by Rachel Lyndhurst; Carmen Falcone; Ros Clarke; Annie Seaton; Christine Bell
He slid the black lace of her blouse over her shoulders, and the slight scratch of the material on her sensitized skin before it fell to the floor was delicious. He lifted the straps of her bra and eased them half way down her arms, bending to kiss her shoulders and collarbone. She went to lift her arms to take his shirt off, but the bra straps restricted her movements like light bonds.
“Wait,” he said.
She felt his hot breath on her clavicle; he folded down the black silk of the bra cups, exposing the top two thirds of her breasts above the rigid under-wiring. “I’ve wanted to do this since the first moment I met you.”
Lora felt for his belt buckle while he kissed her neck and lightly teased, pinched, and pulled her nipples into dark red points. The belt came free, but before she could reach the zipper, he bent to take a breast into his mouth, and she could concentrate on nothing but the sensations he was creating. “I want to feel you, too,” she said.
He eased her backward against the edge of a sofa. “Sit and you soon will.”
Her eyes closed as his hard fingers pressed her shoulders back against the soft leather, and his mouth took her nipples again. He sucked hard, one by one, to the point that took her to the brink of pain, but not quite. She heard the slither of fabric over her light moans of desire, then the rip of a zipper, and she sensed he was now naked.
She opened her eyes when his hands took hold of both sides of her panties and ripped them apart. He was naked and kneeling on the rug in front of her. The black shards of his hair caught the lamplight when he eased her thighs apart. He was utterly gorgeous, like a marble sculpture with hard muscular biceps, broad shoulders, and sensuous lips that were now slightly parted. A shock of adrenaline ripped through her as her gaze followed the dark line of hair from his navel and then lower…
He lifted his head, and his midnight gaze sliced right through her. “Do I scare you?”
“Nothing scares me.”
His hand stroked the inside of her thigh, edging upward as he leaned in to kiss her breasts again. His thumb found her most sensitive part and circled slowly, applying a perfect amount of pressure until she wriggled against him for more. Then a finger entered at the exact moment his tongue slid between her lips, followed by another until she felt consumed by him. Lora’s fingernails bit into the flesh of his shoulder. “You’re so good…”
He inserted a third finger, then withdrew slowly before thrusting deep until she cried out with pleasure again. “More?” he whispered and scraped his teeth over her sensitized breasts. She began to buck underneath him. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you inside me. Roll me over and take me. Hard.”
“No.” He withdrew his hand and mouth and grabbed her by the hips. “You take me.” In one swift movement, he pulled her off the sofa and onto his thighs on the floor. His back was against the marble coffee table where she could see a strategically placed condom.
“Then get this stupid bra off.” She ripped at the foil with her teeth while he flipped the catch, helping her wriggle free. Her fingers trembled as she attempted to sheath him. “You’re big.”
He peeled her fingers away and stretched the protection over himself as she watched, biting down on her bottom lip. His voice became soft. “So do I scare you now?”
Lora felt her spine tense as she lifted her hips. “No.”
“Then do it.”
His hands were hot, and her head was spinning as she eased herself over him. He was thick and wide, almost too much girth, but her arousal helped ease him in the first inch. “You’re so—”
“Slowly,” he muttered and flexed his hips gently upward.
“Yes, that’s it.” She gasped and grabbed onto the edge of the table behind him for support. “A little more, do it some more.” She could feel the tension coiled in his entire body, the power of him was immense, and the sensations rocketing between her legs were like nothing she had ever experienced. She tensed her stomach muscles when he pushed upward, harder this time, and the stretching sensation was so erotically intense that she began to lose control.
“God.” She was panting while she met and matched his increasingly urgent thrusts and then he was finally, completely inside her. Everything turned to a hot, black and red whirl of lust and abandonment as she felt herself tightening around him. Her body pulsed and ached, loving the erotic discomfort of being possessed and invaded by such a powerful and dominant male. Her voice was almost unrecognizable when she crested the peak and started to tumble over. “I’m coming. God, I’m coming so hard—”
…
“Sounded good,” Lorenzo whispered into Lora’s hair as she panted into the crook of his neck. “You must have needed that.”
She pulled back and stared at him. Her was hair a tangled mess, and her pupils were still lusciously dilated. “Didn’t realize quite how much…”
“You feel amazing,” he said and closed his eyes against the feeling of being so intimately pressed up and hard inside her. The animal in him was howling to flip her over and finish the process, but he wasn’t an animal. “And watching you come was highly erotic.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her ran the edge of his thumb across her chin. “Sorry?”
“That I…that I was so quick.” She looked genuinely mortified with her flushed cheeks and mussed up hair. “How can I? Would you like me to?”
“It’s okay, really.” Lorenzo was confused. Not only had she been the most responsive woman he’d ever had sex with, but now she was concerned about him. She was considering his needs and appreciated that that he must be frustrated. He was sexually frustrated, but her thoughtfulness touched an emotional part of him that he wasn’t ready for. “Hey, we have at least four weeks to practice, Lora.”
“Four weeks,” she murmured and sucked in her bottom lip thoughtfully.”
“That’s if you want to,” he added softly as her hips began to move again. Slowly. “But you need to be clear it’s just a fling. I don’t do relationships or permanence. We can forget this ever happened if you can’t deal with that.”
“I can deal with that.” Her chin jerked up, and the soft skin of her buttocks brushed the top of his thighs. “Four weeks until we go our separate ways A no-strings fling until our contract is over and I go back to living a normal life again.” Her voice juddered as her pace quickened. “Being your fake fiancée in every way is going to make this project much easier to pull off.”
He moaned as her breast teased his lips once more, insistent, intrusive, and he sucked her in hard. She tasted earthy and sweet, her movements kicking off electric shocks of pleasure all over his body. Blood roared in his ears when he felt her muscles constrict around his length; the hot, velvety friction was soon more than he could bear. His breath came hard and fast as he shuddered his release, rendered momentarily helpless by the physical rush of orgasm.
In the afterglow, he groaned against her satin-soft skin, dreamily acknowledging the most erotic climax he had ever had. He was almost lost. Lora Pryce-Howard was the perfect screw, and he was now glad he hadn’t given in to the urge to roll her onto her back and roughly take her on the Turkish rug beneath them. Maybe next time. Watching her use his body to climax so spectacularly had turned him on more than he had thought possible, and then for her to pleasure him like that afterwards… Christ, he was getting hard again just thinking about it. And he was going to come inside her, over her, and with her for the next four frantic weeks. To hell with the distraction—he needed wild sex more than he had realized, too.
He pushed her tangled hair back away from her face and tapped her bottom lip with the pad of his middle finger. The post-coital haze made him feel unusually relaxed. “It’s been a long day. You must be hungry.”
She regarded him closely and then nodded as she slid away from him. “It has been a long day, but d’you know what?” She stood and turned her back on him to pick up her clothes. “I’m too tired to eat.”
This was a new scenario; usually, a lover wou
ld be clinging to him like a limpet begging for cuddles and soft words of reassurance before dragging him out to be seen on the fashionable streets of wherever they were staying. “I’ll call room service.”
“Honestly, it’s okay.” She turned, clutching her black clothes against her so that all he could see was the long, alabaster white of her legs and smooth shoulders beneath a mass of wild auburn hair. “There’s a hospitality tray in the room if my blood sugar drops in the night. And tea bags, lots of tea bags.”
She was unusual. She was beautiful. And she didn’t even want to spend the night in his bed. She was perfect for that reason alone. “If that’s what you want.”
Lora nodded and smiled sleepily. “Perhaps you could arrange for us to have an enormous breakfast?”
“Consider it done.” He watched as she yawned. “Seven-thirty. Here. It needs to be early as I have a busy day tomorrow. Meeting with Pinerapid Aggregates.”
She walked to the door of her suite and, before going through it, looked over her shoulder at him. “I remember. Irene must be super-efficient pulling it all together at the last minute. And Madame Farage…”
“That’s what I pay them for,” he said as the door silently closed behind her.
Chapter Seven
Lora could hardly believe how beautiful the bay of Naples looked in the early morning sunshine. The heat was already starting to build as she sat on the balcony of the penthouse and sipped freshly squeezed orange juice. Room service had arrived at seven twenty-five as Lorenzo had promised, and their luggage had also been quietly delivered for them. She watched an enormous cruise liner inch its way across the bay, leaving a silver ripple on the glassy water in its wake. A seabird cried, and a hint of cigarette smoke wafted up from the beach.
“Sorry I’m late.” Lorenzo’s voice was gruff.
“Sleep well?” Unshaven with dark circles under his eyes, he looked like he’d not slept at all.
“Not particularly,” he muttered. “I came out for some coffee before I go downstairs. I’m running late.”
“It’s still hot.” She reached for the coffee pot. “Sit down, and I’ll pour you some.”
He looked irritated. “No, I’ll do it. You carry on with your breakfast.” He poured the black liquid into a white china cup, and she noticed that his hand trembled slightly. If she didn’t know better, he was displaying all the symptoms of a crashing hangover.
“I’m finished.” She dabbed a napkin to her lips and watched him swig back the coffee without even sitting down. “It was delicious, especially the peeled peaches and mascarpone. Sit down and have some.”
“No time.” He put down his cup and shot her a quick look before snatching up a banana from the fruit bowl. “I need to clean up and run through some documents before the Pinerapid director and his team arrive. Sorry to be rude, but—”
Okay, Lorenzo wasn’t going to play this morning. She could handle it. “Is there anything I can do to help? As a PA?”
Lorenzo shook his head and took a blister pack of pills from his trouser pocket. He popped one out and swallowed it, quickly followed by two large bites of banana. “Nice of you to offer, but I work better alone at the best of times, and after last night, I would find your presence more than a little distracting. Negotiations are at a delicate stage, and I need to concentrate.”
Lora felt heat rise in her cheeks, unable to shake the nagging feeling that she’d thrown herself at him like a sex-starved teenager the previous night. “I suppose I brought that upon myself,” she said and pasted on a tight smile.
“It was only a matter of time before it happened.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that I was attracted to you the moment we first met, and I suspect it’s the same for you. We’re young, single, consenting adults. We like sex. We do sex. And then we move on without feeling guilt. In four weeks or so, our contract will be over, we will have had some fun, and you, to quote your own words, can go back to living a normal life.”
Shit, he might be feeling cool about it…
“Exactly. A normal life. And I look forward to it because all this high living really isn’t my style.” She blew out a slow, calming breath and pretended to look out to sea. “And now you have a headache?”
She heard his coffee cup clink back into its saucer again, and he was studying her closely when she dared to look again. “Ibuprofen is one of my best friends these days. Comes with the territory. I’ll be busy for most of the day, and we’ll leave for Sicily this evening, so there’s a chauffeur and security team assigned to you for the day. Just call reception to arrange everything. I suggest you go shopping or something if you get bored lying by the pool.”
“Sicily?”
He nodded. “That’s where the girls are right now. We go to them and then we’ll take things from there.”
She felt uneasy at the way events were rapidly changing. “There was no mention of Sicily before today.”
“Correct. It’s safer for you not to know the details of our itinerary. Only my chief of staff knows what will be happening beyond the next twenty-four hours.” He knotted his fingers around the back of his head and flexed his biceps. The movement of his muscles beneath the white silk of his shirt made her mouth grow dry. “It’s safer that way, easier to maintain security, and what you don’t know won’t hurt you.”
If she was paranoid, she might think he was laying a false trail because someone or something was following him. But paranoia was a needless drain on her well-being; it was much more likely that he was the paranoid control freak on the terrace, not her. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
He shrugged. “It’s not up for discussion.”
So she was still his employee, and he was to be obeyed without question in spite of their intimacy the previous evening. It was as if a switch in his brain had been tripped and he’d blocked it all out. Unless it was an experience he had no intention of repeating in the cold light of day. That would explain why he looked so rough this morning; regret and self-loathing would cover it. It was possible, maybe even likely, and even though the thought stung, she knew she would have to accept it. Lorenzo Ferrante was The Shark, and nothing would easily change that.
She sharpened her tone. “There’s not much point in me unpacking in that case.”
“You didn’t need to bring much of your own things in the first place. I told you that. But unless you say otherwise, all the things Madame Farage sourced for you will be going wherever we do. The valet will come early afternoon to pack everything up to send on, so pick what you’d like to wear for the journey to Taormina and leave it on the your bed.”
“And how are we getting to Taormina? A bigger boat this time?”
He took in a sharp breath. “No, we’ll take a helicopter from one of my other properties up the hill back to Naples, take the jet to Catania airport, and then on to Taormina. Less than two hours in total, so no clambering in and out of boats. You could even wear a miniskirt and pair of Jimmy Choos. I know you want to.”
“Great!” Forcing out a bright lie of a smile, she stood up from the breakfast table. She looked to her left and down a flight of steps to the private terrace and pool area where potted lemon trees rustled in a light breeze. The limpid water shimmered a glorious clear aquamarine, and tiny veins of crystal in the marble paving glittered in the morning sun. “I have the whole day to myself?”
He nodded and held out an envelope. “Correct. And if you do decide you want to go shopping, here’s a corporate credit card in your name. Use it for whatever you like.”
“Oh, I seriously don’t think—”
“It’s not a perk, if that’s what you’re worried about; it’s a necessity. This is business, and I can’t be with you all the time when things need paying for. I get the impression you wouldn’t take kindly to your bodyguard getting his wallet out on your behalf, either.”
“God, no, I’m not a baby!”
“Exactly.” He glanced at his watch and tensed. “I must go
. Have a great day, and be ready to leave at five.”
“Will do,” she called cheerfully to his back as he disappeared inside. She had quickly made exciting plans for the day ahead, and they didn’t involve the pool, shopping, or any of Lorenzo’s little baby shark staff.
…
Lorenzo stopped himself from tapping his pen on the meeting room table as a waitress fussed about with a tray of hot coffee things. He was anxious to talk confidentially with Grigor Pontecorvo before the board of one of his subsidiaries, Pinerapid Aggregates, joined them, and Pontecorvo had arrived late as it was.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, my friend,” the gray-haired Russian said with a smile that showed he wasn’t in the least bit sorry because he was too rich to care. “Raisa insisted I saw her off on her day trip to Capri; you know what she’s like.”
“She’s a wonderful woman,” Lorenzo said with a warm smile. The oligarch’s wife had always been kind and generous to him, such a contrast to his own Russian spouse. “A pity I missed her on this occasion.”
“Business, it bores her. Like most women, she would rather go shopping.” Grigor sipped his coffee and waited until the waitress left the room before he spoke. “We were so excited to hear you’ve decided to marry again considering how…bitter things became with your last wife, Ivanka.”
“My first wife.” Lorenzo had anticipated this line of questioning and had his answers ready. It was common knowledge among the right circles that Grigor Pontecorvo would only deal with straight, family-oriented men in spite of the dark rumors about gangland violence that he also attracted. “I had hoped we could make it work if only for the sake of the children. We tried. We couldn’t. We must all learn from our mistakes.”
