But did she want to experience it? Did she want that dark allure of his to draw her closer? Did she want to give herself to its embrace?
She felt a sensation like electricity flicker along her nerves, felt the pulse at her throat start to race. Something she did not know—had never known—had happened as she’d lifted her head after the hypnotic rhythm on the dance floor, her gaze clashing with his. She had acknowledged that something was flowing between them. Impossible to deny. Primitive and primeval.
It was here again, now, in this confined space. Pressing all around her. Her and him. They did not speak, and he was not looking at her, but she could sense, palpably, the restraint he was exerting. It was visible in the set of his jaw, the compression of his mouth, the tension across his shoulders.
He’s leashed—leashing the power he wants to exert. That he wants to release.
She felt the voltage of the electricity that was building up around them, between them, as if she were in the middle of a charged space, heat beating up inside her, flushing through her veins.
It was madness—she knew that. Knew that even now she should stop what was happening. She should break the electric silence, turn to him and say,Actually, I’d better go back to my own hotel, I think. Halt the elevator and send it back to the lobby. Get into a taxi and leave without a backward glance. Alone.
Leaving Luca Farnese to be nothing more than a fleeting memory of a single night in New York, having dinner with him and then walking away. Going back to Italy...back to her normal, predictable life. Familiar. Safe.
Yes, she would do it. She would do just that. The moment the elevator stopped she would do it. She would turn to the man beside her, whose dark presence was as tangible as if his hand were fastened around her wrist, whose aftershave was still catching at her senses, whose obsidian eyes she could feel slicing through her. She would turn and say that she was sorry, that she had made a mistake...
She felt her heart thudding, her breathing quicken, every muscle taut. The elevator stopped with the slightest judder. The doors slid open. She began to turn, to tell Luca Farnese what she must tell him...
A hand slid around her hand. Cool, strong fingers closing over hers. Silencing the words that died on her lips.
His head was turning to finally look down at her. His eyes held hers. Those dark, unbearable, obsidian eyes...cutting into the very heart of her. Telling her nothing. Telling her everything.
Her breath stopped—her heart stopped.
Desire, like black fire, shone in the depths of his blacker eyes... Burning towards her like a black flame—a flame that consumed all that was reason and sense. Burning away everything but what was now left to her—a knowledge that was deeper than reason or sense.
This is what I want.
This was what had been engendered from the very moment she had seen him looking at her and felt him reach into the very core of her.
‘Come,’ he said, and his voice was low, insistent.
His cool, strong fingers meshed with hers, leading her forward to the only place she wanted to be now...tonight... She knew that with a certainty that burned away everything else in the world, in existence.
In Luca Farnese’s arms.
His bed.
Luca watched her enter the room as he stepped in behind her, shutting the door and flicking on the two bedside lamps to bathe the room in a soft, low light. She was standing there, in the middle of the room. Not moving. Her eyes were huge, and smoky, and fixed on him.
He felt desire—arousal—kick inside him, hot and urgent. He was behaving as he had never done. Picking up a woman at a party just to have sex with her.
He thrust the crude description aside. Who the hell cared how they had got here, or how swiftly? It would be one night—one night only. One night of breaking every rule in his book.
Especially now...when you are on the brink of making a quite different life for yourself.
He thrust aside the warning that was trying to gain entrance. He didn’t have time for it, nor room for it. Instead, he let his eyes feast on the woman standing there, full breasts straining beneath the fabric of her dress, hair a fall of satin and silk around her shoulders like a veil, parting to display the sensual beauty of her face.
Displaying it for him.
Displaying herself.
He walked towards her...halted. Her eyes were huge, lifted to his, fire flaring in their smoky depths. Her lips had parted and he could hear her breathe. See the pulse throbbing at her slender throat...
He slid his hand around it, thumb resting on her pulse, feeling it throb beneath her skin, feeling her tremble at his touch. He let his hand relax, easing it down sensuously to graze his thumb along the delicate length of her collarbone. He reached his other hand forward, trailed his index finger slowly, deliberately, down her cheek, seeing her pupils dilate, feeling the fine, subliminal tremble of her body again.
His hand slid over her shoulder, moulding the flesh beneath as he turned her around. He smoothed the fall of her tumbling hair from her back and she dipped her head forward. She knew what he was doing...what he was about to do. He could feel her still trembling, quivering, motionless though she appeared.
With a single unbroken movement he drew down the zip of her dress. As he did so, slipping the fastening of her bra, arousal flared in him more strongly, more urgently yet. He slid his hands inside the dress, around her body, beneath her bra. Cupping her breasts as they spilled into his palms.