Her gaze was instantly drawn to the queen-size bed, her imagination running riot with the sexual fantasies she’d woven around James in the long months of her employment as his secretary. Only vaguely did she hear the click of the door closing, the rustle of the curtain dropping back into place, but all her senses leapt into vibrant life as James’ arms wound around her waist, scooping her back against him, and the warmth of his breath caressed her ear as he lowered his head to hers to murmur seductively intimate words.
‘I’ve been anticipating this moment all day and I can’t wait any longer. Say it’s what you came for…that you can’t bear not to feel again what exploded between us this morning.’
His hands moved up under her top, taking possession of her breasts, kneading them, revelling in their soft giving to his touch. Her bottom was nestled against his groin and there was no doubting the urgency of his desire, his arousal only too evident in its hard, erotic pressure. Lucy was dazed, thrilled that he could want her so much, that this morning’s passion had not abated and was just as strong—stronger—now.
‘Say it, Lucy. Take the risk. Break your rules. Don’t hide from me any more. You can’t anyway. I know.’
His voice throbbed with confident knowledge.
She didn’t care that he knew what she felt.
She didn’t care about anything but having him.
‘Yes…’ The admission poured from her heart. ‘I do want more of you.’
More than he was thinking of, but it would come, Lucy told herself. It had to, or this flood of feeling for him was a terrible misdirection of nature.
‘Yes,’ he echoed, a hiss of triumphant satisfaction. ‘So let it be more. No clothes this time.’
His hands moved swiftly, whipping off her top. Momentarily freed of his embrace, Lucy whirled around to face him, her eyes blazing with her own need to have him stripped, as well. ‘You, too, James. This is a two-way deal,’ she insisted feverishly, her fingers attacking the buttons of his shirt, uncaring if he thought her brazen. It wasn’t right, James taking without giving her all of himself. The word, mutual, was pounding through her mind.
He laughed, seemingly elated by her positive counter-action, pulling off his shirt as she opened it. His tanned skin was gleamingly taut over his chest and arm muscles, somehow glorifying his beautiful masculinity which was so sleek and strong, everything female in Lucy started fluttering in a purely pagan response to the man he was. Even the nest of black hair across his chest suggested an animal virility that touched something deeply primitive in her.
Impossible to stop her fingers speading through that hair, luxuriating in the feel of it. Under her palm the thump of his heart transmitted a charge to her own heart, an exultant pulse of joy and need that she knew, beyond any possible doubt, was intensely mutual—such exhilarating, intoxicating knowledge, like swimming in dreams that had taken on flesh and blood reality.
‘Stopping there, Lucy?’ James teased, his voice husky now, affected by her absorption in him.
She looked up into eyes that had darkened to deep blue. ‘You had the advantage of me this morning,’ she reminded him. ‘I didn’t get to touch you.’
‘Satisfy yourself then. As I will.’
He reached around her waist, unclipping and unzipping her skirt. Driven to match him, she slid her own hands down over his stomach to unfasten his trousers, wanting him stripped at the same time, both of them equally naked. Clothes were discarded in a rush of eagerness, shoes, too, everything tossed aside with a wild sense of abandoning all inhibitions because this reality was a thousand times more exciting than anything she could dream.
At last she was free to know all of him and he crushed her to him as though the need to imprint her flesh and blood reality on his was of the utmost urgency, as though he, too, had wanted it for months and the waiting and fantasising were finally over.
‘No pins—’ he growled, grabbing a fistful of hair, winding it around his fingers ‘—and all buttons undone.’
‘I didn’t have buttons,’ she said distractedly, revelling in the lean line of his hips, the powerful hardness of his thighs, the taut curve of his buttocks, filling her hands with every tactile sensation within her reach, even as she soaked in the sheer bliss of feeling her breasts squashed against the heat of his bare chest and his erection furrowing her stomach. He was perfect—incredibly, wonderfully perfect.
‘You’ve been primly pinned and buttoned up from the day I employed you, Lucy Worthington,’ he gruffly accused. ‘But I’ve got you now—the woman I always sensed was underneath it all.’
Always?
He started walking her backwards, dominantly purposeful. Lucy found the movement so exciting, her mind barely grasped the idea that James had been thinking of her as a woman, not just as his worthy secretary.
‘Why did you never say anything?’ she cried, remembering the anguish of her own secret wanting which he’d given no hint of returning.
He tumbled her onto the bed, kneeling over her, hauling her into a more comfortable position, smiling into her eyes. ‘I liked the tantalising mystery…the way you fenced with me.’ He lifted her arms up over her head, holding her wrists to keep them there. ‘But more and more I’ve wanted you like this, Lucy, open to me, wanting me, responding with the passion I sensed in you.’
Was it true? Had the attraction been there all along, building towards this on both sides?
He bent and ran his tongue between her lips, making them tingle. She lifted a leg and caressed the back of his knee with her foot, instinctively denying him complete mastery over her. His head jerked up. Then with a rumbling growl he released her wrists, burrowing an arm under her hips as he plundered her mouth with a swift challenging drive to arouse and excite the passion he wanted to feast on.
Lucy gave it to him, as greedy as he was for the same ravishing intimacy, the same heady explosion of sensation, the same sense of an ecstatic inner sharing that broke all normal boundaries, that zoomed them into a world owned only by them.
She felt the hot hardness of his penis being moved against the soft moistness at the apex of her thighs, caressing, inciting an almost unbearable excitement, back and forth, back and forth until she wrenched her mouth from his and cried for its insertion. ‘Enough! I need you now…now….’
And he plunged into her, so deliciously full and fast, dispelling the terrible yearning for him, answering the throbbing need with a force that arched her body in exquisite satisfaction, and she could feel her inner muscles convulsing with the intense pleasure of it, squeezing him, relaxing to let him pump the sheer splendour of this fantastic togetherness higher and higher, climbing to peak after peak of quivering ecstasy, her legs wrapped around him, driving him on, her hands blindly urging, her eyes closed, her whole being inwardly focused on this wildly compelling mating with James…James…her man…and she his woman…bonding…melding…