that would expose. Suddenly realisation struck. Aristotle.
Without thinking, galvanised by pure anger, she marched over to that adjoining door between their rooms and yanked it open. To her surprise his own door was already open, leading into a room that made her own opulent one look like a prefab.
He strolled out at that moment from what she presumed must be his bedroom, naked except for a small towel around lean hips. All Lucy could see was a magnificently bronzed muscled chest, a light smattering of dark hair and long, long muscled legs. His hair was wet and slicked back, making him look somehow more approachable, vulnerable.
Seeing him like this completely scrambled her brain and defused her anger.
‘I …’ She realised she was breathing hard.
He stopped and looked at her enquiringly, and then she watched him lift his wrist to look at the heavy platinum watch.
‘A little longer than I thought it might take, but still … not bad.’
It took a few precious seconds for what he said to sink in. He’d planned this. He’d orchestrated this and had been waiting for her to react exactly as she had. Sheer fury and impotence rushed through Lucy in a wave so strong she shook.
‘Where is my case, please?’
Aristotle folded his arms and that was worse—because where his shirt might have hidden those biceps, now she could see them in all their olive-skinned, bunched glory. Lord, but he was beautiful, and her body was reacting like the Road Runner, seeing his mate in the distance.
‘Your case is somewhere safe. I’ve taken the liberty of removing the items I think you’ll need, like your toiletries. I didn’t want to presume to know what products you like to use.’
‘Yet you can presume to know what clothes I may like and my size?’ Her voice fairly crackled with ice.
His gaze drifted down over her body, and she cursed herself for inciting him. His eyes met hers again and he drawled, ‘I think you’ll find that everything … fits.’
She cursed him under her breath. She wouldn’t be surprised to find them all a size too small, and if they were …
But he wasn’t finished. ‘I also decided that from what I’ve seen you’re more than capable of choosing your own underwear. You’ll find the items I’ve taken out there, in that bag.’
He gestured to a table nearby, where one of the hotel bags was sitting, a lacy bra strap dangling provocatively from the top. Blind rage and humiliation at the thought he’d handled her intimate clothes, and at remembering that he’d seen her changing, almost made Lucy stumble as she stalked over to get it. But in that instant she vowed she would not react as he was expecting her to. She would not give him the satisfaction.
So she merely walked back to the door, turned and, avoiding his eye, said grimly, ‘I’ll see you in the lobby in forty-five minutes.’
‘I’m looking forward to it, Lucy.’
It took an awful lot of restraint not to slam both interconnecting doors as Lucy went back into her own room, but under a steaming hot shower minutes later she vented her anger with no holds barred.
Some forty-five minutes later Lucy paced in the lobby and ineffectually tried to pull the dress down again. It felt indecently short, even though it came to just above her knees. She hated the fact that otherwise it fitted like a glove. And she’d never worn shoes with heels so spiky they looked like a lethal weapon, but it had been them or flat shoes, and even she had enough fashion pride not to make a complete fool of herself. She also hated the fact that they made her feel somehow … powerful. She couldn’t say the word sexy. Her brain seized at the mere nebulous thought.
Aristotle watched Lucy from behind a plant for a moment, feeling curiously protective—and something else: surprised at her obvious reluctance to embrace her innate sexiness, especially when she oozed such voluptuous femininity. She’d chosen one of the least revealing dresses, but even that made his blood boil over with lust.
It had a high neck but, unlike her other sack of a dress, this one was cut to define a woman’s body, to hug and emphasise its curves. When she turned to the side he had to draw in a breath. Her breasts were so beautifully shaped and enticingly full that he noticed more than one man falter as he saw her.
That galvanised Aristotle to move. Possessiveness was an alien emotion, but it was coursing through him now as he took in the way the dress drew the eye to those stupendously long and slender legs, a discreet slit showcasing their shapeliness. And those shoes …
Lucy turned away abruptly. She’d noticed a man nearly tripping over himself as he’d seen her and she flushed with mortification. He probably thought she was a call girl. She felt like one. This was ridiculous. She was going to demand her own things back—
Suddenly Aristotle was right in front of her and, as was becoming annoyingly familiar, her brain emptied of all rational thought. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt and royal blue tie. It somehow made his eyes pop out, even though they were a dark slumberous green. But weren’t they normally light green? As Lucy was wondering this, as if it had become the most important question in the universe, Aristotle moved so fast that she didn’t even notice until he’d whipped her glasses off her face and removed the pins from her hair.
‘Hey!’ she cried out, too late, only to see him calmly snap her glasses in two and feel the heavy fall of her hair around her shoulders. He took her by the arm and marched her out towards the entrance, handing her broken glasses and hairpins to an unsurprised-looking doorman, who took them obsequiously, clearly not fazed by such behaviour. It made Lucy even madder. Those glasses had been her last bastion of defence and he’d merely ripped it away, like removing a toy from a cranky child.
She barely noticed the pleasantly warm early evening air caressing her skin between the hotel and the luxury car. When they were ensconced in the back, Aristotle curtly ordered the driver to put up the privacy partition, which he duly did. Lucy’s mouth was opening and closing ineffectually, steam practically coming out of her ears as Aristotle rounded on her, blocking out any daylight coming through the tinted windows. Absurdly, in that split second Lucy thought how unbearably intimate it seemed to make the space.
‘Enough,’ he growled out, and before she knew which end was up Aristotle had reached out, hauled her into his chest and his mouth was over hers. He was kissing her as if his life depended on it, one arm like steel across her back, one hand in her hair, clasping her head. There was no hesitation. Lust exploded in a blaze of heat.
All of Lucy’s reflex denials melted away in a flame of desire so profound and deep that she couldn’t question it. All she knew was that Aristotle’s mouth was on hers, his tongue stabbing deep, with ruthless precision, and she was craving it. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her hands trapped against those hard contours, and the beat of his heart was an unsteady tattoo that made her own beat faster.
She forced her hands free to twine them around Aristotle’s neck, fingers pushing upwards into the thick, silky hair that brushed his collar. He groaned deep in his throat, their mouths not parting for a moment, lost in a dark, lustrous world of tasting and touching, of sensation heaping on top of sensation so acutely delicious that when Lucy felt herself being lowered back onto the seat behind her, and Aristotle coming over her, she too gave a deep moan of approval.
All she knew was here and now. Sanity had ceased to exist.
