Wife By Contract, Mistress By Demand

Heather’s daughter, the beautifully stunning, exotically sensual Gabriella, as far as Rufus was concerned, had just as calculatingly decided that he, James’s only son and heir, would make an equally suitable husband for her!

There was only one problem with that line of thinking—Rufus had little intention of ever marrying again. He had tried that once, only to discover that Angela was solely interested in the Gresham money, too, walking out after only a year of marriage, and leaving their two-month-old daughter behind when she did.

Their divorce, six months later, had been messy and very public, resulting in Rufus giving Angela half his vast personal fortune in order to maintain custody of the baby daughter he knew Angela had no interest in anyway.

And into that maelstrom had walked Gabriella Maria Lucia Benito, when his widowed father, obviously having learnt nothing at all from Rufus’s experience, had announced in the same breath that he intended both retiring as Chairman of Gresham’s, in favour of Rufus, and marrying the attractive fifty-year-old widow who had been his secretary—his secretary, for heaven’s sake; how clichéd was that?—for the last year, bringing with her a seventeen-year-old daughter from her previous marriage.

Tall, with a natural grace of movement, Gabriella, in her fitted tee shirts and tight, tight jeans, had taken one look at Rufus, it seemed, and thereafter done everything in her youthful power to tempt him into acknowledging her as a woman every time he visited his father at Gresham House in Surrey, her hungry violet gaze seeming to follow him everywhere.

But Rufus’s own experience with Angela—even if he ever did contemplate getting married again, which was highly unlikely, to give his now two-year-old daughter a mother—meant that Gabriella Maria Lucia Benito, no matter how alluring, would be the very last girl he would choose. One grasping gold-digger in the family—her mother!—was quite enough, thank you.

But, he decided with another sweeping glance at Gabriella she was without doubt a beautiful girl.

‘I think I might just take a dip in the pool,’ he murmured throatily, starting to unbutton his shirt. ‘The parents will be gone another couple of hours, you said…?’

‘Yes,’ Gabriella confirmed huskily, watching covertly as he stripped the shirt from his darkly tanned and muscled torso before unbuckling the belt on his trousers, unzipping them to drop them down onto the terrace exposing long and powerful legs.

The black fitted boxers he wore made more than adequate swimming trunks. But she blushed as she took in the dark hair on his chest, that moved down in a vee before thickening again, and her eyes widened as she saw the evidence of his arousal.

Rufus wanted her!

Gabriella swallowed hard, slightly breathless as her gaze returned to the hard, uncompromising planes of his face, those pale green eyes still hidden behind the dark glasses.

Dropping down onto the side of her lounger, the touch of his thigh searing hers, Rufus drawled, ‘Would you rub some oil on my back for me?’

Her hands shook slightly as she tipped some of the oil into her palms before moving to touch the broad width of his shoulders, loving the way his muscles tensed and flexed as she smoothed the oil into his skin, fingers softly kneading as she moved down the length of his spine.

Never, in her wildest fantasies about this man—and there had been a lot of those this last year!—had she ever thought he would allow her to be here like this with him, touching him, his hard strength making her tremble, a warmth between her thighs spreading as she felt the sexual tension between them grow.

‘Now the front.’ Rufus turned to lie back on the lounger, at last taking off those sunglasses to look up at Gabriella as she now sat beside him.

Gabriella rubbed the oil into his chest, her breath catching slightly in her throat as she felt herself captured by that totally assessing gaze as it moved over her.

‘Lower,’ he invited, seductively soft, one of his hands moving to rest on her thigh.

She could feel the warmth in her cheeks, her gaze avoiding his as she looked down at her tanned hands moving over his slightly paler skin, his stomach tautly muscled.

‘Lower, Gabriella,’ he urged throatily.

So much for showing Rufus how sophisticated she was, Gabriella thought nervously as her hands shook so much as she tipped more oil into them that she splashed some of the liquid onto his stomach and thighs.

‘Yes, there,’ he encouraged achingly.

Her touch was driving him insane, Rufus acknowledged. He breathed a short sigh of relief as her hands eventually moved down the long length of his legs. As it was, the featherlight touch of her fingers on his thighs and muscled calves did little to alleviate his ache, those caressing fingers on his legs increasing the need he had to make love to her.

But he shouldn’t…wouldn’t.

They had a couple of hours before the parents returned, Gabriella had said, and he intended touching her in the same way she had just touched him. Touching, but not taking.

‘Now you,’ he murmured gruffly as he moved to sit up and gently push Gabriella down on the lounger.

Rufus looked deeply into her eyes, taking his time as he rubbed the oil into his hands before moving them down to anoint her, Gabriella’s groan of pleasure caused a similar response in his own body.

Yes, he was going to enjoy touching this sleekly provocative young woman. Every inch of her!

Gabriella couldn’t look away from Rufus, totally enraptured by the sensations he was creating inside her as he caressed and massaged her with oil.

Just when she thought she couldn’t bear it any more Rufus pulled away from her, raising his head to look down at her, eyes dark with satisfaction.

‘Lower?’ he prompted throatily.

She could barely breathe, let alone speak, the brush of her lashes down against her cheek answer enough as Rufus tipped more oil on his hands to move down the slenderness of her waist.

Once again he held her gaze as he touched her, Gabriella’s thighs moved sensuously against him as he increased the rhythm of his caress, feeling her arousal deepening and increasing as she hurtled towards a pleasure she had never known before, arching against him as that heat spun out of control and wave after wave of sensation ripped through the whole of her body, sobbing low in her throat, her hands moving up as her fingers became entangled in his dark blond hair, holding him against her as those waves became a crescendo of feelings that had her clinging to Rufus in unashamed abandon.

She had never experienced anything like this in her life before, none of her romantic daydreams about Rufus having prepared her for the reality, for her completely uncontrolled response to his caresses.

She had never felt as happy before as she did at this moment, knew that Rufus couldn’t touch her in this way if he didn’t love her, too.

She smiled dreamily as she imagined a future with Rufus. As his wife. How surprised her mother and James were going to be when they told them the news. They—

‘Not bad, Gabriella,’ Rufus derided softly as he looked down at her, his eyes no longer hot with arousal but coolly assessing. ‘Very responsive, in fact,’he dismissed dryly as his gaze moved over her with clinical appreciation. ‘But I think you had better go and make yourself decent before the parents get back,’ he added mockingly. ‘We wouldn’t want to shock their sensibilities, now, would we?’

Gabriella blinked up at him frowningly, her eyes dark smudges of purple, not quite sure of him now. Rufus had just caressed her in a way no one else ever had, had taken her to a climax beyond her wildest dreams. Admittedly, they hadn’t made love, but surely the intimacy they had just shared had to mean something to him—

‘I think I’ll go for that swim now.’ He stood up, stretching languidly. ‘And then I think I’d like something to eat,’ he added dismissively.

He would like something to eat? They had just made love—well…Rufus had just touched her!—so how could he just calmly start talking about food as if—?

‘What’s the matter, Gabriella?’ Rufus looked down at her with those coldly assessing eyes, his mouth twisted derisively. ‘Not satisfied yet?’ he mocked throatily. ‘Well, give me a chance to have a swim and something to eat, and maybe I’ll be in the mood for more of the same—’

‘Why are you being like this?’ Gabriella sounded pained, tears swimming in the deep purple of her eyes.

‘Like what?’ Rufus came back tersely, not falling for those tears; Angela had shed ones just like them every time she hadn’t been able to get her own way during the total of eighteen months they had been together. Crocodile tears, totally deceptive, totally false.

Gabriella blinked dazedly. ‘But we just—’

‘No, Gabriella, you just,’he corrected hardly. ‘You’ve been wanting me to touch you for the last year, and now I’ve done so…’ he shrugged ‘…so what are you complaining about?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘Gabriella, I’ve been stuck in an airport and an airplane for a total of seven hours,’ he reminded impatiently, determined not to be swayed by the bewilderment in those deep purple eyes. ‘I’m tired and I’m hungry,’he snapped. ‘If you want any more from me then you’re going to have to wait until I’ve satisfied at least one of my other appetites!’

She reached up to readjust her bikini top before answering him. ‘But I thought—’ She shook her head. ‘I thought you and I—’

‘Thought what?’ Rufus’s patience snapped completely. ‘That you would seduce me—as you’ve been trying so hard to do this last year!’ he added scathingly. ‘And that I would then ask you to marry me, that I would behave like the lovesick fool my father has over your money-grasping mother? Well, think again, Gabriella,’ he bit out coldly. ‘I’ve already given all that I have to give where you’re concerned!’ His top lip curled back sneeringly. ‘If you want a repeat performance, perhaps I’ll be willing to oblige. But later, not now.’

Gabriella stared up at him tearfully.