Deal With the Devil--3 Book Box Set

Her frantic litany of pleas and praise fell against Ricardo’s senses like a song sung in sensual counterpart to their mingled breathing, underscored by the rise and fall of its urgency and satisfaction, whilst her body’s response to him blew apart his intention of remaining in control.

His own need to go deeper, harder, to know and possess all of her, overwhelmed him. His increasingly powerful thrusts took them both higher, and his own satisfaction was matched by the eager rhythmic movement of Carly’s hips, and the sounds of her rising pleasure. She clung to him, kissing his throat and his shoulder, then raking his arm with her nails in a sudden ecstasy of physical delight as he drove them both closer to the edge.

It was too much for his self-control. The muscles in his neck corded as he fought to delay his own climax, but it was too late. His body was already claiming its final mindless driving surge of release.

Carly called out a jumble of helpless words of feverish pleasure as Ricardo’s fierce pulsing thrusts of completion carried her with him over the edge of pleasure, her body suddenly contorting in a burst of rhythmic climactic contractions of release.

It was over.

Very carefully, Ricardo rolled Carly over onto her side and held her against him.

Carly lay there, trying to steady her breathing, her body still trembling with reaction. Tears blurred her vision, although she had no idea why she should want to cry. The pleasure had been so very much more than she had imagined.

Ricardo was lying facing her, his arm resting heavily but oh, so sweetly over her, holding her close to him.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I think so,’ she answered shakily. ‘I’m still trying to come back down to earth. I hadn’t realised it would be so…’ She stopped.

‘So what?’ Ricardo probed.

‘So…so intense. Not when you…when we don’t…when this isn’t about loving one another,’ she finally managed to say.

She felt Ricardo moving, but before she could say anything he was holding her tightly in his arms and kissing her. Slowly and gently and…oh, so very sweetly.

It was six o’clock and the park was quiet. Ricardo had left Carly sleeping, easing himself away from her body and taking care not to wake her.

He had woken a dozen times during the night, silently listening to her breathing, watching her, and whilst he was doing so he had relived the intimacy they had shared, trying to analyse his own reaction to it.

He had had sex before, after all, and he had had good sex before. But never, ever anything that had come anywhere near to making him feel the way he had felt with Carly.

Her use of the word ‘intense’ had mirrored his own feelings.

Why, though? Why should her body, her flesh, her need be so very different? Not because she had been a virgin? No, definitely not because of that!

The second time they had made love, in the early hours of the morning, had to him been an even more intense experience than the first time. And Carly had made it plain to him that she had no regrets. Her virginity had been something he’d had to take account of in possessing her, yes, but it had not been the cause of that difference.

So what was it about her that lingered so strongly that he had needed to keep waking up to check that she was still there?

What was it about her that made his whole body compress with possessiveness at the thought of losing her?

Was it the intensity of the intimacy they had shared? The fact that, for some unfathomable reason, something in her humbled and softened something in him? He didn’t know. But he did know that, whatever it was, it had somehow caused an abrupt turnaround inside his head, and that instead of mentally working out how fast he could get away from her and get on with the really exciting things in his life—like another business acquisition—he was actually wondering how he could prolong their time together.

He looked at his watch. Soon she would be waking up. And he wanted to be there when she did.

‘Carly?’

Reluctantly she opened her eyes.

She had woken up an hour earlier, wondering where Ricardo had gone, and then, after showering and brushing her teeth, she had come back to bed and promptly fallen deeply asleep again.

Ricardo was sitting on the side of the bed next to her, and what was more he was fully dressed.

She struggled to sit up, and then realised self-consciously that she was naked.

‘We need to leave for France this afternoon,’ Ricardo reminded her.

‘Oh, yes, of course. I—’

She gave a shallow gasp as Ricardo leaned forward and covered her mouth with his own. Automatically she clung to his shoulders, and then wrapped her arms around his neck when she felt his tongue demanding possession of her mouth. Already her body felt sweetly heavy with longing for him, drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

He lifted his mouth from hers and she stretched sensuously, watching the heat burn in his gaze as it feasted on her, relishing the hot glitter. His hand cupped her shoulder and then stroked slowly over her, ignoring the urgent, desiring peaking of her nipples and coming to rest on her hip, his thumb moving lazily over the indent of her belly. Feathery, frustrating little touches that had her arching up to him in silent demand.

‘Undress me!’

The command sounded thick and slightly unsteady, rather like her own fingers as they curled round the hem of his tee shirt and then trembled wildly the minute they came into contact with the hard-muscled heat of his skin.

Her task might have been easier if Ricardo hadn’t tormented her, occupying himself by kissing her and caressing her whilst she was trying to complete it, Carly decided, but she finally tugged off his tee shirt, to be rewarded with the hot fierce suckle of his mouth on her breast.

Sensation pierced her, sweet and shocking and achingly erotic, and the stroke of his tongue and the deliberate, delicate rasp of his teeth made her moan and beg for more.

In the end he had to finish undressing himself, shedding his clothes with unsteady urgency and then taking hold of Carly and lifting her to straddle his prone body.

He watched as her eyes widened, and kept on watching whilst he stroked his fingertip through her wetness.

She cried out immediately, her body tensing. Ricardo reached up and laved first one and then the other nipple with his tongue, feral male arousal gripping him as the morning sun highlighted for him the swollen wet crests. He found the sensitive heat of her clitoris and rubbed his fingertip rhythmically over it.

Carly arched tightly against his touch, her eagerness for him darkening her eyes as she reached for him and positioned herself ove

r him, slowly sinking down on him, taking him into her.

Ricardo kept still, hardly daring to breathe, hardly able to endure the pleasure of the sensation of her body opening to him, her muscles slowly claiming him.

Experimentally Carly moved her body, gasping in shocked delight as she felt her own pleasure. She moved again, eagerly and demandingly. Exhaling, Ricardo responded to her need, grasping her hips as she took control, letting her take as much of him as she wanted, and then groaning in raw heat as she demanded more.

She came quickly, almost violently, just before Ricardo, in a series of intense spasms that left her too weak to even move. It was left to Ricardo to lift her from him and then hold her sweat-slick trembling body against his own, his arms wrapped securely around her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘I SHOULD really stay at the château, so that I can be on hand in case anything goes wrong.’

They had arrived in France two hours ago, and now Carly was seated next to Ricardo in the large Mercedes hire car that had been waiting for him at the airport. He had just informed her that he wanted her to stay with him at the house he was renting instead of at the château where the party was to be held.

‘If anything does go wrong you can be there within minutes,’ he told her.

She knew that he was right, and she knew too that she wanted to be with him. How, in such a short space of time, could she have become so physically addicted to him that she could hardly bear not to be close to him?

‘How are you feeling? Are you okay?’

Both his question and the almost tender note in his voice startled her.

‘I’m—I’m fine. I can’t believe I didn’t realise before how…how compulsive sex can be.’