The Most Expensive Lie of All

They were both utterly still. The only movement came from his thumb as it swept back and forth, back and forth, across her hyper-sensitive flesh. Back and forth until her lips started to buzz and gave beneath the persuasive pressure, allowing him to reach the moisture within. Aspen trembled as he spread her own wetness along her bottom lip and then opened her lips wider, until he was touching her teeth. He traced their shape just as thoroughly, only they weren’t as malleable as her lips and stayed firmly closed.

She should have known that he wouldn’t stop there. Unfairly he was bringing his fingers into play, to knead the side of her neck, pressing firmly into her nape. On a rush of heat her senses were overloaded and her teeth parted, giving him greater liberties.

Only he didn’t immediately take them, and without even realising it Aspen tilted her head, seeking to capture his thumb between her teeth, silently inviting him inside. Still he hung back, and with a small sound in the back of her throat she couldn’t stop her mouth from closing around his thumb and sucking on his flesh, couldn’t stop her tongue from wrapping itself around it as she sought to taste him.

Cruz didn’t know if he’d ever experienced anything as erotic as Aspen drawing his thumb into her wide mouth, her cheeks hollowing as she sucked firmly and then softening as she used her tongue to drive him wild. With every stroke his erection jerked painfully behind his zipper and, unable to hold back any longer, he pulled his thumb from her mouth and replaced it with his own.

She immediately latched onto his mouth as if she was just as desperate as he was, and he backed her against the cast iron balustrading and didn’t stop until he was hard up against her.

Incapable of thought, he let his instincts take over and hooked one of her legs up over his hip so he could settle into the cradle of her thighs, all the time ravaging her mouth until she fed him more of those hot little moans.

The deep neckline of her otherwise demure dress, which had tantalised him all night, was no barrier to his wandering hands and he deftly moved the soft jersey aside and cupped her, squeezing her full breasts together. He strummed his thumbs over her lace-covered nipples and felt exalted when she arched into him, moaning more keenly as he slowly increased the pressure.

He groaned, licked his way to her ear, bit it, and then trailed tiny kisses down over her neck, sucking on her soft skin. She smelled like flowers and tasted like honey and he knew he’d never experienced anything so sweet. So heady.

Her leg shifted higher as she sought a deeper contact, and her fingers dug into his shoulders as if she was trying to hold herself upright.

‘Cruz, please....’

Needing no further invitation, he pushed her bra aside and leant back so that he could look at her.

‘Perfect. You fit perfectly into my hands.’

He moulded her fullness, watching her beautiful raspberry-coloured nipples tighten even more as they anticipated his mouth on them. His body throbbed as it anticipated the same thing, and he tested the weight of each breast before drawing his thumb and fingertips together until he held just the tips of each nipple between his fingers, his touch too light to fully satisfy.

She cried out and arched impossibly higher, as if in pain, and he bent his head and gave her what he knew she needed, soldering his lips to one peak and pulling her turgid flesh deeply into his mouth while rubbing firmly over the other.

‘Cruz! Oh, my God!’

She buried her hands in his hair and clung—and thank goodness she did. The taste of her made his knees feel weak and his hunger to be buried deep inside her impossibly urgent.

Wrapping one arm around her waist, he lifted her and ground his hardness against her core, his self-control shredded by her wild response. ‘I want you, Aspen.’ He smoothed his hand down the silky skin of her thigh and rode her skirt all the way up. ‘Tell me you want me, mi gatita. Tell me this has nothing to do with money.’

He registered the rigidity in her body at the same time as his rough words reverberated inside his head, and both acted like a bucket of cold water on his libido.

What was he saying? More importantly, what was he asking?

‘I...’

She looked up at him, flushed with passion. Dazed. Beautiful. The breeze whispered over her hair.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered breathlessly.

Sorry?

So was he.

The last time he had wanted something this badly he had lost everything. And he couldn’t take her like this.

Couldn’t take her because he was paying her.

Once again the image of a lustful Billy Smyth with his hand stroking her face clouded his vision. Up to yesterday Cruz would have said that he wasn’t a violent man, but just the thought of her sleeping with anyone else curdled his blood. If he hadn’t offered her this deal where else might she be tonight—and who with?