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  Her unconcealed enthusiasm only added to his pleasure in her. His tongue flicked her sensitive collarbone and she shivered violently.

  Raising his head, he urged, “Stay with me tonight.”

  Yes. The power of what she was feeling shocked her. He was a stranger and she knew nothing about him, and most assuredly would have nothing in common with him whatsoever. It was purely a physical craving, but almost irresistible in its pulling power. For the first time, she wondered if something similar had drawn her late mother to her married father, and if she herself was guilty of being meanly narrow-minded and unsympathetic in despising her parent for getting involved in an extra-marital affair.

  They weren’t teenagers making out in a car. She might be a good deal less experienced than many teenagers, but she was a grown woman, and he was very definitely an adult male. What happened next was entirely her decision. She thought about saying no and never seeing him again.

  She’d weathered misery after misery since she had been put up for adoption. She expected so little in return for her constant sacrifices, but this one aspect of her life—deciding who would introduce her to lovemaking—she could control. And her instincts were screaming she could trust this mysterious stranger. He was so much a man, so male in comparison to the youths with whom she had limited experience. She felt the rigid heat of his erection against her legs, and it both intimidated and excited her, thinking of the effect she was having on him.

  Suddenly, being sensible and careful had zero attraction. He made her want to be daring and the sort of female who inspired men to acts of madness. “Yes, I’ll stay.” My birthday gift.

  “My place?” At her nod, he pressed a button and in a foreign language gave an order to the driver. Then he reached up to unclip her hair and used his hands to brush the lush mane of blue-black curls to guide the tumbling mass down over her slight shoulders and over her breasts. “You have the most beautiful hair.”

  Even if she could, she wouldn’t have told him she thought she had too much hair because his hands were running possessively over her breasts, his thumbs brushing the protuberant nipples that were visible through her thin cotton blouse, his palms smoothing over the full curve of her hips below her tiny waist.

  She leaned forward and brushed her lips over his in an experimental fashion while she yanked his silk tie loose and cast it aside.

  “You also have the most wonderful shape,” he breathed against her lips, running one hand over her leg and under her skirt. “I can’t decide if I want to have you here, right now, or wait until we get home.”

  Now. And after, too. The hungry heat burning through Siobhan was reaching a boiling point of impatience when his fingers toyed with the junction of her thighs. She gasped. Her skin was damp with perspiration, her heart thumping like a road drill while an ache of longing close to actual pain throbbed between her slender legs.

  “Open,” he whispered.

  Conscious she was taking a chance on him by throwing caution to the winds, she obeyed, shifting on his lap, and was rewarded with his fingers rubbing softly over her panties.

  So much unfamiliar sensation engulfed Siobhan a stifled sob of response was dredged from her. The power of what she felt was overwhelming.

  “Kiss me,” he breathed, as his fingers went under her panties.

  Emboldened by that request, she took his mouth and dipped one of her hands from his hair to touch him with greater intimacy. She traced and stroked his iron-hard chest over his shirt and down to the hard length of his sex, rubbing him.

  Ripples of lascivious wanton pleasure enveloped her from the first expert invasion of his finger. His thumb found the tiny bud and lingered there, circling it with devastating effect.

  When she began to undulate her hips to his fingers, he thought he’d spill in his trousers.

  She pulled back from his mouth, whimpering beneath his sensual torment of sensation, clearly aching for her climax.

  With her brows drawn, she met his eyes, and whispered, “Angus.”

  In her green depths, there was a hunger for this passion and pleasure, but he recognized that wasn’t all she was longing for. There was a yearning, so raw and furious he was staggered by it.

  Then, thankfully her eyelids slid shut, because he was shaken.

  “Let yourself go,” he grated in her ear, barely recognizing his own strained voice.

  Her desire was the most powerful aphrodisiac he could imagine. Her sheath hugged his finger, shockingly tight as he lazily thrust inside her. “Come for me, Siobhan.”

  There was a tight, tormenting ball of need swelling and pushing her to an agonizing pitch of hunger and when he increased the pace of his fingers, she exploded without warning, expectation, or precedent.

  Her breath rasped raw in her throat and she let out a silent cry, her sex tightening in spams, over and over as his fingers relentlessly hammered inside her.

  “Yeah, give it all to me,” he encouraged, extracting all the pleasure from her body.

  With a last shudder and a low moan, she slumped against his chest, and he smiled.

  She was so passionate—her responses ungoverned, bare—and she was his for the night, to do with as he would.

  4

  Mayfair

  Braxton-Lenox House

  10:45 p.m.

  Angus flipped on lights to reveal a large hall with a marble floor and fashionable glass table bearing a tall crystal vase with flowers.

  It looked like a picture out of a glossy interior design magazine and somehow unnerved her. Only someone very, very wealthy could afford that amount of space and kind of furniture in a city as expensive as London. This kind of hushed luxuriousness reminded her too much how they were from two very different worlds and made the skin on the back of her neck prickle.

  “I hope I’m not making a mistake,” she muttered to herself, nervously.

  Angus removed his jacket and tossed it over an armchair, then hauled her back to him and kissed her with a passionate, probing force until she was breathless.

  “Nothing that feels this good could possibly be a mistake,” he declared, pulling her through a lengthy corridor and into a huge room.

  She wondered if he would feel the same way in the morning—how she would feel as well—but stopped trying to second-guess the future as he sat down on the bed and pulled her between his legs for another heated kiss.

  Blindly, his hands unzipped her skirt and pushed it down and just as quickly unbuttoned her shirt, pushing it away from her body. The ease with which he undressed her suggested a level of sophistication that made her nervous.

  His fingers teased her swollen nipples and he cradled her across his thighs to let his mouth and tongue play with the delicate lace of her bra, before taking it off.

  When her breasts spilled from the cups of her bra, he molded the soft, pouting mounds in his hands with a masculine growl of appreciation.

  “Beautiful. And so delicate,” he absentmindedly mused, seeming not to realize he’d spoken aloud, running the pads of his fingers over her nipples.

  “Oh, my God,” she moaned, clutching both of her hands on the back of his neck. Somehow, she knew this wasn’t a mere seduction. But as his skillful mouth closed on a nipple, sending her into a renewed wild hunger, she found it impossible to think, much less control the small moans leaving her mouth.

  A wave of desire and elation swept through him at her soft moans. He languidly rolled her swollen nipple, rasping, “Delicate and sensitive.”

  After gorging himself on her breasts until both tips were hard, swollen points, he put her on the bed and stood to strip.

  Siobhan’s rapt gaze followed Angus’s movements.

  For an artist who had sketched multiple live nude models, the masculine anatomy was far from a mystery to her. But she had never seen a male body that could aspire to the sheer magnificence of Angus’s sleek, bronzed physique. He was superbly built with a muscular hair-roughened chest, featuring a pelt of black curls arrowing down in a tantaliz
ing line over his hard, flat stomach.

  But her eyes widened slightly as she looked further down, for there was a good deal more of him between his long, powerful legs than she had expected. For the first time in her life, she wished she were a little more practiced.

  Unconcerned by his nakedness and silvered by moonlight, he strolled fluidly back to the bed to join her.

  “I can’t wait any longer,” Angus confessed, coming over to her and pinning her hands to the bed while he slid between her thighs and her legs came around his waist.

  He had never wanted anything or anybody as much as he wanted her. With her raven hair spread across his pillows, her crystalline green eyes shimmering, and her voluptuous mouth swollen from the onslaught of his, she was irresistible.

  He drove into her with one urgent thrust, forging a bold passage into her honeyed depths, grunting when her hot, tight channel sheathed him. “Christ! You feel so good.”

  She gasped and shuddered, stretched and filled to the brink.

  He held still for a moment, confused, but when she pulled his head down for a kiss, he pistoned his hips, until she was moaning in answer to his groans.

  Siobhan thought she would not be able to bear anything more powerful than her release in the car, but his skilled body was eliciting a hunger too potent to be denied, and her body eagerly quickened to the sexual dominance of his.

  He sank deep into her and withdrew again and repeated that torturous cycle over and over until she was shaking and arching beneath him, almost driven out of her mind by the urgent desire he had ignited.

  “Angus!” The hot, hungry heat burned inside her; tiny feverish tremors flinging her sky-high.

  “Fuck, I’m coming.”

  Waves of exquisite pleasure gripped her and she writhed under him in an ecstasy of abandon.

  In the throes of his own climax, he shuddered and drove deeper and faster as she lifted her hips to receive him and her arms and legs tightened around him, holding him close.

  And it was as if the whole world vanished, leaving only the two of them floating in a perfect wave of warmth and light.

  The next thing he knew he was flush against her, all his weight atop her body. It felt so damn good, even though he must be crushing her.

  But she wasn’t complaining. In fact, she was wrapped tightly around him.

  Best sex ever. With a satisfied sigh, he rolled over, pulling her with him, and on an impulse, he dropped a teasing kiss on her inner wrist.

  “You’re a practiced seducer, if I’ve ever seen one,” she whispered between a sigh and a giggle.

  “Practiced?” For the last decade, his flirtations hadn’t been practiced—they’d been nonexistent. And before that, he’d never needed to seduce. From where the sodding impulse came from, he didn’t know.

  “The brush of your lips demonstrates you’re gentle and sensual.” She yawned. She wanted to stay awake because she had never before felt so close to another human being and she loved that sense of intimacy, but she had also never felt so tired in her life. “Your firm hold on my hand indicates you’re masterful at the same time…a perfect communication.”

  Perfect communication is not one of my qualities. He laughed and muttered in his foreign tongue.

  “I don’t speak that lingo,” she mumbled, in a state of sleepy wonderment at what she had just learned about her own body’s amazing capacity for enjoyment.

  He laughed. “I’m too tired to speak English.”

  “Hmm, then shut up and sleep,” Siobhan countered, snuggling up to him and closing a possessive arm around him.

  He had never known such a high of sexual intensity. She was totally different from any other woman he had ever met or bedded. Definitely not Princess material, but the perfect companion for his lonely nights in London.

  The idea of having relaxation time with a warm, willing woman like Siobhan at the end of a long stressful day was immensely appealing.

  He enjoyed the fact she talked to him on a level as if he were an ordinary person. She was comfortable and confident within herself. He couldn’t ever remember a woman telling him to shut up before—even as a joke.

  She was novel, fresh, and he was bored and determined to break free of the web of duty and responsibility that entrapped him. Just for once, I am going to do exactly what I want. And to hell with the consequences!

  Thursday, February 11, 2016

  7:07 a.m..

  Wakening, Siobhan lifted her lashes and registered that she was lying in a strange bed in an equally strange room. It was still dark but the dawn was lighting the distant horizon. The décor had a mix of contemporary and traditional styles and to say the room was large was an understatement. The Talbot’s house would easily fit inside.

  The events of the previous night flooded back to her and she went rigid. She had slept with Angus and she couldn’t even remember his surname. I’m a slut, a total slut.

  All Siobhan wanted was a magic wand that would whisk her away from being naked in his bed and back to the sanctuary of her own bedroom. Her clothes were scattered over the polished wood floor and the rugs, her panties lying next to his underwear. God! Just kill me.

  But the erotic memory of being awoken during the night for a slow bout of lovemaking made her sigh with pleasure.

  Slowly, she sneaked a leg toward the edge of the bed to get up but a long masculine arm closed around her and drew her back.

  “Don’t even think about leaving, Angel,” Angus husked, his breath stirring her hair and his hard erection pressing against her buttocks. “It’s only seven and I still have to show you how I like to wake up in the morning.”

  He’d barely dozed but again he was ready for her and he wasn’t about to waste a minute of their first night together. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. The sex was good. Surprisingly good.

  “This is really embarrassing,” Siobhan mumbled, watching as his fingers caressed her breast and ran slowly down to her nether hair. “I don’t even have a toothbrush with me.”

  “I don’t care.” Angus chuckled at her admission, much more interested in plundering her honey depths again. He pressed his lips to her neck and sucked at the tender flesh below her ear, and was instantly rewarded with a sound like a purr that turned into a moan when he cupped her breast.

  He moved his head and captured one ripe nipple between his lips, drawing it in deep, circling the tightening bud with his tongue. He loved her breasts, loved their shape and the feel of them in his hands, and he loved the contrast in textures when she was aroused, from their satin-soft skin to their pebbled circles to their bullet-like peaks.

  His lips curled into a smile on her skin when she arched under him, moaning, and clung on, her fingers tangling in his hair.

  She tasted of woman and salt and sex and he couldn’t get enough. “Raise your leg.”

  And soon she also didn’t care because he was working his magic with his fingers and teaching her a new, very pleasurable way to wake up; a long, achingly slow and spellbinding seduction that had her crying out his name at the top of her voice.

  His own climax shorted his thought processes, until there was room for just one spark of awareness, barely a thought, more an acknowledgement that seeped through his fogged senses.

  Not just good. The sex is perfect.

  5

  “That’s much better than waking up to a blaring alarm,” she sighed breathlessly, drawing a laugh from him.

  “I believe anyone would agree sex is better than an alarm,” his fingers played with her hair as he looked down at her. He was still fully sheathed inside of her, but Siobhan didn’t feel any sort of weirdness or embarrassment.

  It all felt so right.

  As she looked into those warm eyes of his, however, the weight of the morning started to dull the oh-so-happy edges of her brain. She truly knew nothing about him other than how the others had reacted to his presence. “What do you actually do?”

  Angus arched a brow. “What?”

 
; She cleared her throat, her fingers barely brushing over his chest. “You know, a job?” She knew he had to have one, given their opulent surroundings. Either that or he came from old money. There was a lot of that around London.

  He rolled off her and Siobhan felt the disconnect immediately, like someone had sucked the warmth out of her body. She thought it was crazy how she had gotten so used to his body in the few short hours they had been together.

  “I’m sorry,” she started, hoping she hadn’t scared him away. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “I’m a banker,” he answered, cutting her off. “A damn good one.”

  She would expect nothing less. He carried his confidence like she wore her jewelry: proud and not afraid to show it. “Oh.”

  He chuckled this time. “So, I didn’t impress you.”

  She smiled as she heard the tease in his voice. Good. He wasn’t mad about her prying. “There’s a lot of bankers in this city.”

  She felt his hands against her bare skin, his fingers running down her side with such aching precision goosebumps scattered all over her body. “Yeah, but can any of them make you gasp and beg for more?”

  Well, that, she could not say for certain. “You are the first one I’ve ever been with.”

  “Good,” he stated. “I’ll order breakfast.” He threw the top sheet aside and got up. It was then that he noticed red smears over the pristine white Egyptian cotton sheets. He frowned at her, his ebony brows drawn together, questioning. “Are you...a virgin?”

  “Was,” Siobhan countered awkwardly, not keen to discuss the matter.

  His lean, handsome face became taut. “You should have warned me, Angel.”

  “It felt too private to mention,” Siobhan admitted uncomfortably.

  Angus dealt her an incredulous look, then he flung back his dark head and laughed with rich appreciation. “You are funny.”

  Funny? She groaned inside yet she felt the sound all the way to her toes. She had never felt such warmth before and especially not with a stranger.