was the way that she whispered his name that sealed his fate. Before that he still might have been able to terminate this craziness here and now—had not that little moan laid a fresh assault on his senses.
‘What?’ he questioned huskily. ‘What is it?’
The bold words seemed to tumble out of their own accord—but how could they not, when she seemed to have spent a whole lifetime repressing them? ‘I…I want you.’
‘Do you now?’ he murmured, smiling a secret smile into her scented hair. Because that heartfelt capitulation somehow freed him from all the restraint he knew he should be exercising. A restraint he knew he should act on.
She was his secretary, for God’s sake!
But suddenly that didn’t matter. As she writhed against him unashamedly nothing mattered other than the urgent need to possess her. To see whether the body beneath matched up to all the tantalising promise which had been showcased by the scarlet dress. Which had driven him mad with desire all evening.
Deliberately, he circled his hips against hers and she gasped into his mouth as he slipped his hand into the bodice of her dress. He could feel her trembling anticipation as he took one breast into his palm and began to flick his thumb over the stiff, puckered nipple.
‘Oh!’ she cried out again, wriggling restlessly, her fingernails skating over his back and digging into his flesh through the silk shirt he wore. She was eager, he thought, his heart erratically missing a beat. Very eager. Once again, the voice of reason began to clamour in his head, demanding to be heard and to put a stop to this madness—but the needs of his body were more demanding still and he could hold back no longer as he began to ruck the slippery material up over her bottom.
It was a surprisingly firm bottom. Luxuriously, he smoothed his fingers over the high, tight globes—but his access to a still sweeter destination was impeded by the tights she wore.
Pulling his mouth away from hers, he looked down at her as he hooked a careless finger in the thick elastic of the waistband. ‘I think we’d better take these off, don’t you?’ he questioned unsteadily.
Angie was so het up with need for him that she could hardly think, let alone speak. Her lips were dry and her heart was hammering but warning bells began to ring. Couldn’t he just carry on what he was doing, which was giving her more pleasure than she’d ever thought it possible to feel? Strip her here without her having to give him permission to undress her. So that sex, if sex they were going to have, would be driven by passion rather than a cold-blooded discussion about it beforehand. And that way—driven by heated need rather than cool logic—he wouldn’t get the chance to discover her relative inexperience until it was too late to stop.
And then she considered the reality of Riccardo removing her tights—the hold-everything-in tights which resembled cycling shorts and which she had bought deliberately to wear under the all-too-revealing outline of the thin silk dress. Because the last thing she had imagined was that he would be taking them off! Would he be disappointed when he saw what she was really like underneath—with a bit of a tummy, and hips about which the most flattering thing which had ever been said was that they were ‘child-bearing’? How would she compare to the perfectly honed supermodels and actresses he usually went to bed with? Angie shiv-ered with a mixture of dread and sheer excitement—because he was touching her bare skin.
Her lack of response to his question prompted him to rake his fingers through her hair, so that it spilled out all over his hands. Somehow the gesture made her feel curiously wanton—and so did the way he dipped his head to whisper his lips all the way along her shoulder blade.
‘You are suddenly very quiet, cara mia.’
He made the silken words sound like poetry and the butterfly kiss which accompanied them was unbearably beautiful. Shuddering with pleasure, Angie swallowed down her self-doubts. She didn’t care! She didn’t care about support tights or the other women or the fact that they were in her grotty little apartment instead of the fancy places he was used to. All she cared about was Riccardo, the only man she ever had cared about, really—though she must never tell him that. Well, certainly not tonight!
She buried her lips in his ear. ‘Yes, take them off,’ she whispered.
Heatedly, Riccardo glanced around the room. Should he do it to her here? There was a small sofa and a floor covered by a rather tatty-looking carpet. If ever there was a room which was the antithesis of erotic, it was this one. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said urgently. ‘Come. Show me where it is.’
Lacing her fingers with his, Angie led him towards the bedroom—her heart racing with excitement and dread as she tried to see it through his eyes. But there was no time to wish that the place looked more welcoming or that the bed were bigger—because Riccardo was pulling her into his arms again and kissing her into sweet, soft submission once more before turning his attention to her clothes.
‘Now…where was I?’
He slid the zip of her dress down so that it whispered into a scarlet pool by her feet. Next came her bra—he unclipped it with such frightening efficiency that it fluttered instantly to the floor. Only the tights slowed down his smooth progress—and it was with a bit of an effort that he peeled them off and flung them aside, his tongue trailing a moist path wherever her flesh was laid bare.
She gasped when he reached her belly, holding her breath as if scarcely able to believe that he was going to continue his erotic journey. And now he had buried his face in the soft fuzz of hair at the juncture of her thighs and she was shivering with what should have been embarrassment—that her boss should be performing such an intimate act on her. But Angie felt nothing except a wild and delirious excitement as he pushed her back onto the bed. Wasn’t this what she’d spent the last four years dreaming about? She clawed at his shirt buttons, scrabbling to try to pop them open—and was it her imagination, or did she hear one bouncing to the ground?
‘Ah, cara. Lentamente…slowly…’ He was laughing softly now. Surprised—but very turned on by her impatience as he put his wallet, phone and keys on the bedside table. ‘You must wait a little.’
But Angie didn’t want to wait. She felt like someone who had just seen a rainbow—dazzled by its fragile beauty but aware that it could disappear in a moment. Because she loved this man. Hadn’t she loved him for years—and wasn’t this the natural conclusion to all those feelings? And the last thing she wanted was Riccardo having second thoughts and changing his mind about making love to her. If she was destined to spend her life alone—then at least she would have this one, glorious night to cherish in the lonely years ahead.
With a boldness she’d never before experienced she reached out and began to tug at the belt of his trousers and he groaned before removing her fingers.
‘No!’ he bit out.
‘But—’
‘I am too hot and hard to trust anyone but myself with my undressing,’ he groaned as the zip rasped down and he kicked away the trousers before swiftly divesting himself of the rest of his clothes.
Then suddenly he was as naked as she and had joined her on the bed. The thin mattress dipped to the weight of an unaccustomed man beside her and Angie was glowingly aware of the long limbs which enfolded her and the dormant strength which shimmered beneath the muscular frame.
‘Riccardo,’ she whispered. Riccardo was in her bed and in her arms. She wanted to ask him whether this could really be happening to her. To him. To them. But she could
