by Miranda Lee
He watched her disappear into the one furthest from the road. It was just like all the others. Cream brick, two-storeyed and quite stylish. But again, a lot less than a woman of her wealth could afford.
He’d be very interested in seeing that report on her financial status at the end of the week. But not so interested any more in seeing how many men she’d slept with during the past five years. She’d already admitted she’d been very sexually active. All that was left for Rico to find out, really, was with whom. Although he already had ideas on that. He’d bet London to a brick that they’d all be younger than her. Younger and easily dispensed with. Men she met through her work. Possibly male models or advertising executives or aspiring fashion photographers. The toy-boy type, as he’d thought before. It was clear Renée liked sex, but she liked it unencumbered with emotional involvement.
The thought riled him, as did the time she was taking in getting her damned things. If she was in there changing out of that black dress and black satin corset, he was going to strangle her.
Rico was just about to leap out and pummel on her front door when the lady herself made a reappearance, thankfully still in the same sexy gear, and carrying a reasonably large navy gym bag. Now he did leap out, meeting her before she reached the steps and sweeping the gym bag out of her hand.
‘You’re only staying for the weekend, Renée,’ he said drily on feeling the weight of the bag. ‘Not the whole month.’ Though, having said it, Rico thought that wasn’t a bad idea. But he knew she wouldn’t go for that. He’d already pushed things, demanding she stay the weekend. Frankly, he’d been surprised when she’d agreed. Although of course her motivation was strictly selfish. She wanted more of what she’d waited so long for. More sex. More fun and games.
Come Monday morning, however, she’d be back to work. And so would he. He had a heavy schedule next week. Several episodes to shoot. Meetings with his accountant and solicitor about the restaurant franchises. And discussions with his television crew about the road-tour of Italy he was going to propose.
Oh, yes, that was definitely still on. Rico could already see the writing on the wall where Renée was concerned. He’d be out on his ear at the end of the month, no matter how well he performed in the bedroom. Except on the million chance she was after him for his money. If that was the case, then he certainly wouldn’t be waiting around to become her next victim.
No. This month was all they were going to have together. Given that, he aimed to enjoy himself to the full. And to hell with silly worries about falling in love with her, or whatever other weird and wonderful agenda she had in mind.
Sex was the name of the main game. And it was a game he was eminently qualified to participate in. Same as the woman walking beside him.
Rico’s gaze raked over that incredible black outfit again, putting his body right back on red alert for action.
‘What in hell were you doing that took you so long in there?’ he asked as he slung the bag into the boot. ‘Besides packing the kitchen sink, that is.’
‘I told you. I had to feed the goldfish.’
‘How many have you got? Two thousand?’
She sighed. ‘I went through the message bank on my phone as well. Made a few return calls.’
‘Who to?’
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’
‘Fine,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Let’s get going, then,’ he added, resolving to shelve every thought about Renée for the next thirty-six hours except sexual ones. She wanted him in no other role except Don Juan? Fine by him. He could do that.
He started playing his part the second his front door was shut behind them and he’d disposed of her gym bag on the foyer floor, leaving his hands free to pounce. Her cry of protest when he pushed her up against the nearest wall failed to impress, as did her feeble attempt to shove her shoulder bag between them. That bag quickly joined the gym bag, leaving her with no weapons against him but her tongue. And that, he swiftly found after some serious French kissing, soon totally lost its usual caustic edge.
‘You kiss very well,’ she purred when he finally lifted his head.
‘I do most things well,’ he growled and stepped back just far enough to do what he’d been wanting to do since he first clapped eyes on her that day.
It was a struggle to keep his fingers from fumbling as he undid the leather tie that secured the cummerbund. But he managed, although his already pounding heart became even more erratic as he slowly unwound the darned thing. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly too, he noticed. Yet her face had grown quite pale, as if all the blood had run from her head.
‘Don’t you dare go fainting on me,’ he warned just as the leather wrap ran out and slipped from her body, leaving the dress to hang more loosely around her but still secured in some way.
Press-studs, he soon found out.
He could have simply ripped the two sides of the dress apart, but he didn’t want that. He wanted to torture her as much as himself. Her eyes had already grown wider and he could feel her tension, as well as her excitement. He knew how she was feeling, because he was feeling the same way, torn between the desire to draw out these exquisite moments of anticipation, and the urgent need to see everything at once, do everything with delay.
The knowledge that she wouldn’t stop him doing anything he wanted at this stage gave him patience, and a wicked resolve to have her lose control first. Yes, to make her beg as he’d once vowed to make her beg. So he undid each press-stud slowly, taking his time, making sure his hands didn’t brush against a single thing other than the soft black lightweight wool the dress was made out of. There was no accidental touching of exposed flesh, although he went darned close at times. She stood there silently and very stiffly, every muscle held exquisitely tight, both inside and out, he imagined.
At last every press-stud had yielded and he was peeling the dress back, back off her slender shoulders, giving up the secrets of what lay beneath.
His eyes didn’t know where to wallow first, but inevitably they raked downwards.
Dear God. She hadn’t lied about that corset being high-cut. There was nothing but the narrowest strip of black satin between her legs.
He wrenched his gaze upwards as he felt his own control beginning to slip. But the sight of her breasts pushed up and together in that decadently designed built-in bra did little to help. Every time she breathed in—which was often—her nipples tried to escape their confinement. He could already see a good proportion of each aureole.
There was no doubt the whole corset was a mastery of erotic engineering, boned to pull her waist right in, automatically making her hips flare out and her breasts look larger than they were. The choice of black satin was spot-on as well, the colour a perfect foil against her pale skin, the slick, shiny satin more feminine than leather but just as arousing. To him, at least. She could not have chosen better if she wanted to reduce him to mush.
A strictly emotional term, of course. His body was far from mush. It was like granite and screaming for release.
His eyes dropped downwards again, taking in her long, long legs and those devastatingly sexy suspenders. The screws on his own sexual tension tightened a notch. Truly, there was no safe place to look. Even if he closed his eyes, the memory of her in that outfit would stay with him.
‘Wicked,’ he murmured, then laughed. ‘I don’t even know where to start. Or what to do next. How many times have you done this to a man with this amazing outfit?’
‘Never.’
‘Huh?’
‘I only bought it this morning. Like the dress. And the shoes. Everything…just for you, Rico,’ she said thickly, her green eyes glazing over.
He couldn’t decide if she was for real, or just playing with him. Maybe even lying to him.
If she was, he didn’t want to know. Not right now. He reached out to smooth his hands down the sides of the corset, tracing the shape of her very feminine figure. When his hands spanned her tiny waist and squeezed, s
he gasped, quivering when he let her go. His hands continued their journey down the outside of her bare upper thighs then across the lace-topped stockings before starting up the inside towards the ultimate goal.
‘Move your legs apart a little more,’ he commanded, his voice sounding as if he were talking underwater.
‘You…you can undo it,’ she said shakily as she did what he wanted.
‘Undo what?’
‘Between my legs. There are snaps at the front and back. You can remove that part altogether.’
His eyes flicked up to hers then back to the task at hand. If his hands had fumbled before, they were all fingers and thumbs now. But it wasn’t rocket science and the strip of satin which had so tantalisingly but inadequately covered her private parts was finally dispatched to the floor of the foyer.
He stepped back to view his handiwork, and to try to keep his brain working, even whilst his body was fast racing towards overload. She looked incredible. Stunningly sexy and beautifully bad. But not bad enough, he decided darkly, and reached out to tuck the bra-cups down against the undersides of her breasts, exposing all of her nipples. Already rock-hard, they were. And so eagerly awaiting his attention.
She gasped when he gave each a tweak before stepping back once more to see how she looked now.
‘That’s better,’ he said, and took no notice whatsoever of the look in her eyes, or the way she was pressing her palms against the wall beside her as if she was some kind of virgin sacrifice, pinned to the wall against her will. What an actress!
This was exactly what she wanted, what she’d planned to happen all day, to torment and arouse him unbearably with her choice of clothes and underwear, firing an insatiable appetite in him so that he would, yes, use her as she wanted to be used.
‘Like I said,’ he muttered, ‘wicked.’
‘Rico, I—’
‘Hush up,’ he snapped. ‘I like my mistresses silent. Except when they’re begging, of course. Is that what you were going to do, Renée? Beg?’
Their eyes clashed. Slowly the panic left hers, replaced by a dark and bitter resolve which almost eclipsed his. But not quite. Rico in full-on fury mode was an unstoppable and unsurpassable force.
‘I’d die before I’d beg anything from you,’ she threw at him.
He smiled. ‘We’ll see, sweetheart. We’ll see. Don’t go away, now.’
He delighted in the anguish that immediately filled her face. ‘Where…where are you going?’ she choked out, levering herself away from the wall. Clearly her leaning position had been supporting her because, once away from the wall, she swayed dangerously on her heels.
‘To my bedroom,’ he informed her. ‘To slip into something more…comfortable. Don’t worry. I’ll be back. But before I go…’ he strode over and pressed her back hard against the wall, palms splayed wide as before ‘…perhaps a little taster of what’s to come…’
He clasped her face with one hand and held it captive, watching her eyes whilst he touched her with his other hand, touched her there between her legs, where she was silky smooth but shockingly wet. Touched her inside and out. Touched her everywhere but right on that spot he knew would send her screaming into a climax. Touched her till her iron will broke and he saw an anguished pleading enter her eyes. It wasn’t verbal begging but it was almost as good.
When a moan broke from her lips he let her go.
‘I won’t be long,’ he said with a final patronising peck on her panting mouth.
‘You bastard,’ she spat. ‘If you think I’m going to stay here and wait for you to come back like a good little girl, then you can think again.’
‘You will stay. Or I won’t be back. I’ll walk out of here right now. There are plenty of women who can give me what you’re giving me here, sweetheart. You choose. Either you do exactly as I say, when I say it, sexually speaking, or this is over.’
He was bluffing, but for the first time since he’d met her he was doing it superbly. His face wasn’t totally unreadable, but it remained convincingly hard and cruelly cold.
‘Well? What’s it to be?’ he snapped.
She didn’t say a word. She just glared at him, then turned her face away and stayed put.
Rico’s moment of triumph felt somewhat shallow. Perhaps because underneath he knew only her pride was hurting. Underneath her outburst, she wanted to stay, not like a good little girl but like a bad little girl. A very bad little girl. This was the kind of fun and games she obviously liked. She just wasn’t used to the man running the show. As he’d once thought, Renée liked being on top, not under a man’s orders, or pushed up against a wall.
Rico determined not to hurry back despite it not taking more than thirty seconds to strip himself naked. He took his time going to the toilet, washing his hands, cleaning his teeth, applying some expensive cologne. He even contemplated having a shower but decided that might be going too far. After a good ten minutes his own frustration won the day so he slipped on his black silk bathrobe, sashed it then strode casually back down the carpeted hallway to the foyer.
She wasn’t there. She’d gone. Fled. Escaped. Run out on him.
He swore, and was about to wrench open the front door and follow her—a rather stupid plan of action in his present attire—when he noticed that her things were still there. Her bags and her clothes. No way would she have taken the lift down to the lobby in the get-up he’d left her in. She’d be arrested for indecent exposure.
So where was she?
A door suddenly opened down the other hallway, the door to the guest bathroom, just this side of the study. Renée emerged then sashayed slowly back towards him, her eyes calm and composed.
He gulped at the sight of her in slow motion, his eyes riveted first at her still boldly bared breasts, then to the smooth naked mound between her thighs. All his controlling anger shattered, replaced by a desire so hot and so fierce that it frightened him.
‘You were gone so long,’ she explained coolly on reaching him. ‘I simply had to go to the loo. I was desperate. Don’t worry. I’ll go right back to where I was, as ordered.’
When she went to brush past him his hand shot out to grab her nearest wrist, spinning her back then yanking her hard against him.
‘Put your arms up around my neck,’ he told her, which she did, eyes flaring wide, lips gasping apart.
With her wearing such high heels, there wasn’t much between their height—Renée was a tall woman—so the juncture of her thighs was in just the right place for him. No time to waste now, he realised, the brakes he’d been exerting on his body up till now no longer working. He was beginning to lose control. His hands ripped open his robe, then moved down to push her legs apart, just wide enough for him to angle his erection away from his stomach and into the liquid heat between her legs. Dared he rub himself against her before slipping inside? He did, and the effect was well worth it. She stiffened against him, then cried out.
But not in pleasure. More in pain, the pain of knowing you were cripplingly close to coming. Did she feel like him? he wondered. Desperate to come but already resenting the moment of release.
‘Look at me,’ he whispered, and she did, just as he surged up into her.
‘Oh,’ she cried again, this time in stunned surprise.
He was big. Never bigger in fact. She’d done her job well, if this was what she wanted.
‘Rico,’ she sobbed.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Just…just do it.’
Just do it. God, but he hated it when she said that. That was what she’d said last night. Didn’t she know that this was special, him being inside her? That she was special, to him?
No, he thought savagely as he clamped his hands over her bare buttocks and began to pump up into her. She didn’t know that. Any man would do, as long as he had the right equipment and knew how to use it. Use it and use her.
Her orgasmic cries were like daggers in his heart, as was the way her flesh convulsed violently around his. His immediate counter-cli
max was inevitable. How could he hold out against such stimulus?
But his own cries and shudders of physical ecstasy somehow shamed him. This was not how it should be between them. This was not what he wanted. He wanted to make love to her, not use her. Couldn’t she understand that?
Obviously not. Her aim in all this—today at least—was sexual gratification. Which she was getting, if the length and intensity of her climax was anything to go by. Eventually, her body calmed and her arms sagged around his neck, her head drooping into the crook of his neck.
He reacted poorly when her mouth brushed his throat in a seemingly tender gesture. Hypocrite, he thought. She didn’t want tenderness. She just wanted to be well and truly screwed.
When her knees started going out from under her, he scooped her up and carried her down the hallway on the left, which led to the master bedroom. She wanted sex? She would get sex. She wanted to be in control for a change? He could do that, too. And he’d enjoy every single moment.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RICO woke to the sound of the shower running, his head shooting up from the sheets to glance at the clock radio on the bedside table. Six fifty-three. He hadn’t been asleep long. Only twenty minutes or so.
Relieved, he rolled over from where he’d been lying face-down on the bed, heaved himself up onto the pillows by the headboard, pulled a sheet up over his lower half, then hooked his arms behind his head.
Well, at least she hadn’t run out on him this time. And why would she? He’d even surpassed his top-class performance of last night.
It had been five hours, give or take a few minutes, since they’d got here. Five hours and a lot of sex, and a lot of foreplay and afterplay in between. He’d used everything he’d ever learnt about women to keep her in a state of abandoned surrender.
Renée, he’d discovered to his surprise, did like to relinquish control. At least, with him she did. He’d been the one firmly in charge of the action, doing the seducing and the demanding and the taking. Yes, she’d been on top, but only at his command, and not for too long. He didn’t want her getting ideas that she could be the boss in his bedroom. But she’d been a glorious sight, riding him, her head tipped back, her eyes shut, her mouth wide open as she gasped in much needed air. For a few moments he’d just lain back and watched her and wondered who she really was, this woman who captivated him so. Captivated and corrupted him.
