A Night of Scandal

His temper and his mood simmered along at one degree under boiling point. Even on the other side of the world, his past hunted him. ‘Did Katie say how long she would be?’

‘I knocked on her door but there was no answer. I thought she might have been asleep. You had a long flight.’ Ben poured chilled wine into a glass. ‘You want me to call her again?’

‘I’ll do it myself.’ Desperate for distraction, Nathaniel left the phone on the table and strode back inside the villa towards the guest suite. The door was shut. He tapped once and received no answer so he opened the door and walked in.

And stopped dead.

Katie lay on her stomach on the bed, dressed only in a skimpy lace plunge bra and an equally skimpy thong, both in the same shade of hot pink. The headphones from her bright pink iPod trailed from her ears and she lay with her chin on her hand, completely absorbed by the script. Her head bobbed in time to the music and occasionally she made a little sketch in the margin.

Nathaniel’s mind blanked. He forgot about the texts waiting for him on his phone. Instead he stood still, transfixed by the creamy curve of her bottom revealed by the thong. He remembered the lacy camisole she’d worn to bed. Nothing about the way she dressed hinted at a secret love of sexy underwear. Underneath all that boring brown she’d been wearing hot pink lacy silk?

Engulfed by a scorching flame of lust, he felt himself harden. Dinner, he decided, was going to be delayed.

Kicking the door shut behind him, Nathaniel strolled into the room just as she glanced up and saw him there.

With a squeak of horror, she yanked the earphones out of her ears and scrambled off the bed, scattering pages of the script over the floor.

‘Get out of here!’ Her scarlet face clashing with the hot pink underwear, she grabbed the dress she’d been wearing earlier and clutched it to her chest, but not before Nathaniel had been treated to a full frontal display of her generous curves.

‘Just for the record, you definitely don’t need to suck in your stomach,’ he drawled. ‘And I thoroughly approve of the underwear.’

‘Don’t you knock?’

‘I knocked. You weren’t listening.’

‘I was reading—’

‘In your underwear?’

‘I was hot.’

‘Now, that we can agree on.’ Nathaniel delivered a smile of undiluted masculine approval. ‘Why do you always wear brown on the outside when you’ve got all that lacy pink going on underneath?’

Her green eyes flashed a warning. If he’d been keen on the safe route he would have left the room, but Nathaniel had always preferred to live dangerously so he strolled towards her, prised the dress from her rigid fingers and studied the smooth perfection of her soft curves. ‘You have an incredible body.’

‘Get out of here!’

He discovered that playing with fire distracted him from all the things he didn’t want to be thinking about. ‘Of all the secrets you’ve spilled in the past twenty-four hours, this one is definitely the best.’ He tumbled her back onto the bed, pinning her arms as she tried to roll.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You said you wanted to get to know me better. This is the quickest way I know.’ Without thinking he brought his mouth down on hers, capturing her soft lips with his, smothering her moan of shock. Her mouth opened and he tasted the sweetness and then desire slammed into him, the explosion of need consuming him like a fever. Nathaniel locked his hand in her hair and plundered that mouth, turning what had begun as an experiment into a kiss of such erotic intensity that the shock of it exploded right through his body. Sucked under by the sheer impact of raw physical chemistry, he slid his hand under the smooth curve of her bottom, bringing her into contact with the urgent thrust of his arousal. His need for her desperate, he teased her lower lip with his teeth and tongue and then lowered his mouth to her breast. Pink lacy fabric acted as a barrier between them and he dragged it aside with impatient fingers and fastened his mouth around one thrusting peak—and tasted heaven.

He heard the sudden snatch of her breath and felt her fingers dig hard into his shoulders. When he skimmed her breasts with tongue and fingers, she moaned under him, the sensuous movement of her hips unleashing a ravenous hunger inside him.

Nathaniel lost all sense of time and place.

His brain shut down and he responded with pure animal instinct.

Sliding his hand between her legs, he breached the barrier of her underwear and explored her slick softness with bold, gentle fingers. He felt her stiffen beneath him and then she shoved hard at his chest.

‘No.’

He heard her through a dark mist of ferocious, primal need.

‘Nathaniel, no—’

It was the tone that registered, rather than the words. That and the sharp bite of her nails in his shoulders.