Marriage on the Rebound

Until the kisses grew longer and stronger and deeper, and her new-found powers of seduction grew bolder when it became clear that he wasn’t going to bring a halt to what she was inciting here in the hotel lift of all places. Her fingers began to slide loose the black bow-tie at his snowy white collar and he didn’t do a single thing to stop her.

And here it was, yet another variation on the act of loving, where she seduced him, not the other way round. Where she made his heart pound with desire and made his skin burn beneath her delicate touch.

Triumph whistled through her when, on a painful groan, he reached out and hit the button which would take them back to their floor again—the triumph of knowing that she had the power to make him want her above everything, even his precious business dinner.

‘You are a witch,’ he muttered unsteadily, as if catching hold of her thoughts and answering them. ‘You’ve cast a damned spell on me.’

The lift stopped. The doors slid open to reveal a Japanese couple waiting to come inside. They looked rather shocked as Rafe grimly pulled Shaan past them and back down the corridor to their own room.

‘I’ll never live this down if anyone finds out,’ he muttered once he had them safely locked inside their suite again.

‘I won’t tell,’ Shaan promised softly, her fingers already busy with his shirt buttons.

Her fingertips ran light, scraping caresses over hair-roughened flesh, felt muscles inside him dance with pleasure, felt the heat bouncing from him, felt the need throbbing in him, and pulled the shirt free from the waistband of his trousers. With a boldness that managed to shock even herself, she ran her hands over his hips, down his long, powerful thighs, then sensually back up again over the swollen evidence that was the very essence of the man himself.

He shuddered violently, his mouth leaving hers so he could release the air from his tense lungs on a pleasurable hiss. And in all they had shared during these last few dynamic days she had never felt so aware of her own femininity as she was at that moment.

Because he was enjoying this—losing himself in it. His eyes closed, expression taut with a passion that would have alarmed her if her own hungry passions hadn’t been as throbbingly intense.

And it was those hungry passions that gave her the courage to go for the kill. With her eyes locked on his face and the delicate pink tip of her tongue probing between the provocative set of her even white teeth, she reached for the clasp on his trousers, flicked it free, then smoothly slid down the zip—and touched him.

It was a shock. No matter how intimate they had become over these last few days, this was the first time she had actually voluntarily touched him like this. And the shock was in the fierce heat of him, the unbelievable tension, the power of him pushing against the final barrier of stretchy black underwear.

‘Don’t stop now,’ he murmured huskily when her fingers went suddenly still.

‘Don’t stop’, he’d said, and she didn’t want to stop. She wanted to overwhelm him with the power of her sensuality just as he had done countless times to her. But…

She glanced up, found his eyes open, saw the twin fires of desire burning in their smoky depths and just stared rather helplessly at him—begging, she suspected, for him to take over now her courage was beginning to fail her.

But Rafe shook his dark head in refusal. This is your seduction this time, Shaan,’ he said gruffly. ‘You began it, you finish it.’

He meant that what had happened the night before had been entirely his seduction and, since neither of them had liked what had happened then, he was therefore relinquishing all control this time to her.

But she suddenly discovered that she didn’t want it. She liked him to overwhelm, overpower and devour her. She liked to kid herself that he allowed her no choices in this wild, sensual madness that formed the very crux of their relationship.

She liked to see herself as the innocent victim of the ruthless Danvers brothers because if she didn’t see herself in that way then she would have to start looking at what she really was.

Fickle. That word came back to taunt her. Fickle in her feelings, fickle in her allegiance. Fickle in the way she could supposedly love one man yet be like this with another.

Fickle.

Then he moved, one of his hands coming up so he could gently comb his fingers through her long, loose hair, and her whole body shivered on a shaky sigh, breasts heaving behind their tight covering of silk, and she turned her mouth into that warm, male palm as her senses went haywire.

Fickle or not, she told herself fatally as she wound her arms inside his gaping shirt and reached upwards for his mouth again, she wanted this—needed it now—so badly that nothing else seemed to matter.

And through all of it came the one telling little truth that had supported her own actions throughout the whole of this thing with this man: the knowledge that he wanted her, desired her, couldn’t get enough of her, Shaan, jilted bride of his brother. No matter what Madeleine meant to him, Rafe still wanted her.

And if that made them both fickle then so be it. Because at this moment in time she wanted him more than she could ever remember wanting anything.

Anything.

Wanted this—this wonderful, heady sense of elation she was experiencing as her hands went back to caressing his body, feeling his pulsing responses, his muscles rippling with pleasure when her fingers brushed over them, finding his mouth again time after time, drowning him in hot and moist, wanton kisses.

‘What about your friends?’ she managed to recall in the middle of their next wave of heated passion.

‘I’ll ring them,’ he muttered. ‘Later.’ He shuddered at the sensual rake of her nails down the satin smooth skin of his back. ‘Much later,’ he added, and bent to scoop her up in his arms, then carry her through to the bedroom.

From there on Rafe took over—of course he took over; he would not have been the forcefully virile man she wanted if he had been content to lie back and let her do all the seducing. And what followed was a slow, hot, flesh-stirring loving that was the complete antithesis of what had gone the night before.