Fiancee for One Night Read online

  ‘Maybe,’ she agreed, earning herself a smile in return.

  ‘And now I find that I have been cheated in those years since. I never had a chance to revisit what we had lost that night, because you chose not to tell me.’

  She blinked up at him, still reeling from the impact of his words. ‘How could I tell you?’

  ‘How could you not tell me, when you must know how good we will be together. We knew it that day. We recognised it. And we knew it earlier when I kissed you and you turned near incendiary in my arms. Do you know how hard that kiss was to break, Evelyn? Do you know what it took to let you go and take you to dinner and not take you straight to my bed?’

  She shuddered at his words, knowing them to be true, knowing that if he’d taken her to bed that night, she would have gone and gone willingly. But he’d left her confused. He’d been angry with her a moment ago, yet now the air vibrated around them with a different tension. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘What I have always wanted ever since the first time I saw you,’ he said, his eyes wild with desire and dark promises that kept those dark, secret places of her humming with sensation and aching with need. ‘I want you.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘THIS won’t work,’ she warned weakly, her hands reaching for the wall behind her as his mouth descended towards hers. ‘This can’t happen.’

  He brushed her lips with his. ‘Why not?’

  ‘You don’t sleep with your PAs. You don’t mix business with pleasure. You said so yourself.’

  ‘True,’ he agreed, making a second pass over her mouth, and then a third, lingering just a fraction longer this time. ‘Never mix business with pleasure.’

  ‘Then what are you doing?’ she asked, her senses buzzing. He slipped his hands behind her head, his fingers weaving through her hair as he angled her mouth higher.

  ‘Unfinished business, on the other hand,’ he murmured, his eyes on her mouth. ‘That’s a whole different rule book.’ He moved his gaze until dark eyes met her own, gazing at her with such feverish intensity that she felt bewitched under their spell. ‘Do you want to open that book, Evelyn? Do you want to dip into its pages and enjoy one night of pleasure, one night of sin, to make up for that night we were both cheated out of?’

  This time he kissed her eyes, first one and then the other, butterfly kisses of heated breath and warm lips that made her tremble with both their tenderness and their devastating impact on her senses. ‘Or do you still wish to leave?’

  He kissed her lips then before she could respond, as if trying to convince her with his hot mouth instead of his words, and she could feel the tension underlining his movements, could tell he was barely controlling the passion that bubbled so close below the surface as he tried to be gentle with her. He was offering her a night of unimaginable pleasure, a night she’d thought about so many times since that ill-fated first meeting.

  Or he was offering her escape.

  She was so, so very tempted to stay, to stay with this man who’d invaded her dreams and longings, the man who’d taken possession of them ever since the day they’d first met. The man who had made her want and lust and feel alive for the first time in her life. She wanted to stay and feel alive again.

  But she should go. The sensible thing would be to go. She was no longer a free agent, able to do as she pleased when she pleased. She had responsibilities. She was a mother now, with a child waiting at home.

  His kisses tortured her with their sweetness while her mind grappled with the dilemma, throwing out arguments for and against. The decision was hers and yet she felt powerless to make it, knowing that whatever she decided, she would live to regret it.

  But it was just one night.

  And her child was safely tucked up in bed, asleep.

  But hadn’t her child resulted from just one such night? One foolish wrong decision and she would live with the consequences for ever. Did she really want to risk that happening again? Could she afford to?

  Could she afford not to?

  Did she really want to go home to her empty bed and know that she’d turned her back on this chance to stop wondering what if, the chance to finally burn this indecent obsession out of her system?

  And didn’t she deserve just one night? She’d worked hard to make a success of her business and to provide for Sam. Surely she deserved a few short hours of pleasure? Maybe then she could stop wondering, stop imagining what it would have been like to have made love that night, to have finished what they’d started. And maybe he was a lousy lover and this would cure her of him for ever, just like one night with Sam’s father had been more than enough.

  Hadn’t she already paid the price?

  His mouth played on hers, enticing her into the dance, his tongue a wicked invitation, his big hands skimming her sides so that his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts, so close to her aching nipples that she gasped, and felt herself pushing into his hands.

  A lousy lover? Not likely.

  ‘What’s it to be?’ he said, pulling back, his breathing ragged, searching her eyes for her answer. ‘Do I open the book? Or do you go? Because if you don’t decide now, I promise you, there will be no going anywhere.’

  And his words were so hungry, the pain of his restraint so clearly etched on his tightly drawn features, that she realised how much power she really held. He wanted her so much, and still he was prepared to let her walk away. Maybe because he sensed she was beyond leaving, maybe because he knew that his kisses and touches had lit a fire inside her that would not be put out, not be quenched until it had burned itself to ash. But he was giving her the choice.

  When really, just like that first time, there was none.

  ‘Maybe,’ she ventured tentatively, her voice breathy as she wondered whether in wanting to make up for a lost opportunity she was making the mistake of her life, ‘we could at least check out a page or two.’

  He growled his approval, a sound straight from the Stone Age, a dark, deep sound that rumbled into her very bones and shook them loose. She would have fallen then, if he hadn’t pulled her into his kiss, his hot mouth explosive on her lips, on her throat, as he celebrated her acquiescence, his arms like steel crushing her to him, his hands on her back, on her shoulders, capturing a breast and sweeping his thumb over her peaked nipple, sending sensation spearing down to that hot place between her thighs and making her mewl into his mouth.

  ‘God, I want you,’ he said, echoing the only words she was capable of thinking, as she pushed his jacket off his shoulders and he shucked off his shoes. He released her for only a moment, shrugged the jacket off and let it drop to the floor while she worked desperately at his buttons and his tie, and he turned his attentions to her zipper. She felt the slide down her spine and the loosening of fabric, the electric touch of his hands at the small of her back. Impatient to similarly feel his flesh under her hands, she ripped the last few buttons of his shirt apart, scattering them without regard.

  Finally she had him, her hands on his firm chest, her fingers curling through the wiry thatch of hair, lingering over the hard, tight nubs of his nipples, relishing all the different textures of him, the hard and the hot, the wet and the insistent, and if she’d had any doubt at all that he wanted her, it was banished by the bucking welcome of that rigid column as her hand slid down to cup his length. He groaned and pushed her back hard against the wall as she grappled with his belt.

  He was everywhere then, his taste in her mouth, his hands separating her from the dress, slipping the straps from her shoulders, letting it slip between them as he took her breasts, the scrap of lace no barrier against the heat from his hands. And then even that was gone, replaced by his hot mouth, devouring her, lapping and suckling at her flesh until she cried out with the agony and the ecstasy of it all. It was everything she had imagined in dreams spun in hot, torrid nights alone and more, and still it was not enough.

  She clung to his shoulders as he laved her nipples, gathering her skirt as his hands skimmed up her legs,
not taking his time but still taking so much longer than she wanted.

  ‘Please,’ she pleaded, clutching at his head, gasping as he cupped her mound, his long fingers stroking her through panties wet for him, needing him, hot and hard, inside her. Needing him now, before she came with just one more touch. ‘Please!’

  ‘God, you’re so hot,’ he said, dispensing with her underwear, pulling free his belt with damn near the same frenetic action.

  She saw him then. Her first glimpse of him unleashed and hungry and pointing at her, a compass needle finding true north. Once she might have wanted to believe it. But she was wiser than to believe such fantasies these days, and much wiser to the consequences. Which reminded her…

  ‘Protection,’ she muttered through the fog of need, but he was already ripping open a sachet with his teeth, rolling it on before pulling her back into his kiss. Her breasts met his chest, the feel of skin against skin taking her breath away, or maybe it was what he was doing with his hands and clever fingers.

  Her dress bunched at her waist, his hands kneading her behind, fingers teasingly close to the centre of her, driving her insane with need, as he lifted her, the wall at her back, still kissing her as he urged her legs around him until she felt him, thick and hard, nudging, testing, at her entrance.

  She cried out, something unintelligible and primal, lost in an ocean of sensation, drowning under the depths. It was almost too much and yet it was nowhere near enough and she only knew that if she didn’t get him inside her she would surely die of need.

  He didn’t keep her waiting. With a guttural cry of his own he lowered her, meeting her with his own thrust, until he was lodged deep inside her.

  A moment in time. Just a moment, a fraction of a second perhaps, but Eve knew it for a moment about which she would always remember every single detail, the salt of his skin and the smell of his shampoo, the feel of his big hands paused at her hips, and the glorious feeling of the pulsing fullness inside her.

  Could it get any better than this?

  And then he moved, and it did, and flesh against flesh had never felt so good, every new moment giving her treasures to secrete away, to add to a store of memories she would take from this night, of sensations she would never forget. Sensations that built, one upon another, layer upon layer, higher and higher, fed by each calculated withdrawal, each powerful thrust.

  Until there was no place to go, no place higher or brighter or more wondrous as the sensation, the friction, the furious rhythm of his pounding body all melded together into a cataclysm, taking her with it.

  She screamed her release, throwing her head back against the wall, her muscles clamping down hard as he shuddered his own frenetic release.

  She didn’t know how long they stood together that way, she couldn’t tell, too busy trying to replace the oxygen consumed in the fire of their coupling while her body hummed its way down from the peak. But slowly her feet found the floor, slowly her senses and sensibility returned. To the knowledge she was standing barely dressed between a wall and a near naked man she barely knew but with whom she’d just had mind-blowing sex.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, embarrassed in the aftermath as he dispensed with the condom and she remembered her own wantonness. Had she really pulled his shirt apart in her desperation to get inside it? Had she really cried out like a banshee?

  And he laughed, a low rumble in a velvet coat. ‘Evelyn Carmichael,’ he told her with a chaste kiss to her lips, ‘you are just one surprise package after another.’

  He didn’t know the half of it. She found the straps of her dress, pulling it up to cover herself before she started looking for her underwear.

  ‘Leave it,’ he said, his hand around her wrist. ‘There’s no point. It’s only coming off again.’

  ‘Agai n?’

  His eyes glinted. ‘This book I was telling you about. It’s a long book,’ he said. ‘That was only chapter one.’

  She blinked up at him, her dress gathered in front of her, and he pulled her arm away, letting the dress drop to her waist, then slide over her hips in a whisper of silk to pool like a lake on the floor.

  And even though they’d just had sex, she felt nervous standing there before him wearing nothing more than lace-topped stockings and spiky sandals. She hadn’t been with anyone since Sam’s father. She didn’t have the body she’d once had, her belly neat but traced with tiny silvery lines and softer than it had been before bearing a child.

  She held her breath. Could he tell? Would it matter?

  ‘You look,’ he said, ‘like a goddess emerging from the sea.’ And some tiny, futile creature somewhere deep inside her grew wings and attempted a fluttery takeoff.

  ‘And you look like a pirate,’ she countered, reminding herself it was just a game. It wasn’t real and that pointless tiny creature inside her would soon die a rapid death, its gossamer wings stilled. ‘Ruthless and swashbuckling.’

  ‘Uncanny,’ he said, his lips turning in a half-smile as he swung her into his arms. ‘However did you know?’

  ‘Know what?’ she asked, feeling a secret thrill as he carried her into the next room.

  ‘The goddess of the sea and the swashbuckling pirate.’ He winked at her and he laid her gently on the king-sized bed. ‘That’s the title of chapter two.’

  It was a long and detailed chapter. There were passages Eve found agonising going, like when the pirate sampled the goddess, tasting every last inch of her except there, where she craved his detailed attentions the most, and then there were the passages that moved at what felt like breakneck speed, where he feasted on her until she was bucking on the bed.

  And even when she lay, still gasping, after her latest orgasm, the chapter didn’t end and he joined her in savouring the final few pages together until that final breathtaking climax.

  Outside the lights of Melbourne winked at her, the skies unusually clear, a heavy full moon hanging above the bridge over the Yarra.

  Inside the suite, Eve’s breathing slowly returned to normal as she savoured the feel of Leo’s arm lying pro-prietorially over her stomach as he lay face down alongside her, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted, his thick black hair mussed into bed-head perfection by her own hands. He wasn’t asleep, she knew, but it was a wonder given the energy he’d used tonight. Definitely a pirate, she thought. And very definitely a magic night. But it was late and magic nights had to end, just as goddesses had responsibilities too.

  Oh, my, he’d actually called her a goddess! And she felt that tiny winged creature launch itself for another lurching spin around her stomach.

  ‘I should go,’ she said, with a wistful sigh for the ill-fated beast before she returned to sensible Evelyn Carmichael again and considered the practicalities of not having a functioning hot water service. ‘Do you mind if I take a shower before I go?’

  And his eyes blinked open, the arm around her waist shifting, scooping higher to capture a breast. A smile played on his lips while he coaxed a nipple into unexpected responsiveness. ‘I’ve got a much better idea.’

  She swallowed. Surely it wasn’t possible? But still her body hummed into life at the thought. ‘Chapter three?’

  He nodded, his busy fingers hard at work on the other nipple, adding his hot mouth to the mix, guaranteeing the result. ‘The goddess returns to the sea only to find the pirate lurking in the depths, waiting to ambush her.’

  ‘That’s a long title.’

  ‘It’s a long chapter,’ he said, rolling off the bed and scooping her up into his arms. ‘In which case, we should get started.’

  An hour later Eve had bubbles up to her chin and warm jets massaging all those newly found muscles of hers she hadn’t realised would so appreciate the attention. From the bedroom came the sound of Leo’s voice on the phone as he arranged her car. In a moment she’d have to prise herself from the bath and shower off the bubbles but for the moment she lingered, her limbs heavy, feeling languorous and spoilt and thoroughly, thoroughly spent.

  It was eas
y to feel spoilt here, she thought, quietly reflecting on her opulent surroundings, committing them to memory as part of the experience. For if the size and scale of the suites had amazed her, the sheer lavishness of the bathroom had taken her breath away.

  Marble in muted tones of sun-ripened wheat and golden honey lined the floor and walls, the lighting low and warm and inviting, the spa and shower enclosure—a space as big as her entire bathroom at home—separated from the long marble vanity by heavy glass doors. It was utterly, utterly decadent.

  And if there hadn’t been enough bubbles, he’d found champagne and ripe, red strawberries to go with it. He’d turned what she’d intended simply as a shower into another erotic fantasy.

  What a night. Three chapters of his book, all of them different, every one of them a complete fantasy. If chapter one had been desperate and frenetic, and chapter two slow to the point of torture, chapter three had showed the pirate at his most playfully erotic best. The slip of oils on skin, the play of the jets on naked flesh and the sheer fun of discovering what lay beneath the foam.

  She closed her eyes, allowing herself just a few snatched seconds of imagining what it would be like if this was her life, all posh hotels with views of city lights and an attentive lover like Leo to make her feel the most special woman alive, with no worries about broken-down appliances and falling-down houses.

  But then there was Sam.

  And she felt guilty for even thinking of a world that didn’t include him—that couldn’t include him. For Sam was her life, whereas this was a fantasy that had no other course but to end and end soon.

  She slipped under the water one last time, letting her hair fan out around her head, relishing the big wide bath, before she sat up, the water sluicing from her body. No regrets, she told herself as she squeezed the water from her hair, she wouldn’t allow it. She’d made her choice. She would live with it. And whatever happened in her life after this, whatever her everyday suburban life might hold, she knew she would have this one secret night of passion to look back on.