a soft gasp breaking from her lips when he pushed aside her long curtain of hair, draping it over her left shoulder before bending his mouth to her exposed right ear.
But it wasn’t his lips that made her shiver. It was the fear of what she was about to allow … and enjoy.
‘Don’t,’ she heard herself whisper just as his tongue tip dipped into the shell of her ear.
‘Don’t what?’ he whispered a few seconds later.
‘Don’t do this to me … ‘
‘But you want me to,’ he murmured, and nibbled at her ear lobe. ‘This is what tonight was all about. Not food.’
‘No,’ she choked out. ‘Not … entirely.’
His laugh was low and sexy. ‘Yes. Entirely.’
She stiffened when he ran the zipper down past her waist, a shudder following when he stroked the cold glass he was holding down her spine.
‘You want this as much as I do,’ he said thickly as he pushed the sides of her dress off her shoulders.
It pooled around her feet in a silky pink puddle, leaving her wearing nothing but her pink high heels.
This wasn’t the first time she’d left off her underwear. But it was the first time she’d felt ashamed of having done so.
I’m exactly what Aunt Kate said I am, Amber accepted despairingly as she stood there, naked, before her wealthy lover’s gaze. Not a proper girlfriend or a much loved partner, but a mistress, a kept woman. Kept for nothing but her master’s sexual pleasure.
Her stomach contracted when he moved around to look at her from the front, her feelings of shame at war with those other wickedly powerful emotions he could so easily evoke. Not just desire but need—the need to be caressed, and kissed, and filled.
She closed her eyes, blotting out the way his glittering blue eyes were gobbling her up. Perversely, her not being able to see him only increased her awareness of her own appalling excitement. Every muscle in her body tensed up, waiting for his touch. Yearning for it. Dying for it.
His breath on the nape of her neck told her that he’d moved behind her again. He must have put his drink down too, both his hands free to slide up and down her arms, which immediately broke into goose bumps.
‘Do you have any idea what you do to me?’ he murmured as he pressed himself against her naked back, his mouth hovering just above her right ear.
‘No,’ came her shaky reply. She only knew what he did to her, and what he’d done. Reduced to this … this pitiful state where shame and pride were no match for the pleasure of his lovemaking.
Though this wasn’t lovemaking tonight. This was just sex—raw, unadulterated sex.
‘If I were a prince in the Middle Ages,’ he whispered as he took her hands and lifted them high above her head, ‘I would keep you … just like this … locked in a dungeon … with nothing to do but wait for me to come to you.’
She shuddered at the image he’d created.
Why it excited her so much she could not fathom. She should have been repulsed. Instead, she was shaking with excitement.
‘Would you like that?’ he demanded to know, his breathing growing heavier as he pressed himself even harder against her bare buttocks.
‘Yes,’ she choked out.
His naked groan betrayed a level of need possibly even greater than her own.
‘What on earth am I going to do with you?’ he growled.
Amber moaned, having reached that point where pride and shame had become totally irrelevant. She needed Warwick inside her, right then and there, regardless of the fact that she was standing in the middle of a well-lit, glass-walled living room, less than a hundred metres away from where boats full of tourists were enjoying evening dinner cruises on Sydney Harbour.
‘Please,’ she heard herself practically beg as she moved her legs wantonly apart.
Warwick heard the wild desperation in her voice, felt the uncontrollable excitement that had taken possession of her. He should have felt triumphant. Clever old Warwick, knowing exactly what buttons to press and words to say to seduce her into a state of total surrender.
Why, then, did he suddenly feel bitterly ashamed of himself?
The answer was obvious.
Because she loves you, you bastard. She’s not some cheap whore who doesn’t care what you do to her.
But even as he told himself all this Warwick was unzipping his trousers. His conscience kept screaming at him not to, but Amber wasn’t the only one who’d reached the point of no return.
He groaned as he slid into her, wallowing in the feel of her flesh enclosing his like a tightening fist. She made some sound, a moan perhaps, though not of pain, but of pleasure. It was impossible to stop now. With his right hand splayed firmly over her stomach, and his left cupping her right breast, he began to move his hips.
Not so fast, Warwick, he warned himself as his body immediately surged towards a decidedly premature release. His hips, however, refused to obey him. They jerked back and forth with an urgency that would not be denied, his outspread fingers pressing upwards on her belly, lifting her buttocks up higher against his abdomen, the angle affording him a deeper penetration.
Warwick grimaced as he felt the hot blood rushing along his veins. He was going to come! Hell on earth, he hadn’t come this fast in decades!
Amber’s suddenly shattering apart in his arms was a huge relief to his pride, allowing him to abandon what little control he had left.
He cried out, holding her tight against him as he ejaculated with the ferocity of an erupting volcano.
She shuddered with him, the contractions of her orgasm more intense, he thought, than ever before. The fantasy he’d painted about keeping her imprisoned in a dungeon had really turned her on. So much so that she’d forgotten who might be watching what they were up to.
You should do this more often, Warwick. Play erotic games with her.
Up till now he’d hardly touched the sides of what he’d learned over many years of hedonistic behaviour. There was so much more he could show her, and do with her.
The only question was … should he?
As much as Warwick was tempted by the thought of becoming Amber’s tutor in the erotic arts, he knew that the more imaginative and adventurous practices—whilst wildly exciting—carried a degree of danger; the danger of corruption.
The last thing he wanted to do was corrupt Amber. Pleasure her … yes. Satisfy her … yes. Corrupt her? No.
He would not destroy her basic innocence, he decided as he gently withdrew, then scooped her up into his arms. Such innocence was too precious. She was too precious.
He was going to miss her terribly, he thought as he carried her into the
