‘I’m not helpless,’ she said as he took her arm, shivering a little at the unexpected contact.
‘Not helpless, but at the mercy of those shoes. I’m not prepared to risk my most valuable asset taking a tumble and breaking her neck.’
She glanced at him, as if surprised, although why she would be when he’d made it plain that he’d do anything to get her to join him, but she said nothing until they reached her door.
Instead of opening it, ducking quickly inside, as he’d expected her to, she turned to face him, said, ‘You never did tell me what you wanted to talk to me about on Saturday, Max.’
‘To be honest I was rather hoping we could both forget Saturday.’
‘All of it?’
Not the moment when he’d seen her standing in her kitchen, hair tousled, flushed from bed. Her wrap hanging open, her lovely legs bare. Not the moment when she’d looked up at him as if he were the only man she’d ever wanted…
‘Maybe just the last bit, where I behaved like a moron.’
‘I don’t want to forget that part, Max,’ she said, her voice so soft that he had to bend his head to catch the words. ‘You wouldn’t have reacted that way if…’
She hesitated as if to say the words would be to expose them both so he said them for her.
‘If I hadn’t wanted to throttle Cal Jameson. If I hadn’t wanted you for myself.’
Now…
The voice in Louise’s head was so loud that she was certain Max must hear it too. But he didn’t move.
‘This room,’ she managed. ‘It wasn’t a mistake, was it?’
Max shook his head and, emboldened by a tiny sigh that escaped her, said, ‘It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. I realised we’d need more time and when I spoke to Sebastian, I asked if we could stay here. He gave me the number so that I could make my own arrangements with the staff; the butler misunderstood and I didn’t correct his mistake. I thought, hoped that this might be somewhere private, neutral ground where we could continue our discussion about exactly where you wanted me to kiss you.’ He looked up, met her gaze head-on. ‘A place where we could conclude all contractual obligations to your complete satisfaction.’
She came close to smiling. ‘In an icy, rustic stone lodge?’
‘You wouldn’t have felt the cold,’ he assured her.
‘No?’
She shivered, despite the heating, but still he didn’t touch her, even though her body was doing everything but scream at him to go for it, even though she could feel that his hand, still supporting her elbow, was not quite steady…
He was giving her total control. Her call…
She opened the bedroom door and led him inside, turning to face him as the door closed behind them ‘Show me,’ she said, her voice scarcely strong enough to reach him and, lifting her hand, she touched a fingertip to her cheek. ‘Kiss me here.’
His eyes seemed to take on a new intensity and for a moment she was afraid that she’d unleashed a passion that he wouldn’t be able to hold in check but when, after a pause that seemed to last a lifetime, his lips touched her cheek she felt no more than a whisper of warmth. Enough to send a flash of heat through her and for a moment she swayed towards him, dangerously close to flinging herself on him. If he made one move…
But he didn’t. He was leaving her to set the pace, take it where she dared.
If she had the courage.
Responding to his unspoken challenge, she moved her hand, touched her chin.
‘Here,’ she said, on a breath.
His eyes, darker than pitch, warned her that she was playing a dangerous game. Did he think she didn’t know that?
This was their time. Now. It would be brief, glorious but brief, like a New Year’s Eve rocket, and afterwards, when it had burnt out, she would be free of him.
They would both be free…
‘Here,’ she said, raising the stakes, touching her lower lip, anticipating the same exhilarating, no-holds-barred kiss with which he’d stopped her walking away. Would use this time to carry them both over the threshold of restraint and beyond thought.
But he did no more than touch her lower lip, tasting it with his tongue. It was all she could do to remain on her feet; her only compensation was knowing how hard this must be for him. To hold back, wait. It would have been difficult to say which of them was trembling more, but he was forcing her to make all the moves, insisting that she be the one to tip it over the edge from a teasing game into a dark and passionate reality.
‘Now, Max,’ she said. Unfastening her dress, she let it fall in a shimmering puddle of silk at her feet, leaving her naked but for the scrap of silk and lace at her hips, lace-topped hold-ups, high-heeled sandals.
His response was to pull loose his tie, remove his jacket and toss it aside, finally turning the key in the lock without ever taking his eyes off her.
She’d thought she’d die with the sheer force of desire his first kiss brought bubbling to the surface, but now every cell in her body seemed to sigh, melt as his mouth kissed a slow seductive trail over her breasts and down across the soft curve of her stomach.
In that moment she felt like a conqueror, a queen receiving tribute from a vanquished king whom she’d made her slave.
But then he hooked his thumbs under the ties of her silk panties removing the last barrier between them, using his mouth until ‘now’ became not a command, not permission to touch, but a whimpering entreaty, a plea for his hands, his body, for all he had to give, and she knew that she’d made a mistake.
As he finally took pity on her, responded to her ‘Max…please…’ lifting her acquiesent body in his arms, carrying her to the great four-poster, she discovered that, far from being the one in control, she was the conquered.
Louise woke in a series of gentle waves. First there was a boneless, almost out-of-body consciousness in which she was dimly aware that it was morning, but felt no pressure to do anything about it. Then came a gradual awareness of a soft pillow beneath her cheek, limbs heavy with the delicious languor of utter contentment.
She nestled down into the pillow, unwilling to relinquish her dreams.
Something warm tickled her shoulder.
She twitched away, burrowed deeper.
It happened again and this time she reached to pull up the sheet, tuck it in, but instead of the sheet her hand encountered warm skin over hard bone.
Her face still buried in the pillow, she flattened her hand over a nose that wasn’t quite straight, a mouth blowing soft, warm breath against her palm.
Not a dream, she thought, as finally awake she recalled where she was, who she was with. Every word, every touch, every little whimper as she begged him to love her. Every fierce sound she’d wrung from him in return…
She turned her head, opened her eyes.
Propped on an elbow, he’d clearly been watching her, waiting for her to wake. The fact that he’d grown impatient sent a ripple of delight coursing through her veins and she slid her fingers through his hair, fantasy fulfilled; she had never seen his short, thick, perfectly groomed hair without wanting to do that. Disturb the outer perfection, shatter his control. She’d done that, she thought, in a moment that was pure victory. Then she rolled over onto her back, drawing him to her.
She’d wanted to be free of him, of the dark primal need for him that had destroyed every other relationship. But there was no hurry. She had until the fourteenth to put together her PR and marketing plan. All the time in the world.
‘Did anyone ever tell you, Max,’ she said, ‘that when you wake a woman from her dreams, you have to replace them with something more…substantial?’
‘First you have to tell me your dreams, my sweet,’ he said, his smile slow and lazy, his eyes smoky-soft in the early-morning light. ‘Tell me all your dreams, your wildest fantasies, and I promise you that I’ll do whatever it takes to make them come true.’
‘You promise?’ The word sent a tiny shiver of apprehension sweeping through her. She dismissed it, said, ‘Have we got that long?’
