velvet steel, and she sucked in a deep breath in purely sensual satisfaction.
‘Yes,’ Dominic agreed, his voice a silken rasp, ‘touch me, Sophie. I want you to touch me.’
His command opened the floodgates of need inside her. Greedily she slid her hand down, past his perfect navel, past the springy clutch of fine blond hairs, and grasped his hard, hot erection. He felt like satin. As her fingers curled around him Dominic groaned, then bent his head and kissed Sophie again, drinking from her moist, plundered lips with increasing urgency and ardour. She offered no protest when he guided her firmly down onto the bed and positioned his strong, muscular thighs either side of her.
Just before she lost the power to think of anything else but the intense gratification to come, Sophie knew she ought to tell Dominic that she was on the Pill. She took it more to help regulate her periods than for more obvious reasons, but even as she opened her mouth to speak she saw him reach into the trousers he had discarded and withdraw a small blue packet.
As he slipped off his boxers and sheathed himself in the protection she saw for herself how generously endowed he was, and her mouth went dry as chalk. She forgot the fact that they were supposed to be enemies, that they didn’t have a single thing in common between them except this: this wild, inexplicable sexual attraction that had flared up between them hotly and unexpectedly and compelled them to go to bed together. And when Dominic brought his mouth down upon her breasts, attending to each one in turn with hot, demanding caresses, urging her towards the most intense delectation she had ever known, Sophie decided not to fight her conscience at all, but simply just to enjoy the experience instead.
Didn’t her friends do that all the time? Not the ones who were looking for Mr Right, but the others, who believed it was a woman’s right to take sexual pleasure wherever she could find it and suffer no guilt.
‘Are you ready for me, Sophie?’ Dominic whispered against her ear, as he slid his hard, fit body along hers. ‘Are you going to let me inside now?’
Was that husky little whimper really hers? Was that soft, needy voice really the same vehemently strident one that had levelled all those insults at him just a few short hours ago? As he urged her slender thighs apart, and pushed slowly but firmly inside her, Sophie ran her hands down Dominic’s back, pressing her fingernails into his toned muscled flesh with increasing need as he thrust deeply inside her.
‘That’s it, my little cat…Let me feel your pretty little claws.’
Dominic had always been blessed with a healthy libido, but even he had not experienced sexual need so intensely passionate as this. His lips became intimately acquainted with every inch of her flesh in a hungry search to sate himself with her body. Even her sweat tasted sweet to his beguiled mouth.
Holding back his own desperate compulsion to reach a climax, Dominic thrust into Sophie again and again, until she came undone in his arms. As she quivered and moaned, and slid her hands down the now slippery wetness of his back, he succumbed to a wave of ecstasy so powerful and glorious that he was left breathless and stunned in its aftermath. Before he rolled away from her, Dominic stared down into Sophie’s lovely blue eyes and smiled at her with the most deeply satisfied smile he had ever bestowed on a lover before.
‘You have nothing to say to me now my, little cat?’ he taunted gently, green eyes brimming with amusement and fierce, fierce pleasure.
Staring up into the hard, lean contours of his mesmerising face, her body already needing him again, and throbbing with unashamed anticipation, Sophie sighed softly up at him.
‘Sometimes words aren’t necessary…don’t you think?’ she whispered, her glance already sliding away from his, in case she exposed herself too deeply to his hot, examining gaze…
About to race out of the door because she was late, Sophie was delayed by the appearance of a courier with a large package that she had to sign for. Puzzled by what the contents could possibly be, she nonetheless signed the delivery note quickly, left the box on the table just inside the front door, and dashed down the road to catch the bus that would take her to the primary school where she taught.
The local garage did not hold out much hope for her beloved car, so she had no choice other than to use public transport to get to work. The young mechanic who had looked over it for her had shaken his head and cheerfully told Sophie that it didn’t have much value other than scrap. His blasé conclusion pained her deeply. Any repairs she might instruct them to undertake would apparently cost her almost twice that of the value of the car itself. Her heart sinking, she’d agreed to let them tow it away, and resigned herself to getting used to either Shanks’s pony or the unreliable delights of the local transportation system. She certainly wasn’t in the market for a new car—second-hand or otherwise.
Diana’s wedding and the whole difficult day on Friday—culminating in the most surprising event of all, when she and Dominic had ended up in bed together—he’d vowed not to think about too much.
How had she allowed herself to behave like such an unbelievable little hussy? Even now she couldn’t quite believe she had succumbed so easily to the ruthless charm of Diana’s handsome boss. Coming to her senses in the early hours of Saturday morning, she had been careful not to wake him in the bed beside her, and instead had paid a brief visit to the bathroom, dressed quickly, then left the hotel without so much as saying goodbye to him. What was the point? In the harsh, cold light of morning she knew they’d both only regret their passionate fling.
No…Sophie had definitely done the right thing where Dominic Van Straten was concerned. She’d saved them both the embarrassment of confronting each other again. No doubt he’d been nothing but relieved when he’d woken to find her gone.
Now, on Monday morning, Sophie found that she actually welcomed the chattering voices of her class of sixteen lively five-year-olds in preference to ever enduring such an uncomfortable occasion as Diana’s wedding ever again. Whenever her unguarded mind recalled Dominic’s intoxicating presence, her stomach reacted with an anxious, confused flip, and she was surprised yet again how one beguiling yet infuriating stranger could make her respond with such violent emotion.
She’d never had a one-night stand in her life before, and to have one with her best friend’s boss, and on her wedding day, too, was probably the most uncharacteristic and reckless thing she’d ever done.
It was a good job Diana and Freddie had left before they’d found out that Sophie had agreed to spend the night with Dominic, or else she’d never have gone through with it in the first place. But even as she tried to reassure herself she would not willingly have embarrassed her friend—she knew she could not have resisted Dominic’s invitation that night—not when his eyes had undressed her and openly made love to her even before they had reached the hotel room!
‘Finish the story, Miss!’
‘What?’ Snapping out of yet another recollection of the Dutch billionaire who seemed to be dominating her thoughts with alarming regularity that morning, Sophie flushed guiltily, adjusted the illustrated book in her lap, and smiled warmly down at the group of children gathered round her seat on the floor. ‘Where were we?’
‘The big bad wolf was just about to gobble up the grandmother!’ a little girl with blonde bobbed hair offered enthusiastically.
Sophie didn’t miss the irony that she should be reading the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf when her mind was preoccupied with thinking about Dominic…
The first thing she saw when she came through the door that evening was the package.
