and then sat back on his haunches to gaze at her with open admiration.
If this was how he was in bed with a woman, she thought in a heated daze, then she was surprised that there wasn’t a demanding queue of ex-lovers banging on her front door, braying for him to return to bed with them.
‘Just for the moment,’ he said huskily, ‘indulge me and allow me to take charge.’
With her hands still above her head, burrowed underneath the pillow, Rose half smiled.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t take charge in everything you do?’ she teased, ‘because if you are then I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true. Some people have accused me of occasionally being somewhat...assertive.’
He seemed determined to assert himself right now. Starting with her breasts.
He kissed them, nuzzled their softness, making her writhe and stretch underneath him, her movements feline and sensuous. He licked one nipple with his tongue and then sucked on it, drawing it into his mouth and teasing the sensitive tip with his tongue. As he ministered to her breast, he dipped down to rest his hand between her thighs, lightly covering her mound with the palm of his hand and then pressing down in lazy circular movements.
Bliss.
Rose was dripping wet and she didn’t care. She was explosively turned on. Something about the position of her arms heightened the sensitivity of her breasts and each flick of his tongue and caress of his hand made her want to cry out loud.
He trailed a path of kisses along her stomach and she inhaled sharply, wanting more than anything for him to taste her down there again, there between her legs where the ache desperately craved his touch.
As he found that place and began, once again, to tease her with his tongue, she arched up, spread her legs wider and bucked against his questing mouth.
Sensation started with an electric ripple that spread outwards with the force of a tsunami until she was lost in a world dictated by her physical response to his mouth. She could no more have strung a coherent thought together than she could have grown wings and taken flight.
When she came against his mouth it was with such force that she cried out, hands clutching the bed linen, her whole body arching, stiffening and then shuddering as everything exploded inside her.
She eventually subsided on a wave of mind-blowing contentment.
‘Felt good?’ Arturo lay alongside her, then curved her against him, pushing his thigh between her legs.
Rose linked her fingers around his neck and darted some kisses over his face. ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at him with such genuine apology that he winced.
‘Sorry about what?’
‘Just lying there and...um...enjoying myself...’
‘You have no idea how much enjoyment I got from pleasuring you.’
Rose smiled and curved against him, taking the initiative this time, adoring the hard, muscled lines of his body as she ran her hands over it. Along his shoulders, over his hard, sinewy chest, taking time to tease his flattened brown nipples.
His erection was thick and pulsing and she lowered herself into a position where she could take him into her mouth and he, manoeuvring her, could take her into his.
An exchange of intense pleasure that brought her right back up to the edge from which she had only recently descended.
Rose had never experienced such a lack of inhibition. She had always approached the opposite sex from a position of caution, a place where mechanisms were in place to prevent her from being too hurt. She’d never let go with anyone, not that her life had been cluttered with an abundance of men, and it astounded her that, of all the people in the world, she should be so free and open with one who wasn’t destined to play any kind of permanent role in her life.
It didn’t make sense.
But wonderfully open was exactly what she was feeling as she licked and teased and sucked him, as she felt him move between her thighs, tickling her with his tongue, their bodies fused as one.
They both knew when the time was right for the foreplay to end before it cascaded into orgasm.
Arturo eased her off him, groaning as their bodies broke contact. It was a matter of a few fumbling seconds and then, protection in place, he positioned himself over her.
Rose could barely contain her excitement. Her whole body ached for the ultimate satisfaction of having him inside her and when he drove into her, thrusting hard and firm, she groaned long and low.
He filled her up and with each thrust she came closer and closer to the brink.
* * *
Art had never been with anyone as responsive as she was. It was as though he was tuned in to her, sensitive to just how far he could take her before she came, able to time his own orgasm to match hers, and when they came it was mind-blowing.
Deep inside her, embedded to the hilt, he drove hard and felt her shudder and cry out just as he rocked with waves of such intense pleasure that he couldn’t contain his own guttural cry of satisfaction.
It was a few moments before they could unglue their bodies from one another. Unusually, Art didn’t immediately feel the urge to break the connection by escaping to have a shower.
Instead, he slid off her and held her. What the hell had he done? He’d come here on a mission and this most definitely had not been any part of his mission.
But he looked down at her flushed face, her parted mouth, felt the warmth of her beautiful body pressed against his, and all he wanted to do was have her all over again.
Art knew that this was a weakness. In fact, sleeping with her at all had been a weakness. Since when had any woman taken precedence over common sense and, more importantly, work?
And what happened now?
Art knew what should happen. He should walk away. He should walk away and keep on walking until he hit London and the reality of his life there. He should put an immediate end to this charade and conduct whatever business needed conducting through his lawyers and accountants. The land belonged to him and tiptoeing around that stark fact was a matter of choice rather than necessity.
Okay, so maybe if she got stuck in and took a stand, the community would view his development as a blot on their landscape and react accordingly to the newcomers buying properties, but that wouldn’t last. Within six months everything would settle down and life would carry on as normal.
His presence here and his willingness to do his best to ease the process would bear testimony to his capacity for goodwill.
It would also be useful because, in due course, he would be putting in another planning application and a hostile community would make that more difficult.
But in the end he would get what he wanted because he always did.
And, in the meantime, this...was a complication.
‘What
