He released it when they reached the edge of the pool, letting her dive in alone.
The water was warm and silky, a lovely sensual liquid flow around her body, doing nothing at all to cool her mind, inciting an even deeper seduction towards simply luxuriating in feeling. Her hair which had been heavily wet from the shower, floated around her, weightless, as she turned on her back and floated.
‘You look like a mermaid,’ James said, treading water beside her.
She smiled, enjoying her own wicked thoughts as she replied, ‘Having a tail might be inconvenient.’
He laughed, and his pleasure in her was a further intoxication. She started swimming, spurted on by a glorious burst of energy and wanting to share all his pleasures with him. He didn’t attempt to make a competition of it, matching her leisurely stroke, apparently content with the companionship, which warmed Lucy’s heart. When she tired and rested at one end of the pool, he stopped with her, reaching out to draw her into an embrace. She went willingly, loving the slow entanglement of his legs with hers.
His eyes were midnight-blue in the gathering twilight of the evening. They searched hers, as though wanting the response of her mind as well as her body. ‘I’m beginning to think we’re natural partners…at work and play,’ he said quietly, seriously.
Yes, her heart sang. She smiled. ‘We seem to fit together very well.’
His answering smile was loaded with sensual appreciation. ‘In every sense. So I think we should explore how far it goes, don’t you?’
‘James… Lucy?’ Zoe Hancock called from above. ‘Are you coming up soon? I’ve got everything ready to start cooking when you give the word.’
His mother! And soon to come—facing her across a dinner table! Lucy’s lifetime habit of looking respectable—according to her own mother—came crashing into prominence. ‘I’ll need at least twenty minutes to do something with my hair,’ she warned James in an anxious whisper.
He frowned quizzically at her, as though the state of her hair was totally irrelevant to him, then called back, ‘Give it half an hour and we’ll be ready to eat.’
‘Half an hour,’ Zoe repeated. ‘That’s fine…’ Her voice trailed away.
James frowned again at Lucy. ‘Don’t be worried by my mother. She has nothing to do with us.’
‘She’s here…’ Summing me up, assessing me, and she’ll discuss me with you when I’m gone…but Lucy choked up on admitting she wanted his mother’s approval. It assumed too much of their relationship. ‘We can’t keep ignoring that, James,’ she pleaded.
‘Agreed,’ he conceded. ‘Just don’t let her interfere with this.’
He kissed her with ravishing intensity, wiping out the rest of the world. He peeled the flimsy maillot from her body, baring it to his again, and the water lapping them made the flesh to flesh contact even more erotic. When he hauled her up to sit her on the edge of the pool, Lucy was still rocking from the explosion of sensation spiralling through her. The maillot was drawn off and tossed onto the paving behind her. He moved between her legs, opening them wide.
‘Lean back, Lucy, and think of me wanting to do this, and more, as you sit at the dinner-table with my mother.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘And know I’ll be thinking of it, too.’
He parted the intimate folds of her sex and kissed her there, with even more ravishing intensity than he had kissed her mouth. Lucy automatically arched back, her arms supporting her as waves of pleasure issued from the exquisite caressing. He hooked her legs over his shoulders and she felt his tongue delve inside her, swirling, inciting an incredible excitement, driving her into another shuddering release which he soothed with gentle stroking until the quivering ceased.
‘Hold onto what you feel now,’ he murmured, his eyes burning with hot purpose. ‘Don’t let it go no matter what my mother says or does.’
Impossible to let it go. The acute sexual awareness he had stirred was pulsing chaotically through her bloodstream, throbbing through her mind.
He left her alone while she showered and washed her hair, going to fetch her bag from upstairs so she could apply fresh make-up and use her own hair-brush as she wielded the hair-dryer in the bathroom. But she didn’t feel parted from him. Not for a moment. It was as though he had infiltrated her entire being.
Every sense was heightened with this feeling when he came back. While she attended to her hair and face, he was in the bathroom with her, showering and towelling himself dry, and she could barely stop herself from staring at him, so entranced was she by the naked physique of the man.
Even when he dressed she kept seeing him as he was without clothes. He watched her, too, waiting for her to be ready to confront his mother again, and all the time she felt his sizzling desire for every possible intimacy with her.
To Lucy, dinner with his mother seemed to take place on two levels. One appeared to be relatively normal. Conversation was carried on and she took some part in it because she heard herself speaking from time to time. The meal Zoe Hancock had cooked—a beef and vegetable stir-fry with noodles—was eaten, although Lucy couldn’t recall tasting any of it.
On a secret and far more dominant level was the unrelenting and explicit message in every look James gave her—a simmering promise of more and more of what she had already experienced with him. It made her breasts tingle. It shot little shivers down her thighs. Her inner muscles clenched with the memory of all he’d made her feel—was still making her feel.
She grew so self-conscious of her response to him that she felt his mother couldn’t fail to sense what was going on under her nose. Zoe Hancock couldn’t know what had transpired in the cabana and by the pool, but she would have to be as thick as a brick not to pick up on what was humming between James and his secretary. She had to know that the moment she left them alone together…
Lucy couldn’t bear the thought of his mother knowing. Being here under the same roof and knowing. It wouldn’t be private. Not emotionally private. And that felt horribly wrong to her.
James had said—Don’t let her interfere with this.
But what was this?
If she was more than a lay for the night…if he really thought they were natural partners…that would still be true tomorrow.
She couldn’t stay.
Not with his mother here.
It wouldn’t feel right to her.
Dinner was over. Coffee had been served. Best she leave now while Zoe was still indulging herself with the chocolate mints she’d brought with the coffee. She stood up, determined on taking her leave, regardless of how deeply she was still aroused by the promise of more with James.