That galvanised Aristotle to move. Possessiveness was an alien emotion, but it was coursing through him now as he took in the way the dress drew the eye to those stupendously long and slender legs, a discreet slit showcasing their shapeliness. And those shoes…
Lucy turned away abruptly. She’d noticed a man nearly tripping over himself as he’d seen her and she flushed with mortification. He probably thought she was a call girl. She felt like one. This was ridiculous. She was going to demand her own things back—
Suddenly Aristotle was right in front of her and, as was becoming annoyingly familiar, her brain emptied of all rational thought. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt and royal blue tie. It somehow made his eyes pop out, even though they were a dark slumberous green. But weren’t they normally light green? As Lucy was wondering this, as if it had become the most important question in the universe, Aristotle moved so fast that she didn’t even notice until he’d whipped her glasses off her face and removed the pins from her hair.
‘Hey!’ she cried out, too late, only to see him calmly snap her glasses in two and feel the heavy fall of her hair around her shoulders. He took her by the arm and marched her out towards the entrance, handing her broken glasses and hairpins to an unsurprised-looking doorman, who took them obsequiously, clearly not fazed by such behaviour. It made Lucy even madder. Those glasses had been her last bastion of defence and he’d merely ripped it away, like removing a toy from a cranky child.
She barely noticed the pleasantly warm early evening air caressing her skin between the hotel and the luxury car. When they were ensconced in the back, Aristotle curtly ordered the driver to put up the privacy partition, which he duly did. Lucy’s mouth was opening and closing ineffectually, steam practically coming out of her ears as Aristotle rounded on her, blocking out any daylight coming through the tinted windows. Absurdly, in that split second Lucy thought how unbearably intimate it seemed to make the space.
‘Enough,’ he growled out, and before she knew which end was up Aristotle had reached out, hauled her into his chest and his mouth was over hers. He was kissing her as if his life depended on it, one arm like steel across her back, one hand in her hair, clasping her head. There was no hesitation. Lust exploded in a blaze of heat.
All of Lucy’s reflex denials melted away in a flame of desire so profound and deep that she couldn’t question it. All she knew was that Aristotle’s mouth was on hers, his tongue stabbing deep, with ruthless precision, and she was craving it. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her hands trapped against those hard contours, and the beat of his heart was an unsteady tattoo that made her own beat faster.
She forced her hands free to twine them around Aristotle’s neck, fingers pushing upwards into the thick, silky hair that brushed his collar. He groaned deep in his throat, their mouths not parting for a moment, lost in a dark, lustrous world of tasting and touching, of sensation heaping on top of sensation so acutely delicious that when Lucy felt herself being lowered back onto the seat behind her, and Aristotle coming over her, she too gave a deep moan of approval.
All she knew was here and now. Sanity had ceased to exist.
The outside world? Gone.
This was her world, and this man was the only thing in it. His huge hard body crushed hers to the seat beneath her, but her arms were free and she explored and spread them under his jacket to feel the latent strength of his broad shoulders.
His mouth left hers to blaze a trail of hot kisses along her jaw and down her throat, where he nipped gently and then sucked, making her squirm as an arrow of pure lust shot to her groin, making her wet.
As if he’d read her mind, she felt his hand encircle her ankle and start to travel up her leg. He breathed into her mouth, ‘Remember what I said the other day?’
Words couldn’t impinge upon her mind in this drenching of desire. Lucy couldn’t function. She was finding it hard to open her eyes, finding it hard to breathe as she looked up and drowned in dark green oceans. She didn’t recognise the man above her. The expression on his face was so raw and elemental. All she knew was that he looked exactly how she felt. Her breasts were tight and aching, tips chafing against the confining bra and dress. And slowly, so slowly, his hand was climbing with relentless precision, until its heat was wrapped around her upper thigh, where her sheer stockings ended. His fingers spread wide to encompass as much as he could touch. Any second now they’d be on her bare skin. She stopped breathing in earnest.
‘Please…’ Was that voice hers? Who was she anyway? She was suffering from temporary amnesia. Somewhere distant, where a bell was ringing, she felt something wanting to intrude, but more than that she wanted this. It felt so right and so necessary. Too right to question.
‘Please…Ari…’
With a muffled groan of something that sounded Greek and almost painful, he lowered his head, took her mouth again. Their tongues connected feverishly just as his hand hovered and tantalised at the tender place of her soft inner thi
gh, on the edge of her silk pants. Lucy tore her mouth away and arched herself towards him, gripping his shoulders. She could feel the heavy stabbing weight of his erection against her leg and she moved experimentally, exulting in his answering growl of unmistakable torture.
And then he was there, fingers pushing aside the barrier of her pants to slide into hot slickness, where she ached most. She sucked in a breath, shocked eyes opening wide. She looked up and his fingers began to move, finding the secret spot and pressing it, flicking it. Blood roared into Lucy’s head, drowning out everything but the clamour for satisfaction which was coming towards her like the mirage of an oasis in the desert.
And then suddenly, as quickly as this insanity had taken over, it was gone. Aristotle was taking away his hand, moving back, his features harsh and unbearably tight. Cold seeped into Lucy as she realised where she was. She was supine on the back seat of a car, her legs spread, and her boss had just been—
Oh God.
She also realised what Aristotle had realised way before her: they had stopped, obviously at their destination, and the driver was patiently knocking on the privacy window. They hadn’t heard him because—
Oh God.
More shame and mortification and self-disgust than she could ever remember feeling coursed through Lucy in a tidal wave of heat so intense she felt feverish. She scrambled to sit up, hands shaking as she pulled her dress down to cover her thighs.
A large brown hand came over hers, and she had to stop herself flinching back.
‘OK?’
The huskily asked question surprised her. It was almost as if he really cared. But she couldn’t look at him, just nodded jerkily, a curtain of hair hiding her face from view. She could give thanks for once that it was down. She didn’t think she could ever look at him ever again. In the split seconds they had as they gathered themselves and she heard Aristotle—Ari—speak to the driver, Lucy tried to assimilate what had just happened.
The fact that she’d all but drowned in an instantaneous pool of lust in his arms was evident enough. She’d deal with that in a darkened room on her own later. But it was the fact that it had happened without hesitation, with not even a flicker of rejection or desire to draw back. Was it simply because after weeks of denying this to herself, weeks of this desire building and building, the merest touch had sent her up in flames and she’d been unable to draw up even the flimsiest of defences? She’d turned into a complete wanton.
When Aristotle climbed out of the car, and Lucy readied herself to step out too, she realised that any vulnerability she’d felt before had paled into pathetic insignificance. The truth swirled sickeningly in her breast. She truly was her mother’s daughter, and that knowledge jeered her for all her efforts to deny it for so long.
There was no going back now, not after that little performance, and she quaked when she saw the huge looming shape materialise on the other side of the door. That everything she feared most lay outside that door right now was obvious, and also the fact that she’d just kissed goodbye to any pretence of a defence she might dream up to excuse her behaviour. The door opened abruptly and Lucy was compelled to step out, taking the hand that was offered and forcing down the frisson of electricity at even that innocuous touch. She felt as though the entire world had changed, and suddenly her place in it.