Angelo suddenly smiled and his lean dark face lit up with a brilliance that made her heartbeat pick up speed as he came down beside her on the bed. ‘I think you are and I’m only interested in my own opinion.’
When he smiled she felt as if she could fly, but Flora had no time for such fanciful thoughts and she was bone-deep stubborn, shrugging off the way he could make her feel to add in a tone of distinct challenge, ‘I’m much too tall for a woman—’
‘I’m tall and you’re the perfect size for me,’ Angelo countered, undaunted by her comeback as he joined her with predatory grace.
Men had always tended to find Flora too bluntly spoken for comfort but Angelo appeared to take that candour very much in his stride. He captured her hands in his so that she could no longer hide her body from him.
For a timeless moment she lay there while he caressed her wrists with his thumbs, his attention hotly pinned to the stiff crests of her prominent nipples. ‘You have very pretty breasts,’ he husked, intense blue eyes embellished by lush black lashes.
Embarrassment claimed her. She could not be comfortable lying there half naked in broad daylight. She shut her eyes tight and wondered what insanity had come over her and then he kissed her again and the insanity came back with a vengeance, blurring all rational thought and inhibition. Nothing had ever felt so sweet or so necessary to her as his mouth. His tongue plunged into the tender responsive interior of her mouth and lit her up inside like a fire. She had not known that much pleasure could exist in mere kissing.
Her hands sank into his black hair as he nibbled down the cord of her slender neck and began to centre his attentions on her swollen sensitive breasts. His tongue lashed over the tender tips before the graze of his teeth on her delicate flesh made her cry out and tremble while the burn of excitement travelled straight to the moist heat gathering at the heart of her body. He pressed the heel of his hand against the apex of her thighs and she writhed, helpless beneath that pleasure inflicted on the most sensitive part of her. She felt the zip give on her jeans, her hands falling from him as he sat up to remove the garment.
‘This is crazy,’ she muttered jaggedly, ‘out of control.’
‘I’ve never been out of control in bed before. It’s exciting,’ Angelo confided, pushing up her face with an impatient hand to steal another explosive kiss.
And when his hard, hungry mouth was sealed to hers, nothing mattered and nothing else existed. He cupped the damp crotch of her knickers and then whisked them off to explore the slick wet folds between her thighs. She was hyper-sensitive there and she dug her hips into the mattress beneath her and little sounds escaped her lips without her volition. Teasing the delicate entrance, he rubbed the tiny bud where all her nerve-endings centred. Drenched in exquisite waves of pleasure beyond any she had ever experienced, she became ever more frantic. A sense of pressure was building in her tummy and a pulsing ache stirred between her legs, making her feel unbearably taut and needy.
Angelo slid between her thighs. She looked up at him with apprehensive green eyes, reacting to the probing feel of him against her most intimate place. He shifted and sank into her, stretching her hot tight channel with his girth and length. His hungry growl of pleasure masked her hastily swallowed huff of pain as he thrust past her resisting flesh and filled her to the hilt.
‘You’re so tight you feel incredible,’ Angelo groaned, blue eyes radiating deep sensual satisfaction as he gripped her hips in hard hands and moved slowly and erotically, acquainting her with the full extent of his power.
Instinct made her arch her spine and rise up as he withdrew and slammed back into her in a pagan rhythm that made her every sense sing. Her body wasn’t her own any more. Invaded and controlled by his driving urgency and her own need to answer its demands, she was overwhelmed by the thunderously exciting rise of pleasure. The pressure built and built to a nerve-racking high inside her. She squirmed and writhed in the last seconds before an explosive orgasm ripped through her trembling body like an earthquake, sending sweet shards of ecstatic pleasure shooting through every limb.
Afterwards she was drained and wrapped in a cocoon of exhaustion. He gazed down at her, blue eyes shimmering, and he kissed her again, slow and deep and hungry. Hungry? He was ready to do it again. She wasn’t and was taken aback by his energy. Animation was returning to her brain and suddenly she wanted a magic lamp to rub so that she could leap fully clothed onto the quay beyond the window and run away as fast as her cowardly legs could carry her. What was she doing? Oh, what had she done, what … had … she … done? Bewilderment and shame drenched her in a tidal wave of regret. Her arms were wrapped tightly round him and she w
hipped them off him at supersonic speed and jerked free of his embrace.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she told him shakily. ‘Places to go, people to see.’
Wincing at that airhead announcement even as it fell from her lips, Flora scrambled off the bed with a haste she couldn’t hide.
Startled by her abrupt flight from his arms, Angelo pushed himself up on his elbows and rested frowning dark blue eyes on her. ‘What’s up? ‘
Stark naked, wreathed in blushes and with not the smallest idea where the bathroom was, Flora hovered in horrible confusion. What’s up? she almost screeched back at him. Are you that insensitive that you think this situation, this appalling misstep, could possibly be acceptable?
‘This should never, ever have happened. I’m embarrassed!’ Flora gasped, reckoning he needed it all spelled out in simple words so that he could understand normal human reactions.
‘Why should you be embarrassed? What we just shared was amazingly good sex,’ Angelo commented thickly, pushing his powerful bronzed shoulders back against the tossed pillows and surveying her with deeply appreciative sapphire-blue eyes. ‘Come back to bed.’
Every bit of Flora that wasn’t already blushing took on a scarlet hue. Come back to bed? Whoever had said that men had a one-track mind had not been joking! Through an open door she espied something that looked reassuringly like a plumbing fixture and she sped towards it without further ado, only to discover that she was in what appeared to be a closet lined with pipes.
The door opened. Angelo looked in at her, alarmingly tall and broad and graphic in the nude. ‘The bathroom is across the passage.’
Her hands knotted into fists. She was so upset she marvelled that she wasn’t having a heart attack. On the way past the bed again she bent to scoop up her discarded clothes, trying not to wince at the soreness lingering between her thighs. Her first sex ever and she wanted to forget it, she thought in anguish. In the tiny bathroom she washed as best she could. There were no towels, just as there had been no bedding. She had rolled about on a bare mattress with Angelo van Zaal like a cheap slut and the mortification of that unacceptable fact bit deep.
A knock sounded on the door and she opened it a reluctant crack. ‘Yes?’
‘I have a country house. I’d like you to spend the weekend there with me,’ Angelo suggested smoothly.
‘Was the sex that good? ‘ Flora enquired in a frozen voice that would have chilled a polar bear.
‘I don’t do one-night stands,’ Angelo drawled softly.
Flora was getting desperate. ‘Why don’t you just go back to your office or whatever and leave me here?’
‘We’ll talk when you come out.’ There was just the hint of a rougher edge to his tone as if he was finally accepting that she didn’t even want to speak to him, never mind look at him, after the intimacy they had shared.