As he brought his questing mouth to her neck, she closed her eyes on a whimper and arched back.
‘I’ve reached heaven,’ Alessandro groaned. He fanned out his hands under her breasts, pushing them up, getting them ready for his mouth as he administered his attentions further down, along her shoulderblades and over the gentle pale slopes under which he could feel the rapid beating of her heart.
Unable to stand the exquisite torture, Megan brought his head to her nipples and half opened her eyes to watch as he began suckling on first one then the other, dividing his attention so that neither was spared the abrasion of his tongue as he laved them, or the delicate nipping of his teeth as he drew them deep into his mouth.
Her legs were spread as he straddled her, and his flat, hard stomach rubbed against her, sending her into a giddy, wild response that threatened to have her reaching orgasm when she wanted so badly to wait.
It was almost a blessed relief when he raised himself slightly, as though fully aware of how close she was to the edge. But the relief lasted barely a second as he left her breasts and began to work his way downwards.
His hands slid to her waist.
She had never been much of a believer in working out or going to the gym, but for all that her body had never seemed to need any such attentions. She was soft and feminine where she should be soft and feminine. A man could drown in the glory of her full breasts, and her waist was small, but not so slender that he could feel any protruding hipbones. Just small and soft and rounded, and Alessandro couldn’t quite believe how he had managed the past seven years without her body. He was so much taller and bigger than her, and yet they had always fitted perfectly together.
In comparison, the tall, leggy women he had endeavoured to replace her with now seemed like stiff, unyielding mannequins.
He lifted himself up for a few seconds to gaze at her flushed face, and when she looked back at him, he said roughly, ‘Enjoying yourself, my darling?’
‘You are so smug, Alessandro,’ she said, and smiled lazily back.
‘I like you being hot for me…’ Unbidden came the agonising thought that she might have been equally hot for the other men she had slept with. Sure, they had been losers, or else one of them would still have been on the scene, but still…
Alessandro had never felt a second’s worth of jealousy when it had come to any of the other women in his life, but the full weight of it slammed into him now, like a rampaging monster.
He didn’t like it, and he steadied himself by remembering that this was simply something of the moment for both of them—sex to be enjoyed without the hassle of commitment. After all, look where his last step to commitment had led him. He would enjoy her, because in some undefined way this was something he had been waiting for. Her eager, pliant body writhing and squirming under his.
He would give her the best sex she had ever had.
He placed his hand between her legs and rubbed. Her soft moans were like music. Then, easing his body back down, he heard the soft moans become more urgent, and felt her body buck against him as he slid his tongue along into her, feeling out her small, sensitive bud. She tasted like honeyed dew, and weirdly it was as though the remembered taste had survived somewhere in his memory bank, waiting for just this moment to come rushing back to him.
He raised his eyes. She was arched back, and her breasts were bouncing as she moved under him. Her nipples stood up, erect tips standing to attention.
He needed her right now, but he had come unprepared. With a groan of frustration, he asked her whether she was on contraception, and was almost disappointed to be told that she was.
He didn’t want any accidents—of course he didn’t! But neither did he want this ferocious jealousy at the thought that she might have been readying herself for another man.
It wasn’t going to do. She had talked to him about not getting involved. Hell, he wanted her involved. He wanted her to belong utterly and entirely to him. He didn’t want her thinking of anyone else. With supreme confidence, he knew that, as always, what he wanted he would get.
CHAPTER SIX
MEGAN propped herself up on her elbows and watched him. He made a great sleeper. He didn’t snore, and he didn’t thrash around the bed the way she did, so that in the morning the bedsheets were all over the place and at least one bit of her body was hanging over the edge, however big the bed happened to be.
And his was a big bed. Much bigger than her double bed. Big enough, in fact, to throw a party on it.
She sighed, slipped out from under the covers and headed for his bathroom. After nearly three weeks she was familiar with the layout of his house. She wasn’t sure whether that was a good development or not.
She had had ample warning from Charlotte. Have sex in haste, she had been told, and repent at leisure. Even though Megan had told her repeatedly that it was all just about the sex, so there would be nothing to repent over at leisure.
What she had tactfully omitted to mention was that small sprig of hope which seemed to have taken root inside her, burrowing in between all her good intentions, finding the little crack where resolution met control and growing every day.
At the back of her mind was the notion that this time they were both different. She was older, and hopefully a little wiser. He had fulfilled his ambitions and maybe, just maybe, was ready for a proper relationship. It wasn’t as though she was now standing in the way of him and his dream of conquering the world! He had already conquered it!
And then there was the business of Victoria. Hadn’t he tried the path of finding the ‘perfect woman’ and come up short? Hadn’t he told her that the perfect woman had not proved as satisfying as the imperfect one?
Maybe not in so many words, but Megan’s fertile mind had busily read between the lines, and now…
Now she looked at her reflection in the mirror and sighed again.
‘What are you doing in there?’
Megan started. She lived in daily fear that he would somehow read the thoughts in her head. It was one thing thinking the impossible. It was another thing should that weakness be exposed. Would he run a mile? In her crazy daydreams he wouldn’t, but daydreams were a far cry from reality, and she was still managing to preserve a healthy scepticism—at least on the outside.
She peered round the door. Alessandro was now sitting up, sprawled amid ivory sheets, the purest of Egyptian cotton. ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ she told him. ‘And then I’m heading home.’
‘It’s Saturday. Why are you heading home?’
He frowned. Three weeks ago he had considered it a pretty safe bet that she would be running at his beck and call the minute they were lovers. Indeed, Alessandro had taken that as a given. He had also thought long and hard about why he still wanted her and had come to the conclusion that it was because, as he had told her, she was his unfinished business. He had broken off their relationship because of circumstances, and of course had been right to do so, but sexually she was without compare, and he needed to have her before she cleared his system, so to speak. It made sense.
Unfortunately, whilst they were as rampant as teenagers and the sex was as satisfying as he had ever experienced, he wasn’t reaching her. They met only on predetermined days, and on the one occasion when a meeting had taken him out of the country, she had smilingly but firmly refused to reorganise her calendar for the following evening. What, he had thought, could be so important in her life that she couldn’t shuffle a few things about?
But when they did meet he had to admit that he was never disappointed. The sex was everything he could have wanted. It was familiar, and yet blazingly new at the same time. But there was always a part of her that she seemed to be holding back. And, call it a challenge to his male ego, he was determined to reach that part and scoop it out.
‘Well?’ He tried to pose it as a light question, but the demand was there, just under the surface. ‘What’s so important that you have to fly off at the break of dawn on a Saturday morning?’
<
br /> ‘It’s not the break of dawn. It’s after ten.’
‘That’s quibbling over detail.’ He patted the side of the bed invitingly. ‘Come back to bed and we’ll do something.’
‘You’re insatiable!’ Megan laughed. ‘I’m beginning to feel like a sex slave!’
‘Not precisely what I was thinking of, but are you saying that you don’t like the role?’
‘I’m saying that even sex slaves need showers.’ She looked at his bronzed body, entwined among the sheets, and itched to leap back into bed with him, to spend the whole day wrapped up in his arms, making love until they were too tired to move. When night fell maybe they would stir themselves, grab a takeout, settle in front of the television and watch one of those reality TV shows which he had always hated. Like a normal couple.
This was the forbidden hope and longing which she knew, in her saner moments, she had to fight, but now she compromised. ‘We could always have a shower together.’
‘Tempting…’ He slashed a smile and swung out of the bed, as lithe and graceful as a panther.
Megan turned away, already warm at the thought of his hands on her.
‘But before we turn on the water…’
Alessandro caught her from behind. In front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror, she watched his big, naked body behind hers. For a second their eyes met and tangled in the reflection. She watched his hand push up under her pyjama top, slowly kneading her heavy breasts. She could see the drowsy flush on her cheeks as he tugged her nipples between his fingers, and when he removed the top the person she was looking at was breathing quickly, chest rising and falling, her nipples turning deep pink as he continued to play with them.
The person in the mirror was not someone in control. She was in the grip of a passion too big for her. But Megan couldn’t tear her eyes away from herself, watching as he continued playing with her, teasing her throbbing nipples with his fingers as he leaned down to nip and caress her neck with his mouth.
When he stopped paying attention to her breasts, leaving them full and aching, it was to hook his fingers in the elasticated waistband of her pyjama bottoms and run them delicately under the cotton against her skin—before driving his hand down between her thighs where he, oh, so slowly began to administer his full attention, rubbing the sensitised area with his hand while two fingers deliberately sought out her clitoris, tickling it until she wanted to pass out from the pleasure.
She made a motion to stop him before he took her to a point from which there would be no return, but Alessandro wasn’t interested in having his own needs fulfilled. Not yet. No, he wanted to look in that mirror and watch her melt against him. He wanted to see the surrender in her eyes as he brought her to a climax.
He gave a grunt of satisfaction as the hand that had been trying to brush his away fell to her side and she curved back into him, her body twisting as he continued to press faster and harder, until she could no longer help the shuddering release that came in uncontrollable waves, leaving her spent against his hard chest.
If he hadn’t been behind her, holding her, Alessandro was sure that she would have sunk to the ground from the power of her orgasm. She had cried out, and at that point had looked beautiful and flushed and helplessly in his control. And that had been immensely satisfying.
She curved round into him and he held her against him, his fingers tangled in her hair.
Gradually he could feel her breathing return to normal, and she laughed a little shamefacedly.
‘I didn’t want that to happen,’ she protested, tilting her face up to his.
‘I know,’ Alessandro drawled. ‘But I did. I wanted to feel you tremble against me as I brought you to fulfilment….’
‘It was selfish. Sex is a two-way street.’ She reached down and felt the hardness of him pressed against her. ‘And don’t you think that I’m going to let you get away that easily, mister.’ She laughed again—a deep, throaty laugh. ‘My turn now….’
But he obviously had more control than she did, because although she lavished as much attention on his arousal as he had on hers, he pulled her onto him and drove deep into her, his head thrown back and his eyes closed as he shuddered to his own climax, bringing her to another.
‘I really think I need a shower now,’ Megan said, when they were finally disentangled from each other. Her body was still tingling all over.
He had a huge wetroom, and it felt strangely natural to have her shower and wash her hair while he stood at the slate basin and shaved. They had fallen into a routine of seeing each other two nights a week. On a Wednesday and a Friday. She only ever stayed over on a Friday, and would leave bright and early on the Saturday morning. Sometimes they would have breakfast together. His chef always kept the fridge laden with delicacies. But she would always make sure that she was out of his house at a reasonable time. Hope might be there, and it might very well spring eternal, but there was no way that she was going to let herself get lulled into a false sense of security. At least not to the point where she would do anything about it.
‘So…’ He was wiping his face on one of the fluffy towels as he turned to face her. ‘You never say why you have to rush off. Busy day ahead? Books to mark? Nails to paint? You can’t tell me that there’s hair to be washed, because you’ve already done that.’
Megan stepped out of the shower room and looked at him as he lounged indolently against the wide plate of marble that encased the slate washbasin. He had slung a towel around his waist and it hung low, a casual covering that paid token lip service to modesty.
‘I always have books to mark. It’s a never-ending exercise. Today it’s English, and I’m expecting some fabulous stories from Year Four.’
‘In other words you are rushing back for no good reason?’
Megan didn’t say anything, because this was unfamiliar territory. She had laid down her ground rules and so far he had obeyed them. Sex without involvement. How was she supposed to cling to those ground rules if he started trying to break them?
‘Marking books is a very good reason,’ she began valiantly. ‘I know you probably think that my job isn’t as hard as yours—’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ He strolled towards the shower, turned it on and said, casually, ‘Don’t even think about leaving until we’re done with this conversation.’
‘Conversation? I thought we were exchanging information about the day ahead.’
Alessandro heard her but chose not to reply, even though he was aware of her dithering by the misted glass.
He was going to take his time, and then—well, it was open to debate whether she would be scuttling off to her house in pursuit of marking ‘fabulous stories from Year Four’. He had other plans in mind. Plans which he hadn’t had a week ago, when their non-involvement relationship had still seemed a pretty good idea—especially on the back of Victoria.
Megan wasn’t in the bedroom when he finally made it out of the bathroom, but she was waiting for him in the kitchen, sitting demurely at the kitchen table, warming her hands around a mug of coffee. Her rucksack was on the ground by her feet and her shoes were on. She was ready and prepared for a swift exit.
He scowled. ‘Breakfast?’
Megan shook her head and finished what was left of the coffee in her cup. ‘Must dash.’
Alessandro gritted his teeth as he poured himself coffee from the glass jug on the counter. He forced himself to smile. If she was so damned eager to leave, then snarling at her was only going to hasten her departure.
‘I’ve been invited to a company do this evening,’ he said conversationally, tugging out a chair with his foot and sitting to face her. ‘Theatre and dinner.’
‘Oh? That sounds nice. Anything interesting?’
He gave the name of a play which had only just hit the West End. Tickets were like gold dust.
‘Lucky you.’ Megan sighed. ‘I’d love to see that, but the waiting list is probably ten years long. Still, it’ll give me time to save up. Have you any idea how mu
ch theatre tickets cost?’
‘No idea.’
‘Well, an arm and a leg.’ She stood up and glanced at her watch as she did a mental checklist in her head, to make sure that she had packed up all the stuff she had brought over. She was careful never to leave anything at his house. It was easy to be lazy, and that was a road she had travelled down before.
She had reached ‘toothbrush’—tick—when he interrupted.
‘I’m glad you’re keen to see that play, because I need a partner and I’m inviting you to come along with me.’
Alessandro could tell immediately that she was appalled by the idea. First off there was her lack of response, and then her face fell. He could snap his fingers and have any woman he wanted leaping at the invitation, but here he was, confronted by the woman he was sleeping with—a woman who, seven years ago, would have squealed with delight at the offer—and she looked as though she was calculating what phony excuse she could dredge up by way of refusal.
‘I…I can’t.’
‘And why would that be, Megan?’ he asked with heavy sarcasm. ‘Because your social diary is so jam-packed with exciting events that you can’t possibly cancel?’
‘Because it’s not a good idea,’ she told him bluntly. She sat back down and looked at him, cupping her chin in her hand.
‘And why,’ Alessandro asked with laboured patience, ‘isn’t it a good idea?’
‘Because that’s not what this deal is all about.’
He clenched his jaw and shoved himself away from the table. ‘This so-called deal is beginning to get on my nerves,’ he said harshly. ‘I can’t slot my sex life into a diary like a business appointment, and forget about it on the days we don’t meet. It’s unnatural.’
‘It’s necessary.’
‘Are you telling me that I don’t cross your mind on the days when we don’t meet?’ he demanded. ‘If that’s the case, then why are we having this relationship?’
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