From Prim to Improper

by Cathy Williams

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘That’s life,’ Andreas said briefly. ‘Still tired, or do you want to turn back the bed and make the invalid happy?’ He switched on the bedside lamp and the little circle of mellow light threw him into shadowy relief.

  Elizabeth’s heart was banging. The atmosphere between them suddenly felt charged, pregnant and heavy with something unspoken, something she couldn’t quantify or put her finger on.

  ‘Now I’m a nurse!’ She laughed shakily and waited with her back to him, because she really didn’t want to see him brush past her to the bed.

  ‘In a manner of speaking, you are. James might be recovering nicely now, but you have had to cater to his physical needs in terms of settling him at night, making sure he takes his daily exercise… Has it occurred to you that the time is coming when he might no longer need you around?’

  Elizabeth spun round on her heels and looked at him in open dismay. Yes, that thought had occurred to her, but really only vaguely. Like the increasingly uncomfortable matter of her real identity, she had been content to lay it to one side.

  ‘Has he said that to you?’ she asked, fighting to control the tremor in her voice.

  Andreas could sense the panic and felt that frustrated surge of curiosity and the accompanying, raging need to find out what lay behind it.

  He saw the way her full mouth quivered, and without thinking he reached out and feathered his finger across her lips.

  For a split second everything emptied out of her head and even her breathing was arrested. She touched her lips with the tip of her fingers, shocked and surprised to find that they weren’t burning hot, which was how they felt. Which was how her entire body felt. The excitement unleashed in her was wild and suffocating. She felt as though she was caught up in the eye of a hurricane, and it took a little while for her brain to crank back into gear and for her to tell herself that the casual gesture meant nothing at all. For a nano-second in time, they had shared their thoughts, and that passing moment had released Andreas’s hitherto-unseen ability to sympathise. The guy was human, after all; despite his coldness, his arrogance, his offputting brilliance, there had had to be a few sympathetic genes there somewhere. Incredibly they had found their way to the surface and, sensing her distress, he had offered her a gesture of compassion.

  She backed away. Not because she was running scared at the turmoil bubbling up inside her—oh no, she told herself. She was backing away because she really was tired, and he really did need to get some sleep because it was the best cure for a cold.

  ‘Would you believe, I can feel those tablets kicking in already?’

  ‘Really? Well. That’s brilliant.’ She was almost at the door thanks to a series of crablike movements that had safely taken her out of his reach. ‘A good night’s sleep is probably all you need and you’ll be fighting fit in the morning.’

  ‘Is that your expert medical opinion?’ Andreas smiled drily. ‘You have a practical approach when it comes to dealing with ailing men. I’m beginning to see what makes you so good at what you do. You don’t humour them and you chivvy.’

  ‘I don’t like the word chivvy. It sounds too much like nag.’ She swallowed hard. From across the room, she felt as though he was reaching out and touching her and it sent a strange, icy, exciting chill up and down her spine.

  ‘You don’t look like a nag,’ Andreas murmured softly.

  Like an idiot, Elizabeth heard herself reply on a nervous whisper, ‘What do I look like?’

  If she wanted to leave, there was nothing stopping her. In fact, she couldn’t get nearer to the door if she tried, and although her brain was shrieking at her to run like a bat out of hell her body was saying something else. That something else was keeping her rooted to the spot. In the space of only a few seconds, Andreas’s perceptive mind had grasped all of those essentials and was already working out how best to take advantage of the situation—because take advantage of it he certainly would. He blamed his suffocating, single-minded determination to bed her on a variety of reasons, all of which were firmly to do with curiosity, and didn’t trouble himself to look further than that. Curiosity was sufficient impetus, as far as he was concerned, because it was a rare commodity in his life and to be savoured for as long as possible.

  ‘I’ve been curious to see your hair.’ He walked towards the bed, removing his bathrobe en route so that he was down to just his boxers. He didn’t look at her as he said this. He didn’t have to. His imagination could fill in the blanks, and the exercise of filling in those blanks—the blushing cheeks, the soft gasp, that nervous way she had of biting her lip—was a turn-on like no other. ‘You always wear it up or dragged back from your face.’

  He lay down on the bed with the covers half over him and leaned against the headboard with his arms behind his head. ‘I’ve imagined unpinning it,’ he admitted with a casual shrug. ‘Imagined it tumbling over your shoulders, much as it is now.’ The game of seduction had never involved keeping a safe distance from the intended lover or playing it cool the way he was now—lying in bed like the invalid he most certainly wasn’t, and pretending that he didn’t want to yank her to him and run his fingers through that mane of untamed copper hair; it was so unlikely on someone as unflamboyant as her. At least, on the outside. Which made him wonder how flamboyant she was on the inside. How wild. As wild as her hair? As unrestrained?

  Elizabeth’s hand self-consciously flew to her hair and then dropped to her side. Her heart was hammering inside her and she could no longer deny to herself that the out-of-body feeling she was having was grounded in the most basic of human responses: lust. Andreas was a gorgeous man, a supreme example of male beauty at its most spectacular. He had the presence and the looks that could stop any woman dead in her tracks; she had not been immune to the raw power of his personality, especially working alongside him.

  She had accompanied him down to the kitchen in his hunt for painkillers, even though he really had had a nerve to wake her up in the early hours of the morning for something as silly as that. He would have unearthed the medicine eventually. In fact, she could have just told him where they were, something that only now belatedly occurred to her. But she hadn’t, had she? As always when he asked her to do something beyond the call of duty—to work overtime, to fetch him something to eat because he couldn’t possibly break away from whatever mega-important thing he happened to be in the middle of doing—she had sighed and grumbled to herself. But did she ever refuse? No. Did she ever seriously consider refusing? No.

  She gave herself long lectures about resenting him. She told herself that he was dangerous in his pursuit to discover what he thought she was hiding, and should therefore be handled with caution, like a temperamental Rottweiler. She made long lists in her head about all the hateful things about him. And yet her body was still her own worst enemy.

  ‘Um…it’s more convenient to tie it back during the day.’ She was astounded that her vocal chords were continuing to function when every other function that required her mind to work seemed hellbent on shutting down.

  ‘I…I should have had it cut ages ago,’ she stumbled over her words as he continued to look at her with unnerving intensity. ‘But everything’s been so chaotic over the past few months—well, longer than that, actually. In fact, I can’t even remember when I last had my hair cut.’ She had to make a conscious effort not to reach and twist it into a knot, get it out of the way, remove it from being a subject for conversation. ‘Ages ago,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘You are?’

  With the finely tuned predatorial instincts of a shark, Andreas breathed in the tantalising smell of imminent conquest; never before had it smelt so good. He smiled. ‘It may be my imagination, but women these days have tailored hair. It’s unusual to find someone who doesn’t fuss about what she looks like.’


  ‘That’s not a very kind thing to say.’

  ‘Coming from me, you can take it as the highest compliment. I get sick to death of stick-thin creatures with poker-straight hair and layers of make-up.’ Which fitted the description of Amanda down to the letter, but that was no longer his problem, now that he had broken up with her.

  It had been a while coming, something he hadn’t mentioned when he had arranged to meet her when he had been to London a couple of days previously. Instead, he had listened to her ranting and railing, had politely handed over his handkerchief when she had started crying and had made his excuses and left when she had started implying that they could try and make things work. It had been just the right time to leave, because he had shut the door of her apartment to the sound of her mounting anger, a woman scorned.

  He sounded, to Elizabeth, as though he was surprised to have come to that conclusion. On that flattering note of sincerity, Elizabeth knew that she should leave, because she was feeling more giddy by the minute. But when he told her to stop hovering by the door, and patted a space beside him on the bed, she was aware of herself walking towards him in a zombie-like trance.

  ‘So…’ Andreas drawled, ‘are you going to let me assuage my curiosity?’ His arms were still folded behind his head, but beneath the covers the urgency of his erection stirred and stiffened.

  The thought of Andreas ‘assuaging his curiosity’ on her opened up boundless visions in her head that were scary and enticing at the same time. She felt herself break out in fine perspiration. His remark might go against every romantic notion in her head, but there was a raw, animal urgency to it that brought her out in goosebumps.

  Elizabeth had never, ever, not even once in passing, been the object of such blazing, brilliant intensity as she was now. Like some kind of potent drug, it went to her head and zapped out all thoughts of caution. She shifted slightly and her hair fell over one shoulder, its curling tips almost touching the covers loosely draped over Andreas’s sexy, bronzed body.

  He shot her a slow, curling smile that shattered her already fast-crumbling defence system and made her breath catch in her throat. Her last attempt to focus was a lame, ‘You really should get some sleep now…’ which trailed off into a suffocating sense of anticipation, sharpening all her senses and making her feel as though time was standing still.

  Andreas reached forward and lazily twirled one long strand of hair between his fingers, which he looked at in apparent fascination. Then he pulled her to him. In the process, her dressing gown fell open, and when she automatically reached to preserve her modesty he held her straying hand fast in his.

  ‘Amazingly, I’ve wanted to do this for a while,’ he murmured as his lips touched hers, gentle and exploratory at first, then hungry and insistent as she tumbled onto the bed next to him; he curved his body so that his heavy thigh pinned her down.

  Elizabeth clung to him. Shorn of all the arguments she had constructed to distance herself from the magnetic pull he had over her, her craving was an unstoppable force. She emitted a soft whimper as his tongue delved and thrust deeply in her mouth, and she began running her trembling hands over his naked body. Like a blind person acquainting themselves with someone else’s body through touch, she traced the contours of his torso and lost herself in the wonder of his hard, densely packed muscle.

  ‘I take it you feel the same way,’ Andreas murmured into her mouth. Her nod and accompanying whimper was all he could have hoped for. ‘Then touch me,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Feel for yourself exactly how much I’ve been fantasising about you.’ He took her hand in his and directed it to where his erection was as hard as steel, and he groaned as she wrapped her fingers around it and began simulating the rubbing motion he might have experienced during intercourse. He had to press down hard on her hand to stop her, or else he would have done the unthinkable and climaxed before he wanted to, something he had never done in his life before.

  ‘Okay…’ His voice was husky and unsteady. ‘Let’s take this slowly…’ He flattened her to the bed and pinned down both her hands with his, then he levered his big body so that he was straddling her but not touching her.

  Elizabeth almost fainted at the sight of his magnificent manhood rearing up from its nest of dark curls. His black robe was like a marauding cape, but he got rid of that swiftly, returning his hand to hers and letting her enjoy the sight of his rampant masculinity.

  ‘Don’t move a muscle,’ he commanded, and she obeyed, her eyes fluttering shut as he undid the sash of her robe and peeled it back to expose her naked breasts.

  She was beyond beautiful, way beyond what he had imagined. She still had her hands raised above her head, her fists tightly closed, as were her eyes. Andreas stroked her neck with his fingers, and this time when he kissed her it was long and lingering and an indication that he wasn’t going to rush their love-making. As cures for the common summer-cold went, this beat the hell out of a couple of tablets; he had never felt more alive or vibrant.

  Taking his time, he let his lips blaze a trail along her collarbone, then down to her breasts. It was agonisingly difficult to ignore those pert, pink nipples pouting at him, but ignore them he did, at least for a few minutes while he attended to her cleavage. Then he turned his attention to those big discs, bigger than average for the size of her breasts, which were generous, more than a handful.

  Delicately, he circled his tongue over the stiffened bud and she shuddered convulsively. He had told her to keep her hands where they were, not to move a muscle, but she just couldn’t remain like a frozen statue when she wanted more than delicacy. She clasped her fingers in his hair and watched in dazed fascination at her own hands pushing his head down against her breast so that he could take her sensitive, aching nipple into his mouth; so that he could roll his tongue abrasively over its surface until she wanted to scream from the sensation.

  A guttural moan escaped her lips as he suckled hard on her, drawing the tip into his mouth and teasing it with his tongue, while the wetness of his mouth started a frenzy of liquid excitement coursing through her veins. He stilled her restive writhing by placing one hand firmly over her feminine mound, still sheathed in its cotton underwear through which she just knew he could feel the dampness that was the glaring evidence of how much she was aroused.

  She moved against his hand and angled her body against the ridge of his finger which immediately made him release her so that he could waggle another finger with disapproval, grinning.

  ‘No way,’ he murmured. ‘When you come, I want to be the one to take you there.’ He worked his way further down her body, enjoying the satiny smoothness of her belly, pausing to circle her belly button with his tongue. Then very slowly he divested her of her cotton briefs.

  He breathed her in. She smelt dewy and sweet, and he deftly parted her legs so that he could gaze down at the soft fold of skin, from which spilled the wetness of her need as great as his own. He dipped his tongue in between that crease, tasting her honeyed sweetness, and Elizabeth gave a convulsive little shiver and shielded her face with her arm.

  She couldn’t look at him. If she did, she was convinced that she would teeter over the brink from the mere sight of his dark head between her legs, doing things to her that no one had ever done before, and which she was enjoying beyond belief. Her body was behaving with a will of its own, rising up to meet his mouth as his tongue thrust deeper and harder against her throbbing clitoris.

  She badly wanted to feel him inside her, but like a maestro in expert charge of his instrument Andreas knew just when to stop before they both came prematurely.

  It was a matter of seconds for him to avail himself of the necessary contraception, seconds during which Elizabeth touched herself, because she just had to. Then, with a groan of satisfaction that he barely recognised himself making, he entered her, driving deeply, his big body rearing up as he thrust faster, harder, un
til he felt her climax against him, and until he too shuddered at his own soul-shattering orgasm.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘YOU’RE late.’ Andreas looked pointedly at his watch as Elizabeth pushed open the door to the office forty-five minutes after she should have been there. Under normal circumstances, this would not have been a problem for him. With ultra-efficiency, she had made sure that everything he needed for his reports—right down to miniscule logistic details that even his more experienced secretary in London would have omitted—were ready before he had switched on his computer at seven in the morning. Which meant that she had emailed him the information way after official closing time. He should not even have noticed her late entry, because in his world closing a deal was always the only thing that mattered.

  Unfortunately for him, focusing had proved impossible. In fact, in the week since they had become lovers, she had managed to wreak havoc with his concentration levels, so it could be said that ‘normal circumstances’ had been put on temporary hold.

  She’d point-blank refused to condone any risky behaviour while she was working with him, even though he had assured her that this was definitely one occasion when he would freely mix pleasure with business.

  ‘A desk,’ he had told her invitingly, ‘would be a hell of a lot more interesting with you sprawled on top of it, fully dressed except for your knickers. I needn’t even leave my chair! You would just need to open your legs and I would be at the perfect height to sample what’s on offer between them with my mouth…’ She had laughed, blushed and refused, at which point he had attempted to interest her in the sofa by the bookcase or even his large, leather swivel-chair. Both items of furniture had met with the same negative response. Andreas didn’t get it.