Slave to Love

Mac glanced at her, and that was all it took for the very last penny to drop home. ‘You’re here as my hands-on assistant,’ he mocked. ‘Anything to say to that, Miss Chandler?’ he enquired provokingly.

‘That depends,’ she came back stiffly, ‘on whether I’m talking to my boss or the man I used to go to bed with.’

‘Oh, your lover, darling,’ he drawled lazily, making a fine but clear distinction between her past tense and his present. ‘Most definitely your lover.’

‘Then you’re nothing but an unscrupulous rake!’ she flared, beginning to seethe with just about every angry emotion she possessed.

‘Rake?’ he choked. ‘What have I just said that could even vaguely be described as rakish?’

He was laughing at her, relaxed again, enjoying himself at her expense. His eyes had turned a warm and appealing shade of grey, his mouth twitching with that little smile that always got to her, no matter how angry with him she was.

‘Then why else have you got your ex-lover—’ it was her turn to labour the distinction ‘—here, if not to have your rakish way with her?’

‘Rakish.’ He shook his head, still laughing at her. ‘I love it.’

‘Don’t come near me!’ she warned as he began walking towards her.

‘Why not?’ he challenged, still coming.

‘Because you’re too damned sure of yourself for your own good.’

‘Sure enough to know that I can make you feel wonderful if you give me a chance,’ he murmured, reaching her. ‘I’ve got a bargain for you,’ he said as his arms closed around her. ‘How would you like three whole days of my undivided attention playing tourist while we take avoiding action against Brunner?’

‘For what purpose?’ she demanded suspiciously, knowing that this man never suggested anything without an ulterior motive.

‘For the purpose of enjoying each other’s company, of course,’ he answered, then drew her closer to him. ‘Doesn’t it appeal just a little bit, bunny rabbit?’ he murmured, his lips brushing temptingly against hers. ‘Three whole days of my undivided attention ladled solely upon you?’

‘I thought you had more pride than to chase after a woman,’ she pouted as a deliberate goad, but really his tenacity was warming her all the way through. Perhaps he did care for her? Perhaps he even cared more than he actually realised himself?

Strangely, he smiled, his eyes softly amused as they gazed deeply into her own. ‘What’s my pride worth when gauged against—this...?’ he murmured as he caught her mouth.

‘This’ was sweet, it was gentle and it reached right down deep inside her and coiled itself tightly around every pleasurable sensor she possessed. His mouth was warm and tender, his tongue moist and exquisitely languid as it joined with her own. His hands were lightly caressing flesh that preened to his touch. She sighed softly, wishing she could hate him and knowing she couldn’t, and on an act of defeat her arms slid up his arms and around his neck, fingers closing into his hair to bring his mouth more thoroughly on to her own.

‘Say yes,’ he urged against her searching mouth.

‘Oh, God,’ she choked, despising

herself for being so easy for him. ‘Yes, damn you, Solomon Maclaine—yes!’

On a soft growl of triumph he gathered her into his arms, his mouth fixed hungrily on to hers as he carried her through to the bedroom.

Her clothes were removed by expert hands, hands that knew just where to touch and how to touch to arouse her. By the time she had removed his jacket, tie and shirt, she was lost in the magic that was his alone—his body, his kisses, his tightly muscled flesh where her hands could run at will.

Only once did sanity briefly raise its head to warn her that she was wrong letting this happen. ‘Mac,’ she whispered protestingly against his mouth.

But he pre-empted her, pushing her gently down on to the bed and following her with his body, hot and hard. ‘You want this, Roberta,’ he stated grimly. ‘We both do, so much, we ache.’

He was oh, so right, she acknowledged when, to prove it, he ran his hands down her body, caressing her where he knew so well that she couldn’t help but arch and groan with desire. ‘See?’ he murmured, sliding his mouth sensuously against hers. ‘Your body’s crying out for me. You want to feel my mouth close around your breasts and suck—suck hard until you can’t tell the pain from the sheer pleasure of it.’ She gasped as he did just that, lowering his head to close his lips around one throbbing peak, his tongue flicking greedily around it before he sucked it deeply into his mouth.

Her soft cry as pleasure ripped through her accompanied her fingers clutching at his head to hold him to her as she thrust upwards in a sensual need for more. He gave it, shifting to the other breast, ravishing it, driving her so crazy that she had to pull hard at his hair, bringing his head up before she actually lost all control there and then.

Triumph glowed in his eyes as he looked down on her, because he knew just how powerfully he affected her. But he was affected too; she could feel it in the hectic pumping of his heart, see it in the darkened tautness of his face and the way his flesh quivered across tightly packed muscle, as desperate to feel her touch as her flesh needed his. And, as if he knew what she was thinking, he acknowledged it, trailing a hand down her stomach to her navel, then further, until he’d dipped into the hot, moist core of her.

‘Mine,’ he whispered possessively. ‘My woman, do you hear? Mine and no one else’s. God!’ he choked then, on a sudden upsurge of impassioned possessiveness. ‘Never anybody else’s!’

He took her mouth again, drawing her into the kind of kiss that drugged the senses while he aroused her with an urgency that actually managed to shock her. Hands, mouth, tongue, the pulsing dominance of his tightly muscled flesh so beautifully, excruciatingly sensual that she became too lost to do anything other than follow where he led.

Her body became a puppet, coaxed to respond to his slightest touch. And she revelled in the response she urged from him—the quickening rise and fall of his chest beneath her caressing fingertips, the rasping hiss of his breath when she ran them along his groin, teasing him by avoiding contact with that hard, throbbing core of him that thrust urgently against her thigh until he could stand the teasing no longer and grabbed one of her hands, forcing it hard down on to him while he punished her by drawing on her breasts again, drawing and drawing until she cried out in wretched protest.