Relief flooded her and she lay back. Ben knelt between her legs. Lia was all but splayed before him, like some kind of offering. But then, instead of coming over her again as she’d expected—as she wanted—he reached out a hand and touched her where she ached most. Where she was embarrassingly wet for him.
He circled her with his thumb, ratcheting up the tension inside her. Dipping inside, and out again, lubricating her with her own juices.
‘You want me.’
She wondered how on earth he could doubt it. Then she gasped and her back arched as he slid two fingers into her. She said jerkily, ‘I told you I did.’
Lia could feel her muscles tighten around his fingers. Heard him curse softly. She felt too exposed. She didn’t want him to make her come like this, while he watched.
She reached out and wrapped her hands around his arms. ‘Please... Ben, I need...’ Her back arched again as he thrust his fingers deeper, playing her like a violin. She lifted her head, hating the power he had over her right now, and said fiercely, ‘I need you.’
Ben finally took his hand away, and then he loomed over her, his thighs pushing hers apart, and she slid her hands up to his shoulders.
‘Look at me,’ he said roughly. ‘Don’t ever doubt that you are a very desirable woman, Lia.’
She looked down and saw him take himself in his hand as he guided himself towards her, and then he fed himself into her body, slowly, inch by inch, making her draw her breath in on one long inhale as he impaled her...utterly.
He was big...bringing her almost to the edge of discomfort. But he held himself still for a long moment, letting her body adjust to him. And then, when she took another breath, he started to move, and everything in Lia’s world was reduced to the here and now. This moment. This man. And the exquisite sensations rushing through her body.
She’d never felt anything like it as a wholly new tension built inside her with every movement of Ben’s body in and out of hers. She wrapped her legs around his back, heels digging into his taut muscles. His hand gripped her thigh and his movements became less careful, a little rougher.
He came closer, moved down over her, making his chest hair abrade her still sensitive nipples. She reached up and found his mouth, and as everything inside her coiled to a point of excruciating pleasure/pain she pressed a desperate kiss to his mouth until finally she was broken apart into a million shattering pieces.
She was barely aware of Ben’s own shout as his body tensed over hers for a long moment, muscles locked and taut as a paroxysm of pleasure held him in its grip too.
* * *
When Lia woke she felt completely disorientated, recognising that she wasn’t in her own bed, or room. And then she felt the unfamiliar aches in her body and memory came rushing back.
Dawn was breaking outside, bathing Ben’s room in a pink pearlescent hue that didn’t diminish the masculine tones one bit. Gingerly, Lia moved her head, and sucked in a breath when she saw the unashamedly male and indolent sprawl of a very naked Benjamin Carter beside her.
Even like this, in repose, he was magnificent... Dark stubble lined his jaw, making him look rakish. Long lashes should have prettified the stark and strong lines of his face but they didn’t. He looked marginally less fierce, especially when those blue eyes weren’t watching her and gauging her reaction to every little thing. She might hate him for that if she wasn’t feeling so...sated.
Her gaze travelled down over hard muscles and her face grew hot when she saw that most masculine and potent part of him—no less impressive at rest.
They’d made love again last night, after that first cataclysmic time. The second time had been slower, more luxurious, but no less intense. A surge of emotion made her throat tight. She wasn’t frigid. At all. In fact the woman revealed under Ben’s expert tutelage was sensual and voracious...and he had shown her that. As easily as flicking a switch to let light into a dark room.
Lia sucked in a breath. That was exactly what he’d done. He’d shone light into the dark corners of her soul, where she’d felt closed-off. Deficient.
His expert dismantling of her defences had started yesterday. By the time they’d gone to his friends’ party they’d already been crumbling, thanks to their idyllic day spent walking around one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with surely one of its most charismatic and charming guides...
A voice mocked her: who was she kidding? Her defences had been crumbling from the moment she’d bumped into him outside the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
And then something cold flickered down Lia’s spine as she registered the full magnitude of just how easily and completely she’d capitulated. It really hadn’t taken much at all, in the end. She’d proved no less susceptible than any other woman to this man. Finding out about his troubled past had only added another layer of depth to a man who was fast becoming far too complex and fascinating.
And now there was this—the ultimate intimate exposure. She’d slept with him because he’d made love to her mind as much as to her body. He’d delved deep and she’d let him in, far more than anyone else.
Emotions she’d never felt before rushed around her in a sickening mix...fear, exultation, hope.
It was the hope that brought her back to earth with a bang. Hope...for what? The kind of thing she’d always told herself didn’t exist? Hope that she wouldn’t face the excruciating lash of rejection if she opened herself up to someone?
As Ben had said himself the previous evening: ‘I’m under no illusions about the myth of a romantic ideal.’ And neither was she, she assured herself, but for a dizzying moment there she’d felt hope—and that was dangerous.
The thought of Ben waking, and of herself trying to act blasé when she had no idea how to navigate this kind of situation, made her go cold all over. She had nowhere left to hide.
Her mother’s abandonment had not only devastated her father—it had devastated Lia. The knowledge that she hadn’t been lovable enough to make her stay had been indelibly inked into her skin from a young age, and Lia knew now that that was at the heart of why she’d avoided intimacy for so long, and why she’d agreed to a marriage of convenience.
She’d found it easy to dissociate, not to engage, because no one had ever broken down the walls she’d erected...until now. The galling reality that she could be as susceptible to heartbreak as her father after years of avoiding it made her feel nauseous.