His mouth was insistent, but something inside Lucy was like ice amidst the heat, still protecting her from fully feeling. It was a wall of defence she’d erected over a long time … and yet even as she thought that she suddenly visualised that defence crumbling.
As sensation got stronger, igniting an alien urgency, panic surged. Aristotle could have no idea of what was happening inside her, how cataclysmic her reaction was, but at that moment he took his head away and looked down into her wide eyes. Somewhere Lucy was dimly aware that she wasn’t pushing him away … which she could. But she felt so heavy, so deliciously lethargic, and she couldn’t think when he was so close and looking deep into her eyes like this.
He said gutturally, ‘Lucy … I can feel you holding back. You’re shaking with it.’
And then she became aware that she was shaking—like a leaf, all over. Reality exploded around her. She was in her boss’s arms and he was kissing her! The feelings rippling through her were intense to the point of overwhelming her completely, more intoxicating than anything she’d ever experienced, or thought she could experience. With that thought sanity tried to break through: she didn’t respond to kissing in this way. And yet … she was.
Aristotle chose that moment to kiss her again, and Lucy was caught between two worlds, defenceless and vulnerable, conflicting desires whirling in her head, making her dizzy. Making her weak against this far too seductive attack on her senses. One hand was curled against Aristotle’s chest, and as his mouth moved over hers once again her fingers unfurled, like the petals of a flower opening to the sun. When his tongue traced along the seam of her tightly closed mouth the sensation made her open her lips minutely, some dark and distant part of her wanting this, wanting to experience this, and Aristotle took immediate advantage, opening her mouth, forcing her to accept him. And to respond.
When his tongue-tip touched hers it set off a chain reaction in her body. Suddenly she was feeling for the first time, and it was too strong to resist—like a flash-flood carrying her downstream. She moved closer to Aristotle’s body and felt his growl of approval. His tongue stabbed deep, exploring and coaxing hers to touch and taste. The hand at her waist brought her even closer, and the evidence of his arousal pressing into her soft belly elicited a deep craving feeling not of disgust, but of desire to experience union.
Her fingers tangled in surprisingly silky hair; she could feel her back arch wantonly towards him. He shaped the indent of her waist and hips and Lucy didn’t feel self-conscious, she felt exultant. When his hands moved to cup her buttocks and pull her even tighter into the cradle of his lap her breath caught.
Aristotle tore his mouth away and looked down at her. Their bodies were still plastered together. Their breath came swift and uneven, and he didn’t take his eyes off hers as he reached one hand down between them and found where her hand was still tightly clenched over the rent sides of the dress. He loosened her fingers and, helpless, Lucy could only look deep into his glittering eyes as she felt the dress fall apart and his hand smooth up over her thigh, then between her legs, climbing higher and higher.
He was looking at her. His eyes were on her … studying her. While his hand—
‘You’re so beautiful. Why do you hide yourself away, Lucy?’
It wasn’t his hand climbing to such an intimate place but his words that broke her out of her sensual stasis: so beautiful …
She wasn’t beautiful. She’d heard those words a million times before. Not directed at her—never at her. But at someone else. Someone who had craved them; someone who had spent her life being defined by men’s opinion of her.
The shock of everything suddenly hit her, and made Lucy jerk back violently, knocking his hand away and pulling her dress together again. She had the mortifying image in her head of wantonly pressing as close as she could, and the shame of her reaction to that made her feel nauseous. Between her legs she throbbed and tingled.
Her voice was shaking and thin, too high. ‘This is completely inappropriate. I’m your assistant.’
Aristotle’s face was uncharacteristically flushed. ‘You’re also the one woman I can’t stop thinking about and wanting. And it’s a bit late to put on the injured virgin act.’
He raked a hand through his hair in frustration, leaving it gorgeously unruly.
Lucy shook her head in rejection of that, trying to ignore the way her mouth felt so full and plump. She felt anything but virginal right now. In a few seconds he’d managed to blast to smithereens the knowledge that she’d comforted herself with ever since she had lost her virginity: she was frigid.
‘No. I’m your assistant. This is not possible.’ More shame rushed through her as she said, ‘If you think I gave you some indication that I might welcome …’ She couldn’t even say it. ‘You’re just … bored or something. You can’t possibly—’
‘Can’t I?’ he interrupted harshly. He stood with hands fisted at his sides and glowered at her. ‘I saw you changing the other morning and I felt like a schoolboy watching a naked woman for the first time. No woman has ever reduced me to that. And you want me too, Lucy. You’ve just shown me that.’
Embarrassment washed through her in a wave of heat. He had seen her. She’d known it … but to hear him confirm it nearly made her mind short-circuit. And along with the embarrassment came another feeling, one of illicit pleasure, when she remembered seeing his face. She shook her head again, even fiercer this time, both hands clutching the dress.
Just at that moment the phone rang shrilly. Lucy jumped. She was starting to shake; reaction was setting in. ‘That’s the taxi. Get out right now.’ When he didn’t move she said, ‘Please.’
Aristotle finally strode over to pick up his coat and, flinging it over one shoulder, he walked to the door. He looked back at her for a long moment, hugely imposing and dark in her plain little apartment. Men like him weren’t meant for scenes like this, she thought.
The phone had stopped, but now started again.
‘I’ll see you on Monday, Lucy. This isn’t over—not by a long shot.’
And then he was gone. Lucy stood stock still and could barely breathe. When the phone impacted upon her consciousness again she went over and picked it up. ‘He’s on his way down,’ she said.
When she was certain he had gone, Lucy undressed and had a steaming hot shower, thinking perhaps it might eradicate the painfully intense feelings Aristotle had aroused in her when he’d touched her and looked at her. She dressed in her oldest and comfiest pyjamas and made herself a hot chocolate, dislodging the bra she’d hurriedly hidden as she did so from the cupboard. Heat rose upwards again, but she resolutely ignored it and went into the sitting room and sank onto the couch, cradling the hot cup in cold hands.
She reached up and took down the photo of her and her mother and tears filled her eyes as emotion surged upwards. She felt incredibly raw after what had just happened.
Her mother had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s two years ago. It had come on the back of her growing ever more forgetful and irritable, prone to mood swings and dramatics. It had been so unlike her usually sanguine mother that Lucy had insisted she go to be checked out by a doctor. They’d run some tests, and as soon as a diagnosis had been made her mother’s condition had worsened by the day—almost as if naming it had allowed it to take hold completely.
At first Lucy had been able to look after her in their small townhouse near Holland Park, but when she’d come home one day to find her mother wailing inconsolably in a flooded kitchen, with all the gas rings of the cooker on and alight and no idea how or why she’d done it, Lucy had known she couldn’t fight it on her own any more.
She’d started with home help—the cost of which had rapidly eaten up all