When he withdrew she practically sobbed with the sense of loss.
‘Now you can come to bed,’ Alessandro commanded softly.
He patted the space next to him and she slid like a rag doll into the allotted spot, her body turning and curving against his, loving the feel of the heat he was emanating.
He pushed his thigh between her legs and moved it with just the right level of pressure to ensure that she picked up where she had left off when he had removed his tongue from her.
Kate grasped his shoulders, feeling solid muscle under her fingers, and looked at him drowsily, drugged, completely in his power.
And he liked that.
He kissed her—a hungry, very thorough kiss, that made all her bones feel just a little more jelly-like—and then he carried on kissing her. The slender column of her neck, her shoulder blades, working his way down until he was circling her nipple with his tongue and then taking it into his mouth and suckling on it, lazily, in no rush to go anywhere.
She had died and gone to heaven. There wasn’t a single part of her entire body that wasn’t buzzing with all sorts of new, wonderful, pleasurable sensations, and they only increased when his hand wandered down to her thighs, slipped between them, his fingers idly playing with her in a way that was screamingly intimate and utterly erotic.
She squirmed and felt him smile against her breast. He was enjoying himself—but he couldn’t be enjoying himself half as much as she was enjoying herself. He did this all the time. He had a reputation that preceded him wherever he went. He was a guy who had wined, dined and bedded some of the most beautiful women in the world. This was probably routine for him.
Not that she liked the thought of that. But she hadn’t been born yesterday, and even while she was losing herself in the pleasure he was bringing her she was still realistic enough to know that he was an expert at this sort of thing. An expert when it came to giving sexual pleasure.
Whereas she was in a whole new territory—one she had never visited before—and she was loving it.
Loving what he was doing to her.
Loving the way her body felt—as though it was waking up for the very first time.
She closed her eyes and sighed as he moved from one tingling nipple to the other.
She had always thought her breasts to be overtly sexual —had always secretly longed for little ones that didn’t require the heavy-duty support of a bra—but, watching his dark head exploring them, she was enormously proud of them, of their fullness, the prominence of her dusky nipples, which he couldn’t seem to get enough of.
She moved against his fingers and he thrust them a little deeper into her, arousing her yet further.
‘Please...’ she pleaded, and he stopped sucking her nipple to look at her.
‘Please what...?’
‘You know...’
‘Okay, so maybe I do, but I still want to hear you say it...’
‘You want me to tell you that...that I want you? Right now? That I can’t hold on for much longer? That—’
‘That you’d like to come into my hand but you’d much rather feel me moving inside you...thrusting hard and deep... Repeat all that after me...’
‘I can’t!’ she gasped breathlessly, and Alessandro grinned. Because the chasm between her wet, hot body and her prurience, to which she couldn’t help but carry on clinging, even if it was just a little, fascinated him.
‘You can...’
She did. And just saying those things out loud was a huge turn-on.
She was aware of him leaving her for a few seconds, felt the mattress depress when he returned, and knew that he was donning protection.
She was open and ready for him when he entered her. Although it had been a while and he was big—very big. Her tight muscles relaxed, closed round his hardened sheath, took every glorious inch of him in. And when he began moving inside her it was like nothing she had ever experienced in her life before.
Her short nails dug into his back. Both their bodies were slick, sliding against one another. He reared up just as the groundswell of sensation inside her cascaded and splintered, sending her into orbit and making her cry out.
Utterly spent. That was what Kate felt as she descended from the peak to which she had been catapulted at supersonic speed. Utterly spent and very much aware that, like it or not, she had been as vulnerable to this man’s sexual charisma as all those supermodels he had dated and dispatched with monotonous regularity.
Alessandro rolled off her, took a few seconds to gather himself—because the experience had left him on a different planet. He felt amazing—as though he had discovered the ability to walk on water...
Where had that feeling come from?
He lay on his side and looked at her body. He cupped one breast with his hand and felt its weight.
Kate edged away and scrabbled for the duvet, which was solidly planted underneath them. Horses, stable doors and bolting sprang to mind. What was the point in succumbing to a sudden attack of shyness when she had been uttering things that made her blush only minutes previously?
That said, what on earth had she gone and done? Shouldn’t she be in the grip of remorse? Regret? Mortification?
‘My feet feel much better...’ That was the prosaic statement that came out of her mouth—because she was too busy looking at the man she had just had sex with to think of anything wittier or more profound to say.
‘Sex has a way of sorting out most of life’s little problems.’ He toyed with a few tendrils of her hair, tucked them behind her ear. ‘Including sore feet.’
‘Really? I never knew...’
‘That’s because you’ve spent all of your adult life avoiding it.’
And you’ve spent all of your adult life avoiding commitment.
It was something she wanted to say. She found that she wanted him to talk to her—talk to her the way she had inadvertently been persuaded into talking to him—but that was a line that could not be breached. She knew that with every gut instinct inside her. Step over that line and she would be dismissed as casually as a stranger he had happened to bump into.
She didn’t want to be dismissed. Not yet. Not when she had discovered this crazy, sensual side to her that made her feel so great—as though she could walk on water. She wanted to hang on to it for just a little bit longer.
What was wrong with that? It was human nature, wasn’t it? The desire to cling on to something that made you feel good?
Not that she had any intention of being clingy. She might have taken an unexpected detour with him, but in the process she hadn’t steamrollered over all her principles. She was as strong as she always had been.
She swatted away the uneasy realisation she had had earlier that she had fallen for his charm, succumbed to his animal magnetism, trodden the same mesmerized, idiotic path that those women he dated had trodden before her.
Now that the haze of unbridled passion had dissipated she decided that she was the same person she always had been but with added dimensions. And how could that not be a good thing? How could that not stand her in good stead for the future that was out there waiting for her?
Mr Right was out there—and not only would he be waiting for her with a glass of chilled wine when she had had a long day...after the chilled wine he would sweep her off her feet and carry her into the bedroom and make her feel just the way the very inappropriate Alessandro Preda was capable of making her feel.
Because now the sensual side of her had been unleashed. Her ex-boyfriend might not have been the full package, but now she knew the full package was practically round the corner.
And the relief of knowing that knocked her for six.
Only now did she realize how much she had begun to accept an inevitable future in which she found no one, remained a lonely career woman, heading up the ladder with no one at her side.
She snuggled against Alessandro and laughed when she realized that their recent bout of mind-blowing sex had done nothing to depress his very active libido.
‘The reason I asked you how your feet were,’ Alessandro murmured in between kisses to the side of her mouth, ‘is that it’s occurred to me that walking is going to be fairly difficult for you tomorrow. Possibly for the next couple of days.’
Kate stilled. In a horizontal position, with this gorgeous hunk next to her and her body already eagerly anticipating round two in the sexual stakes, her feet had been the last thing on her mind. They felt right as rain, in fact.
Now she pictured shoving them into her little black pumps, feeling the tight leather pressing against the plasters, and knew that he had a point. But she was here to work. And he was first and foremost a man who put work ahead of everything else—and that would include a romp in the hay with one of his employees.
Which was what she was. An employee.
‘I’m sure I’ll be able to walk if I get some flip-flops.’ She drew back and pressed her arms in front of her, shielding her bare breasts. ‘It may not be the most professional look, but as long as I don’t wear closed shoes I think I’ll be fine. There’s no need to imagine that I won’t be able to do my job.’
And there’s no need to imagine that because we’ve slept together I’m suddenly going to become anything less than the efficient person who reports to you... No need to fear that I’ll turn into one of those clingy types who don’t know when the party’s over.
She had a desperate urge to fill him in on how she felt—to let him know that she was still in the driving seat...to let herself know that she was still in the driving seat.