‘We’re not done here.’
Excitement and trepidation warred in Lia’s chest. Ben was unmistakably alpha. Maybe he saw her as some kind of challenge?
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know this isn’t what you expected when you thought of indulging in a weekend fling. I think we’ve established that I’m not exactly cast from the same mould as your usual women.’
She went to walk past him, instinctively seeking a place where she could be alone and deal with her sense of exposure without that incisive gaze watching her every move. He’d laid her bare—completely. She’d been right to resist him.
A hand on her arm stopped her. She looked up.
Ben pulled her around in front of him. ‘There are no other women. There’s only you. Are you saying you don’t want this?’
Lia flushed at his words. ‘There’s only you.’ And how could she deny she wanted this when she’d just been writhing and moaning under his expert touch?
She said tightly, ‘You really don’t owe me anything, Ben. If you just feel sorry for—’
His hands tightened on her arms so much she stopped talking. He looked incredulous. ‘Feel sorry for you? Believe me...that’s the last thing I’m feeling right now. I want you, Lia. Because you make me feel like I’ll combust if I don’t have you. And that’s not pity. That’s desire.’
Suddenly she didn’t have anything to hide behind. He was calling her out.
She felt nervous. ‘I’m not experienced enough for you... I’ll disappoint you.’
He speared her with that bright blue gaze, like two flames. ‘You couldn’t disappoint me if you tried, Lia. And there’s no such thing as inexperience—there’s just how two people fit together. You’re not frigid—not remotely. That man was an idiot, and he couldn’t recognise a brilliant precious gem when it was right in front of him.’
Ben’s words reached deep inside her and melted the insecurity Lia had been carrying around like a weight.
He moved closer, as if sensing her vacillation. ‘I want you, Lia, more than I’ve ever wanted another woman. But if you can say that you truly don’t want this, then I’ll let you go.’
He took her elbows in his hands and pulled her gently to him until they were touching. If she’d had any doubts about how much he wanted her, or thoughts that he just pitied her, they fled when she felt the hard, thrusting evidence of his desire against her soft belly.
Her heart started to pound and her blood heated. Her defences were annihilated. And then she felt a spike of anger. Anger that he’d brought her here and laid her bare, forced her to delve deep inside herself to where she ached and wanted...so much. Where she wanted him. Forcing her to admit it.
She felt fierce. ‘I can’t tell you that.’
Ben was intense. ‘What can’t you tell me?’
She looked up into his eyes and drowned. ‘That I don’t want you.’
Lia didn’t care any more how or why she’d got here, just that she was, and she didn’t want to be anywhere else. She desperately wanted Ben to show her again how she could respond to a man. That she wasn’t frigid.
As if reading her mind, Ben bent and lifted her into his arms. And then he was carrying her up the stairs.
She was mesmerised by his jaw, by the play of the powerful muscles of his chest under her arm. Breathless at the thought of what she was doing, and so far out of her comfort zone that it wasn’t funny, she pushed all her trepidation down.
Ben shouldered his way into his room, and Lia was vaguely aware that it was just as palatial as hers but more masculine in tones and colours. And then her gaze fell on the massive bed in the middle of the room and her mouth dried completely.
A part of her wanted to leap from Ben’s arms and run away fast, but a stronger part realised that she wanted to be strong—for this, for herself. Her confidence had been eroded when she was a young child, when her own mother had rejected her, forcing her to shut away a part of herself for fear of rejection. Then she’d let Simon decimate her confidence as a sexual woman. It was time to restore the balance.
Ben put her down near the bottom of the bed. His voice was deep, rumbling in the silence. ‘You can let your dress go.’
Lia looked down and saw her almost white-knuckled grip on her dress. She uncurled her fingers, undid the tie and let it go. It swung open, catching on the slopes of her breasts.
She heard a sharp intake of breath and looked up to see Ben’s eyes on her.
‘So beautiful,’ he muttered as he brought his hands to her shoulders and pulled her dress off them and down over her arms, until it fell to the floor in a sibilant whoosh of silk. Her undone bra followed.
Now she was naked, the ends of her hair tickling the bare skin of her shoulders. Ben’s eyes had darkened and Lia gritted her jaw to kill the instinct to cover herself with her arms; she didn’t want him to see how vulnerable she really felt. No doubt he was used to women parading themselves in front of him.
Instead, just to do something to break the almost overwhelming tension, she reached out and touched his chest tentatively. It was muscled perfection, broad and strong. Defined pectorals with a dusting of dark curling hair led down to the ridges of a six-pack and his flat belly, with its single line of dark hair dissecting the muscles and disappearing under his trousers.
Ben sucked in a breath and, emboldened, Lia explored further, spreading her hands across his chest. They looked tiny and pale next to that burnished skin. She could feel his heart thumping solidly, and some nameless emotion gripped her tight. But she ignored it. Now was not the time for emotion.
She raked her nails over him experimentally, catching a nipple, making him take another sharp intake of breath. He caught the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. She looked up and felt drugged.
Not taking her gaze off his, she let her hands feel their way to his lean waist and found where his belt was buckled. She looked down and undid it, and then her hands were on his button and the zip. She could feel the insistent thrust of his erection through his clothes, and a wave of heat scorched her from the inside out and between her legs, where she felt damp again. Hot.
She pushed his trousers down over his hips and he stepped out of them, letting her go momentarily. Then he pulled down his briefs until he too was gloriously naked. She’d never been more aware of herself as a woman. There was something very elemental about this moment, with everything stripped away.
Unable to resist, and not even recognising herself any more, Lia reached out and encircled his hard flesh with her hand, stroking him up and down, mesmerised by the vulnerability of his erection and also the steely strength. The velvet texture of his skin. She touched the bead of moisture at its head and spread it with her thumb.
At that Ben took her hand from him and she looked up.
‘I won’t last if you keep touching me like that.’
He caught her hand and brought her around the side of the bed, urged her down onto it, following her. He looked massive from where she lay, all wide shoulders and chest and long, lean body.
