to push him over the edge. He’d never revealed so much to anyone. Never spoken about his past like that. About his father’s drinking. His mother’s weakness.
Lia stepped forward, her hand out, her eyes wide and full of something Ben didn’t want to decipher.
‘Ben, I’m sorry, please let me explain—’
He tipped over that edge. ‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘You don’t need to explain anything because I’m not interested in talking any more. All I’m interested in is this...’
Before she could say another word Ben had closed the distance between them, taken her face in his hands and was kissing her. Kissing her the way he’d been aching to kiss her again. For a long second she was frozen in his arms, and then she was moving closer and reaching up. Pressing her body against his.
Everything was forgotten as she twined her arms around his neck. Their angry words were decimated in the heat of this passion. Their mouths fused for a long moment, as if the intensity was too much to break, and then subtly Ben coaxed her to open her mouth to him. When his tongue touched hers he was lost, drowning in a sea of sensation and growing lust as he demanded a response, which she gave willingly.
He moved his hands down her back and settled them on her hips, hauling her closer. Close enough so she could feel what she was doing to him, where he ached most of all. Lia gasped into his mouth but he didn’t let her break away. He never wanted to let her go again...
* * *
Between Lia’s legs she felt damp and hot. Her breasts ached, pressed tight against his chest. But somehow a tiny sliver of sanity returned and she tore her mouth away from Ben’s, breathing as if she’d just run a marathon.
They’d combusted. That was the only word for it. She’d never felt anything like it. She hadn’t even known she was capable of this much feeling.
‘I can’t—’ she gasped incoherently, too far gone to be embarrassed. ‘This is too...too much.’
The look in Ben’s eyes was hot and feral. ‘It’s not nearly enough.’
He caught her hand and led her deeper into the living room. Lia’s body throbbed in time with the blood pumping to every erogenous zone. Ben took her over to one of the couches and made her sit down. She was glad, because her legs were shaking.
He stood above her, looking down with a kind of intensity that scared and excited her in equal measure.
‘You’re so beautiful...’
She went to pull the edges of her dress together, feeling exposed, thinking of that buxom Brazilian beauty earlier. ‘I’m not...’
He came down on his knees before her then, taking her by surprise. He put his hands on her thighs and gently pushed her legs apart, moving between them. His eyes burned into hers.
‘Yes, you are. And I’m sorry for lashing out just now...you didn’t deserve that.’
His apology struck at the heart of her. ‘That’s okay...’
He put his hands on her hips and pulled her towards him so that she lay back on the couch. She whispered through her erratic heartbeat. ‘What are you doing?’
He smiled, but it was the smile of the devil. Dark and decadent. Sexy. ‘Something I’ve wanted to do from the moment I saw you in this dress.’
He leant forward, putting delicious pressure on her between her legs, and slowly but methodically pushed her hands out of the way so that he could pull apart the neckline of her dress, all too easily. Lia remembered his look in the shop, and instead of feeling self-conscious, something scarily exultant moved through her.
Her delicate underwired blue lace bra opened very conveniently from the front. Ben undid the catch and pushed the lace material aside. He cupped one full breast with his hand, making it pout upwards. Lia’s breath stalled as shards of pleasure raced through her body. Excitement fizzed in her veins. And then Ben bent his head and tongued her nipple, bringing it to tingling hardness before he sucked it into his mouth.
Lia had a moment of sheer disbelief that this man could possibly want her this much before sensations she’d never felt before swamped her and removed her ability to think. Without even registering the movement, she found her hands were in Ben’s hair and she was clutching him to her breast. Eyes shut, heart pounding...
He was reaching right down inside her and unlocking the door to all the insecurities she’d buried deep. And she couldn’t stop him. Because the pleasure was eclipsing any fear she might be feeling—if she was even capable of being rational right now.
When Ben finally lifted his head from her tender flesh she opened her eyes, and it took her a second to focus and realise that she held his head in a death grip.
She let go immediately, horrified. But Ben just smiled. He lifted a hand and brushed some hair back off her cheek in a surprisingly tender move, even as she felt the hard length of his erection near the apex of her legs. She was aware that if she moved slightly it would create the friction she suddenly needed.
Who was she? What had she become?
‘You look deliciously...undone.’
Ben’s voice was gravelly. Lia looked at him, feeling twin desires: to move and pull her dress around her again, and also just to lie there and offer herself up to him.
He started to press kisses down her torso, his hands reaching around and finding where the dress was tied, undoing it easily, the silk like water in his hands. Soon he had her dress pushed apart completely, and he looked down at her blue lace panties.
Immediately Lia had a memory of her ex-fiancé, recoiling in horror when he’d first seen that she didn’t shave all over, and she tried to sit up awkwardly, putting a hand down to cover herself.
Ben caught her, though, stopping her hand with his, looking at her. ‘What is it?’
Now she felt horribly rational, and exposed and sane. Her ex-fiancé wasn’t remotely in the same league as Ben, and if he had found that part of her a turn-off...
She looked away. ‘I’m not...’ She forced herself to look at him. ‘I’m probably not like your usual lovers...’
Ben looked down between her legs and then back up, incredulous. ‘Because you don’t shave?’
Lia gulped. God, this was excruciating. She nodded. His face flushed and he took her hand and brought it down until he could place it over the bulge between his legs. The very hard bulge. Now she flushed.
‘Sweetheart,’ he growled, ‘when I make love to a woman I like to know she’s a woman. And right now I need to taste you, more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything else. Will you let me taste you?’
Something scarily exultant ripped through Lia. He wasn’t turned off. He wanted to taste her. Did that mean he wanted to do what she’d seen Simon doing to his secretary when she’d walked in on them that day? The thought sent her mind reeling. It had looked so decadent to her at the time. And she’d never got over the jealousy that he’d been moved to do that to this lover, not to her... And now this man was asking her—
Before she could lose her nerve, Lia
