by Abby Green
Immediately Lia had a memory of her ex-fiancé, recoiling in horror when he’d first seen that she didn’t shave all over, and she tried to sit up awkwardly, putting a hand down to cover herself.
Ben caught her, though, stopping her hand with his, looking at her. ‘What is it?’
Now she felt horribly rational, and exposed and sane. Her ex-fiancé wasn’t remotely in the same league as Ben, and if he had found that part of her a turn-off...
She looked away. ‘I’m not...’ She forced herself to look at him. ‘I’m probably not like your usual lovers...’
Ben looked down between her legs and then back up, incredulous. ‘Because you don’t shave?’
Lia gulped. God, this was excruciating. She nodded. His face flushed and he took her hand and brought it down until he could place it over the bulge between his legs. The very hard bulge. Now she flushed.
‘Sweetheart,’ he growled, ‘when I make love to a woman I like to know she’s a woman. And right now I need to taste you, more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything else. Will you let me taste you?’
Something scarily exultant ripped through Lia. He wasn’t turned off. He wanted to taste her. Did that mean he wanted to do what she’d seen Simon doing to his secretary when she’d walked in on them that day? The thought sent her mind reeling. It had looked so decadent to her at the time. And she’d never got over the jealousy that he’d been moved to do that to this lover, not to her... And now this man was asking her—
Before she could lose her nerve, Lia said huskily, ‘Okay.’
Ben reached for the sides of her panties, expertly pulling them down and dropping them near her feet. She was bared completely now, the silk of the dress falling away as he pushed her thighs apart even more.
Lia closed her eyes and bit into her fist as Ben’s head dropped and she felt his mouth on her soft inner thigh, pressing kisses and nipping at her skin gently. She was in danger of hyperventilating again, especially when his mouth moved higher, closer to the apex of her legs.
She didn’t think he could spread her any wider but then he did, his big hands high on her thighs.
As if reading her mind, he commanded, ‘Look at me.’
Reluctantly she opened her eyes. Ben had taken off his shirt and his chest was bare and massive. She couldn’t breathe as he bent forward and pressed his mouth to her, his tongue hot and wet as he dragged it up the secret folds of her body.
Lia’s breath returned and she hitched in big gulps as that dark head bobbed and moved between her legs. His hands looked massive on her pale skin.
Ben looked up, ‘Touch your breast.’
Feeling dizzy, even though she was all but lying down, Lia brought a hand to her breast, trapping a nipple between her fingers.
‘Now, squeeze...’ Ben instructed softly.
She did, and gasped as an arrow of pleasure went straight to her groin. Ben smiled and it was wicked as he bent his head again and tortured her with his mouth and tongue.
When he pushed a finger deep into the heart of her she arched her back off the couch, and then it became two fingers, thrusting in and out as his mouth and tongue lapped at her with fierce intensity.
Lia couldn’t hold on. The coil of tension inside her snapped and she cried out as pleasure exploded her into tiny pieces. Waves of after-shocks rocked through her body for long moments, and she only became aware of her surroundings again when she could open her eyes and blink to focus, realising that Ben had lapped all that pleasure from her body and was now pressing lazy kisses to her inner thighs.
She felt undone. Turned inside out. Totally exposed but too spent to do anything about it. She realised that she was still squeezing her breast, almost painfully, and let go.
CHAPTER SIX
WHEN BEN FINALLY straightened up, tearing himself away from Lia’s intoxicating taste and scent he was not prepared for the glorious sight of her looking so shocked. Her hair was a dark cloud around her head. The blue silk dress was crumpled beside those lush curves.
The realisation that she looked so stunned stopped him from automatically moving his hands to his belt to seek his own relief. He ignored the insistent ache in his pants and rested his hands on her knees. ‘Are you okay?’
After a moment her eyes seemed to clear and she nodded. But he noticed that she reached for her dress with visibly shaking hands, pulling it over her as much as she could. The heat in Ben’s blood cooled a little and he moved back so that she could pull her dress down, concealing that glorious body from view.
‘What is it, Lia?’
She looked at him for a moment, almost accusingly, but he just looked right back. Making a little huffing sound, Lia scooted back on the couch until she was sitting upright. She bit her lip, but then eventually said, ‘One day I walked into my ex-fiancé’s office and found him with his secretary. He was doing what you just did to me to her...’ She trailed off.
Ben tried to make sense of what she was saying. ‘That’s why you broke it off? He was unfaithful?’
She nodded jerkily, her face crimson now. ‘Yes, but the thing is I’ve only ever slept with Simon...’
Ben would have never envisaged this scenario in a million years. In one fell swoop any remaining misconceptions he might have had about Julianna Ford were blasted apart. She was inexperienced, and she was achingly vulnerable right now, even though he could tell she hated it from the way her hands held her dress together in a white-knuckled grip.
And instead of feeling the urge to get up and run in the opposite direction Ben got up and sat on the couch beside her, feeling something close to protective.
Lia looked at him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not very experienced.’
Ben felt something dark rise up. ‘What happened with this ex-fiancé?’
Now she went pale. ‘When we made love for the first time...it hurt. A lot. After that I didn’t really want to...to make love.’ She grimaced. ‘It wasn’t as if we were in love. We’d both agreed to the marriage for our own reasons. But he told me that I was frigid, and that was why he was sleeping with his secretary. I couldn’t...didn’t want to get married after that.’
Ben reeled. He wanted to find that man and punch him for betraying this woman, for leaving her confidence in tatters. Never in Ben’s life had he been remotely interested in the notion of taking a woman’s virginity, but now he felt a ridiculous sense of loss, just imagining the way her rutting fiancé had probably not even realised the jewel he’d had in his hands. This woman was not frigid. Not remotely.
Then he thought of what else she’d just said. ‘Why did you agree to a marriage of convenience?’
As if the questions were probing too deeply, Lia got up off the couch, still graceful even while she was deliciously dishevelled. She turned her back to Ben and pulled the dress around her, tying it in front.
When she turned around again it was all Ben could do not to yank her back down onto his lap.
She folded her arms over her chest, as if she could hear his lusty thoughts. ‘It was primarily for my father. I told you...he’s traditional. He believes I’ll only be secure if I’m settled. He was sick a while back and I got a fright... He begged me to give Simon a chance—he knew he’d been asking me out on a regular basis.’
She shrugged and looked down, scuffing the floor with her toes. ‘I went out with him and it turned out that we were both happy enough to agree to something more...clinical than a romantic relationship.’ She looked back at Ben, almost defiant. ‘At the time it seemed like a good idea.’
‘You don’t need to convince me,’ Ben said with a bitter edge to his voice. ‘After seeing how little there was to hold my parents’ marriage together when the crisis hit, I’m under no illusions about the myth of a romantic ideal.’
For a long moment neither said anything else and then Lia took a step back.
Ben stood up. ‘Where are you going?’
* * *
Middle Earth, hopefully.
Lia had been ready for the ground to open up and swallow
her right from when she hadn’t been able to stop the verbal equivalent of This is My Life from spilling out. She blamed Ben, and the fact that he’d wrung a response from her body that she’d never believed she’d feel.
He was looking at her now as if she had two heads, and the thought that he might pity her after what she’d just told him was making her burn with mortification. Of anything she might have expected from this man, she’d never expected that. Nor wanted it.
She struggled to look cool and calm, even though she was in tatters. ‘I’m going to bed.’
Ben shook his head. ‘We’re not done here.’
Excitement and trepidation warred in Lia’s chest. Ben was unmistakably alpha. Maybe he saw her as some kind of challenge?
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know this isn’t what you expected when you thought of indulging in a weekend fling. I think we’ve established that I’m not exactly cast from the same mould as your usual women.’
She went to walk past him, instinctively seeking a place where she could be alone and deal with her sense of exposure without that incisive gaze watching her every move. He’d laid her bare—completely. She’d been right to resist him.
A hand on her arm stopped her. She looked up.
Ben pulled her around in front of him. ‘There are no other women. There’s only you. Are you saying you don’t want this?’
Lia flushed at his words. ‘There’s only you.’ And how could she deny she wanted this when she’d just been writhing and moaning under his expert touch?
She said tightly, ‘You really don’t owe me anything, Ben. If you just feel sorry for—’
His hands tightened on her arms so much she stopped talking. He looked incredulous. ‘Feel sorry for you? Believe me...that’s the last thing I’m feeling right now. I want you, Lia. Because you make me feel like I’ll combust if I don’t have you. And that’s not pity. That’s desire.’
Suddenly she didn’t have anything to hide behind. He was calling her out.
She felt nervous. ‘I’m not experienced enough for you... I’ll disappoint you.’
He speared her with that bright blue gaze, like two flames. ‘You couldn’t disappoint me if you tried, Lia. And there’s no such thing as inexperience—there’s just how two people fit together. You’re not frigid—not remotely. That man was an idiot, and he couldn’t recognise a brilliant precious gem when it was right in front of him.’
Ben’s words reached deep inside her and melted the insecurity Lia had been carrying around like a weight.
He moved closer, as if sensing her vacillation. ‘I want you, Lia, more than I’ve ever wanted another woman. But if you can say that you truly don’t want this, then I’ll let you go.’
He took her elbows in his hands and pulled her gently to him until they were touching. If she’d had any doubts about how much he wanted her, or thoughts that he just pitied her, they fled when she felt the hard, thrusting evidence of his desire against her soft belly.
Her heart started to pound and her blood heated. Her defences were annihilated. And then she felt a spike of anger. Anger that he’d brought her here and laid her bare, forced her to delve deep inside herself to where she ached and wanted...so much. Where she wanted him. Forcing her to admit it.
She felt fierce. ‘I can’t tell you that.’
Ben was intense. ‘What can’t you tell me?’
She looked up into his eyes and drowned. ‘That I don’t want you.’
Lia didn’t care any more how or why she’d got here, just that she was, and she didn’t want to be anywhere else. She desperately wanted Ben to show her again how she could respond to a man. That she wasn’t frigid.
As if reading her mind, Ben bent and lifted her into his arms. And then he was carrying her up the stairs.
She was mesmerised by his jaw, by the play of the powerful muscles of his chest under her arm. Breathless at the thought of what she was doing, and so far out of her comfort zone that it wasn’t funny, she pushed all her trepidation down.
Ben shouldered his way into his room, and Lia was vaguely aware that it was just as palatial as hers but more masculine in tones and colours. And then her gaze fell on the massive bed in the middle of the room and her mouth dried completely.
A part of her wanted to leap from Ben’s arms and run away fast, but a stronger part realised that she wanted to be strong—for this, for herself. Her confidence had been eroded when she was a young child, when her own mother had rejected her, forcing her to shut away a part of herself for fear of rejection. Then she’d let Simon decimate her confidence as a sexual woman. It was time to restore the balance.
Ben put her down near the bottom of the bed. His voice was deep, rumbling in the silence. ‘You can let your dress go.’
Lia looked down and saw her almost white-knuckled grip on her dress. She uncurled her fingers, undid the tie and let it go. It swung open, catching on the slopes of her breasts.
She heard a sharp intake of breath and looked up to see Ben’s eyes on her.
‘So beautiful,’ he muttered as he brought his hands to her shoulders and pulled her dress off them and down over her arms, until it fell to the floor in a sibilant whoosh of silk. Her undone bra followed.
Now she was naked, the ends of her hair tickling the bare skin of her shoulders. Ben’s eyes had darkened and Lia gritted her jaw to kill the instinct to cover herself with her arms; she didn’t want him to see how vulnerable she really felt. No doubt he was used to women parading themselves in front of him.
Instead, just to do something to break the almost overwhelming tension, she reached out and touched his chest tentatively. It was muscled perfection, broad and strong. Defined pectorals with a dusting of dark curling hair led down to the ridges of a six-pack and his flat belly, with its single line of dark hair dissecting the muscles and disappearing under his trousers.
Ben sucked in a breath and, emboldened, Lia explored further, spreading her hands across his chest. They looked tiny and pale next to that burnished skin. She could feel his heart thumping solidly, and some nameless emotion gripped her tight. But she ignored it. Now was not the time for emotion.
She raked her nails over him experimentally, catching a nipple, making him take another sharp intake of breath. He caught the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. She looked up and felt drugged.
Not taking her gaze off his, she let her hands feel their way to his lean waist and found where his belt was buckled. She looked down and undid it, and then her hands were on his button and the zip. She could feel the insistent thrust of his erection through his clothes, and a wave of heat scorched her from the inside out and between her legs, where she felt damp again. Hot.
She pushed his trousers down over his hips and he stepped out of them, letting her go momentarily. Then he pulled down his briefs until he too was gloriously naked. She’d never been more aware of herself as a woman. There was something very elemental about this moment, with everything stripped away.
Unable to resist, and not even recognising herself any more, Lia reached out and encircled his hard flesh with her hand, stroking him up and down, mesmerised by the vulnerability of his erection and also the steely strength. The velvet texture of his skin. She touched the bead of moisture at its head and spread it with her thumb.
At that Ben took her hand from him and she looked up.
‘I won’t last if you keep touching me like that.’
He caught her hand and brought her around the side of the bed, urged her down onto it, following her. He looked massive from where she lay, all wide shoulders and chest and long, lean body.
Every nerve in her body was tingling. She could feel Ben’s erection against her thigh, hard and heavy. Big. She felt a shiver of trepidation, remembering the discomfort she’d felt with her fiancé and how she’d failed to excite him, but again, as if reading her mind, Ben distracted her by moving between her legs, spreading them wide.
With his elbows trapping her, he cupped both her breasts and te
ased her tingling nipples with his thumbs, before lowering his head and sucking first one and then the other into his hot mouth, torturing her with his wicked tongue.
As the flames of lust licked higher and higher Lia moaned softly. She wanted to squirm, to arch her back, but her movements were restricted by Ben’s big body holding hers down. It was an exquisite form of torture, and as he lavished attention on her breasts he moved subtly against her, notching his hips higher, until she could feel the blunt head of his erection move against her where she was slick with desire.
She widened her legs even more and tried to move her hips up, wanting him to fill the part of her that ached. Then she heard a muttered curse and Ben suddenly rolled away.
Lia lifted her head. She realised she was panting. ‘What’s wrong?’
For an awful second she went cold, imagining that he’d realised she wasn’t enough for him... But then she saw him extract something from a drawer beside the bed, heard foil tear, and then he was rolling protection onto his thick length.
Relief flooded her and she lay back. Ben knelt between her legs. Lia was all but splayed before him, like some kind of offering. But then, instead of coming over her again as she’d expected—as she wanted—he reached out a hand and touched her where she ached most. Where she was embarrassingly wet for him.
He circled her with his thumb, ratcheting up the tension inside her. Dipping inside, and out again, lubricating her with her own juices.
‘You want me.’
She wondered how on earth he could doubt it. Then she gasped and her back arched as he slid two fingers into her. She said jerkily, ‘I told you I did.’
Lia could feel her muscles tighten around his fingers. Heard him curse softly. She felt too exposed. She didn’t want him to make her come like this, while he watched.
She reached out and wrapped her hands around his arms. ‘Please... Ben, I need...’ Her back arched again as he thrust his fingers deeper, playing her like a violin. She lifted her head, hating the power he had over her right now, and said fiercely, ‘I need you.’
Ben finally took his hand away, and then he loomed over her, his thighs pushing hers apart, and she slid her hands up to his shoulders.
