Rafiq murmured a reply; Melanie offered a nervous little smile and wondered what the man must really be thinking as Rafiq pulled her into the lift.
‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ she protested a trifle breathlessly.
‘I do,’ he countered, and one glance at him told her why he did. He wasn’t even trying to hide it!
A wave of answering heat put her into a panic. ‘No,’ she said, and tried to twist her wrist free from his grasp so she could turn and make a diving exit before the lift doors closed. But Rafiq was one step ahead of her; with only the gentlest of tugs he brought her hard up against his body at the same time as his other hand snaked out to hit the lift button.
To the man on the desk they must have looked like two people so hungry for each other they couldn’t wait until they were alone. The lift doors closed while Melanie was still trying to recover from the shock contact with Rafiq’s body. Eyes like hot coals burned his intention; her blood began to race, charged by her hammering heartbeat.
‘How dare you?’ she choked in shrill protest. ‘This is supposed to be about Robbie!’
Rafiq laughed. Maybe she was right, but he didn’t think so. For two long days he had prowled through his life trying to understand what it was that was holding him back from going to meet his son. For two aching days and sleepless nights he’d swung from one reason to another without hitting upon the right one. But one look at Melanie standing in the rain and the answer had lit up in his head like a beacon. He could not deal with the problem of his son until he’d dealt with the problem of his son’s mother. He wanted her—all of her. He wanted every single thing he had walked away from eight years ago. He wanted her in his life, in his bed! And the best thing about it was that he meant to have it all, without the love thing cluttering up his reasoning.
‘I am going to take you in my arms and kiss you stupid,’ he informed her grittily. ‘I am going to strip the clothes from your body and enjoy your exquisite flesh. I will take you to my bed and avail myself of every sweet, delectable inch of you,’ he rasped with husky incision. ‘I am going to take you out and buy you a ring which will say that you belong to me. Then, and only then, I will take you with me to meet my son! You owe me this much, Melanie-of-the-sweet-face-and-lying-little-heart. You owe me for eight long years of bitterness, and seven years of never knowing my son!’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘YOU’RE crazy,’ she breathed as she strained to get away from him.
‘Maybe.’ He shrugged, but the look in her eyes told him she was captivated by the whole exciting agenda, and she was quivering against him like a trapped little bird, mesmerised and enthralled.
‘How long has it been for you, Melanie, since a man laid his hands on your body?’ he questioned darkly. ‘How long since you felt the burning thrust of a man’s pleasure zone driving you mindless with need?’
Her mouth was trembling, her eyes were bright, her skin pale with what might have been mistaken for fear if it hadn’t been for the seductive scent of her arousal sweetening the air. He knew that scent, had picked up on it at their first meeting, and it had never failed to be there every time they’d been near each other since. Eight years had not changed it; eight years had not diminished one small part of what it could do to him.
‘Sex…’ He leant close to whisper. ‘It is all around us. You can feel it. Stop pretending.’
‘If you don’t stop this I am going to start screaming!’
His response was to clasp his free hand round her nape, his eyes glittering his intention just before he lowered his dark head and took what he wanted: her mouth, her hot, dry, trembling mouth, that opened without pause to welcome him. Her fingers grappled with his shirt front; her breasts heaved against his chest. And as her beautiful thighs arched in their eagerness to make contact with his, it was Melanie who plunged into the kiss.
She groaned as his tongue caressed moist tissue. He laughed, low and throatily deep, pulsing with dark triumph that brought her nails clawing into his neck in punishment. He didn’t care. He liked those sharp nails digging into him. They let him know this could be as wild and unbridled as he wanted it to be. They made him feel alive, energised! With Serena it had been sex. With this woman it was—regeneration of every single cell he possessed!
The lift doors slid apart. Without breaking the kiss, he swung her up into his arms and carried her towards his apartment door. Opening it with the key was a struggle when he was not prepared to release her mouth, but he managed it, stepped inside, kicked the door shut behind him then, with a satisfied grunt, began walking down the hallway towards the only room that mattered right now.
His jacket slipped from her shoulders, trailed its way to the ground and was left where it fell as he walked with unerring steps into the bedroom and shut this door too. Which left only them and a giant-sized bed, standing proud with its cover of royal blue silk. No soft feathers this time, no deep eiderdown, just a firm flat mattress dressed in the perfect colour on which to lay his prize.
When he lowered her feet to the floor she was trembling so badly she could barely stand upright unaided. Her eyes were big, glazed, and the colour of the richest gold, her mouth full and red and begging for his.
‘Now tell me no.’ He laid the silken words down like a challenge.
She couldn’t answer. When all she did was reach out a hand to steady herself, he caught it and placed it onto his chest. Her eyes flickered down to absorb the fact that she was touching hair-roughened flesh. She had done it again. Without knowing it she’d unfastened his shirt during their walk down the hall!
‘Yes,’ he breathed in dark confirmation, and yanked his tie loose then tossed it aside. The last shirt button came undone at his throat and the shirt fell wide open to reveal a body built to carry the world if it was ever called upon to do so.
‘Oh, dear God,’ she managed to breathe in shaken realisation. By then his fingers were unfastening the buttons of her jacket to reveal a fitted top she had added to the ensemble that had not been there the last time.
Protection from him, or herself? The jacket slid from her shoulders; the top slipped over her head. As she lifted those dazed eyes back up to his he kissed her, fiercely, just in case she decided to try and stop this.
But Melanie was in no fit state to stop anything. She was lost in a gripping love affair with this man’s body and the power of his kiss. Every time she breathed she drowned in the scent of him; every time she moved she felt the impact of his strength. His mouth consumed her with a voracious hunger; the stroke of his hands collapsed her brain. She had no sense, no will, no desire to do anything but be here, feeling the raging torment of a need so potent it overwhelmed her. The eight years since she’d been with him like this didn’t seem to matter. Her senses remembered, desired and demanded she feed them with everything.
‘This is mad,’ she whimpered.
He didn’t answer. His hands were ridding her of her bra. The black lace drifted away from full rounded breasts with nipples already tightly distended. He touched; she groaned and simply fell against him, then fell again, into a pit packed full of sensation. Sleek bronzed skin electrified her fingers; the rasp of curling hair excited her breasts. The kiss was a seduction on its own hot merits, and as he slid down the zip of her skirt she wriggled her hips to aid its journey to the floor. The powerhouse thrust of his erection jumped as she writhed against him. His breathing was rough, his body clenched by the ferocity of his desire. But when he slid his hands beneath the final piece of black lace to tug her more firmly against him, she was the one to fall apart.
It was a complete loss of control. She cupped his face, kissed it all over, urgently, desperately touching and tasting, and forcing tight, thick sounds to rasp from his throat. He belonged to her. This man, this glorious dark-skinned giant, belonged to her. She’d believed it eight years ago and she believed it again now. Part of her might be yelling, Fool! but at this precise moment she didn’t care.
His hands spanned her hips and lifted her up against him; her arms wound around his neck. He began carrying her again, to lower her down onto the firm cool expanse of the large bed. Warm skin slid against the smoothness of silk; long limbs stretched sensually. Her eyes caught a glimpsing impression of ivory presented on a bed of blue, with her hair a golden halo as she watched him divest himself of the rest of his clothes. She watched in fascination as he drew in tight muscles in his abdomen then unclipped his trousers; her mouth ran dry as she watched him slide down the zip. Two seconds later he was naked, and her insides were curling on a mixture of excitement and stark, staring alarm until she remembered how it felt to absorb this man into her.