‘Wait here while I get my keys,’ he told her shortly, relieved to see that the foyer was completely empty, apart from the receptionist. And receptionists were trained to turn a blind eye, weren’t they?
Lisi followed him up the stairs and walked with exaggerated care. She wasn’t drunk, she told herself. Just feeling no pain!
Grimly, he pushed open the door, wondering just how he had managed to get himself into a situation which could look to the outside world as though he were intent on seduction. While nothing could be further than the truth. But he averted his eyes as she flopped down onto the bed like a puppet which had just had its strings cut.
‘Kick your shoes off,’ he growled.
The alcohol had loosened her inhibitions, and she giggled again as she obeyed his terse command, sneaking a look at him from between her slitted eyes and thinking how utterly gorgeous he looked. She wriggled and stretched her arms above her head with a blissful sigh.
The sight of her lying with such abandon on the scarlet silk coverlet was too much to bear. ‘Go to sleep now,’ he told her tightly. ‘I’ll wake you in a couple of hours and give you some food, then send you home.’
He made her sound like an abandoned puppy! thought Lisi. But her indignation faded into the distance as delicious sleep claimed her.
Philip sat moodily at the bar, sipping at a coffee and wondering whether he should ring the hospital. Maybe later. After Lisi had gone. And he wanted her gone!
But his body was telling him other things. Tormenting him with tantalising reminders of making love to a woman. He shifted uncomfortably on the bar stool, and would have taken the longest and coldest shower in the world had it not been for the fact that his room was occupied by the cause of his torment.
He waited a couple of hours and then ordered a plate of steak and chips to take upstairs to her. ‘And a pot of strong coffee,’ he added grimly. But it was with a heavy heart and an aching body as he slowly carried them into his room, and his breath froze in the back of his throat.
Because she was naked.
Naked in his bed.
Her arms were flung above her head, and part of the scarlet silk coverlet had slipped down to reveal one pert and perfect breast—pale and luscious and centred by a tiny thrusting peak of rose. Her long legs were accentuated by the coverlet which moulded itself against them and her clothes were in an untidy heap on the floor beside the bed, with a wispy thong lying uppermost.
Sweet heaven! Philip very nearly dropped the tray.
His heart was pounding fit to deafen him and he could feel the immediate jerk of a powerful erection as he shakily put the tray down on a small table.
He strode over to the bed, trying to use his anger to dampen down the overpowering need to join with her in the most fundamental way possible.
He reached his hand down to shake her by the shoulder but something happened along the way. His fingersirresistibly reached for her breast and he was appalled to find them stroking little circles, but unable to stop himself from finding the bud of her nipple and feeling it harden beneath his touch.
‘Oh!’ she breathed.
Eyes closed, still in the mists of sleep, Lisi writhed with pleasure beneath the bedclothes and the unconsciously sexy action nearly made him lose his mind. The blood roared in his head, his composure utterly shattered by the sight of a naked woman, warm and responsive and waiting in his bed.
With an unbearable effort, he tore his hand away from her nipple and moved it up to the soft silk of her shoulder, intending to shake her. But instead of shaking her, again he found his fingers kneading rhythmically against her cool flesh, urged on by the clamouring demands of his body.
‘Wake up,’ he ordered, in a low, furious voice. ‘Wake up, Lisi!’
Lisi’s eyes snapped open and she stared with disbelief into the dark, angry eyes of Philip. It took a second or two to get her bearings.
A strange bed.
A hotel room.
One drink too many.
‘Oh, hell!’ She sat bolt upright in bed and heard him utter something agonised beneath his breath, and she realised that she was wearing nothing at all and that Philip was staring at her bare breasts with a wild kind of furious hunger in his eyes.
‘Put something on!’ he snapped.
She was still befuddled by sleep. ‘Where are my clothes?’
‘How should I know where your bloody clothes are?’ he roared. ‘It wasn’t me who took them off!’
Lisi blushed as vague memories came back to her. Feeling too hot and tossing her clothes to the ground with abandon. She had! Acutely aware of her nakedness and of the sound of Philip’s quickened breath, she leaned over the side of the bed to hunt for them, and the movement made her breasts jiggle unfettered.
Suddenly Philip lost it completely. He moved towards her, tumbling onto the bed next to her and pulling her roughly into his arms to kiss her before he had the time or the inclination to think about the wisdom of his actions.
And once he had kissed her that was the beginning of the end—his starved senses and hungry body made sure of that.
The thong fell uselessly from her hand and there was a split second of doubt in Lisi’s mind but that doubt fled the moment that he kissed her.
His mouth plundered hers as if it were the richest treasure he had ever encountered and her lips parted for him immediately,moist and sweet and tasting faintly of wine.
Lisi’s heart was beating so hard she thought that it might burst. This was every wish she’d ever had, every sweet dream come true. Philip. Here. In her arms. Her hands went up to his shoulders and felt the silk of his shirt beneath her fingertips. She was wearing nothing and he was covered up with all these clothes—it wasn’t fair!
He lifted his head from hers and she could see that his eyes looked almost ebony in the lamplit room. ‘Do you want to undress me, Lisi?’ he asked unsteadily, because he couldn’t trust himself to do it with any degree of finesse. Not when her breasts were peaking towards him like that and he longed to take one into his mouth and suckle her.
‘Yes,’ she murmured throatily, made bold by that look of raw need on his gorgeous face. Deftly, she began to unbutton his shirt, springing open the tiny buttons to reveal a golden-skinned torso sprinkled with a smattering of dark hair. She indolently ran the flat of her hand over the soft whorls, feeling him shudder beneath her as she did so, loving the power of having this big, handsome man respond so passionately to her.
He kissed her again. And again. Until she was mindless with longing—willingly pinned to the bed by his muscular frame and praying for him to make love to her properly.
Logic and reason had vanished from his mind—obliterated by the wet lick of her tongue as it flicked against his. If he didn’t have her soon, he would explode. ‘Undress me,’ he commanded huskily. ‘Undress me now, Lisi!’
She slid the shirt over his shoulders, anointing the flesh which she laid bare with soft little kisses which made him moan with pleasure beneath her mouth.
His belt came off easily, but her fingers faltered slightly when she was unzipping his trousers as she felt the formidable hardness of him brush against her palm.
‘Don’t touch me,’ he pleaded. ‘Not there. Not yet.’
He couldn’t wait to be free of his clothes and yet he could hardly bear to watch the erotic vision she made as she pushed the covers off and sank down on her knees astride him, easing the trousers down slowly over the long, powerful shaft of his thighs. She eased them over his knees and further still, her hands brushing against the soft swell of his ankles and lingering there.
‘Hurry up,’ he pleaded.