When he put up his hand towards her in a stopping gesture and kept on talking—something about a website—rebellion overcame Tara’s usually automatic tendency to obey him. Slowly, she moved towards him across the expanse of dark green carpet, her hips swaying seductively, her breasts moving underneath the wrap. The act of walking parted the silky material around her knees, giving tantalising glimpses of her bare legs.
One of his brows arched as he eyed her up and down. ‘I’ll have to speak to you later, Pierce,’ he said into the phone. ‘Something’s just come up.’
‘Much later,’ Tara said as he clicked off the call. Pierce was only Max’s PA, after all. He could wait.
Max smiled an odd smile before dropping his eyes back to the laptop screen. ‘I have something I have to finish up here first, Tara,’ he said without looking up at her again. ‘Why don’t you toddle off back to bed and I’ll join you there as soon as I can?’
Pique fired her tongue before she could think better of it. ‘What if I don’t want to go back to bed? What if I want to stay here? What if I want you to stop working right here and now?’
Slowly, his eyes rose. Hard and glittering, they were, just as she liked them. He sipped some more of his drink whilst he studied her over the rim of the glass.
His gaze was knowing. He was mentally stripping her, making her face flush and her nipples tighten.
‘Make me,’ he said at last, his voice soft and low and dark.
His challenging words sent a bolt of electricity zigzagging through her, firing her blood and her resolve not to weaken. Because she knew what he wanted. He wanted to see her, all of her. Not lying in a bed, but standing upright, in front of him. Facing him.
Her heartbeat quickened whilst her hands went to the sash on her wrap. She might have fumbled if the knot had been difficult, but she only had to tug the ends of the ties to make the bow unravel. In a split-second, the sides of the wrap fell apart.
But he showed no reaction whatsoever, just went back to sipping his drink.
Shock at his low level of interest held her frozen, and finally, his eyes dropped back to the screen in his lap.
‘Go back to bed, Tara,’ he said. ‘Clearly, you’re not cut out for the role of seductress just yet.’
Stung, she stripped the robe off and dropped it to the floor. When he still didn’t pay her any attention, she went right up to him and banged the lid of the laptop down.
‘Look at me,’ she hissed.
He looked at her, his narrow-eyed gaze now travelling with exquisitely exciting slowness over every inch of her nakedness.
‘Very nice,’ he murmured. ‘But it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.’
‘You might see something new,’ she threw at him, ‘if you put that drink down. And that infernal computer.’
He closed the laptop and placed it beside the chair, but kept the drink. He looked her over again as he leant back into the chair and took another mouthful of whisky.
Now fear did return. The fear of making a fool of herself.
‘I’m waiting,’ he said, and finally placed the near-empty glass on the small round side-table next to the chair.
Tara swallowed.
‘Come, come, Tara. This is your show. I’m curious to see how far you’ll go before you turn tail and run. I’m not going to help you one little bit.’
Tara gaped at him as the realisation struck that he didn’t just want her to parade herself in front of him. He wanted her to make love to him.
If he’d issued this type of challenge on any other day before today, she probably would have turned tail and run. But today was a different day in more ways than one. Today, a new and exciting dimension had entered their relationship and she refused to retreat from it.
Don’t think, she told herself as she stepped forward to stand between his stretched-out legs. Just do what he thinks you don’t dare to do.
She heard his sharp intake of breath when she knelt down and reached for the sash on his robe.
Don’t look up at his face, she warned herself shakily.
She didn’t want to see any undermining shock, or surprise, in his eyes. He’d told her once he didn’t mind how provocative or assertive she was in private. Well, he was just about to get a dose of provocative assertiveness, even if she was quaking inside.
The sash on his robe was as easy to undo as her own, being only looped over. Pushing the sides of the robe back was not so easy, because she knew what would confront her when she did so.
Her eyes widened at the sight of him.
So his apparent uninterest had all been a lie! He was already aroused. Fiercely so.
Tara resisted the urge to close her eyes and put her mind elsewhere. Her days of cowardice were over. She would look at him there, and touch him there, and kiss him there.
Yet oddly, once she started stroking the velvety length of him, once she felt Max quiver and grow even harder beneath her hands, any reluctance or revulsion melted away. Tara found herself consumed by the intense desire to make the beast emerge in him again, to drive him wild with pleasure and need, to love him as she had never loved him before.
Max could not believe it when she took him into her mouth, making the blood roar through his veins, his flesh expand even further, threatening to make him lose all control.
Surely she would not want that. Surely not!
Max groaned his worry that he might not be able to stop himself. Then groaned again when her head lifted, showing him that he had wanted her to continue more than anything he had wanted in a long time.
But any disappointment was swiftly allayed by her crawling up onto the chair onto his lap. She was even at that moment straddling his tautly held thighs, her knees fitting into the far corners of the chair.
He gasped when she took him in her hands again and directed him up into her body. Her hot, wet, delicious body. She sank downwards and suddenly he was there, totally inside her. Her face lifted and their eyes met, hers dilated, his stunned.
‘Max,’ was all she said before she bent down to kiss his mouth, her hands cupping his face, her tongue sliding deep into his mouth.
How often had he hoped for a Tara like this?
Then she began to ride him. Slowly at first, but then with more passion. The wilder rise and fall of her hips wrenched her mouth away from his. Her hands fell to his shoulders to steady herself, her fingernails biting into his flesh till suddenly her back arched, her flesh gripping his like a vice.
‘Oooh,’ she cried out.
The power of her climax was mind-blowing. He exploded in erotic response, the pleasure blinding as, all the while, she kept moving upon him, rocking back and forth, her eyes shut, her breathing ragged.
Afterwards, she sank down against his chest, her head nestling into the base of his throat. His arms encircled her back and he held her like that for quite a while, both of them silent and content.
But inevitably, the significance of what had just happened came home to him. His gorgeous Tara had finally abandoned her inhibitions.
Suddenly, he wanted her in every way a man and a woman could make love.
Tara sat up straight, her startled eyes searching his.
‘Too soon?’ he said, his hands sliding down her back to cup her bottom.
She shook her head.
He kept on caressing her bottom, and soon her lips fell apart on a sensual sigh of surrender. Max had never felt