‘Neither do I,’ she sliced in breathlessly.
Dark eyes smouldered brilliant gold over her flushed face. ‘Tonight we break the rules—’
‘No...’ she framed feverishly and then he kissed her again, his hard mouth stealing her protest with a passionate intensity she could not resist.
He guided her through the crush of party-goers with a word here, a wave there, smoothly ensuring that nobody intercepted them and slowed their progress. She mounted the stairs by his side, ever so slightly dizzy, lower limbs a little clumsy and, away from the music, the noise and the bright lights, suddenly conscious that she was not quite sober. How much wine had she drunk? And she had not eaten much at dinner, she recalled vaguely. Drinking on an empty tummy after that huge brandy Nessa had pressed on her—how foolish could a woman be? But the burn of that scorching kiss was still on her swollen mouth, firing an unbearable ache between her legs and destroying her self-discipline.
A lean brown hand closing round hers, he pulled her into the bedroom she had vacated earlier. His hands cradled her face, glittering dark eyes heavily lidded with desire. ‘Once we get back to London this didn’t happen. It will be our secret,’ he told her arrogantly.
‘It’s not going to happen,’ she faltered, taken aback by that ruthless assurance that warned her there would be no future beyond the next dawn. ‘I’m not cheap—’
His fingertips grazed her delicate jawbone. ‘You want me.’
Madly, insanely, crazily, she acknowledged, still fighting to think straight.
One night, Bastian was bargaining with himself, one rare night of self-indulgence that smashed his usual boundaries. She wasn’t cheap? He had got that unsavoury message, wished he hadn’t and wanted the strength of mind to evict her from his bedroom but he could no longer fight his devouring hunger for her. He pulled off his jacket with impatient hands and ripped loose his collar before he reached for her and crushed her succulent mouth below his again. Gathering her up to him, he brought her down on the bed, stretching down a hand to flip off her high heels.
His hard, demanding mouth and the plunging stab of his tongue were like a drug Emmie craved, a need as powerful and natural as taking a next breath. In a minute she promised herself that she would stop him, call a halt, assert logic, but with every demanding kiss he demolished her mental misgivings. She was flat on the bed, rejoicing in his weight, which seemed to answer some of the longing clawing at her, when he lifted her up and ran down the zip of her dress.
‘Bastian...we—’ mustn’t, she intended to say but he enveloped her in the folds of her dress as he trailed it off over her head.
‘We must,’ he contradicted, second-guessing her words while burying his carnal mouth against the pulse beating raggedly at her collarbone, licking the salt from her skin with a wicked tongue, tracing a trail down to the shallow valley between her small high breasts, fingers already dealing with her bra, everything moving so fast she couldn’t keep track of it or call a pause.#p#分页标题#e#
‘I want to be sensible,’ she argued frantically, spooked by the out-of-control feeling she was experiencing.
‘Sensible?’ he exclaimed with incredulity, straddling her prone length to rip off his shirt with positive violence, buttons flying in all directions. ‘There’s nothing sensible about feeling like this. Some actions are driven by instinct, koukla mou.’
Either instinct or appreciation kept her still, her dazed blue gaze welded to the smooth muscular planes of his magnificent brown torso. Heat hummed at the heart of her and the ache stirred again stronger than ever. Her bra was gone and she hadn’t even noticed it going, was suddenly much more aware of the burn of his eyes over her bare breasts, the devastating touch of expert fingers rubbing against the unbearably swollen tips. Her spine bowed, her body reaching upward in a helpless arch as long fingers grazed down her leg and came to a sudden stop to retrace their path over the roughened stretch of skin he had detected.
‘What’s this?’ he breathed, glancing down.
Emmie froze, more naked and vulnerable in that moment than she would have been had she wakened to find herself walking nude down a street, and she turned paper pale. ‘I had surgery...years ago...there was something wrong with my leg,’ she explained jerkily. ‘You see, I’ve got some ugly scars. I’m not perfect—’
‘I don’t want or need perfect,’ Bastian declared hungrily, running a caressing but unconcerned hand over the marks he had discovered.
‘But I do want you,’ he breathed thickly, eyes hot gold below sooty lashes. ‘I’m as hard as a rock.’