Rumours: The Ruthless Ravensdales: Ravensdale's Defiant Captive (The Ravensdale Scandals) / Awakening the Ravensdale Heiress (The Ravensdale Scandals) / Engaged to Her Ravensdale Enemy (The Ravensdale

‘You’re thinking about it—that much I do know.’ Why am I speaking in such a husky whisper? Holly thought. Anyone would think she was falling under some sort of crazy spell. Sure, he was handsome and he smelled good. Way too good, compared to some of the men she’d been up close and personal with. But he was a man who wanted to tame her and that she could never allow. Not in a million years.

His mouth tilted in a half smile. ‘You think you can read my mind?’

‘I don’t know about your mind but your body’s giving off one heck of a signal,’ she said.

‘So is yours.’

Tell me something I don’t already know, Holly thought, sneaking in a hitching breath. Somehow the power base between them had shifted. She was no longer in charge of her body. It was reacting according to its own schedule, a schedule she had no control over. Her senses were scrambled. Caught up in a maelstrom of feelings she had never encountered before. Desire was running like a hot fever in her blood. She could feel her own wetness between her legs. She wondered if he could smell the musk of her arousal. She could feel the tingling of her breasts in anticipation of him reaching for them. As it was, his chest was barely half an inch away from hers.

In the past her breasts had felt nothing when a man stood close to her. They were just there—part of her anatomy. Now they were deeply sensitive erogenous zones that craved contact. They pushed against the fabric of her bra, swelling in need, her nipples peaking in response to his presence.

She could even sense the swell of his erection close to where her pelvis pulsed with need. The hot, hard, swollen heat of him was sending out a signal like sonar to her body, making her ache and throb with want.

‘I would only sleep with you to prove a point,’ Holly said in a way she hoped sounded offhand. ‘Sorry if that offends your ego.’

He picked up one of her curls and wound it around his index finger. The gentle tug on her scalp sent a shot of lust between her legs, turning her core to molten fire. His eyes were so dark they reminded her of deep outer space. Limitless. Fathomless. ‘It doesn’t, because we’re not going to sleep together.’ His voice was only slightly less husky than hers.

‘Could’ve fooled me.’

He pressed the pad of his thumb against her lower lip, holding it there for a moment before lifting it away. But still he didn’t move away from her. His body was toe to toe with hers. If she leaned forward a fraction, their thighs would touch. The temptation to do so was like an invisible hand pushing her from behind. She brushed against the unmistakable hardness of him. Felt the shock through her flesh like a powerful current. It shot through her body in an arc of erotic energy that left no part of her unaffected. She saw the way his pupils flared, his eyes darkening, pulsing and glinting with want.

‘You want me so bad I bet all it would take is one little kitten-lick of my tongue to send you over the edge,’ Holly said, shocking herself at her wanton goading of him. Why was she being so utterly brazen? He had the edge on her here. He had already told her he would evict her from the programme. That had been his intention when he’d come down to speak to her. She would be sent to prison. She had no second chances. If she pushed him too far, he would get rid of her. Wasn’t that what everyone did to her? She knew what was at risk but even so she couldn’t stop herself. She was driven by the urges of her body—her traitorous body—which seemed to have developed an agenda of its own.

Julius sent a fingertip from the top of her cleavage, down the length of her sternum, over her quivering belly and then down to the zip of her jeans. He outlined the seam of her body through the denim and metal teeth of her zip, all the while holding her gaze with the smouldering blaze of his own. ‘I bet I could make you come first,’ he said in a two-parts gravel, one-part honey tone.

Holly almost came on the spot. She felt the flickering of her nerve endings, the swelling of her body as it ached and throbbed for more stimulation. She had to get away from him before he won this. He had far more self-control than she had bargained for and certainly far more than she had. What was he...made of steel?

‘I could be faking it and how would you know?’ she said.

His mouth slanted again in a cynical smile. ‘I would know.’

Holly let out a breath that caught at her throat like a tiny fishhook. ‘In my book, sexual confidence in men is arrogance in disguise.’

He outlined her mouth with that same lazy, tantalising glide of his finger. Tracing, touching, teasing her lips until she wanted to suck his fingertip into her mouth and draw on it as if she was drawing on him intimately. Not that she ever did that. Not for anyone. She hated it. It was gross and so were the men who insisted on it. But something about Julius made her want to step outside her boundaries. He triggered all sorts of forbidden urges in her. Was it because he was so conservative? Or was it because he was the first man she had ever felt this raging, red-hot passion for?

‘You think I’m arrogant because I can pleasure you like you’ve never been pleasured before?’ he asked.

‘Promises, promises,’ Holly said in a singsong voice.

He upped her chin between his finger and thumb so her gaze had nowhere to go but to mesh with his. The burn of his touch moved through her body like a trail of fire. The scorching circle of his thumb beneath her chin sent her pulse into overload.

His eyes moved between hers, back and forth, like the beam of a searchlight. She felt the magnetism of him, the sheer power he had over her with his laserlike touch. The touch she craved in every pore of her body. Her flesh ached to feel his hands move all over her. To shape and caress her breasts, her thighs and what pulsed and fizzed with longing between them. The need was thrumming inside her like the twang of a cello string plucked too hard. It reverberated through her racing blood, tripled her heartbeat and sent her already scudding pulse haywire.

‘You’re beautiful, but you know that, don’t you?’ Julius said in a deep, rough baritone that sent another tremor of want through her core. ‘You know the power you have over men and you use it every chance you get.’

‘A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,’ Holly said, trying to keep her gaze from skittering away from his probing one, trying to keep the fragile hold on her equilibrium disguised. Never had she felt such a compulsion to indulge her senses, to lose herself in a feast of the flesh, to allow herself to be consumed by the power and force of attraction and lust.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, lifting it away from her scalp, only to let it fall in a bouncing cascade against her neck and shoulders. ‘That’s why you were cavorting out in the pool,’ he said. ‘You wanted my attention. How better to get it than to strip off and parade that beautiful, tempting body beneath my office window?’

‘You didn’t have to look,’ Holly said. ‘You could have drawn the curtains or pulled the blind.’

He gave a little sound of sardonic amusement. ‘You’re not going to pull my strings like I’m some spineless puppet. I’m made of much sterner stuff.’

That goading little devil was back on Holly’s shoulder, urging her to push Julius as far as she could. ‘So that’s why you came stomping out to the pool and manhandled me out of the water, was it? Just to show how stern and disciplined you are? Don’t make me laugh.’

His eyes flashed with a flicker of anger. The same beat of anger she could see in a muscle beside his mouth, flicking on and off like a faulty switch.

The tug of war between his gaze and hers went on for endless seconds.

The air bristled with static.

But then he suddenly stepped back from her with a muttered expletive. Holly hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath until he walked out of the kitchen without a backward glance.

She expelled the banked-up air in a long, jagged stream.

Round one a draw, she thought. You’ll win the next.

But a nagging doubt tapped her lightly on the shoulder... Maybe you won’t.

CHAPTER FIVE (#u2749712f-7352-5476-818a-34ed57cbdfd4)

JULIUS STRODE OUT of the villa in search of fresh air. Of common sense. Control. Where the hell was his control? He was furious with himself for allowing that toffee-eyed little temptress to trigger his hormones. Why hadn’t he kept to his plan? He owed her nothing. What did he care if she went to prison? It was where she belonged. Why had he allowed her to manipulate his conscience?

Or maybe it wasn’t his conscience she’d manipulated...

He was disgusted with himself for wanting her like he had wanted no other woman. He was annoyed he had allowed her to needle him to the point where he was as close to breaking as never before. How could he have allowed that to happen? He wasn’t the sort of man who put sex before sense. This was nothing but a game to her.

She could tease and taunt him all she liked. She could walk around his villa scantily clad. She could flash her delectable cleavage at him. She could wiggle her hips and pert bottom. She could pout her sexy little mouth at him all day long. She could swim in his pool stark naked for all he cared.

He would not let her win this.

He had been tricked by her chameleon-like behaviour. The way she’d fooled him by her charitable act of taking over the cooking while Sophia had rested, after she’d been so adamant she wasn’t going to take orders from him or anyone.

What was true about her and what were lies?

She was a smart-mouthed, streetwise siren. Flirting with him, teasing him, daring him, goading him until his blood ran so hot and fast through his veins it scorched him. He was burning for her. Throbbing with the ache to have her. He had never felt desire like it. It was like a storm in his body. A powerful combustion of energy that built each time he was near her. It was brooding inside him even now. The pressure of high arousal. The ache of unreleased desire was a burning ache he couldn’t tame or dismiss. It consumed his thoughts as well as his flesh. Wicked, damning thoughts of what he would like to do to her—craved to do to her.

His brain was racing with a constant loop of hot images of them having sex like jungle animals. No ‘finesse’ sex. Hard and fast sex. ‘Any position’ sex.

Holly Perez was the most dangerous woman he had ever met. With her bedroom eyes and wily ways, she threatened everything he stood for. She made him feel things he had trained himself not to feel. Emotions were things he controlled. Desires were something he properly channelled. He did not rush into mad flings and one-nighters with strangers, especially ones with a criminal past.

He had standards. Principles. He was a good citizen who paid his taxes on time. He never coloured outside the lines. Damn it, he didn’t even park outside of them. Call him conservative, or even obsessive, but rules were things he respected because for most of his life his parents had disregarded them. Rules provided structure in a disordered world. He liked order. He liked predictability. Planning was his forte. He didn’t do things on the fly. He wasn’t spontaneous. He wasn’t a risk taker. He left that sort of thing to his brother, Jake, who loved to live life in the fast lane. Julius was only happy in the fast lane if he knew exactly how fast it was, how long, how wide and how long he would have to be in it.

He did the calculations and then he acted.

And right now his calculations told him in big neon flashing letters: Holly Perez was danger personified.

But for all that something about her got to him...not just physically, but on an entirely different level. He felt something for her. Something he hadn’t expected to feel. He was drawn to her. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He couldn’t forget her touch. The way she moved. Even the sound of her laughter—the tinkling-bell sound that made his spine shiver. She was blatant, brazen and in-your-face, yet beguiling. He’d seen a glimpse of vulnerability down at the lake. And when he’d asked her about the scar on her arm. For just a moment he had seen a flicker of something behind the mask she wore. He couldn’t help feeling there was more to her than met the eye. Yes, she made him uncomfortable. Yes, she was a flirt. But he had some sort of responsibility towards her, didn’t he?