Oh, no, she needn’t have worried that he would find her too ordinary in bed. He seemed to have no concept of the word. With Scott she had been made to feel supremely special, unique, exquisitely fashioned to satisfy his desires in a way that no other woman ever could, or would…
A smile stole across her lips as she lovingly studied his sleeping face, resisting the temptation to brush the dark strands of hair off his brow and kiss the faintly pouting mouth. So wary and mistrustful when awake, he was determined not to let himself be vulnerable to love. His daughter had cracked the self-protective shell around his heart, but the small breach wasn’t wide enough to admit anyone else, had merely thickened the scars created by past betrayals.
Scott had been extremely vocal in the throes of passion, but not a word had been permitted to pass his lips that Anya could mistake for a profession of love. The profound sense of completeness that she had experienced in his arms was a gift that she couldn’t acknowledge without jeopardising their relationship. Well, he might not be interested in her gift of love, but there were other things that she could give him that would bring him a joy that he was prepared to accept.
She began to ease back towards the edge of the bed, sliding out from under the covers, taking care not to awaken the sleeping tiger. Her feet soundless on the thick carpet, she snagged his shirt from the chair as she passed and scampered into her room, where she had a quick shower and donned the items that she had secretly purchased while Petra had been choosing her dress. She cleaned her teeth and ran a brush through her hair and emerged from her bathroom intending to tiptoe back into Scott’s room, to find him sitting on the end of her bed dressed in a hotel bathrobe, a resolute expression that was distinctly unlover-like tautening his face.
‘For a moment I thought our night together had been a figment of my imagination,’ he said roughly. ‘Didn’t your good manners tell you that it’s not the done thing to flee your lover’s bed without at least the courtesy of a farewell?’
Oh, God, was he remembering the way that Kate had taken off without a word? Did he see it as a rejection of everything that they had shared? Did he think Anya was ashamed of what they had done and was seeking to pretend it hadn’t happened?
Suddenly his sweeping gaze took in her feet and he did a shocked double-take that would have made her giggle if she hadn’t been so unnerved by his brooding words. His widening eyes travelled with excruciating slowness up from the white ankle socks to his barely buttoned silk shirt veiling her delicate curves, the shadow of a triangle at the juncture of her thighs and dusky circles at the centre of her breasts making it obvious that she was wearing nothing at all under the tissue-fine fabric.
‘I wa
s just coming back to give you your wake-up call,’ she said huskily, emboldened by the flare of his nostrils and the nervous jump in his throat as he swallowed, his incredulousness turning into smouldering recognition. ‘But I wanted to get dressed first…as you can see.’ She extended a leg, wriggling her toes in the white sock, allowing the silk to flirt slyly between her thighs.
She began slowly walking towards him, shaking back her long hair, causing a rolled-up sleeve to slide off one bare shoulder, revealing the paler skin of her breast.
‘Oh, God, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,’ he murmured thickly, but she hadn’t finished with him yet.
‘I think there’s still a price-sticker on my socks,’ she said sweetly, coming to a halt between his spread knees. ‘Would you mind peeling it off for me?’ She lifted her leg and placed her foot daintily in his lap, just below the loosely tied towelling belt, her heel parting the edges of the bathrobe as she leaned forward.
His spine snapped back as the tender arch of her foot settled into his groin, cupping his rapidly growing arousal. He groaned and grabbed her ankle in a vice-like grip, his other hand stroking up over her smooth knee. ‘I don’t see any sticker,’ he growled.
‘You’re not looking in the right place.’
He was staring at the tantalising shadow where the tail of his shirt draped over her hips. ‘I’m looking exactly where you intended me too, you little minx.’
She felt deliciously wicked. ‘What an old-fashioned term. I thought you were a ruthlessly modern man,’ she teased, curling her toes against his thrusting resistance.
‘Hussy!’ he said, holding her foot securely in place, tilting his hips to increase the pressure on his engorged fullness as his other hand continued to creep up her thigh. ‘If you’re deliberately trying to drive me wild, you’d better be prepared to take the consequences.’
She veiled her smug smile of satisfaction with coyly fluttering lashes. ‘How was I to know you were kinky for white socks?’
‘Because I told you what a turn-on they were,’ he purred. ‘And obviously not only for me…’ His fingertips had stirred through the fluff at the top of her thighs, finding the dewy feminine flower they were seeking, and he watched her eyes glaze over as he delicately stroked apart the moist petals and insinuated himself into her velvety sheath, his thumb playing lightly over the swollen bud bursting forth from its protective hood.
Anya’s insides turned to hot syrup. Her teeth sank into her lower lip and her supporting leg began to tremble, her head suddenly too heavy for the slender column of her neck as sensation rioted through her body.
‘Not so sassy with me now, are you, darling?’ he murmured, deeply gratified by her extravagant response. He withdrew his glistening touch to pull her astride his powerful thighs and smothered her mewed protest with his hungry mouth, his hands wrenching open the buttons of the shirt and helping her to push aside his bathrobe so that he could crush her bare breasts against his hot chest. He fumbled in the pocket of his bathrobe and she had a dizzy moment to appreciate his forethought before he was ready for her, tilting his pelvis as he cupped her hips, teasing her with a few blunt nudges of his rigid shaft before forcing her slowly down onto his engorged length, merging them into one indivisible being.
Anya moaned at the blissful stretching of her body, winding her arms around his strong neck, trying to burrow further into his kiss. He reefed his fingers through her hair to tilt her head, running his hands down her back to settle at the base of her spine. ‘It gets even better,’ he whispered. ‘Lean back for me…’ And when she did he feasted at her breasts, tugging wetly on the nipples as he timed his powerful thrusts to perfection, grunting as her fierce convulsions ignited his own orgasm and they peaked in a wild conflagration of the senses that would be burned into Anya’s memory for ever.
‘Mmm,’ he said lazily as they lay panting in exhaustion on the covers, still damply entwined, amongst a tangle of silk and towelling. He licked at a tiny bead of perspiration on the side of her desire-softened breast. ‘We’ve made love in the bed, the shower, the chair and on the floor in my room…so I suppose we should do the same here.’
Anya’s stomach quivered. ‘We haven’t got time. Petra will probably be awake soon.’
He propped his head on his hand. ‘The door is locked. And I can be quick as well as slow. You seem to like it either way.’ He chuckled as she pinkened.
‘I still think we should be careful. Your—Petra’s mother wouldn’t like it if she was exposed to—’
He cut her off with a kiss on the mouth. ‘Petra’s a very intelligent and perceptive girl. She likes you and she’s already picked up that I’m attracted to you—or, rather, have the “hots” for you, as she so tactfully puts it. As long as we act naturally about it, she’s not going to be traumatised if she realises that our relationship has advanced to the level of being openly affectionate.’
His mouth was being more than affectionate! ‘You said you were taking the hotel room so I’d be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for school today. At this rate I’ll be falling asleep in class,’ she chided him.
‘Ah, but I didn’t say that it was sleep that was going to brighten your eyes or fluff up your tail,’ he teased, riffling the cluster of curls below her flat abdomen with his knuckles.
‘You’re a very conniving man,’ she said, pushing away his hand.