frame, desperate to sate the ache in her pelvis as he unleashed a tempest of desire through her body.
As she broke free of him briefly so that she could catch her breath, she was trembling and she didn’t want to let him go, didn’t want to let him walk away. ‘Come in for coffee,’ she heard herself say.
Coffee, she thought, trying not to wince as she thrust wide the door. Everyone knew that that was a euphemism for sex, didn’t they? What was she doing making such an invitation? Panic almost claimed her. He was more than she could comfortably handle. Her brain told her that she didn’t want passion. She didn’t want the dreadful feeling of loss clawing at her now as her body longed for him to touch her again. Safety with men meant maintaining a distance, never wanting more than she might receive, ensuring that she didn’t feel too much or get hurt. He broke every rule and that was too risky.
Alexius lifted his head, shrewd grey eyes veiled, face tight with self-discipline. What the hell was he doing? What the hell was he playing at here? His body rigid with suppressed arousal, he lowered her back to the ground, knowing that he could more happily have pushed her back against the door and satisfied his hunger there and then. He wanted her. He wanted her more than he had wanted any woman in a very long time. There was nothing wrong with that, he decided abruptly. He didn’t need to question his libido.
Determined to see where she lived, he followed her over the threshold. The entrance needed painting and the stair carpet was badly worn. It was dingy and for the first time he thought critically of his godfather, who had clearly committed money to the cause of raising his granddaughter without ensuring that it went to her rather than her mother.
The door to the living room opened and a tiny dog rushed out to leap at Rosie’s knees with shrill yelps of joyous welcome. She scooped him up and cuddled him like a toy. Enormous bat ears flexed above big dark eyes and the dog growled the instant he saw Alex. It was a chihuahua but it looked more like a cartoon rat of the nasty variety, Alex decided.
‘This is Baskerville … I call him Bas for short—’
‘Ah, you got him. He’s been fretting for you,’ Martha, the older woman in the doorway, declared. ‘He knows when you get home and he seemed to know you were late. He’s been patrolling that door listening to every sound for the past hour and more. Oh, you’ve got company …’
‘I should’ve rung you to let you know I’d be late back,’ Rosie said apologetically. ‘Thanks for looking after Bas.’
‘I’ll keep him,’ Martha declared, smiling and scooping the tiny dog back from Rosie and into her arms. ‘He’s great company.’
Martha vanished tactfully back into the living room. Rosie hovered. ‘Do you want coffee?’ she enquired in the rushing silence, barely able to look at Alex, she was so tense, so unsure, but suddenly she knew that she was done with living her whole life in fear, always afraid that she might make her mother’s mistakes.
‘No, I want you,’ Alexius admitted almost harshly, reaching for her again, urging her slight body up against him, crushing that luscious mouth below his again with hungry pleasure.
Rosie let him kiss her because she couldn’t stamp out the longing for that kiss or the even more intoxicating one that followed. Desire, she was learning, was a slippery slope. Give way, open the door to a little and you might invite in a whole lot more of the same. His tongue tangled with hers and a ripple of such intense reaction travelled through her that she shivered, hot and cold with sensation, shock and craving, feeling all the things she had never felt before, and, in that weakened state, his every touch was unbearably seductive.
‘Where’s your room?’ Alexius husked, lifting her up in his arms with decisive cool, finally getting her where he wanted her with a fierce sense of satisfaction.
Rosie gave him a conflicted look. ‘I don’t do this kind of thing, Alex. I don’t bring guys home.’
‘I’m not just a guy, moli mou,’ Alexius told her thickly as he mounted the stairs.
‘First door on the right,’ she told him hesitantly, her heart thumping so hard she was afraid it might stop. ‘No, first on the left!’
He claimed her mouth again then with even greater urgency and her body leapt and yearned and learned all at the same time. There was something about him, something that called to her down deep inside. He nudged the door open with his shoulder, brought her down on her narrow single bed and somehow nibbled on the soft sensitive fullness of her lower lip at the same time. His knowing mouth traced the corded delicacy of her throat, touching and teasing places she hadn’t known were erogenous to send searing flashes of blinding delicious desire racing through her. She slammed the door shut on the doubts at the back of her head.
ALEX found the switch of the bedside light and the small room was illuminated, stark and plain and impersonal. Reminding himself that she had only recently moved in, he stared down at her, his lean powerful length taut and pent-up with the hunger she had aroused.
Her glorious hair lay in a tangle across the pillow. There was a dazed look in her soulful eyes. Her mouth was swollen and red from his kisses and the allure of her called to him as strongly as a siren song. He flipped off her shoes, tugged at her sensible socks. He wanted to strip her bare, he wanted to see her. Painfully unsure of herself, Rosie came up on her elbows and reached down to unzip her trousers. He brushed her hand away and took over. Was this what men and women did? she wondered, plunged into ridiculous anguish by her own ignorance of how to behave in an intimate situation. Was it the done thing for her to lie there and let him undress her? If the only alternative was for her to get up and strip for him, she could not imagine doing it.
‘I don’t bite unless you ask me to,’ Alexius quipped, enjoying his ability to read her thoughts from her ever-changing expressions while he wondered what might be responsible for her obvious tension at the prospect of sex.
‘I’m not very experienced,’ she warned him defensively. ‘So, don’t be expecting too much.’
‘I know it will be amazing,’ Alexius fielded with a level of assurance that shook her. ‘You’re a passionate woman.’
‘Did you work that out from one kiss?’ she teased, scanning the high cheekbones that lent his face such strong, sexy symmetry along with the deep-set mystery of his stunning silvery-grey eyes.
‘There were many,’ he reminded her. ‘No, I see your passion in the way you look at me.’
Instantly, Rosie closed her eyes and he laughed with male appreciation, lightening the moment, putting to flight some of her shyness and uncertainty. ‘And how do you look at me?’ she traded, lifting fluttering lashes to study him.
‘Probably much the same way. The first time I saw you, I couldn’t take my eyes off you …’
She remembered him staring: she had been staring too but that statement buoyed her up, restored her flagging confidence. The pull towards him that she felt was not hers alone. In the interim he tugged off her trousers, frowning down at the plasters marring the smooth sweep of her slim, shapely bare legs. There might not be much of her but there was a delicate perfection to every line of her diminutive body, he decided as he roughly unknotted his tie. Rosie came up on her knees, no longer content to be passive, and removed his tie for him. Her hands lowered and slid beneath his suit jacket to his shoulders and the sheer heat of
