them down and dropping them near her feet. She was bared completely now, the silk of the dress falling away as he pushed her thighs apart even more.
Lia closed her eyes and bit into her fist as Ben’s head dropped and she felt his mouth on her soft inner thigh, pressing kisses and nipping at her skin gently. She was in danger of hyperventilating again, especially when his mouth moved higher, closer to the apex of her legs.
She didn’t think he could spread her any wider but then he did, his big hands high on her thighs.
As if reading her mind, he commanded, ‘Look at me.’
Reluctantly she opened her eyes. Ben had taken off his shirt and his chest was bare and massive. She couldn’t breathe as he bent forward and pressed his mouth to her, his tongue hot and wet as he dragged it up the secret folds of her body.
Lia’s breath returned and she hitched in big gulps as that dark head bobbed and moved between her legs. His hands looked massive on her pale skin.
Ben looked up, ‘Touch your breast.’
Feeling dizzy, even though she was all but lying down, Lia brought a hand to her breast, trapping a nipple between her fingers.
‘Now, squeeze...’ Ben instructed softly.
She did, and gasped as an arrow of pleasure went straight to her groin. Ben smiled and it was wicked as he bent his head again and tortured her with his mouth and tongue.
When he pushed a finger deep into the heart of her she arched her back off the couch, and then it became two fingers, thrusting in and out as his mouth and tongue lapped at her with fierce intensity.
Lia couldn’t hold on. The coil of tension inside her snapped and she cried out as pleasure exploded her into tiny pieces. Waves of after-shocks rocked through her body for long moments, and she only became aware of her surroundings again when she could open her eyes and blink to focus, realising that Ben had lapped all that pleasure from her body and was now pressing lazy kisses to her inner thighs.
She felt undone. Turned inside out. Totally exposed but too spent to do anything about it. She realised that she was still squeezing her breast, almost painfully, and let go.
WHEN BEN FINALLY straightened up, tearing himself away from Lia’s intoxicating taste and scent he was not prepared for the glorious sight of her looking so shocked. Her hair was a dark cloud around her head. The blue silk dress was crumpled beside those lush curves.
The realisation that she looked so stunned stopped him from automatically moving his hands to his belt to seek his own relief. He ignored the insistent ache in his pants and rested his hands on her knees. ‘Are you okay?’
After a moment her eyes seemed to clear and she nodded. But he noticed that she reached for her dress with visibly shaking hands, pulling it over her as much as she could. The heat in Ben’s blood cooled a little and he moved back so that she could pull her dress down, concealing that glorious body from view.
‘What is it, Lia?’
She looked at him for a moment, almost accusingly, but he just looked right back. Making a little huffing sound, Lia scooted back on the couch until she was sitting upright. She bit her lip, but then eventually said, ‘One day I walked into my ex-fiancé’s office and found him with his secretary. He was doing what you just did to me to her...’ She trailed off.
Ben tried to make sense of what she was saying. ‘That’s why you broke it off? He was unfaithful?’
She nodded jerkily, her face crimson now. ‘Yes, but the thing is I’ve only ever slept with Simon...’
Ben would have never envisaged this scenario in a million years. In one fell swoop any remaining misconceptions he might have had about Julianna Ford were blasted apart. She was inexperienced, and she was achingly vulnerable right now, even though he could tell she hated it from the way her hands held her dress together in a white-knuckled grip.
And instead of feeling the urge to get up and run in the opposite direction Ben got up and sat on the couch beside her, feeling something close to protective.
Lia looked at him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not very experienced.’
Ben felt something dark rise up. ‘What happened with this ex-fiancé?’
Now she went pale. ‘When we made love for the first time...it hurt. A lot. After that I didn’t really want to...to make love.’ She grimaced. ‘It wasn’t as if we were in love. We’d both agreed to the marriage for our own reasons. But he told me that I was frigid, and that was why he was sleeping with his secretary. I couldn’t...didn’t want to get married after that.’
Ben reeled. He wanted to find that man and punch him for betraying this woman, for leaving her confidence in tatters. Never in Ben’s life had he been remotely interested in the notion of taking a woman’s virginity, but now he felt a ridiculous sense of loss, just imagining the way her rutting fiancé had probably not even realised the jewel he’d had in his hands. This woman was not frigid. Not remotely.
Then he thought of what else she’d just said. ‘Why did you agree to a marriage of convenience?’
As if the questions were probing too deeply, Lia got up off the couch, still graceful even while she was deliciously dishevelled. She turned her back to Ben and pulled the dress around her, tying it in front.
When she turned around again it was all Ben could do not to yank her back down onto his lap.
She folded her arms over her chest, as if she could hear his lusty thoughts. ‘It was primarily for my father. I told you...he’s traditional. He believes I’ll only be secure if I’m settled. He was sick a while back and I got a fright... He begged me to give Simon a chance—he knew he’d been asking me out on a regular basis.’
She shrugged and looked down, scuffing the floor with her toes. ‘I went out with him and it turned out that we were both happy enough to agree to something more...clinical than a romantic relationship.’ She looked back at Ben, almost defiant. ‘At the time it seemed like a good idea.’
‘You don’t need to convince me,’ Ben said with a bitter edge to his voice. ‘After seeing how little there was to hold my parents’ marriage together when the crisis hit, I’m under no illusions about the myth of a romantic ideal.’
For a long moment neither said anything else and then Lia took a step back.
Ben stood up. ‘Where are you going?’
* * *
Middle Earth, hopefully.
Lia had been ready for the ground to open up and swallow her right from when she hadn’t been able to stop the verbal equivalent of This is My Life from spilling out. She blamed Ben, and the fact that he’d wrung a response from her body that she’d never believed she’d feel.
He was looking at her now as if she had two heads, and the thought that he might pity her after what she’d just told him was making her burn with mortification. Of anything she might have expected from this man, she’d never expected that. Nor wanted it.
She struggled
