SHE WAS DROWNING and she didn’t care. Water filled her lungs, her eyes, her cells, her heart. She was drowning and there was no point trying not to—she would choose this drowning death a thousand times over. His hands on her body were strong and possessive, his lips unrelenting, his arousal persistent against her so she felt her own need explode in a way that was more fierce than any stick of dynamite, any firework, any flame.
She’d lied to him. Pride had driven her to remove that smug, arrogant look from his face. He might have been right—he was the only man she’d ever slept with, and he had filled her dreams for days and nights on end—but he had no right to look at her and expect her to jump when he snapped his fingers.
He deserved to have his arrogance shaken, his confidence taken down a peg. Beautiful, sexy, smug bastard...
His hands pushed at her blouse, and in his haste he tore the buttons, so one popped clear across the room. She barely noticed; she was just so glad the moment his fingers pushed aside the lace of her bra and cupped her naked breast, his touch instantly familiar and desperately perfect. She rolled her hips, her legs wrapped around his waist, her jeans an unbelievable barrier to what she wanted, what she needed.
And he understood, pushing his cock harder against her, so that even through all the fabric that came between them he found the sweet spot of her nerves and moved himself there, inflating her pleasure, pushing her higher and higher into the heavens. His tongue tormented her mouth, his hands controlled her breasts; she was lost to him and this.
She needed him. After four weeks of being made love to by the phantom memories of Cesare Durante, being held, touched and kissed by the real thing was a heavenly balm.
Pleasure rose, a wave upon which she was travelling, her breath torn from her, need insatiable and fierce. She ached for him—nothing else mattered. In that moment, she wasn’t thinking of Laurence, the hedge fund or the deal Cesare had proposed, she was simply a being born of sensation and need.
Lights danced behind her eyelids, bright and persistent, flickering until they became one big inferno, making sight impossible. But who needed sight when there were feelings such as this?
‘Please.’ She rolled her hips again, her release so close, so tantalisingly close.
‘No.’ He lifted his head, the word whipping her as though he’d sliced her with a blade.
Her breath was still coming in pants, her eyes awash with desire as she stared up at him in utter disbelief. He eased her feet to the floor, his eyes hard in his handsome, symmetrical face. If it weren’t for the dark slashes of colour across his cheekbones, she
would have said he had been completely unmoved by what had just happened. But she’d felt his response; she knew his desire to be as fierce as her own.
Except now he was looking at her with a clinical detachment, a sense of complete unconcern, as if nothing had even happened between them. He was all business, ruthless, concentrated, intense.
‘You will become my mistress. For two weeks.’ He held his hand up, two fingers raised. ‘In exchange,’ he added darkly, ‘I will show you a kind of pleasure you can only imagine.’
Jemima swallowed, her traitorous body refusing to listen to sense, refusing to care that he was using her desire to blackmail her.
‘I’m not for sale.’
His expression showed mocking amusement. ‘Everyone is for sale, for the right price.’ He skimmed his eyes over her body. ‘You want me to save your cousin? Done. You want me to please make love to you?’ He mimicked her tone and she winced. ‘You want me to touch you all night until you can barely think straight? Done. Choose which of these prices is more palatable to you and we will go with that.’
Her fingers tingled with a desire to slap him, but damn it, he was right. She needed this; needed him. Her eyes showed frustration as they locked with his. She couldn’t easily choose why she would agree. For Laurence? She would do anything for him. Her future was tied closely to his, but more than that, he was like a brother to her. Yet her love for Laurence had no bearing on her decision.
The temptation she felt to agree to Cesare’s proposal had one root only—she needed him and she’d do anything, agree to anything, for that pleasure. Even sacrifice her pride? Apparently.
‘And at the end of the two weeks?’ she whispered, closing her eyes so as not to see his triumphant expression.
‘You disappear from my life—sexually illuminated and your cousin financially secure.’
She swallowed, his words pulling her to pieces. ‘And it’s that easy?’
‘Yes.’
‘What if it’s not?’ She blinked her eyes open now, a frown puckering her brow. ‘What if two weeks come and go and you don’t want me to leave? Or what if I want to stay?’
His expression was as relentless as a vise. ‘Not possible. I offer this and no more. It is a deal, an agreement, no less binding than any of the contracts I enter into on a daily basis.’
She nodded, but her heart did something strange in her chest, lurching from side to side. ‘I need to think about it.’
His laugh was like the Niagara Falls emptying on her head.
‘What? Why is that funny?’
‘It is obvious you intend to say yes. Do not lie to me, now.’ He lifted a finger to her lips, tracing their outline before pressing the tip into her mouth. She bit down on it with her teeth, not hard, but in a silent warning that had him laughing once more.
‘You are unbelievably arrogant,’ she muttered.