Harlequin Presents January 2015 Box Set 3 of 4(88)

Mesmerised, Alice leaned towards him and half-closed her eyes. His cool lips against hers sent an explosion through her. She slid trembling fingers through his hair and caressed his neck. She could hardly believe what she was doing.

Was this really her? She wasn’t a risk taker. Her life had been too unsteady for her to nurture the sort of devil-may-care attitude that encouraged spontaneous, careless behaviour. She was cautious, careful...

Yet she knew that she was about to take the biggest risk of her life in doing this and she didn’t want to stop.

She kissed him slowly, drowning in the sensuality of his tongue melding with hers. As she kissed him, eyes closed, she blindly traced the contours of his beautiful face with her fingers. The wrap had slid off her shoulders and his hands were moving along her collarbone.

He drew back and she looked at him, still dazed from sensations she had never felt before.

‘Undress for me, Alice...and don’t tell me that you can’t. Turn around. I’ll unzip you.’

‘I’ve never done a striptease before.’

‘I’ll show you how, in that case.’ He stood up and began undressing. Very slowly, watching her as she watched him, her mouth half-open, fascination oozing from every pore.

Did it get better than this? Gabriel couldn’t remember the last time he had been this turned on. She had the star-struck expression of a kid in a candy shop and it went to his head faster than a dose of adrenaline.

When his shirt was off, he began unzipping his trousers, and he grinned when she half-looked away, then looked back, then looked away again and finally returned her riveted gaze to his semi-clad body.

He was down to his boxers—dark-striped, silk boxers. Alice thought she might pass out. He had the highly toned body of an athlete: broad shoulders and a muscular torso that tapered down to a washboard-flat stomach and lean hips. Even in the most unforgiving of lights, he would still be beautiful.

Nerves gripped her.

What would he think of her? Was she opening herself up to humiliation? He might have waxed lyrical about finding her attractive, but it wouldn’t do to forget that he went for small, voluptuous women with big breasts.

He didn’t take off the boxers. Instead, he sat back down on the sofa and said with a wicked grin, ‘Have I set an acceptable benchmark?’

Alice unzipped her dress herself. It was a long zip and it slid smoothly apart. She took a deep breath and then un-looped first one shoulder, then the other.

Another deep breath then it was off, sliding to the ground, the cool air hitting her bare breasts. He had looked at her with gleaming self-confidence when he had removed his clothes. She had her eyes shut until she heard him warmly, unsteadily tell her to open them.

The gentleness in his voice was like the waving of a magic wand and in that instant she shed her nerves as smoothly and as easily as she had shed her beautiful Cinderella dress.

She walked towards him wearing only her lacy pink panties and breathed in sharply as his hands settled on her hips and he sat up so that he could trail delicate kisses over her flat stomach.

She might not be a curvy Marilyn Monroe but she really turned him on. She could feel it in the way his hands shook ever so slightly and the way his breathing was just a little uncontrolled. Just for a brief window in time, her big, powerful boss was not the man who ruled the world but someone very human, someone driven by responses he couldn’t tame, and she had done that. Her self-confidence soared.

‘You’re beautiful,’ she heard him breathe.

She gripped his sinewy shoulders as he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties and tugged them down. She was completely naked and she didn’t want to run for cover.

Two fumbling encounters with Alan before being ditched for a sexier model had left Alice with a punishing lack of self-confidence. If someone had told her that she would be able to do this—to stand in front of one of the sexiest men she could ever hope to meet and not feel embarrassed at her body—she would have laughed in disbelief. But that was exactly what she was doing now.

He parted her thighs with his hand and she curled her fingers into his hair and gasped as he traced the folds of her womanhood with his tongue. When he slipped it into her moistness, her legs almost gave way. The pleasure was unbearable.

This was refined torture as he teased her, bringing her to dizzy heights before allowing her to subside. She was wet, throbbing, aching from wanting more.

He lifted her onto the bed and then laid her down and looked at her.

Her body was slim and graceful. Her breasts were just the right size. Her hair was like spun silk. He stepped out of his boxers. He was so hard for her that it was going to be a challenge to stop himself from doing the unthinkable; he knew that if she just touched him there he would release his seed like a teenager with no control.