‘It wasn’t the dancing that took your breath away,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It was me.’ And having uttered that literal truth he abruptly did what he said he had wanted to on the dance-floor. The feel of his mouth sinking voluptuously into her mounded breasts made Vanessa briefly panic again and then her eyes fluttered closed and she gave up worrying about breathing altogether.
&nbs
p; Oh, what a lovely, lovely way to die, she thought as wave after wave of suffocatingly sensual delight clogged her heart and lungs and set her blood pulsing thick and sluggish in her veins. The faint bristle on his chin rasped erotically across her tender skin as his fist caught the bottom edge of her gown, dragging it up past her calf, her knee...holding her upright against the wall with his body as he slipped his hand further up under the crushed satin flounces to stroke the strip of satiny inner thigh laid bare between the garter and basque. Rivulets of fire flowed wherever he touched and lingered...
‘Open your mouth; I need to be inside you,’ he groaned, pulling his arm from her back and cupping one half-exposed breast possessively as he sought her surrendering lips hungrily.
Even through layer upon layer of satin she could feel his all-consuming need and suddenly nothing mattered but to assuage it. She ran her hands up his arms to cup his head, guiding him to the pleasure of them both, gripped by a fiercely erotic tenderness, her heavy eyelids lifting just in time to see—
Richard’s mixture of pained regret and embarrassment as he turned away, gallantly trying to shield the couple inside the box from the shimmering figure at his side. He wasn’t quick enough. In a split-second Lacey’s beautiful face ran the gamut from curiosity to shock, disbelief and anger before she spun on her heel and stalked away in defiant disgust.
Vanessa stiffened and pushed at Benedict, whose realisation that they weren’t alone had done nothing to bank his desire.
‘Oh, God—Richard and Lacey,’ she whispered despairingly. ‘They must have seen us leave the dancing, and wondered what was wrong—’
‘They had to find out some time. Now maybe Wells will stop sniffing around and find his own woman...’ Benedict’s crudely gloating satisfaction was like a slap in the face.
She stared at him in horror. ‘This was all part of some clever plan of yours, wasn’t it?’ she accused wildly. ‘That we be seen to sneak away and Lacey follow us—that she catch us in a flagrantly compromising position...’ She realised what she must have looked like with her skirts hiked up around her waist and Benedict’s hand between her thighs, and on her breast. ‘Oh, God, you planned for this to happen...’
‘The hell I did! How was I to know you were going to swoon in my arms?’
‘You used me. You promised you wouldn’t, then you used me!’ Vanessa cried. ‘How can I ever believe anything you say? Oh, God, I hate you!’
She lashed out with a viciously closed fist and he caught it in an iron grip, jerking it behind her as he ground out savagely, ‘That’s enough!’
He caught her other wrist and clamped it with the same hand, and then dragged a weakly struggling Vanessa out of the ramshackle back door of the garage and across the unlit rear courtyard to the French doors of the library, the only downstairs room that was shut off to the party-goers. While Vanessa panted and squirmed he searched for his keys in the narrow pocket of his breeches and unlocked the door, thrusting her inside and locking it again behind him, drawing the curtains and turning on the lamp on the desk before striding to the door to the hall to make sure that that too was firmly secured. The soundproofing that had been installed with the new wall-linings created a hushed, exotic quietness as Vanessa stood, rubbing her wrists and summoning her courage finally to demand imperiously, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I know exactly what I’m doing.’ Benedict turned, stripping off his tunic and shirt as he came towards her. ‘Creating the strictest privacy in which to make love to you. No distractions, no interruptions, no possible grounds for a misunderstanding later. Perhaps I can teach you to trust the pleasure I can give you, if nothing else. At least it’ll be a start. Will you take off that dress—or do you want me to do it?’
Vanessa put her trembling hands to her breasts to quiet the tumult that rioted there at the sight of his powerful chest and flat belly sheened with a light perspiration that defined the lean wedges of curved muscle as they rose and fell with his ragged breathing. He looked as if he had been running, his body pumped with adrenalin, his control so finely balanced that she could see faint tremors as opposing bunches of muscles strained against each other in anticipation of the next explosive burst of movement. He was the brutal image of a man primed for sex.
He was unbuttoning his breeches now, watching her become aware of the violence of his arousal as he exposed himself blatantly to her shocked eyes. He bent to pull off his boots and the narrow black breeches, his hard flanks flexing and bunching, and then he straightened again, completely naked. Completely vulnerable. Glistening with his need...
‘Give me this one chance, Vanessa,’ he demanded, the angry edge of his ruthless intent blunted by the flushed fascination with which she was still staring down at his jutting body. ‘Let me show you that when I’m with you, as far as I’m concerned, nobody else in the world exists...’
Her eyes flickered up to his. Her hands fell away from her breasts. He reached for her...
The cataclysm struck.
One moment Vanessa was standing before him, fully clothed, and the next her dress was on the floor and she was lying on the rug beside it covered by a trembling, groaning man in the throes of urgent passion, her long legs wrapped around his powerful hips as the excruciating pleasure that was concentrated in the thrusting fullness that parted and penetrated her escalated to a series of violent convulsions.
There had been no time for fear, no time to register anything but the glory of his manhood as he had reacted with frenzied delight to the sight of her in the satin basque, rolling over on to his back and seating her astride his engorged loins so that he could enjoy the sensuous sight of her arched above him as he roughly dealt with the row of hooks, releasing her pointed breasts to the lascivious attention of his hands and mouth as he undulated beneath her, letting her control the pace until she began straining and shuddering, unsatisfied by anything less than his complete possession.
There was no pain as he turned her on her back and mounted her in one fluid movement, stretching her with his fingers to fit him, only a ferocious relief at being able to take the full length of him, to absorb and milk him of his maleness until he jerked and stiffened and uttered hoarse, guttural cries of violent gratification as she joined his fierce upheaval.
Afterwards, while they still lay co-mingled, he gentled her out of her state of shell-shocked bliss, making her blush with his lavish praise.
‘You see, at least we can speak honestly to each other with our bodies,’ he murmured as he reluctantly helped her to dress, kissing her breasts in tender acknowledgement of her passionate exhaustion as he zipped her up and then pulled on his own clothes, his manner redolent with possessive satisfaction. ‘What could be more honest than sustained mutual passion...?’
Vanessa looked at her sinfully dishevelled Puritan as he stretched contentedly, then strolled over to unlock the hall door. He was signalling that their lovely private idyll was over already. Her heart ached for all that she now had of him...and all that she never would. Unless she risked one final dare...
‘Mutual love, perhaps?’ she ventured bravely.
He stood, his hand on the door-handle, looking so utterly stunned at the suggestion that Vanessa knew instantly that she had made a bad mistake.
Before she could retrieve the betraying words Benedict staggered as the door was suddenly thrust inwards against him.
Moments later, just how bad Vanessa’s mistake had been was being forcefully rammed home to her as they were confronted by Benedict’s horrified parents, who wasted no time in pointing out the appalling implications of Benedict’s allowing himself to be publicly associated with a woman of Vanessa’s deeply dubious background and morals. And Benedict seemed to be tacitly agreeing with every doom-laden word!