An Innocent, a Seduction, a Secret

Edie quickly pulled the dress over it, not wanting to think about that now.

She noticed that it had got dark outside. She went over to the window and, much like the other evening, saw sleek expensive cars pulling into the courtyard, beautiful people emerging.

Edie’s hand tightened on the curtain. What harm would there be if she went to the party? Sebastio was too sophisticated to take her presence as a tacit sign of acquiescence. No doubt he was just toying with her because it amused him. He might want her, but he wasn’t about to stake a claim on her in front of his peers!

* * *

Sebastio was trying to focus on the conversation he was having with one of Britain’s largest hedge fund managers but couldn’t stop looking at the door to the room where he was hosting the drinks reception.

Would she come?

He’d spent the last two days enduring a series of intense meetings in the city and he’d been uncharacteristically distracted. He couldn’t get that kiss with Edie out of his head. It had only stoked his growing hunger.

On a whim, he’d instructed one of his assistants to buy a dress for Edie for the party. Giving in to a fantasy to see her dressed in silk and satin before he’d even decided to invite her to the party. He was losing it.

He felt a prickle of awareness skate over his skin and looked over at the door for the umpteenth time. She was there. His heart skipped a beat. The candlelight made her dress look like liquid silk where it clung to her body. He could see the faint outline of her nipples under the thin material and it was more provocative than the sheerest dress he’d ever seen on a woman.

Her legs were slender and shapely, her feet delicate in the high heels. She looked fresh and beautiful enough to make his blood roar. She also looked endearingly uncertain, hovering in the doorway. And that sent something else entirely through him—something far more dangerous than desire. Because it was emotion.

‘Who is that?’

The voice of the man beside him barely impinged on Sebastio’s rapidly overheating brain. He said curtly, ‘Excuse me.’

He could already see heads swivelling, hear whispers. One man near the door looked as if he was about to approach Edie because she was looking so hesitant, but Sebastio strode towards her, sending silent signals to that man and others to back off. He hadn’t rugby-tackled anyone in years, but he felt his muscles bunching now, as if in preparation to throw someone aside if they got in his way.

Her hair was a bright shining cap of auburn, and Sebastio realised that in her elegant simplicity she immediately made every other woman in the room look overdone.

He reached her and suddenly felt at an uncharacteristic loss for words.

She gestured to the dress. ‘Thank you, but you shouldn’t have. I’ll pay you back

—or clean it so you can return it.’

He dismissed that with a flick of his hand and said, ‘It’s yours. Please—join us.’

She stepped over the threshold and it felt like a victory for Sebastio. As if he could sense how close she’d been to not coming.

He’d kissed her and told her he wanted her and yet she’d walked away, telling him it wouldn’t happen again. But she was here now. And he still wanted her. It beat through his body like an unstoppable wave of need.

He put a hand to her back, to guide her through the throng, and felt the merest sliver of bare silky skin through the gap in the back of the dress. His brain went white-hot. She tensed under his hand but he propelled her forward, afraid she might still turn tail and run.

He had a vision of sliding his hand all the way in through that tantalising gap and reaching around to cup the pert swell of one—

‘Champagne, sir?’

The interruption by the waiter wasn’t welcome, but it was necessary. Sebastio took his hand off Edie’s back and took two glasses from the tray, handing her one before directing her to a quiet corner.

He tipped his glass to hers. ‘Salud.’

She echoed him, and he watched as she took a sip of the sparkling wine, her nose wrinkling slightly. He’d imagined her like this, against this backdrop, but his imagination had fallen far short of her sheer elegance and classic beauty. Her short hair highlighted her stunning bone structure and the delicate line of her neck and shoulders.

She looked at him and a slight blush was staining her cheeks. She lifted her hand. ‘What...? Have I got something on my face?’

He shook his head, marvelling at her lack of awareness even as a far more cynical part of him suspected she had to be playing a part. He’d never wanted a woman as much as he wanted her right now. There were faint warning bells in his head, telling him she must be manipulating him, but he ignored them.

‘You’re very beautiful,’ he said.

She blushed in earnest now. If she was acting then she deserved an award. ‘I’m not really...but thank you.’