She blushed scarlet and wanted to kick him. Instead she turned to Charles. ‘Zac Delucca, a recent acquaintance of mine,’ she offered reluctantly.
‘You English are so reserved. Acquaintance, indeed.’ Zac, every inch the dominant male, gave her a blatantly sexy look before turning to Charles and adding, ‘In my country we would say lover.’
‘Here we would not be so blunt,’ Charles responded, holding Zac’s arrogant gaze. ‘And it is really no concern of mine except that Sally is a valued member of my team and a dear friend. You’d better take care of her.’ He glanced back at Sally and smiled. ‘I hope your mother is okay, and I’ll see you on Monday. Goodbye.’ And with a nod of his head to Zac, he left.
Sally watched him go, and then she saw the big black limousine parked on the road directly outside the exit. It simply added to the anger she was feeling. Furious, she shook Zac’s arm off her shoulders.
‘What on earth are you playing at? You promised no one would know about us, and you turn up here like I don’t know what.’
‘Like an animal staking out his territory?’ he offered helpfully, and laughed at her look of horror. ‘What do you expect, Sally?’ He took her elbow and urged her down the steps to the waiting limousine. The chauffeur held open the door and she got in. Zac slid in beside her and, grasping her chin, turned her head to face him.
‘I only agreed to your parents being kept in ignorance of our relationship,’ he said. ‘While I guard my privacy, I refuse to treat our relationship as a sordid secret. As for your boss—I know he wants you, and I am a possessive man. I keep what is mine. I was simply warning him off. The straightforward approach is usually the best, I find. You should take it as a compliment,’ he declared outrageously, and shot her a wicked teasing smile.
‘You are unbelievable,’ she murmured, shaking her head as the chauffeur manoeuvred the car through the rush-hour traffic.
‘So I have been told,’ he muttered, his attention distracted by the ringing of his phone.
She glanced at him, but he had taken the phone from his jacket pocket and his dark eyes were narrowed in concentration—but not on her.
‘If you don’t mind, I have a few calls to make—some business to settle.’ And, not waiting for her answer, he began talking in rapidfire Italian to whoever was on the other end.
Zac made her head spin. She didn’t understand a word he was saying, but his deep, melodious voice sounded even more seductive in his own language. Seated next to him, with the all-male scent of him teasing her nostrils, and her lips still tingling from his kiss, she was in danger of him taking her over completely. Possessive, he had said—which she supposed was a compliment in a way. At least he had not added for as long as it lasts.
The car stopped and she looked around. ‘We are in an underground car park!’ she exclaimed as the chauffeur opened the door and she stepped out.
‘Brilliant observation, cara,’ Zac remarked with a smile, suddenly appearing at her side and taking her hand in his. ‘I promised to show you my apartment, remember?’
Sally caught the salacious, knowing male grin on the chauffeur’s face as he stepped back. Zac might as well have said come up and see my etchings, she thought, totally embarrassed.
But fifteen minutes later, her embarrassment forgotten, she stood in the middle of a huge bedroom, one of three he had shown her in the penthouse, and stared in amazement at a double bed the size of small state.
A brown leather headboard ran along the top and curved a few feet around either side to incorporate what passed as bedside tables, she supposed. But they were nothing like anything she had ever seen before. A bewildering array of steel buttons and switches were inset into the leather, along with screens and flashing lights. It looked like the flight deck of a jumbo jet.
From what she had seen, the whole apartment was on a massive scale. The kitchen had looked like something out of space: high-tech and unfathomable to Sally’s stunned gaze. The living area was all steel, glass and black leather, and the dining room looked out over a long terrace with a fantastic view down the Thames to the Houses of Parliament and beyond.
Suddenly two hands curved around her waist from behind and pulled her back against a hard male body, and she couldn’t help drawing in a sharp breath.
‘So what do you think of the place?’ Zac asked, nuzzling her neck, his warm breath caressing her ear.
Pride said she should at least try to resist Zac, but he pulled her tighter and the rock-hard pressure of his erection against her bottom sent her pulse-rate into overdrive.
‘It is very modern—the ultimate bachelor pad,’ she managed to answer, and then Zac ran his tongue up the side of her neck and traced the whorls of her ear. It was impossible for Sally to hide the way her body was suddenly trembling and she gave up trying.
His hands stroked up to cup her breasts, his thumbs gently rubbing the tender tips through the soft cotton of the top she was wearing.
‘Do you like it?’ he asked, his lips warm against her throat, and she wasn’t sure if he meant the apartment or what he was doing to her.
But Sally said yes anyway, as he turned her around and lifted her top clear over her head and dispensed with her bra.
‘You take my breath away, Sally,’ Zac said huskily, his smouldering gaze sweeping over her half-naked body in almost worshipful appreciation.
He lifted his hands to caress her breasts, his long fingers teasing the tender tips into tight, ultra-sensitive arousal. A whimper of delight escaped her, and he caught it with his mouth and kissed her with a deep erotic skill that totally beguiled her.
His hands dropped to her waist and deftly removed her skirt, but she didn’t notice. The same dizzying excitement and anticipation sizzled through her veins as during the first time he touched her, but now it was so much more intense as she knew the pleasure that was to follow.
Zac swept her up in his arms and eased her briefs off her legs, placing her gently in the middle of the huge bed.
‘I have waited almost two days for this, and it is killing me,’ he groaned, his glittering black eyes sweeping over her naked body, displayed for his delectation on the taupe coverlet.
Sally watched as he shed his clothes with a minimum of effort, and marvelled anew at his broad hair-roughened chest, at the all-male power and beauty of his naked bronzed body. He came down beside her and stroked a hand over her breast to the junction of her slender thighs. Her body bucked in response as his seeking fingers found her moist and ready.
Her hands moved over his muscular chest to curve around his broad shoulders. Her whole body shook with excitement, and instinctively she squirmed against him and drew a teasing finger down the length of his spine.
A deep shudder racked his mighty frame, and, catching her hand, he rolled over her and caught her breathlessly parted lips in a fierce kiss. Then his head dipped and his mouth found the rigid tip of her breast, suckling with an urgent need that made her groan out loud. Nudging her legs apart, he slid between them.
Sally lost all sense of time and place as Zac swept her along on a vast wave of passion that finally left her sprawled over his chest, her body still pulsing in the aftermath of his hungry, driven possession.
‘I needed that,’ he rasped. ‘It was incredible.’ His hands stroked softly down her back to her thighs and back up, to thread through the tangled mass of her hair. ‘You are incredible, my Salmacis.’
‘I warned you—I do not answer to my given name,’ she murmured softly, then did the opposite. ‘You have no idea how embarrassing it can be when I’m introduced to people and I have to explain what it means,’ she told him, with a soft, languorous smile curving her mouth. She was floating on a sea of pleasure, and she was too happy to argue.
‘You answered me!’ he quipped. ‘But I understand it might be a problem. I won’t use it in public, but I think of you as Salmacis when we make love, and by that point my first priority is rarely getting an explanation from you.’ He chuckled.
‘You are incorrigible.’ She
‘Maybe, but right now I am insatiable.’ And he proceeded to arouse her all over again, with a slow, skilful intimate exploration of her shapely body.
When his long fingers parted her thighs and found her hot and wet he rasped, ‘And so, it seems, are you.’
She gave a long, shuddering groan as her body vibrated in fierce delight at the subtle stroke of his fingertips against her intimate quivering flesh. Her back arched as he moved down her body, lingering to suckle each breast before dipping his dark head lower still. His sinfully sexy mouth delivered the ultimate intimacy, the flick of his tongue teasing and tasting the tiny nub of feminine pleasure to pulsing arousal. He suddenly stopped. With every sensitised nerve screaming out for release she reached for him involuntarily, her slender fingers grasping at the black silken hair of his head.
He looked up through his thick curling lashes and murmured, ‘Now you are ready for this, my sweet Salmacis.’
What followed drove her completely out of her mind as her body tensed to breaking point and she tumbled over the edge into a tumultuous release.
‘What about you?’ she murmured, when she was finally able to breathe again. The thick, rock-hard length of him was pressing against her still quivering stomach. ‘You didn’t…’
‘Oh, I will.’
He covered her mouth with his own, and just when she thought she had no more to give Zac proved her wrong. Slowly he began to kiss and caress her in a deeply erotic exploration of her body, his mouth returning to her breasts to suckle on their hard, throbbing peaks.
Her whole body was suffused with sensual heat, and she quaked with need. The intensity of the pleasure he gave her was almost pain. She clung to him, her nails scoring his back as he lifted her hips and thrust into her with long, deep strokes, stretching, filling her with a power and passion that drove her once more to the pinnacle of ecstasy and held her there.
She cried out, ‘Please, please, Zac—now.’ Her inner muscles clenched around his throbbing hardness as he plunged deeper into her eager body and carried them both to a ferociously orgasmic climax.
Sally lay across his chest, her body sated and her breathing slowly returning to normal. How long she lay there, listening to the heavy beating of his heart gradually subside, she had no idea. Finally she raised her head and looked lovingly down at Zac’s bronzed features. His heavy-lidded eyes were closed, his long black lashes curling on his high cheekbones, and somehow he looked younger, not so hard, even a little vulnerable in his sleep.
She smiled to herself, relishing the pleasure it gave her to study him in secret. She lifted a finger and tenderly stroked the line of his now shadowed jaw, and then up over his cheekbone to smooth the perfectly arched black brows. Her finger lingered on the small scar above one eyebrow and she wondered how he’d got it.
His eyes opened.
‘I thought you were asleep,’ she murmured.
‘No, just savouring your touch. Carry on, my Salmacis.’
‘How did you get this?’ she asked. His huskily voiced request was oddly endearing, and the afterglow of making love encouraged her to be bold.
‘In a fight when I was a teenager,’ he murmured.
‘That does not surprise me somehow—though I am surprised anyone managed to cut you.’ She smiled, letting her gaze roam with feminine appreciation over the width of his shoulders and the muscular biceps of his strong arms. ‘Who was it?’ she asked.
‘I can’t remember his name now. I fought so many.’
Sally was intrigued. ‘You mean you actually got into so many fights you can’t remember what they were about? That is terrible.’
‘No, I fought professionally until I was twenty. That is how I made the money to start my business empire.’
She looked at him with big, soulful eyes. He truly was a remarkable man. He had actually fought physically to enable him get where he was today. How many punches, how much pain must his magnificent body have had to suffer as a teenager? The thought of anyone hurting him horrified her.
‘Zac, you are amazing.’
‘Thank you,’ he responded with a rogue smile. ‘You are pretty amazing yourself.’ And he kissed her, then let his fingers run down the length of her hair. ‘I love your hair.’
Sally’s heart stopped for a second. She had actually thought he was going to say I love you, and her mellow mood was broken. How foolish was that? They had made love for hours and it had scrambled her brain, she swiftly told herself. She didn’t want Zac to love her. She didn’t believe in love. And yet she could not dislodge the fear that assailed her…
‘Thank you,’ she responded in kind, and hoped Zac had not noticed her brief hesitation. She shook her head to free his hand from her hair. ‘Now, what has a girl got to do to get fed around here?’ she asked, with an attempt at a smile. Conveniently her stomach rumbled.
‘Okay, I can take a hint.’ Zac lifted her by the waist and laid her down on the bed. ‘And you have already done it—quite spectacularly,’ he told her with a devilish smile. ‘What would you like to eat? Meat? Fish? Game? Name it and it is yours.’
‘Fish—but can you actually cook?’
‘Yes,’ he said, turning to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to her. ‘But I have no intention of doing so.’
And a moment later he was ordering a meal over the telephone—conveniently part of the stupendous headboard.
‘We have forty minutes before the food arrives,’ he told her, replacing the phone. ‘Enough time to share a shower.’ And he plucked her off the bed and carried her into the bathroom.
A lot later Sally, with her hair wringing wet, a broad smile on her face and the sound of Zac’s laughter ringing in her ears, collapsed into a plastic cushioned chair that looked like something out of the fifties, a towel wrapped around her body.
Zac had slipped on jeans and a top and gone to collect the food when it arrived. Sally, on the other hand, barely had the strength to move. The man actually was insatiable, she decided…and she would not have him any other way. She loved every minute spent with him in bed—or anywhere else, for that matter.
She now freely acknowledged the disappointment she had felt and tried to deny last night, when he had left her naked and alone in bed. But he had certainly more than made up for it this evening. Not only great sex, but she felt she understood him better since he had told her about his fighting career. No wonder he appeared hard sometimes, when he had had to physically fight to survive as a teenager.
Then again, maybe it was because sex was new to her that she enjoyed it so much. she tried to reason with herself. But she knew in her innermost being it had everything to do with the man himself. She could not imagine sharing such intimacies with any man but Zac.
The huge shower, with its jets shooting out all over, had been a novel place to make love, she thought, a dreamy, reminiscent smile on her face. Zac had soaped her all over, kissed and caressed her, and she had returned the favour. She had stroked and soaped every part of his magnificent body and then, dropping to her knees, she had done what she had been longing to do but never had the confidence before.
She had let her slender fingers examine every inch of his thickened length in minute detail, in awe of the source of so much pleasure. She had felt him tense when her tongue had swept out to taste the velvet tip, and heard him groan as she’d continued further.
‘No more,’ he had finally grated, and, reaching under her arms, he had jerked her high in the air and thrust up into her in an explosion of need. She was convinced only a man of Zac’s strength and vigour could possibly have supported her, locked to his great body, as he had driven them both to yet another mind-blowing orgasm.
Against all the odds, her own innate honesty was forcing her to admit she was halfway to falling in love with him, and strangely she was no longer so afraid—it did not worry her at all.
Carpe diem—live for the moment. That was her new motto, she decided. And there was no guarantee in life as to how many moments one had left…
With a carefree grin she got to her feet and, picking up the conveniently wall-mounted hairdryer at one side of the first of the twin white porcelain basins, she began methodically to dry her hair, running her fingers through it over and over again.
She looked at her refection in the mirrored door of the cabinet that stretched the length of the wall. Her face was flushed, her lips were swollen, and Zac’s roughened jaw had left a few telltale marks. She looked what she was: a thoroughly loved-up woman, but a bit of a mess. Maybe Zac had a brush she could borrow, to try and style her wayward mass of hair into some kind of order? She could impress him with her smooth, elegant locks…
She pushed at the cabinet and a door in front of her sprang open. There was all the equipment one would expect to find in a man’s bathroom, including a box of condoms, and, spying a brush, she picked it up. It was then she noticed there was also a half-used bottle of Dior perfume—definitely not male—a few black hairpins and a thick black elastic hairband.
Her carefree mood evaporated like smoke in the wind. It did not take a genius to work out that the last woman to share his bed and bathroom had been Margot, the raven-haired model from Tuesday night. Sally stumbled back in shock. Just the thought of Zac sharing with Margot the same intimacies he had shared with her was enough to make her feel sick to her stomach.
She sank back onto the plastic chair and drew in a choked breath as pain pierced like a knife in her heart. Her head fell forward, her hair forgotten as she blinked back the bitter tears that threatened. Despairingly she realised that, against her long-held belief in her immunity to love, she had done the previously unthinkable and fallen in love with the man.
No…It wasn’t possible, her brain told her, but her heart didn’t want to listen…Conflicting thoughts were tearing her apart. She had only known Zac a week, been intimate with him for only three days. It could not be love…She would not, could not, accept such weakness.
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