the last time. Both hands now threaded through her hair, messing it up, cradling her head. Her hands rested on his chest and wound higher until they were tight around his neck. They barely paused for breath; there was no awkwardness now. First their kiss was slow, sensual, a tentative touching of tongues, tasting. Then it developed into full-on passion, igniting an inferno between them.
Somehow, Alana didn’t know how, Pascal had manoeuvered them and now her back was against a wall. He lifted his head. One hand was high on the wall behind her, the other resting on her hip. She felt as boneless as a rag doll. She looked up, her eyes glazed, her lips plump and tingling.
His index-finger traced around her jaw and down to the top button of her shirt. Her heart stopped and kick-started again. Faster.
‘Do you have any idea what this outfit has been doing to me since I saw you arrive in it?’
She shook her head. All she knew was that she wanted to be out of it. As soon as possible.
He started to undo her tie. ‘As much as this turns me on,’ he said gruffly, ‘I think I’m going to have to burn it.’
‘I have ten more at home,’ Alana said matter of factly, distractedly.
He threw it aside and it landed in a sliver of dark colour on the wooden floor. ‘Then it’ll be a bonfire.’
His fingers were at her buttons now. She tipped her head back to give him access, and she felt him drop his head and press a kiss to the exposed, delicate skin of her throat. Alana moaned softly. She was in a sensual land that she’d never thought she’d experience. She’d heard other women talk of lust and chemical attraction, and had always secretly disbelieved them or thought it was overrated. Now … she knew.
She could sense Pascal’s growing impatience when he couldn’t undo any more buttons as the dress got in the way. He growled, ‘How do you get this thing off?’
Alana stood and turned around to face the wall. ‘The zip. At the back.’
She could feel it whisper down, and then he turned her round again. Bending to take her mouth with his, she could feel his hands go to the shoulders of her dress and push it down; it snagged on her hips, and then his hands were there and pushing it off completely until it fell at her feet, a pool of pleated black.
She brought her hands to the bottom of his sweater to pull it up. He lifted his arms and pulled it off the whole way, and then he stood in front of her, bare chested. She could feel her eyes widening as she took in the bronzed magnificence. Whorls of dark hair dusted his pectorals and then met in a silky line that descended down and into the waist of his low-slung jeans which barely clung to lean hips.
Heat. All Alana could think of was heat.
He pulled her into him and she gloried in the sensation of his bare chest, running her hands round his back, feeling the satin-smooth olive skin, warm beneath her fingers. He gathered her close and his mouth closed over the beating, throbbing pulse at her neck; his hands travelled down to her bottom and caressed it before searching further and finding the bare skin at the top of her thighs over her stockings. He jerked back and looked down, eyes glittering, breath coming harshly.
‘Mon Dieu.’
‘What?’ she asked uncertainly, feeling exposed.
He just shook his head and a huge grin split his face. ‘Stockings. Proper stockings. And suspenders.’ What was turning him on even more was the suspicion that she dressed like this all the time, that it hadn’t been just for him.
He looked at her then. ‘I knew that underneath all that starch was someone earthy, sensual …’
He kissed her, and she felt his hands undoing the rest of the buttons on her shirt, the slightly cooler air hitting her torso as he pulled it apart. He looked at her for a long moment before pushing it off, down her arms, until it too joined her dress on the floor.
The carnal appreciation in his gaze made her throb in response. She was glad now that bizarrely she’d always had an instinctive desire for nice underwear, although she hadn’t indulged it while married, as Ryan had mocked her for trying to be sexy whenever she did. Her breasts were straining against the satin cups of her bra, peaks tingling painfully. Pascal pushed one strap down over her shoulder and dragged down the cup, baring one pale breast to his gaze … and mouth.
He whispered in her ear, ‘Remember what I said before?’
She nodded jerkily, anticipation lasering through her veins.
Then he bent his head and blew softly and enticed, before flicking out his tongue to taste and then drawing that tight, extended peak into his mouth. Alana’s head fell back. She couldn’t stop the moan, and wondered at this woman she didn’t recognise.
As Pascal suckled, a tight spiral of intense sensation connected directly with Alana’s groin. She found herself pressing closer, seeking, wanting more, arching her back. He had taken down the other cup, so now both her breasts were bared, upthrust and framed by the satin black material.
He was torturing her with his mouth. She couldn’t breathe. He reached down, lifted one leg and hooked it around his thigh. His other hand was on the leg that was barely able to keep her standing. His fingers danced over the suspenders; she felt him snap open the ties, then smooth around to cup the cheek of her bottom before slipping his hand between her legs.
She stopped breathing entirely for a long moment as he pushed her panties aside and slid his finger into her, into a caress so intimate that she would have closed her legs if she’d been able to. He was relentless, his mouth on her breasts, his finger sliding in and out, until finally, as if he’d been teasing her, he found the centre of where she throbbed unmercifully and, with one flick of his thumb, she came violently. She could only cling to him as the sensation ripped through her body in case she’d be swept away too.
Her leg that was lifted fell. She couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. A bit like chemical attraction; she’d read about it, heard about it. But amazingly …
‘Alana, was that your first orgasm?’ He sounded slightly stunned, and Alana cringed inwardly at how gauche she must seem.
He stood upright and let her settle against him, cradling her with a disconcerting level of tenderness. As if he could sense her turmoil, he tipped her head back. ‘No, don’t do that. You’re amazingly responsive, but it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s a compliment.’
She looked at him shyly, mortified. ‘I’m—’
‘Don’t say it.’ He shook his head. His expression was enigmatic. ‘You were married; did you never …?’
She shook her head quickly, her body still pulsing in the aftermath, making her feel a little out of this world. Spaced out. ‘My husband never … made me feel like that. We didn’t sleep together for the last three years of our marriage.’
‘And you were married for …’
‘Five years.’ Unwelcome reality was trickling back in. Alana resented the questions now; she didn’t want to think of Ryan. This was her new start for herself. Ryan was in the past.
‘Alana—’
She pressed a finger to Pascal’s mouth and could feel his breath feather there,
