‘Met in a lift,’ he said easily, turning to look up at the display. ‘Funnily enough, the day you walked into my office to interview for the job I remembered it.’ He looked back down at her. ‘In vivid detail.’
Lucy was barely aware that she was still standing. She wanted to put out a hand to hold onto something, but the only solid thing was him. She prayed she wouldn’t collapse.
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she croaked … and then knew she couldn’t lie. ‘That is … yes. I remember you using the staff lift, but I don’t remember much else.’
Her heart was thumping as all she could remember right then was how hard his body had felt underneath hers. A lot like it had felt over hers the other day in the car.
The lift doors opened and Lucy almost fell out. Aristotle walked alongside her easily. Her legs were trembling. As she tried and failed to stick her keycard in her door she felt it taken out of her hand imperiously, and watched helplessly when he effortlessly opened the door.
When she stepped in he said quietly, ‘Who knew you were such a consummate liar, Lucy Proctor?’
She turned around, affronted. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She saw that he’d neatly stepped into the room too, and when the door closed behind him her heart seemed to spasm in her chest. ‘And what do you think you’re doing in here?’
‘Proving what a liar you are, Lucy Proctor.’
And then he reached out, two big hands encompassing her waist, and pulled her inexorably towards him, towards that searing heat. Lucy, gripped by an awful feeling of inevitability, stumbled right into his chest.
‘This is much better,’ Aristotle growled as she fell against him, and he lifted his hands to cup her face and thread fingers through her hair. ‘Now I have you exactly where I want you.’
Lucy couldn’t help a groan of reluctant supplication when he bent his head and took her mouth. It felt as if he’d injected some kind of life force into her body. Every nerve came tinglingly alive, her heart-rate sped up, her skin seemed to glow … and down below, between her legs, she could already feel her traitorous body responding hotly, wetly.
His tongue swirled, sought hers, sucked it deep into his mouth. She felt fireworks explode in her head. Then he was nipping gently at her lower lip and sucking it, exploring the gap in her teeth and saying throatily, ‘Bite me …’
A feeling of exultation took her over. She felt him push her coat off her shoulders to the floor and hardly noticed. Experimentally, shyly, she bit down on his sensual lower lip, feeling its cushiony springiness, soothing with her tongue where she’d bitten.
He growled something indecipherable, and then she felt him searching for and undoing the zip at the side of her dress, pulling it aside so that one lace covered breast was bared. He lifted a hand and cupped its weight. Lucy bit her lip. She felt heavy, aching with a pooling of desire, and it was such an alien feeling it held her in its grip.
One of his big hands reached down and cupped her round buttocks, drawing her up and into him, where she could feel his arousal digging into soft flesh. She felt more liquid heat and instinctively closed her legs against it.
He was palming her breast, a thumb hovering teasingly over the puckered tip, Tension mounted until Lucy wanted to scream, and finally he lowered his head. Her own fell back when she felt that tight, aching lace-covered tip being drawn into the hot, sucking spiral of intense desire that was his mouth.
His hand gripped her buttock and she strained upwards, urging him to suck harder, her hips moving sinuously against his. She was seeking for a pinnacle that she’d never experienced before, but she knew it was there somewhere.
Something made Lucy open her eyes, and she drew in a shocked breath when she saw their reflections in the mirror across the room, highlighted by the one dim lamp in the corner. They must have moved from the door somehow, although Lucy knew that an earthquake might have happened and she wouldn’t have noticed. The image shocked her to the core. It was so explicit … and so like something she’d witnessed as a child, when she’d walked in on her mother unannounced one day.
Sanity and reality didn’t trickle back—they exploded in her face. In a second she’d pushed Aristotle away and was pulling up her dress to cover her heaving breasts. She shook violently.
‘Get out of here—now.’
She spied something from the corner of her eye and moved, grabbing the hotel robe from the end of her bed and pulling it on, wrapping it tightly around her, belting it firmly. She went and stood near the window, her brain hurting and her body throbbing with unfulfilled desire.
‘Please just get out.’
‘No, Lucy, I won’t.’ Aristotle’s voice was unbearably harsh.
She could only imagine how angry he must be with her. She knew what men called women who—
‘Look, I’m sorry. I should never have let that happen—it’s entirely my fault.’
‘You didn’t let it happen, Lucy. You weren’t helpless. You wanted it as much as I did.’
She shook her head dumbly and felt tears threaten.
Aristotle stepped forward then, and stopped a few feet away. His face looked as if it was carved from stone and Lucy quaked inwardly. She wanted to say sorry again, but didn’t. His bow-tie was askew, his hair ruffled. Had she done that?
He frowned, as if trying to understand. ‘Lucy, did someone do something to you? Did someone hurt you?’
She shook her head quickly. ‘No … nothing like that.’
He shook his head. ‘Well, if it’s not that … what is it?’
She felt like crying in earnest now. How could she get into her tangled emotional history? Into how threatened she felt by the way he made her feel?
‘I just … I don’t want this. I don’t want to feel this way.’ It was the closest she could come to an admission.
Aristotle was unsympathetic. ‘Well, tough—because you do and I do. It’s called chemistry and it’s unavoidable.’
‘What if I leave?’ Lucy asked hopefully.
He shook his head. ‘We’ve been through this. You’re not going anywhere.’
Her shoulders slumped, and she missed the flash of something that crossed Aristotle’s face.
‘Look,’ Lucy began awkwardly, ‘I’m not experienced—I’m not like the women you go for. I won’t know how to …’
‘You already do, sweetheart, without even trying.’
She looked up. It seemed important to say it. ‘I’m not a virgin … I’ve had sex before.’ Once. ‘But I didn’t feel anything. So I know that … it won’t do anything for me.’
He came close and tipped her chin up. Lucy tried to avoid his eye but it was impossible.
‘Are you seriously trying to tell me that you think you won’t enjoy having sex?’
She shrugged, feeling very silly.
‘Lucy, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re a sensualist. That’s the only word I can find to describe you. Even though you seem determined to deny it, and I’ve no idea why that is. Don’t you know why you have a taste for exotic underwear?’
‘It’s because …’ Lucy stopped, remembering all those shopping trips with her mother—how she’d had it drummed into her how important it was to buy decent underclothes. But of course other teenage girls hadn’t had the privilege of shopping with the scandalous Maxine Malbec.
‘It’s because I developed too early. I’m