Pride After Her Fall

He lifted her as if she weighed nothing and carried her into his apartment.

As he kicked shut the door she took in the downlit expanse of modern masculine interior design. Smooth parquet floors, oyster walls and carpeting, and floor-to-ceiling windows that gave onto a multimillion-euro view of the velvety star-scaped vista of Monaco’s famous marina. Lorelei had been in some fancy homes in this town for parties and receptions, but she’d never made love in one. Faintly she thought there was something to be said for a sky-high room with a view when it came to romancing a woman.

There was also something to be said for being literally swept off her feet.

‘Nash?’ She brought her palm hesitantly to his cheek.

He caught her hand, kissed her palm fiercely and kept going. He kicked open a door and Lorelei could see two dressers, a huge eastern rug, a vast bed. A man’s bed—so different from her own ice-blue silk Art Deco double. She registered chocolate-brown linens and a neatness and uniformity to everything that made her smile a little. But that smile faded as he released her, and she slowly slid down his body until she was standing on her own two feet before him.

She instantly felt a little dwarfed. His shoulders were impossibly wide, and the power of his sheer masculine dominance over her physically and, she suspected, sexually in this encounter gave her a moment of pause.

To even things up it would probably be best for her to step into his arms, initiate what she wanted, make her own demands... And yet as she waited to find her own rhythm in this dance all she felt was longing. For him to kiss her again, to be tender with her, for this to be somehow different from what she’d ever known before. She didn’t know why this man, why...

‘Let me see you,’ was all he said, in a voice so soft it was velvet over her sensitised skin.

Obediently she toed off her canvas lace-ups, but Nash was already enclosing her in his arms, as if he couldn’t help himself, his hands at the back of her neck, tugging at the ribbon that held her top in place.

‘Let me,’ was all he said.

So she let him. He was having trouble with it, and so close against him she could feel his tension. She could offer to help...

But when she lifted her hands he shook his head, bent his head, and his hot breath whispered against her ear. ‘Let me.’

The ribbon gave and with infinite care Nash was peeling off her top, bending down as it fell away to press his mouth to the gentle swells of her breasts above the delicate floral pattern of lace just screening her nipples. He unfastened her fragile gold bra and it drifted to the floor, a cobweb of silk and lace. Lorelei registered the spike in heat between them as Nash viewed her bared breasts in the soft light, felt the splay of his large hands beneath the slight under curves, closed her eyes as his thumbs dragged across her nipples.

‘You are so beautiful,’ he told her.

She opened her eyes to find his expression first intent upon her own and then dropping down. She followed his gaze, drinking in the intensely intimate sight of his big tanned hands cupping the curves of her breasts.

‘I want to see all of you,’ he told her in a roughened voice.

Lorelei unzipped her jeans and his hands joined hers to slide them over her neat hips, to peel them down, helping her carefully to step out. His hands were slightly clumsy as they settled on her waist, and he was clearly drinking her in as she stood naked except for the tiny scrap of white silk that made up what passed for her panties.

‘God, you are more than beautiful,’ he said, almost reverently, and Lorelei, who had been praised for her looks by too many men, and had thought those words had long lost their ability to move her, let alone hold an ounce of truth, believed him.

She stepped against him and began pushing his T-shirt up, baring an abdomen packed with muscle, a wide, hard chest lightly covered in dark hair. The feel of his skin under her hands was remarkably smooth and hot. His body was like a generator for heat. She ran her hands up over his deltoids as he lifted his arms to reef the cotton off, and she had her first proper look at what had been filling out those clothes.

He had a simply magnificent body—all height and large frame, which were the gifts of the gene gods. Although what he’d done with it, Lorelei thought a little light-headedly, the stripped, lean muscle and the grace with which he moved, wasn’t to be overlooked.