He wanted her.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to want her...that nothing about this tonight should be happening.
It was too late for such thoughts. What was happening was happening, and it was overriding everything else. Overriding all caution, all reluctance, all wariness. All reason.
Ruthlessly he put them all aside. Just as he had from the first moment he’d set eyes on her, sensuously dancing in a world of her own, drawing his eyes to her, dominating his focus. His response to her overrode them all.
His eyes rested on her now, feeling the power of her allure. Her mane of dark burnished hair, the deep smoky eyes, the lush mouth. Her ripe, rich beauty. A slow, potent curl of desire went through him. His body quickened again, arousal cresting in him, more powerful, more visceral than he had ever known.
His eyes washed over her. The dress that moulded her body was in the way—he wanted it gone. Wanted to see her full breasts spill free of it, wanted to peel it from her like a ripe fruit, to feast on what was concealed within.
He moved, restless suddenly, summoning the waiter, scrawling his name on the tab. He was known here. The invoice would be sent to his office for settlement. Then he was getting to his feet. Forgoing the usually required social civilities of asking whether she might like dessert, coffee, liqueurs. He had no time for that now.
Desire was unleashed in him—insistent and imperative. It shouldn’t be there, but it was, and he didn’t care that this was not what he should be doing, that this woman had no place in his life. That he should never have looked at her, should never have taken her to dinner. Should not now be intent on taking her back to his hotel.
I should put her in a taxi, send her off—consign her to nothing more than passing memory.
But he didn’t want to.
Not now.
Not yet.
There was only one thing he wanted, and his hunger for it was increasing every moment.
‘Let’s go.’
He drew her to her feet, draping her jacket around her shoulders.
Out on the pavement, he turned to her. ‘My hotel is on this block,’ he said.
She made no reply, and he did not require one. All he required now was for her to do what she was doing. Walking beside him along the near-deserted sidewalk, not speaking against the traffic noise, her hands holding her jacket together, holding her clutch bag, keeping pace with his long stride on her high heels.
The charge between them now was so strong that it was like St Elmo’s Fire, flaring around them.
Inside the lobby of the boutique hotel—small, discreet, ultra-luxurious and exactly the way he liked it—he guided her to the elevator. Still she said nothing, and neither did he. There was no purpose now in further speech.
Yet in the confines of the elevator he could hear her breathing, sense the tension in her. A tension he shared. Arousal was scything through him, blotting out everything else. He wanted to reach for her, release the tension racking within him. He was holding himself apart from her by sheer strength of will. Refusing to let himself even look at her as he stood beside her as the elevator soared upwards. Taking them to the only place he wanted her to be.
His bed.
Faintness drummed through Ariana. Not from the wine she’d drunk at dinner, nor the champagne at Maisie van Huren’s party, nor even the upward whoosh of the elevator.
From what she was doing. And why.
Because there was only one ‘why’ in what she was doing. Though it made no sense. She did not do things like this. She did not go back to the hotel room of a man she had only just met. But she was doing it now.
With Luca Farnese.
But why? Why him? Why this man?
The question thrummed in her head, as it had all evening. Her eyes went to him. Fastened on him. On the aquiline profile, the sculpted cheekbones and the hard-edged jawline that was already darkening, the long-lashed deep-set eyes and the sensual mouth, the lines etched around it.
Drawing her as no man ever had before...
Knowledge flooded into her. Knowledge of exactly what she was doing—and why.
Because I want to. Because out of nowhere he’s walked into my life, and for reasons I can’t understand he has a power, a sexual potency I’ve never experienced!