Bastian saw Emmie walking towards him and experienced a rare instant of shock. She was a vision of golden loveliness and sophisticated elegance in tailored cropped trousers, sky-high heels and a soft clingy top. He tensed. Perfect for the role, he told himself sharply; nobody would doubt the veracity of his relationship with a woman who resembled a screen goddess with her simply amazing face, long lazy walk and incredibly shapely legs. OK, shorn of disguise and in the right clothing, Emmie Marshall was absolutely gorgeous, but he was not personally affected, he assured himself on the back of the reminder that he had always preferred small, curvy brunettes. But the cut of his trousers still felt too neat and his strong jawline clenched hard. A little reaction was normal, he conceded grudgingly. He would be dead from the neck down if he didn’t react to Emmie at all and didn’t wonder if that luscious pink-tinted mouth would taste as good as it looked. Only at the last possible moment did he finally appreciate that she was being pursued by a couple of men waving cameras and he could not work out why he had not noticed them first. He signalled his bodyguards to protect her from the intrusion.
‘Emmie...’ he breathed.
‘Mr Christou,’ Emmie replied glacially, resisting with all her might the sheer raw charisma of Sebastiano Christou, sheathed in a dark designer suit perfectly tailored to his lean powerful frame, his jawline darkened by faint stubble, heavily lidded dark golden eyes fringed by amazing black lashes resting on her like a gun to a target. Bull’s eye, she thought maniacally, a burst of heat warming her pelvis, breasts high and taut, her entire body positively leaping into a terrifying state of electrically charged sexual awareness.
‘Bastian...’ he traded drily a split second before he reached for her.
Emmie was so startled by the manoeuvre that she froze like a rabbit in headlights. She had convinced herself that she had nothing to worry about with Bastian Christou. After all, he wasn’t going to be getting much time alone with her at a big family wedding. Not only was she not his type, being blonde and about a foot too tall, but he also only wanted her on his arm for show. And then he kissed her and her every conviction that she was safe fell at the first hurdle.
He caressed the corner of her mouth with his firm male lips and she tingled all over, every sense awakening. Her lips parted and then he surged in like an invasion force and took shameless advantage. It was an explosive kiss and she was lost in it as unfamiliar excitement blasted through her slender body with every delving dart of his skilful tongue. It was agonisingly intimate, much more so than any kiss had ever been for her. Little tremors of shocked reaction quivered through her, the inner burn at her core exercising an almost unbearable ache as he set her back from him with strong hands, eyes so dark they glittered like polished jet in his hard face. Her legs felt dislocated from the rest of her body and that ache, that ache she dimly recognised as unfulfilled desire, clawed cruelly at her. For a split second she wanted to snatch him back into her arms and conduct a wild experiment on him. It didn’t matter that he was her boss or that they were in a public place. All that was driving her in that moment was a fierce need to feel that same wild conscience-free excitement again and see where it would take her.
‘I wasn’t expecting actual ph-physical contact,’ Emmie told him shakily while in the background a man with a camera argued volubly with one of Bastian’s security men.
‘You can’t be that naïve. We’re supposed to be lovers. Anyway, what’s a kiss worth?’ Bastian derided with an elegant shrug of dismissal.
On her terms it had been more than a kiss; it had been the kind of intoxication she felt as if she had been waiting for all her life. But that was a silly immature thought more worthy of a teenage fantasist than a grown-up, she scolded herself, fighting to stay cool and in control. A kiss was just a kiss: he was right. And that he should know how to do it so well was hardly surprising with his reputation. Even less surprising was that she should finally lust after a man in earnest. It was only proof that she was a normal breathing woman, nothing she needed to agonise about...at least as long as she didn’t surrender to the temptation.
Bastian was still seething with himself as they boarded his private jet, hostile eyes veiled, jawline clenched, handsome mouth compressed. Diavelos, she was a freaking escort, admittedly not a hooker, but he remained deeply suspicious as to exactly what following such a profession entailed. Obviously pleasing men went hand in hand with the role, so was it really a revelation that she turned him on hard and fast? No, to cope with such a job she had to be a practised flirt and seductress and confident she could handle a man. Well, there was no way that she was going to get the chance to handle him! He had principles, standards and hell would freeze over before he went to bed with a hired escort!