From New York With Love: Rumours on the Red Carpet / Rapunzel in New York / Sizzle in the City

Thia took a step back as Lucien Steele stood up and moved round to the front of his desk. His proximity, and the flat canvas shoes she was wearing, meant she had to tilt her head back in order to be able to look him in the face. A face that made her wish she were an artist. What joy, what satisfaction, to commit those hard and mesmerising features to canvas. Especially if Lucien could be persuaded into posing in traditional Apache clout cloth, with oil rubbed into the bare bronzed skin of his chest and arms, emphasising all the dips and hollows of those sleek muscles—

‘What are you thinking about, Cyn?’

She looked up guiltily as she realised her appreciative gaze had actually wandered down to that muscled chest as she imagined him bare from the waist up—. ‘I—you—nice suit.’ She gave him a falsely bright smile.

Lucien Steele’s mouth tilted sceptically, as if he knew exactly what she had been thinking. ‘Thanks,’ he drawled derisively. ‘But I believe we were discussing your reckless behaviour last night and your reasons for it?’ His voice hardened and all humour left his expression. ‘Do you have any idea what could have happened to you if Dex hadn’t stayed outside your room all night?’

She had a pretty good idea, yes. ‘It was stupid of me. I accept that.’

‘Do you?’ he bit out harshly.

She nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here, actually. I wanted to thank you.’ She grimaced. ‘For allowing Dex to stand guard last night. For having my things delivered to the hotel this morning. And for sending that keycard, in the envelope Dex gave me, for a suite at Steele Heights.’

For all her expectations of what Lucien Steele might have put in that vellum envelope Dex had handed her this morning, there had been nothing in it but a keycard for a suite at Steele Heights, which he had obviously booked for her.

Thia had wrestled with her pride over accepting, of course, along with that old adage about accepting sweets from strangers. This was a different sort of suite, of course, but she told herself it was still sensible to be wary. But pride and wariness weren’t going to put a roof over her head tonight, and she couldn’t possibly go back to Jonathan’s.

Lucien leant back against his desk and seemed to guess some of her thoughts. ‘I trust you’ve overcome your scruples and moved in there now?’

‘Yes.’ Thia grimaced. Just the thought of that luxurious suite—the sitting room, bedroom and equally beautiful adjoining bathroom—was enough for her to know she had done the right thing. It might take her a while, but she fully intended to reimburse Lucien for his generosity.

He quirked one dark brow. ‘Does that mean you no longer mind feeling under obligation to me?’

Thia looked up at him sharply, unable to read anything from his mocking expression. ‘I think the question should be do you believe I’m under any obligation to you?’

‘Let me see...’ He crossed his elegantly clad legs at the ankles as he studied her consideringly. ‘I left a perfectly good party last night because I thought we were going on somewhere to have a drink together. A drink that never happened. You flounced off in a snit after I offered to drive you somewhere, which greatly inconvenienced me as Dex was then forced to stand guard over your room all night. And I was put to the trouble this morning of asking your ex-boyfriend to pack up your belongings in that hideous lime-green suitcase before having my driver deliver it to that seedy hotel.’ He gave a glance at the slender gold watch on his wrist. ‘Your unexpected visit here this morning means I am now already three minutes late leaving for my next appointment. So what do you think, Cyn? Are you obligated to me?’

Well, when he put it like that... ‘Maybe,’ Thia allowed with a pained wince.

‘I would say there’s no maybe about it.’ He slowly straightened to his full height of several inches over six feet, that silver gaze fixed on her unblinkingly as he took a step forward.

Thia took a step back as she was once again overwhelmed by the unique lemon and musk scent of Lucien Steele. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What does it look as if I’m doing?’

He was standing so close now she could feel the warmth he exuded from his body against the bareness of her midriff and arms. His face—mouth—only was inches away from her own as he lowered his head slightly.

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘It looks to me as if you’re trying to intimidate me!’

He gave a slow and mocking smile as he regarded her through narrowed lids. ‘Am I succeeding?’

‘You must know that you intimidate everyone.’

‘I’m not interested in everyone, Cyn, just you.’

Thia’s heart was beating such a loud tattoo in her chest that she thought Lucien must be able to hear it. Or at least see the way her breasts were quickly rising and falling as she tried to drag air into her starved lungs. ‘You’re standing far too close to me,’ she protested weakly.

He tilted his head, bringing those chiselled lips even closer to hers. ‘I like standing close to you.’

She realised she liked standing close to Lucien too. That she liked him. That she wanted to do so much more than stand close to him. She wanted Lucien to pull her into his arms and kiss her. To make love to her.

Which was strange when she had never felt the least inclination to make love with any man before now. But Lucien wasn’t just any man. He was dark and dangerous and overpoweringly, mesmerisingly, sexually attractive—a combination Thia had never come across before now. She knew her breasts had swelled, the nipples hard nubs, pressing against her cropped top, and between her thighs she was damp, aching. For Lucien Steele’s touch!

As if he was able to read that hunger in her face, Lucien’s pupils dilated and his head slowly lowered, until those beautiful sculptured lips laid gentle but hungry siege to hers.

Thia felt as if she had been jolted with several thousand volts of electricity. And heat. Such burning heat coursing through her. She stepped in closer to that hard, unyielding body and her arms moved up and over Lucien’s wide shoulders as if of their own volition. The warmth of his strong hands spanned the slenderness of her bare waist as her fingers became entangled in that silky black hair at his nape, her lips parting as she lost herself in the heat of his kiss.

* * *

Trouble...

Oh, yes, Cyn Hammond, with her black hair, electric-blue eyes, beautiful face and deliciously enticing body, was definitely Trouble with a capital T...

But at this moment, with the softness of her responsive lips parted beneath his, his hands caressing, enjoying the feel of the soft perfection of her bare midriff, Lucien didn’t give a damn about that.

Nothing had changed since last night. If anything he wanted her more than he had then.

Again. Right here.

And right now!

Lucien deepened the kiss even as he moulded her slender curves against his own much harder ones, intoxicated, lost in Cyn’s taste as he ran his tongue along the pouting softness of her bottom lip. Groaning low in his throat, he let his tongue caress past those addictive lips and into the heat beneath, plunging, possessing that heat as his hands moved restlessly, caressingly, down the length of her spine. Soon Lucien was able to cup that shapely bottom and pull her snugly into and against the pulsing length of his arousal.

The softness of her thighs felt so good against his, so hot and welcoming. He shifted, the hardness of his shaft now cupped and cushioned in that softness, and moved one of his hands to cup her breast through her T-shirt. It was a perfect fit into the palm of his hand, the nipple hard as an unripe berry as Lucien brushed the soft pad of his thumb across it and heard Cyn’s gasp of pleasure, felt her back arching, pressing her breast harder into his cupping hand in a silent plea.

Her skin felt as smooth as silk beneath Lucien’s fingertips as he slipped his hand beneath the bottom of her top to cup her bare breast—

* * *

Thia wrenched her mouth from Lucien’s and pulled out of his arms before taking a stumbling step backwards—as if those few inches in any way nullified Lucien’s sexual potency, or the devastation wrought upon her senses by that hungry kiss and those caressing hands!

‘No...’ she breathed shakily, her cheeks ablaze with embarrassed colour as she attempted to straighten her top over breasts that pulsed and ached for the pleasure she had just denied them.

Lucien’s gaze was hooded. There was a flush across those high cheekbones, a nerve pulsing in his clenched jaw. ‘No?’

‘No,’ Thia repeated more firmly. ‘This is—I don’t do this.’

‘“This” being...?’

‘Seduction in a zillionaire’s office!’

He arched one dark brow. ‘How many zillionaires do you know?’

Her cheeks warmed. ‘Just the one.’

He nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’ He crossed his arms in front of his chest and he looked at her from between narrowed lids. ‘Just what did you think was going to happen, Cyn, when you came to my office dressed—or rather undressed—like that?’ That glittering silver gaze swept appreciatively over her breasts, naked beneath the crop top, her bare midriff and hip-hugging denims.

She hadn’t allowed herself to think before coming here—had just acted on impulse, knowing she had to thank Lucien Steele for his help some time today and just wanting to get it over with. But, yes, now that he mentioned it she wasn’t exactly dressed for repelling advances. Deliberately if subconsciously so? Lord, she hoped not!