She leant on the doorframe and watched him do it.
‘Simon said you’ve just finished a relationship?’ Seemed like his subconscious wanted to get to the bottom of it because his conscious mind hadn’t been going to ask that question.
‘Hmm. It didn’t end well, and I’ve been a dishrag poor Simon had to put up with for the last month. You’ve no idea the lift I got when Simon said you were coming.’
No subterfuge there. He had the feeling she didn’t know the meaning of the word. ‘Thank you. But you know I’m here only for one night. I fly back tomorrow.’
She turned her head to look at him. ‘Do you have to?’
That was ironic. ‘No choice.’ Literally. ‘And I won’t be back for a long time.’ A very long time maybe.
She nodded. ‘Then we’d best make the most of tonight.’
He choked back a laugh. ‘What on earth can you mean?’
‘Catch up on what we’ve both been doing, of course. Before Simon monopolises you.’ She was saying one thing but her body was saying something else as she sashayed into the lounge again, and he may as well have had a leash around his neck because he followed her with indecent haste and growing fatalism.
‘Simon will be back soon.’ A brief attempt to return to reality but she was standing in the centre of the room looking suddenly unsure, and that brief fragility pierced him like no other reaction could have. Before he knew it he had his arms around her, cradling her against his chest, soothing the black hair away from her face. Silk skin, glorious cheekbones, a determined little chin. And she felt so damn perfect in his arms as she snuggled into him.
‘Take me to bed, Rayne. Make me feel like a woman again.’
‘That would be too easy.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetheart.’
‘I’m a big girl, Rayne. Covered for contraception. Unattached and in sound mind. Do I have to beg?’
He looked at her, squeezed her to him. Thought about the near future and how he would never get this chance again because things would never be the same. He would never be the same. Searched her face for any change of mind. No. Bloody hell. She didn’t have to beg.
So he picked her up in his arms, and she lifted her hands to clasp him around his neck, and he kissed her gorgeous mouth and they lost a few more minutes in a hazy dream of connection. Finally he got the words out. ‘So which bedroom is yours?’
She laughed. ‘Up two flights of stairs. Want me to walk?’
‘Much as I have enjoyed watching you walk, I’d prefer to carry you.’
And with impressive ease he did. Maeve rested her head back on that solid shoulder and gazed up at the chiselled features and strong nose. And those sinful lips. OMG, did she know what she was doing? Well, there was no way she wanted this to stop. This chemistry had been building since that first searing glance that had jerked and stunned them both like two people on the same elastic. She tightened her hands around his neck.
He felt so powerful—not pretty and perfect like Sean had been—but she didn’t want to think about Sean. About the pale comparison of a man she’d wasted her heart on when she should have always known Rayne would stand head and shoulders above any other man.
Speaking of shoulders, he used one to push open the door she indicated, knocked it shut with his foot, and strode across the room to the big double bed she thought he would toss her onto, but he smiled, glanced around the room and lowered her gently until her feet were on the floor.
His breathing hadn’t changed and he looked as if he could have done it all again without working a sweat.
Ooh la la. ‘I’m impressed.’
He raised his brows quizzically and freed the French drapes until they floated down to cover the double window in a flounced bat of their lacy eyelids and the room dimmed to a rosy glow from the streetlights outside. Slid his wallet out of his pocket and put it on the windowsill after retrieving a small foil packet.
Then he pulled her towards him and spun her until her spine was against the wall and her breasts were pressed into his hardness. Shook his head and smiled full into her eyes. Felt her knees knock as he said, ‘You are the sexiest woman I have ever seen.’
She thought, And you are the sexiest man, as she lifted her lips to his, and thank goodness he didn’t wait to be asked twice. Like falling into a swirling maelstrom of luscious sensation, Maeve felt reality disappear like a leaf sucked into a drainpipe then she heard him say something. Realised he’d created physical distance between them. Her mind struggled to process sound to speech.
‘Miss Maeve, are you sure you want to proceed?’
It was a jolting and slightly disappointing thing to say in the bubble of sensuality he’d created and she looked up at him. Surprised a look of anguish she hadn’t expected. ‘Are you trying to spoil this for a particular reason?’
A distance she didn’t like flashed in his eyes. ‘Maybe.’
She pulled his head forward with her hands in his hair. ‘Well, don’t!’
Rayne shrugged, smiled that lethal smile of his, and instead he lifted her silk shift over her head in a slow sexy exposure, leaving the covering camisole and the dark shadow of her breasts plainly visible through it.
He trailed the backs of his fingers up the sides of her chest and she shivered, wanted him to rip it off so she could feel his hands on her skin. And he knew it.
This time the backs of his fingers trailed down and caught the hem of the camisole, catching the final layer, leaving her top half naked to the air on her sensitised skin.
She heard him suck in his breath, heard it catch in his throat as he glimpsed her body for the first time—and the tiny peach G-string that was all that was left.
Her turn. He had way too many clothes on and she needed to look and feel his skin with a sudden hunger she had no control over.
She reached up and danced her fingers swiftly down the fastening of his black shirt, as if unbuttoning for the Olympics way ahead of any other competitor, because she’d never felt such urgency to slip her hands inside a man’s shirt. Never wanted to connect as badly as now with the taut skin-covered muscle and bone of a man. The man.
This was Rayne. The Rayne. And he felt as fabulous as she’d known he would and the faster she did this the faster he would kiss her again. Her fingers seemed to glow wherever she touched and she loved the heat between them like a shivering woman loved a fire.
While her fingers were gliding with relish he’d unzipped and was kicking away his trousers. They stood there, glued together, two layers of mist-like fabric between their groins, two flimsy, ineffectual barriers that only inflamed them more, and his mouth recommenced its onslaught and she was lost.
Until he shifted. Moved that wicked mouth and tongue lower, a salutation of her chin, her neck, her collarbone, a slow, languorous, teasing circle around her breast and exquisite tantalising pleasure she’d never imagined engulfed her as he took the rosy peak and flicked it with delicate precision.
She
