted, his hand resting back on her thigh, stroking lazily. ‘You could wait here until I get back,’ he said, the heavy-lidded gaze as arousing as the feel of his rough palm on her skin. ‘Although you might get bored.’ His fingers slipped under the hem of her tunic, and she shuddered. He laughed. ‘And I wouldn’t want that.’

Bored? How could she be bored when her body felt as if it were about to explode? ‘I don’t underst—’

‘Or you could come with me,’ he interrupted.

Her breath gushed out. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying but it was next to impossible as the tips of his fingers drew lazy circles on her leg. Her sex throbbed, ached, begging for him to move higher still and stroke her there.

‘Where to?’ she heard herself ask as she tried to keep up her end of the conversation.

‘The Blue Tower Restaurant,’ he murmured, mentioning London’s newest hot spot. His thumb traced the edge of her panties, then dipped underneath and her breath sawed out in a ragged pant.

Her hands fell to his shoulders, and she dug her fingers into the ridge of muscle, scared she was going to fall off the sofa. His green eyes watched her, the lids at half mast.

‘I don’t …’ She swayed towards him. What was happening? What were they talking about? Her skin flushed hot, then cold, then hot again.

His tongue licked at her lips, then he cupped her head, his mouth taking hers in another mind-numbing kiss. Her heavy breasts flattened against the solid wall of his chest, the nipples squeezing into rigid, arching peaks.

‘Say yes, Cassie,’ he murmured as his fingers eased under the gusset of her panties and plunged.

‘Yes.’ The single word burst out of her mouth.

‘God, you’re so wet.’ He circled and rubbed her swollen flesh, pushed inside her, his thumb pressing against her clitoris. ‘You feel incredible.’

She straddled him, her knees digging into the sofa, her arms wrapping around his shoulders as his fingers continued to drive her into a frenzy. She couldn’t talk, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. All thought, all feeling concentrated on the nub of pleasure between her legs. The rigid length of him, confined by his clothing, nudged the inside of her thigh—and she rubbed herself against him, yearning to have him deep inside her.

Her head dropped back and she moaned, heat soaring up her body. ‘Please, don’t stop.’

His strained laugh brushed against her cheek. ‘I’m not going to stop.’

And he didn’t, as the spasms of an unstoppable climax eddied up from her toes, coursed through her body and collided in her sex.

‘Let go, Cassie. Come for me.’

The orgasm roared through her, exploding into a billion glittering sparks like a firework display on Bonfire Night. She heard someone cry out as the wave of pleasure crashed over her. Someone who sounded a lot like her but was thousands of miles away.

Then she buried her face in his neck, dazed and delirious, and whispered, ‘Candy man.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘WHAT did you call me?’ At Jace’s gruff chuckle, Cassie stiffened and rose to see the teasing grin on his face.

Had she just said that out loud?

‘It sounded like candy man,’ he added.

‘Did it?’ She hedged, pressing her palms to the heat in her cheeks.

He laughed. ‘Interesting,’ he murmured, the smile more than a little smug. ‘What does it mean?’

She climbed off his lap, adjusted her clothing, struggling to think straight while noticing the impressive bulge in his trousers. She smoothed the tunic down. ‘It means, that was …’ She halted, her face flushing. How did you thank a guy for giving you the most incredible orgasm of your life? She’d never come that quickly before, or with such intensity. And certainly not with a man she hadn’t been in a relationship with. ‘It means, that was amazing. So thanks,’ she said, opting for honesty while her endorphins were still high on the afterglow.

He stretched out his arms across the back of the sofa. ‘The pleasure’s all mine.’

‘I’m sorry, you didn’t …’ Her gaze snagged on his obvious state of arousal, and she wondered if she should offer to do something for him in return. It seemed only fair. ‘Would you like me …?’

He tucked a finger under her chin, lifted her gaze to his. ‘It’s okay, Cassie. I’m not fifteen any more. I can wait.’ He placed a quick kiss on her nose, before standing up. ‘In fact, unfortunately, we’re both going to have to wait, we’re already fashionably late.’

‘Late? Late for what?’

Instead of answering, he took her hands in his, and hauled her off the sofa. ‘If you want to go do whatever it is girls do while they hog the bathroom, go ahead.’ He placed his hand on her bottom and gave her a proprietary pat. ‘It’s that way.’

‘Yes, but … where are we going?’ she asked, trying to maintain a little sanity. Why had the invitation turned the afterglow into a giddy rush of pleasure?

He settled his hands on her shoulders, swept her hair back and kissed her neck. ‘The Blue Tower. With me. This evening.’

When had she agreed to that? ‘But I …’ She trailed off, unable to concentrate on anything but his lips nuzzling the sensitive skin under her ear—and the darts of sensation shivering down her spine.

The doorbell buzzed and he nipped her ear lobe. ‘That’ll be your clothes. Don’t take too long—we don’t want to be too fashionable.’ So saying, he strode out of the room.

Locating her bag under the coffee table, Cassie dashed off to the bathroom he’d indicated. She knew when she was being railroaded. But right now she didn’t care. She needed time to think.

Once inside the lavish marble bathroom, she flung her bag on the vanity and studied herself in the mirror that covered one wall.

She hardly recognised herself.

Her hair sprung out in all directions, the unruly curls spilling out of the topknot she’d swept it up in that morning. Her cheeks were flushed a vivid red, her lips puffy and swollen, and her pupils so dilated her blue eyes were almost black. She touched her fingertips to the raw spot beneath her bottom lip. And she had whisker burn on her chin.

She looked like a woman who had been well and truly satisfied. She huffed out a breath. Probably because she had been. But she needed to take stock and think clearly now.

Or at least try to think clearly with her brain still addled from the endorphin rush and her core still throbbing from Jace Ryan’s exceptionally skilled caresses.

Unwrapping a bar of the fragrant vanilla soap in a basket on the vanity, she washed her hands and face, then doused her cheeks in cold water. After patting herself dry with one of the hotel’s monogrammed towels and finger-combing her hair, she examined her face again. She still looked dazed and dishevelled, but at least the colour in her cheeks had subsided from a vivid magenta to a pale rose. And her pupils had shrunk enough so she didn’t look as if she were on crack.

Okay, so what had happened out there? She simply wasn’t that into sex. Not that she was frigid or anything. She liked sex well enough. The sensible, comforting, predictable kind with a man she knew well and cared about and respected. Even if it later turned out he didn’t deserve it. A line formed on her brow in the mirror. However, she did not do the hot, wild, knock-you-for-six kind of sex with a man who was a virtual stranger.

But there was no denying she’d done just that with Jace Ryan.

One minute they’d been talking, then they’d been kissing and then she’d been begging him to bring her to the most earth-shattering orgasm of her life. Another line appeared on her brow. And he had.

How had he known just how to touch her, and where? How had he known so instinctively just what she needed when she didn’t know herself? She’d only had two serious boyfriends in her life. Two men whom she’d become sexually intimate with before she’d leapt into Jace Ryan’s car this afternoon. She’d known both of them for weeks, months even, before she’d ever considered taking things to the next stage. But even after forming proper committed relationships with them, even after convincing herself she was in love with them, neither of them had ever been able to make her lose her mind as Jace had with a simple touch. In fact, Lance and David, her college boyfriend, had both complained at one time or another that she thought too much during sex, that she wasn’t spontaneous enough.

She swallowed heavily, her throat dry. She hadn’t merely been spontaneous on Jace’s sofa. She’d come close to spontaneously combusting.

And she hadn’t been thinking either. In fact, she’d been doing the opposite. Jace had offered to get her coat cleaned, and, less than an hour after walking into his hotel suite, she’d been straddling his thighs and writhing under his touch like a woman possessed. What had happened to her smart, safe, sensible, measured approach to sex and intimacy?

Opening her bag on the vanity, she rummaged for her phone. Unlocking the keypad, she scrolled down to Nessa’s name.