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Setting her on her feet, he unclipped her bra and let it drop to the floor. ‘These hot pants are going to haunt my dreams,’ he said roughly, dragging them together with her knickers down her legs.
‘You want me to apologise?’ she breathed as she kicked them away.
‘I want you to want this as much as I do,’ he said, stripping off the rest of his clothes and tumbling her onto the sofa.
‘I do,’ she said, drawing in a shuddery breath as she ran her gaze over him. God, his body was every bit as incredible as she’d imagined. Muscled, powerful, lean and tanned.
And any minute now it was all going to come down on top of her. Her gaze dropped to his erection and for a second she went dizzy. ‘Oh, I really do.’ She bit her lip to stop herself whimpering. ‘More probably.’
‘I doubt that’s possible,’ Matt said tightly.
Laura let her gaze wander up him, over the dips and ridges of his chest, the strong tanned neck and the square jaw and into eyes so dark they were almost black.
She swallowed and delicious anticipation began to thunder through her. Matt was radiating so much tension, looking as if he was having to battle so hard to cling on to his control that she wondered with a thrill what would happen when it snapped.
God, she thought with a tiny surge of satisfaction. Going for what she wanted was great. The sense of power it gave her was awesome. Who knew?
Lifting her arms above her head, Laura arched her back and batted her eyelashes as she smiled up at him. ‘Why don’t you come down here and join me and we can figure it out?’
‘Just so you know,’ he murmured, lowering himself on top of her and bearing his weight on his elbows, ‘I always win.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ she said softly, loving the feel of his body trapping hers. Look where she was. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t at least try. ‘You know what I’d really like?’
‘What?’
She lifted her face and looked straight into his eyes. ‘I’d like you inside me. Right now.’
She felt his heart thump. Saw his jaw clench. Felt his whole body tighten. Aha. Who was winning now? ‘Is that right?’ he murmured, staring down at her but not moving an inch.
‘It is,’ she said softly.
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
Oh. That wasn’t the outcome she’d hoped for. ‘Please …’ she breathed, batting her eyelashes and smiling up at him.
His erection leapt. Feeling a tiny stab of triumph, she tilted her hips against him and let out a sigh of longing.
Matt growled. ‘You,’ he said, his mouth tugging into a faint smile, ‘are irresistible.’
‘I know,’ she said smugly, and then gasped as his mouth landed on hers.
Hot and demanding, it began a devastating assault on her senses. His tongue drove into her mouth, tangling with hers, pushing her to the edge of reason. His hands settled on her arms above her head and then slid down her body, making her burn and tremble.
He dragged his mouth away from hers and dropped a trail of scorching kisses along her jaw and down her neck. Her head fell back and she moaned. His mouth moved lower, lower, until it closed over her aching nipple and she nearly leapt off the sofa. But he was pinning her down with his weight and all she could do was succumb.
Frankly why would she want to do anything else? Laura clutched a cushion with one hand. Grabbed his head with the other as he sucked, stroked, licked and nibbled and she started to lose it. Great waves of pleasure began to roll over her. Desire drenched her and she ached with the need to be filled with him.
‘Please, Matt,’ she breathed, no longer conscious of what she was saying. ‘I don’t think I can bear it.’
His mouth still on her breast, Matt swept his hand down over her hip, round, covered the triangle of hair at the top of her thighs and slid a finger deep inside her. Laura groaned and felt her inner muscles tighten around his finger. He pressed her clitoris with his thumb and her breathing shallowed as she felt herself begin to break apart.
No, she cried silently, clinging on to her control, she didn’t want it to be like this.
She wanted him, all of him, all that strength pounding into her.
She wanted him to lose control the way she was about to.
‘Are you going to make me beg again?’
‘Would you?’
‘If I have to. But I’d probably hate you for it.’
Matt let out a ragged breath. ‘I wouldn’t want that,’ he murmured.
‘Then help me out here,’ she said desperately, dimly aware that he was leaning down and fumbling around on the floor. The sound of a packet tearing, the rolling on of a condom barely registered.
Every inch of her was aching, desperate with need. Biting her lip, she felt him pushing her knees apart, felt him nudging at her entrance and then thrusting forward, up, deep.
Laura gasped. Matt stopped. Waited a second for her to adjust. And then he pulled out of her, caught her mouth with his and drove back into her. A sob of pure pleasure rising in her throat, Laura wrapped her legs around his waist, threw her arms around his back and kissed him with every drop of desire she was feeling.
Her nails raked over his skin. His muscles strained with the effort of restraint.
But she didn’t want restraint. She burned for release. Tearing her mouth from his, she breathed, ‘More,’ into his ear and lifted her hips.
Matt went utterly still. His eyes blazed and then he began to move. Harder, faster, deeper, driving her higher and higher, making something inside her coil tighter and tighter until he thrust one more time and sent her hurtling over the edge. Laura shattered into kaleidoscopic ecstasy. Wave after wave of pleasure poured over her as she convulsed and trembled. Her heart hammered. Her blood roared in her ears. She felt Matt’s whole body tense. Heard him groan and then felt him pulsate deep inside her and it was enough to set off a series of tiny aftershocks of ecstasy that took her breath away all over again.
It was quite a few minutes before she got her breath and her senses back. As she drifted back down to reality after the most exquisite orgasm of her life she felt a great grin spreading across her face. Wow. If she’d known all casual sex was as hot as this, she’d have tried it long ago.
Or at least been a damn sight more assertive in the bedroom.
One softly breathed word and Matt’s steely control had unravelled. Still cocooned in the warmth of his arms, Laura felt like purring with pleasure. She’d have to remember that in the future.
And then she froze. Her heart thumped. Uh-oh. The future? That didn’t sound good. That sounded as if she wanted a repeat. Lots of repeats in fact. Repeats that went way beyond one afternoon.
To her horror she could feel her body softening, heating, getting ready for more just as soon as possible.
‘Laura?’ Matt’s voice cut through the hazy fog in her head.
‘Hmm?’ She wasn’t entirely sure she could speak and not just because his chest was crushing her lungs.
He lifted his head and looked down at her, his eyes unfathomable. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ she muttered, thinking she was anything but.
God, she was such an idiot. Had she really thought she could get rid of her old self that easily? That one two-week course, albeit a highly intensive one, could undo the habits of thirty-one years? What a pillock.
If she didn’t get out of here this very moment she’d find herself being sucked in by Matt and the incredible orgasms he appeared to be able to give her and she’d end up wanting more. Which was most certainly not part of the deal she’d made with either herself or him.
Laura swallowed and fixed a smile to her face. ‘Couldn’t be better,’ she added lightly.
Matt frowned. ‘Are you sure?’
Agh. This was so not a conversation she wanted to be having with him still hard and deep inside her. ‘Absolutely.’ She nodded, gave him a quick smile and prodded at his shoulders. ‘Would you mind?’
‘I rather think I would,’ Matt said flatly, manoeuvring them to shift himself onto his back and pulling her on top of him.
The blast of cold air that hit her back made Laura shiver. ‘Could you let me go, please?’
His arms fell from her waist, and she eased herself off him. Aware that his eyes were following her every move, burning into her skin, Laura fought the impulse to leap back on top of him, and set about retrieving her clothes. She swiped up her underwear and her T-shirt and dragged them on, trying not to respond to the way they scratched over her already highly sensitised skin.
Her shorts, however, lay beneath him. Laura bit her lip. Sprinting back home without them would encourage curtain twitching gossip she definitely didn’t need. ‘Can you shift a bit?’ she said, trying to yank on the inch of fabric she could see.
However Matt didn’t budge. Apart from shooting his hand out to wrap itself round her wrist.
‘Laura, what’s going on?’
‘Going on?’ she said, her eyes jerking to his. Only minutes ago his eyes had been blazing with passion but his whole demeanour was stonier than granite. ‘Nothing’s going on.’
‘So why the hurry?’
‘I have to get going.’
‘A little too wild and uncontrollable, huh?’
She stamped down on the blush that she could feel blooming inside her. ‘Not at all,’ she said, aiming for a nonchalance she didn’t feel. ‘I really do have to go. Like I said, I have plans.’
Matt released her, sprang to his feet and yanked on his jeans. ‘Right,’ he said, his voice ice cold and devoid of emotion. ‘Sure. Then I guess you don’t want lunch.’
With him standing there looking so gorgeous and rumpled in just his jeans, all Laura could think of was how much she did want lunch. With Matt as the main course. ‘Some other time perhaps,’ she muttered, and legged it.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u2a16919e-804a-5a33-9058-908aabcf2e8b)
THREE weeks later, Laura had just about managed to wipe Matt and that incredible afternoon from her mind. But it had been one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do.
For days afterwards she’d wafted around in a kind of dreamlike state, not entirely sure whether the whole thing had actually happened or if it had simply been a product of her imagination. It had been so amazing, so mind-blowing and, up until the moment she’d panicked, everything she’d imagined it would be.
Ruthlessly blocking out the way they’d parted, or rather the way she’d scarpered, she’d wallowed in the memories of the hour before, and as a result had got very little done.
If it hadn’t been for the call from the headhunter a week ago she’d probably still be at it. Wandering round her house with a dreamy smile on her face, putting the milk in the bathroom cabinet and the toothpaste in the fridge.
To think that she might have missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime just because she’d been too busy drifting around in a daze …
Laura went cold and shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking about. And neither did Matt. Not any longer. Now she had to focus on her career. Her savings wouldn’t last for ever and daydreaming wouldn’t pay the bills.
This job, however, would not only pay the bills, it would also get her life firmly back on track.
The opportunity to head up the restoration project on the isolated island of Sassania was a dream come true. The country had been closed off to the outside world for years. As the result of a recent coup, the dictatorship had been overthrown and the borders had been thrown wide open.
The island had some of the finest examples of Baroque architecture in the world. Palaces and monuments she’d only ever read about. Palaces and monuments that were currently in a terrible state of repair and needed restoring.
Ideally, by her.
She’d emailed her CV to the headhunter virtually the moment she’d put the phone down, and to her delight had received a reply the next day inviting her for an interview.
Which was why she was now in London, taking her best friend out for dinner in return for a bed for the night before catching her crack-of-dawn flight in the morning.
‘So how is life in the country?’ said Kate, plucking the umbrella out of her cocktail and taking a long slurp.
Dragging herself away from dusty palaces in tiny Mediterranean island kingdoms and back to trendy London restaurants, Laura picked up a fat juicy olive from the bowl and glanced across the table. ‘Quiet.’
‘I can imagine.’
No, she couldn’t, but there was no way Laura was going to elaborate on what she’d been up to. Not when she’d just managed to stop thinking about it. ‘How’s the world of corporate law?’
Kate took another sip of her cocktail and sighed with pleasure. ‘Yum yum. You know, the usual. Nutty hours, problems galore and clients with egos the size of planets. I don’t know why I do it.’
‘Because you love it.’
Kate grinned. ‘I guess I do.’ She tilted her head. ‘Don’t you miss all this?’
Laura glanced around the place Kate had suggested for dinner. A brand-new London restaurant that had shot to the top of the ubercool lists the day after it had opened.
Against the deep red silk lining of the walls hung enormous canvases by some on-the-up artist. Tiny chandeliers hung above every one of the slate-grey tables, casting flatteringly low sparkling light over the clientele. Model-like waiters who were far too sultry and hip to ever crack a smile whizzed around with plates of food that looked beautiful and made her mouth water. The chatter was low, buzzing and probably far more sophisticated than she was.
Not all that long ago Laura had spent many of her evenings and weekends in places like this. Now she felt a bit like a foreigner.
‘Not really,’ she muttered, slightly perturbed by the realisation.
‘I don’t know how you can bear it,’ said Kate with a tiny shudder. ‘I mean, no shops, no bars and all that greenery.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s just not natural.’
Stifling a smile at the irony, Laura shrugged. ‘I muddle along.’
‘But that’s my point,’ Kate said. ‘You don’t have to muddle along. I mean, I know things went a bit pear-shaped, but why you had to run off to the country is beyond me.’
A bit pear-shaped? ‘Yes, well, when your life implodes as spectacularly as mine did you can end up doing all sorts of out-of-character things.’
‘You could have come and stayed with me.’
Kate sounded a little piqued, and Laura gave her a smile. ‘I know. And I did appreciate the offer, but it was something I needed to sort out on my own.’
Plus Kate would have given her heaps of advice, which she’d have insisted Laura follow, and Laura would have been too wiped out to argue.
But not any more. No more taking the easy way out. No more falling in with other people’s wishes all the time. If her afternoon with Matt had taught her one thing it was that going for what she wanted for a change could achieve some pretty spectacular results.
Not that she was thinking about him of course, she reminded herself, picking up a menu and letting her gaze drift over the other diners. The restaurant was packed with some seriously beautiful people. Not a hint of last year’s fashion, nor an un-touched-up root in sight. She was surprised they’d let her in.
And to be honest she was kind of dreading the bill. Laura resisted the urge to slap herself on the forehead with her menu. She’d done it again, hadn’t she? Gulped back a knot of panic when Kate had suggested this place, and said, yes, sure, why not.
