His Final Bargain(19)

'I want you-I want you now.' He said it this time in English and it had exactly the same devastatingly sensual impact.

'I want you too.' It was part confession, part plea.

He splayed a hand through her hair, gripping her almost roughly as his  mouth came down on hers. It was a kiss that spoke of desperate longing,  of needs that had for too long gone unmet, of a man wanting a woman so  badly he could barely control his primitive response to her. It thrilled  Eliza to feel that level of desire in him because it so completely and  so utterly matched her own.

The stroke and glide of his tongue against hers set her senses aflame.  She undulated her hips against him, whimpering in delight as he in turn  growled deep in his throat and responded by pressing even harder against  her.

His hands moved over her body, skating over her breasts, leaving them  tingling and twitching in their wake. She wanted more. When had she not  wanted more from him? She wanted to feel his hands on her,  flesh-to-flesh, to feel their skin in warm and sensual contact.

Her hands went to the front of his shirt, pulling at it as if it was  nothing but a sheet of paper covering him. Buttons popped and a seam  tore but she didn't hold back. Her mouth went to every bit of hard  muscled flesh she uncovered. From the dish at the base of his neck just  below his Adam's apple, down his sternum, taking a sideways detour to  his flat dark male nipples, rolling the tip of her tongue over them in  turn, before going lower in search of his belly button and beyond.                       
       
           



       

'Wait.' The one word command was rough and low. 'Ladies first.'

A shiver ran over her. She knew what he was going to do. The  anticipation of it, the memory of it made her legs tremble like leaves  in a wind tunnel.

He picked her up in his arms, carrying her effortlessly to the sofa  inside his study. She felt the soft press of the cushions as he laid her  down, those dark eyes holding hers with the unmistakable message of  their sensual purpose, thrilling her from her tingling scalp to her  curling toes.

He came back over her, but only to shove her dress above her hips. One  of his hands peeled off her knickers, the slow but deliberate trail of  lace as he pulled them down over her thigh to her ankles, another  masterstroke of seduction in his considerable arsenal. She kicked off  the lace along with her shoes, snatching in a quick breath as he bent  his head to the swollen heart of her.

The intimacy of it should have appalled her given the current context of  their relationship, but somehow it didn't. It felt completely natural  for him to be touching her like this. To be touching and stroking her  body as if it were the most fascinating and delicately fragrant flower  he had ever seen.

'You are so beautiful.'

Oh, those words were like a symphony written only for her! She didn't  feel beautiful with anyone else. No one else could make her body sing  with such perfect harmony the way he did.

He took his time, ramping up her arousal to the point where she was sure  she was going to scream if he didn't give her that final stroke that  would send her careening into oblivion.

'Please … oh, please … ' The words came out part groan, part gasp.

'Say you want me.'

'I want you. I want you.' She was panting as if she had just run up a steep incline. 'I want you.'

'Tell me you want me like no other man.'

She dug her fingers like claws into the cushioned sofa, her hips bucking  as he continued his sensual torture. 'I want you more than anyone  else … Oh, God. Oh, God … ' Her orgasm splintered her senses into a  starburst of feeling. It rattled and shook her body like a ragdoll in a  madman's hands. It went on and on until she finally came out the other  side, limbless and spent and breathless.

Leo moved up her body and set to work on removing her dress and bra.  Eliza lifted her arms up like a child as he uncovered her flesh. She  sighed with bone-deep pleasure as he took her breasts in his hands.

How had she gone so long without this exquisite worship of her body? Her  flesh was alive with intense feeling. Shivers were still cascading down  her spine like a waterfall of champagne bubbles. The very hairs on her  head were still dancing on tiptoe. Her inner core was still pulsating  with the aftershocks of the cataclysmic eruption of ecstasy that had  rippled through it.

His hands gripped her hips once more as his body reared over hers.  Somehow he'd had the foresight to apply a condom. She vaguely recalled  him retrieving one from his wallet in his back pocket before he had  shucked his trousers off.

He kissed her again, his mouth hard and yet soft in turn. It was a  devastatingly seductive technique, yet another one he had mastered to  perfection. She felt his erection poised for entry against her. She  opened her legs for him, welcoming him with one of her hands pressed to  the taut and carved curve of his buttocks, the other behind his head,  pulling his mouth back down to hers as her ankles hooked around his  legs.

He surged into her with a groan that came from deep at the back of his  throat. It bordered on a rougher than normal entry but she welcomed it  with a groan of pleasure. He seemed to check himself and then started to  move a little more slowly, but she pushed him to increase his pace with  little encouraging gasps and whimpers and further pressure from her  hands pressing down on his buttocks.

She felt the rocking motion of his body within hers. She heard the  intervals of his breathing gradually increase. She felt the tension in  his muscles as they bunched up under the caress of her hands. The  friction of his body within hers sent off her senses into another  tailspin of anticipatory delight.

But still he wasn't intent on his own pleasure.

He was still focused on bringing about another delicious wave of hers  and brought his fingers down to touch her. The way he seemed to know how  much pressure and friction she needed to maximise her pleasure was the  final undoing of her. The continued thrusting of his body and the  delicate but magical ministration of his fingers were an  earth-shattering combination. She was catapulted into another crazily  spinning vortex of feeling that robbed her of all sense of time and  place.

It was all feeling-feeling that was centred solely in her body.                       
       
           



       

But as she was coming down from the heights of human pleasure her mind  resumed enough focus to register his powerful release. It sent another  shockwave of pleasure through her body. She had felt every moment of  that powerful pumping surge as he lost himself. There was something  about that total loss of control that moved her deeply. It had always  been this way between them. A mind-blowing combustion of lust and  longing, and yet something else that was less easily definable …

As she moved her hands to the front of his body she noticed the pale  circle on her bare left ring finger. It was a stark reminder of her  commitment elsewhere.

Her stomach sank in despair.

She wasn't free.

She wasn't free.

She pushed against his chest without meeting his gaze. 'I want to get up.'

He held her down with a gentle but firm press of his hand on her left shoulder. 'Not so fast, cara. What's wrong?'

Eliza couldn't look at him. Wouldn't look at him. She stared at the  peppery stubble on the bulge of his Adam's apple instead. 'This should  never have happened.'

He took her chin between his finger and thumb and forced her to meet his gaze. 'Why is that?'

Her eyes smarted with the tears she resolved she would not shed in front of him. 'How can you ask that?'

His gaze quietly assessed hers. 'You still feel guilty about the natural impulses you have always felt around me?'

She lowered her lashes, chewing at her lip until she tasted the metallic  sourness of blood. 'They might be natural but they're not appropriate.'

'Because you're still intent on tying yourself to a man who can't give you what you want or need?'

She continued to valiantly squeeze back the tears, still not looking at  him. 'Please, let's not go over this again. I'm here with you now. I'm  doing what you asked and paid me to do. Please don't ask me to do any  more than that.'

He released a gusty sigh and got up, dressing again with an economy of  movement Eliza privately envied. She felt exposed, not just  physically-even though she had somehow managed to drag her discarded  dress over her nakedness-but emotionally, and that was far more  terrifying.

'Contrary to what you might think, I didn't pay you to sleep with me.'  His voice was deep and rough, the words sounding as if they had been  dragged along a gravel pathway. 'That is entirely separate from your  position here as nanny to my daughter.'

She gave him a pointed look. 'Both are temporary appointments, are they not?'

His eyes were deep and dark and unfathomable. 'That depends.'