Hotbed of Scandal: Mistress: At What Price? / Red Wine and Her Sexy Ex / Bedded by Blackmail

‘I never said I wanted gentle. Those were your words, not mine.’ She laughed, a lightly hysterical sound. ‘And you were referring to a car.’

She didn’t object, and that was all he needed to know.

Tonight she was his, to pleasure and enjoy. The knowledge careened through his mind, through his limbs, as he gorged himself on her sweet honey taste. Like a crazed bee in a field of clover, he left her lips to sample every patch of bared skin, finally settling to suckle the tender spot between neck and shoulder.

Her fingers rushed up his shirt, popping buttons. Yanking the hem from his trousers, she spread the fabric wide to rub circles over his chest. The heat from her palms scorched and seduced, their impatience thrilled and tantalised.

There was no sound in their thick-panelled room save for the sounds they made themselves. It accentuated his harsh breaths, her desperate moans, fabric abrading fabric, skin rasping skin. The urgent sounds detonated small explosions inside him that reverberated like gunfire through his limbs. What they’d begun as a foil for the press had become something else entirely.

Or had they already known this was how it would be?

Impatience born of desires too long denied made his hands clumsy as he pushed the dress from her shoulders, leaving her breasts dazzlingly, breathtakingly exposed. Pale, creamy flesh. Dark, erect nipples.

Greedy now, he wanted more. He wanted all. He met her eyes, dark in the dimness. ‘How does this creation come off?’

‘Here.’ She guided his fingers to the zip. ‘It’s tight.’ He fumbled for a frustrating moment, then came the satisfying sound as it shirred downward. She helped him shimmy it over her hips. Her panties—if she was wearing any—went the same way as the dress. All she wore were sparkly stilettos.

Sweet heaven.

She reached out, flicked his belt buckle open, wrenched his zip down…In seconds he was as naked as she.

He toed off his shoes. His pulse was jack-hammering, his heart felt so huge, so tight, he thought it might be going into cardiac arrest. Was it possible to die of anticipation?

He twisted his fingers into her hair, pulling out pins, letting them drop wherever. Lifting her arms, she teased the silken mass out with her fingers so that it tumbled over her shoulders.

And then she was twining herself about him like a vine, gyrating her hips against his throbbing erection. She was all lean limbs and strong lines, and if his heart didn’t give out he was probably going to spontaneously combust.

He’d never wanted like this, never burned this way. Tomorrow, that might concern him, but at this moment the only thing in his mind was their mutual goal. All the years till now, all the women till now, had been a dress rehearsal for this command performance.

Seemed he’d waited half a lifetime.

She’d waited a lifetime. Dane Huntington, teenage fantasy, here. With her. Mariel rubbed her lips over his, opened her mouth and drugged herself with his taste. Heat, desire, impatience. Dragging her towards oblivion. She couldn’t think; her head was too filled with his scent. She could only feel. Sensations, lovely sensations, streaking over her skin and zapping through her body like golden lightning.

The ache low in her belly grew, expanded, until she was a writhing mass of wanton need. ‘Now,’ she demanded, arching her hips against his pulsing hardness. Instinctively she reached down between them.

His answering groan, harsh against her ear, had her shuddering. ‘Protection?’

‘On the Pill.’

He hefted her higher and her thighs wrapped around his waist. And he snapped, tension tearing free, his eyes smoking in the half-light, the hard planes of his body taut beneath her hands. No preliminaries—she didn’t want them this time, didn’t need them.

Still watching her, he shoved inside with one long thrust. They stared at each other for what seemed an endless moment, while needs and desire pulsed through their bodies and the air softened around them.

Then he withdrew a little, but only to push again, harder. Again. In a rhythm they both knew how to move to. He took, he possessed, and she met him hunger for hunger, greed for greed.

Her climax shot her into the realms of dark pleasure and bright chaos. She clung to him as he crested the wave and joined her in the sheer mindless joy of shared delight.

Chapter Seven

DANE was roused from sleep by a pounding on the door. Instantly awake, he grabbed one of the hotel’s robes, stepped around last night’s discarded clothing and padded to the suite’s door.

Room Service with their requested breakfast. ‘Good morning, sir.’ The waitress smiled as he stood back to let her enter.

‘Good morning.’ He pushed a hand through his bedroom hair. ‘It’s nine o’clock already?’ He’d slept like the dead. Hadn’t slept like that since he didn’t remember when. He did remember they’d finally found their way under the bedcovers together.

‘Yes, sir. Five past, actually. We’re running a little behind this morning.’

He found his wallet, dug out a tip while she set the tray on the table in the entertainment area. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. Have a nice day.’

‘And you.’

Picking up the tray, he headed to the bedroom. Mariel blinked owlishly at him in the morning’s golden light, then sat up, pulling the sheet modestly over her breasts and securing it firmly beneath her armpits.

‘Good morning.’ The words sounded formal and stilted to his own ears. He followed it up with a more congenial, ‘I hope you’re hungry.’

‘Morning.’

Her hair was a wild dark halo around her face, and there was a glow in those cheeks this morning. He held himself personally responsible. But a thread of something approaching morning-after nerves wound through the satisfaction. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that way with a woman. Awkward. Clumsy with words.

Determined to banish it, he climbed onto the bed and set the tray between them, poured two coffees, handed her one. He figured they might both need it. He’d never felt the need nor the inclination for inane morning-after chit-chat. He either left a lover’s bed before dawn or called her a taxi as soon as she woke.

‘We slept in the same bed,’ she said, surprising him. ‘All night.’ She didn’t sound happy about it.

‘There wasn’t a lot of night left.’ Thoughtful, he sipped the thick black brew. ‘And, since there’s only one bed, after we…’ He drew back from the words. ‘I figured you’d share.’

‘A one-bedroom suite.’ She added sugar, stirred. ‘So…you planned this?’

Seduction 101: Never leave a woman feeling she’s been taken advantage of.

He went with a smooth, ‘Yes. I told you—the press want details.’ He lifted the cover on a plate of fried eggs and bacon. ‘We give them details—that was the plan we agreed on. Whether I slept here or on the daybed, the press will assume what we want them to assume.’

She sipped at her coffee. ‘Okay. Fine.’

He was unsettled by this strange tension that had sprung up between them. He didn’t understand her emotional tug of war. Last night she’d been molten lava in his hands. She wouldn’t be thinking this was more than it was. Would she? She’d made it clear that after her Frenchman she wasn’t going to get emotionally involved with anyone again.

‘Why don’t you tell me what the problem is?’

‘There’s no problem.’ Her reply was quick, brisk, the tone casual. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes, and took another sip of coffee.

‘We used to be able to be honest with each other—’

‘Not completely.’

‘Okay, you’ll probably never forgive me for that, and I accept it. But I never deliberately lied to you. If we can’t deal with issues that arise with our new relationship, then we will have a problem.’

She was silent a moment, and he thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she said, ‘This is going to sound totally gauche, but I woke up and you were lying next to me naked and I don’t know how to deal with this…us.’ Colour bled into her cheeks and she looked down at the cup in her hands.