Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Sinful Proposals: Seduced into Her Boss's Service / Wearing the De Angelis Ring / The Surprise De Angelis Baby. CATHY WILLIAMS
then, had she toughened up? Turned into the sort of cynical career woman who had no time for love and romance?
She’d thought she’d given up on having the sort of capacity for a physical response that was necessary for any sort of relationship, but she was wrong, wasn’t she? Turned out she did have the capacity for a physical response...
So was she kidding herself that she never thought about the future and what it might hold for her with a guy? Should the right guy come along one day?
If Stefano was warning her off getting ideas about him, as if that would ever happen in a million years, then to tell him that, for all the chaos and heartache of her background, she still believed in the enduring power of love would be a mistake.
He’d get cold feet and run a mile and—why kid herself?— she didn’t want that.
‘You don’t have to warn me off,’ she said huskily, daring to step into the unknown and feeling a shiver of molten excitement, ‘because, like I said, the last thing I would want would be involvement...’ She laughed, heady with the sensation that she was no longer talking to the formidable, feared and respected Stefano Gunn, the man who could make heads of finance quake in their shoes, whose ability to close deals and predict the stock market swings was legendary, who could command immediate attention with the snap of his fingers...
She was talking to a man who fancied her and right now she was no longer the junior in a law firm in the presence of the toughest guy in the concrete jungle. They were both adults working their way towards sleeping with one another.
It was...thrilling. It made her realise how predictable her life was. She had spent so long making sure to impose order and control, so that she would never have a runaway future, that somehow the present had become lost in the process, as had fun.
‘And especially involvement with a guy like you,’ she completed with utter honesty.
Stefano, relieved as he was to know that they were both singing from the same song sheet, was a little irked by the speed with which she had established her distance and he was particularly irked by her statement that there was no way she could become involved with someone like him.
Of course he could understand it. If she happened to be someone on the lookout for a committed relationship. But she wasn’t and he believed her. Experiences shaped people and hers had been frightful.
‘Because I would be unable to return whatever involvement you wanted?’
Sunny laughed and then looked at him with narrowed, amused, speculative eyes. ‘You’re really arrogant, aren’t you...?’
Stefano frowned, taken aback by her blunt criticism. It was rare for him to meet a woman who wasn’t either intimidated by him or else desperate to impress him. With the exception of his mother.
‘I don’t mean to be offensive,’ Sunny hurriedly expanded, ‘but there’s no way I could ever get involved with someone as rich and powerful and driven as you...’
‘Since when are money and ambition turn-offs?’ he asked incredulously.
‘When I was thirteen,’ she mused, looking back into the past, ‘I got a scholarship to go to one of the top boarding schools in the country. I met lots of girls there who...came from gilded circles, probably just like you. They talked very loudly in cut-glass accents and laughed a lot and flirted like mad with all the boys. What they would have wanted to end up with would have been someone rich and powerful and driven. If I ever find my soulmate, he probably won’t have much money and he’ll be kind and thoughtful and measured...’ And he’ll have to be able to do what you’re doing now...he’ll have to be able to fire me up until I feel like I can’t breathe for the excitement...
‘Forgive me while I stifle a yawn.’
Sunny wanted to be angry at the casual way he had dismissed her heartfelt dreams but when she caught those dark, amused eyes she felt her lips twitch.
‘Thoughtful and kind can be very sexy traits.’ She lowered her eyes, while the heat of their mutual chemistry sizzled around them.
‘Maybe,’ Stefano murmured. ‘But in the meanwhile...’ He tugged her to her feet and she bumped against his hard, muscular body.
She knew this was what it must feel like when swooning women said that they went up in flames.
Her whole body was burning, on fire. Her nipples, scraping against her bra, felt insanely sensitive and the dampness between her legs was hot and slick, making her want to reach beneath her underwear so that she could rub herself out of her wet discomfort.
‘Yes?’ she squeaked, as far removed from the efficient and sexless professional she assumed herself to be as was possible.
‘Let me show you what someone raw and elemental can do for you...’
‘WHAT ABOUT FLORA?’ It sounded like a last-ditch chance to back off and Stefano looked at her with a shuttered expression, as though he could read straight into her mind and pull the thoughts from her head.
‘Cold feet?’ he asked, without bothering to beat around the bush.
‘No!’
‘Sure about that?’
‘One hundred per cent sure.’
‘Even though I’m not the sort of person you should get involved with?’
‘This isn’t about involvement, is it?’ Sunny could scarcely believe she was saying this stuff. She’d done a complete U-turn in the space of a heartbeat. She would never have imagined for a second that lust could be this powerful—powerful enough to bring all her well-laid plans crashing to the ground.
But she was safe emotionally and for that she was grateful. Her body might be clamouring for adventure but her heart was still switched on enough to know that the real guy for her would not be Stefano Gunn or anyone like him.
‘It’s just...a one-night stand...’ She thought of her fumbling, embarrassing forays into sex, when she had been going out with John. If she’d had the slightest amount of experience she would have known that the missing link had been...this. The missing link had been the wild beating of her heart, the aching of her body, the searing excitement at the thought of being touched...
If she’d had the slightest amount of experience, she would have realised that what made perfect sense on paper didn’t necessarily translate into perfect sense in practice.
She was here, barely able to breathe for the excitement, and she knew that this would have to be part of the equation when she met any man she felt she could have a long-term relationship with.
It wasn’t just about personality but it was about this as well, without which the personality on its own didn’t stand much of a chance.
They were heading up the staircase, softly and quickly, her hand in his. At the top of the staircase, the broad, airy corridor went right for the wing of rooms in which Flora had her bedroom suite and left where Stefano had his rooms.
In her mind’s eye, she could picture his huge super-king-size bed and her heart skipped a beat.
She knew that Flora would be sound asleep. Once her head hit the pillow, she slept the deep sleep of a child but on the one occasion when she had had a broken night and Sunny had asked her, the following evening, what she had done, Flora had simply said that she had read until she had fallen asleep again.
His room was in darkness but, instead of switching on the overhead light, he turned on the lamp by the bay window, leaving the curtains open so that weak moonlight filtered into the room.
In the grip of nervous tension, Sunny hovered by the door, which he had quietly shut behind them.
She thought that she might have forgotten how to have sex. Was that possible?