Far from black silk, the sheets he lay on were white, like hers. He’d thrown off the main covers and lay now, half propped up, with just a sheet hitched up to his waist. She’d seen his naked torso the other day, but now she looked her fill. It was long and lean and bronzed and hard, and exquisitely muscled. More superlatives filled her head but she couldn’t articulate them. He was simply the most devastating specimen of a man she’d ever seen—not that she’d seen many, she had to acknowledge wryly, but she felt fairly sure that Aristotle could take his place among some of the most beautiful men on the planet.
Unruly inky black hair flopped with incongruous youthfulness onto his forehead, making him look much less like the feared CEO of Levakis Enterprises and instead like someone altogether more vulnerable and human.
Lucy’s breath snagged when her eyes rested on those lean hips and then moved down lower, to where the strategically placed sheet was tented slightly over his lap. Hot colour poured into her cheeks at the intense and immediate reaction to even such subtle provocation.
A sound made her eyes dart up, and suddenly the sleeping god of perfection was no more—he was awake, light green eyes darkening even as she looked at him. Lucy belatedly realised that, as if in a dream, she’d walked right into his room and was now standing at the foot of his bed, the dim light of one lamp imbuing everything with innate intimacy.
Her hands gripped the sides of her robes together, knuckles showing white. Reality slammed into her, and she suddenly wondered if she’d suffered some kind of paralysis as she couldn’t seem to move.
‘I …’
Aristotle was completely still, awake and watchful now.
‘You …?’
The sound of his voice resonated deep within her.
‘I … I don’t think … That is … perhaps I should—’
‘Come here.’
The words were uttered with deep implacability, and Lucy’s legs felt shaky. She’d come too far to go back now, so she moved forward jerkily, around the bed, until she was standing just a few feet away, eyes glued to his, mesmerised.
He lifted a hand and gestured. ‘Come closer.’
Lucy looked desperately for any sign that he mightn’t be as über-cool as he looked. And at the last second, just when she was contemplating running while she still could, she saw it: the light sheen of sweat beading his brow and the pulse beating fast at the base of his neck.
But, even so, it was as if the old, safe Lucy was calling her back through the doors, willing her to slam them shut between her and this man and this craving, aching need within her. She even turned and looked, as if to judge the distance.
Immediately her hand was taken in a ring of heat. Lucy looked down to see her wrist dwarfed by his bronzed hand. She looked at him, and gulped.
‘Lucy, are you sure you want this? Because if you stay there’s no going back.’
And in that instant Lucy mentally shut the doors behind her. She didn’t want to go back. She wanted to go forward and free herself of this unwanted baggage she’d been carrying.
She shook her head and felt her hair slip around her shoulders. ‘I’m not going.’
He pulled her irrevocably towards him, and then she was there, legs leaning weakly against his bed, His eyes never left hers as he brought her wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss against the pulse, his tongue flicking out. She gasped and felt as if he’d branded her, even with that small move.
And then he let her hand go and leant on one elbow. ‘Take off your clothes.’
When he said the words, Lucy felt only an intense explosion of heat in her pelvis. She was far beyond disgust or shock. Without breaking eye contact she undid her thick robe and let it drop to the floor. She still wore the dress, which gaped open, and her shoes. She stepped out of the shoes and bent to put them neatly under the chair. Then she stood and looked at Aristotle again.
He had made no move, but his eyes had turned so dark with lust that the green looked almost black. His gaze burnt into her.
With a tremor in her hands she pulled the zip down all the way, and then slowly peeled the dress off her shoulder and down, baring breasts only just confined by a strapless lace bra. Her awful self-consciousness seemed to have faded away to another place. Another person.
Hands on her hips, Lucy wriggled slightly to ease the dress down and over her womanly shape. The veritable waves of heat coming from Aristotle as his eyes followed the path of her dress nearly had Lucy melting on the spot. The heavy silk pooled at her feet, and she stepped out with an innate grace she was entirely unaware of.
Seeing a heavily brocaded chair beside the bed, Lucy lifted one leg to rest her foot there and started to peel one stocking down, only belatedly becoming aware of the eroticism of her pose. She sensed it in the way Ari had stilled even more, felt it in the intensity of his gaze on her, and for the first time in her life, found herself glorying in her innate femininity.
Aristotle knew that the only thing keeping him from jumping out of the bed and burying his aching hardness into her as she bent like that over the chair was the knowledge that, given one touch of her skin, he’d lose all control. When he’d seen her standing at the foot of the bed like a vision, his feeling of pure desire twinned with what had felt suspiciously like joy had made him act gruffer than he would have liked. He gripped the sheets tight in both hands now. It felt hard to breathe. The fact that he also felt more out of control than he’d ever felt with another woman was uncomfortable. Finesse in this kind of situation was a distant memory.
A curtain of dark hair swung forward, restricting his view of the bountiful breasts threatening to spill from that completely inadequate bra, and instinctively he leant forward and brushed it back over one pale shoulder. She turned her head and looked at him, her lower lip caught by her teeth, sending a shudder of pure arousal through his body, tightening the erotic notch on his flimsy control.
She put down that leg and lifted the other, repeated the exercise. By the time she was done Ari could feel sweat rolling down his back from the effort it took to stay still.
Lucy registered the almost indecent bulge in the sheet covering his lap and her throat went dry.
‘Your bra,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Take it off too.’
Lucy reached around behind her and felt for the clasp. She had to pull the bra tighter in the motion it took to undo it, and she saw Aristotle’s Adam’s apple move convulsively as he registered the movement. The clasp was undone, and Lucy held it for a long moment … this was it. And then, with an almost defiant movement, she pulled it away and threw it down, releasing her heavy breasts. She stood before him in nothing but her silk and lace pants. In some dim and distant part of her still-functioning brain Lucy had no idea how she was doing this—the enormity of the moment was too huge to contemplate—but the beat of her blood was drowning out everything but the need to be here right now, with him.
His eyes seemed to glaze over as he looked at her, making her skin tighten and tingle all over, especially her breasts. She could feel the tips puckering and growing unbearably tight. She didn’t have time to feel self-conscious. Aristotle reached out with two hands and grabbed hers in both of his, pulling her close to the bed. The sheet moved down. Lucy had a stomach clenching view of narrow hips and dark hair just above—
With a smooth move she never saw coming he tumbled her down, so that she lay flat on her back. He loomed, huge and dark over her, his hands still capturing hers, held against her belly, his knuckles brushing the sensitive undersides of her breasts. Her heart was beating so fast she felt dizzy, but then his head was lowering to hers, his mouth slanting over hers, and within seconds dizziness had been replaced with heat and