Just Once

‘No? The blushing virgin, then?’ he said, tossing the handful of foil to join her scattered hairpins.

She blushed.

‘Hardly!’

‘You’ve been around, then?’ he said slyly, plucking at the lower edge of the jacket where it poked out below her folded arms.

She tilted her nose up at his deliberate crudity. ‘No, I have not “been around”,’ she sniffed. ‘But I have occasionally been in the vicinity,’ she admitted with a prim dignity that made his teeth flash white in the darkness.

‘Not my vicinity, sweetheart, or you wouldn’t be acting so cool.’

Cool? She was practically burning up!

‘It’s just—’ She felt something warm—something hard yet invitingly soft—kiss her belly button through her skirt, but she didn’t dare look down for fear of losing what little remained of her self-control.

‘Just what?’ he goaded. ‘Just that you’re getting cold feet?’

Damn it, if he backed off now she would kill him! She forced her arms to loosen. ‘No!’

‘No,’ he echoed with gritty satisfaction. ‘So it must be that you’re just too prim and proper to get naked on a first date,’ he taunted cockily, his heavy hands settling on her bony hips, his long thumbs massaging the slippery fabric over the smooth skin of her lower belly. ‘You’ve already decided on letting your hair down with me…’he leaned forward to brush his face through the shiny curtain veiling the side of her neck, and inhale the subtle scent of her shampoo mingled with the faintest trace of musky feminine arousal ‘…mmmm…but the lady obviously wants to be warmed up a little before the main action. You don’t want to take them off, ergo you want me to make love to you with your clothes on…’

Her silver eyes widened. ‘You can do that?’ she blurted foolishly.

Her scepticism made him purr like a sexy tiger.

‘Oh, baby, I can do anything you want…’

His big hands slid caressingly down her flanks and slipped under the knee-length hem of her dress, raking up the skirt with his forearms as his hands stroked slowly back up her legs to span her hips.

‘Hmm, stockings…that makes things easy…’ he discovered on the way up. ‘Oh, no…stay-ups,’ he corrected himself as his fingers found the delicate band that encircled the silky-fine skin of her upper thighs. ‘Even easier…’

He sighed when he found the narrow strip of lace drawn tight over her hip-bones. ‘Rippable?’ he murmured wistfully, winding one stretchy ribbon around a questing finger, drawing the whisper of satin passing between her legs ravishingly tight against her moistened core.

She squeaked and he laughed, pulling her flush against his scalding nakedness, letting her feel the urgent insistence of his arousal, the rough thicket in his groin catching against her smooth panties. He widened his stance, cupping her bottom as she trembled in a fever of eagerness. ‘Never mind, we’ll work around them,’ he promised in a throaty growl, gathering her tight between his hair-roughened thighs, tipping her off balance as he lifted one of her legs and draped it around his hip. ‘I love a challenge…’

He ducked his head and nuzzled aside the jacket to find the outline of her bra against the smooth fabric of the dress, navigating his skilful way to the press of her nipples.

Kate tilted her head back, closing her eyes as she felt the rake of his teeth through the cloth and the simultaneous hot slide of his hardness rocking against her creamy centre, unable to believe this was really happening…She was allowing herself to be ravished by a naked stranger on a rooftop—and she was loving every wicked moment of it!

In a night of glorious firsts she learned that Drake Daniels was very much a man of his word. He delivered on his sensual promise, making love the same way he wrote his books—with fierce concentration and meticulous attention to detail, and a dedication to delivering a climax worthy of his wildly thrilling build-up!

After they had made love several times under the stirring palms they moved inside to the palatial bedroom, and later down to the main part of the suite where they fuelled their sensual excesses from the lavishly stocked bar fridge, and resumed their sexy badinage through a much-interrupted viewing of Kiss Me Deadly.

Neither of them slept and in the morning Kate was staggering slightly as she fumbled into her crumpled clothing, aware that having to go home to change was going to make her horribly late for work.

Sitting in the middle of the bed, his lower body swathed in a white sheet, looking very much like a dissipated Greek god, Drake followed her preparations to flee with hooded eyes. His watchful silence made her even more self-conscious.

‘I’m never late,’ she muttered, stuffing her laddered stockings into her purse and sliding her feet into her grass-flecked heels, uncertain of how to stage-manage a graceful exit.

‘This was not a good idea…’ She meant lingering overlong in his bed, but to her dismay Drake took up her theme.

‘Neither of us was thinking—it was nothing to do with choice, it was pure sexual chemistry,’ he said abruptly, the dark growth of beard giving his face a saturnine look. He braced himself on one arm, the folds of the sheet pooling in his lap. ‘Don’t worry, it’s like fireworks—dazzling but essentially ephemeral. If we let it alone it’ll fizzle out.’ The melting brown eyes hardened with cynical resolve. ‘But you’re right—this can’t happen again. It would be a mistake to try and turn it into something that it’s not. As it happens, I’m off to LA the day after tomorrow, for an extended book tour across the States…’

Kate disguised her sudden pallor by turning to the full-length wardrobe mirror and raising her arms to fold her hair into a neat self-knot at the nape of her neck in the absence of most of her pins.

He was telling her not to make any plans that included him. They had no future together.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Drake’s partial reflection past her bent elbows. He was rubbing the centre of his chest with the heel of his hand, as if massaging an ache. He wasn’t half as relaxed as he looked, she decided, noting the tension in the set of his head and the fist at the end of his braced arm. Perhaps he expected her to throw a tantrum at his frank rejection of any emotional connection between them, or, worse, to pout and insist on a long-drawn-out discussion of their feelings.

She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she had believed they had something special.

Lesson number two in dealing with the unpredictable Drake Daniels:

Never give him what he expects.

She brightened her expression and turned around. ‘Right. A mistake. Well…I’ll be off, then. See you around. No, don’t bother to get up and see me out.’ She waved a casually dismissive hand as he made a sharp movement under the sheets. ‘I’m quite happy to make my own way. I’ve been doing it for some years now,’ she pointed out with only the barest hint of sarcasm.

‘Oh, and if you find yourself in need of another chemistry lesson…feel free to give me a whistle.’

Before he could recognise that vague allusion she had reached the spiral staircase, where she paused to look provocatively back over her shoulder, and hit him square between the eyes with a husky rendition of classic exit-line.

‘“You know how to whistle, don’t you,” Drake?’