By Request Collection Part 2. Natalie Anderson
quickly aside as a cloud of steam gushed out.
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that your dishes are clean,’ he remarked dryly. He was down on his haunches now, pulling the lower basket towards him, and Grace felt her gaze drawn to the way the dark-grey fabric of his trousers strained across his thighs as he inspected the shiny interior of her dishwasher for any obvious damage.
‘It’s been going all this time?’ It was an amazed little utterance, dragged from a throat suddenly dry from a riveting sexual awareness.
‘Seems like the programmer’s stuck,’ he diagnosed authoritatively. He was pushing the basket back in, but stopped in mid-action. ‘Hardly a load worth putting on, was it?’ he commented, noting the sparsity of dishes in both baskets.
Grace made a small gesture with her shoulders. ‘Believe it or not, I don’t spend all my time in this flat cooking.’
‘Obviously not.’ His speculative smile left little doubt as to what he thought she spent most of her time doing. Probably entertaining a steady stream of boyfriends! she thought hopelessly. ‘But that doesn’t alter the fact that you’re not eating enough.’ His eyes, skimming over her willowy figure beneath her black executive suit, admonished as much as they admired. ‘Worrying about something, Grace?’ The sound of the dishwasher door clicking closed only added to an air of menace Grace could almost touch as he got to his feet, so that she was far too affected by him to answer. ‘We’re going to have to do something about that, aren’t we?’ he said.
Aware of the worktop against the small of her back, Grace swallowed, feeling absurdly trapped. The way he was looking at her with that smouldering regard—as though he knew that the reason she couldn’t eat or sleep properly was because she was so wound up over him—left her in no doubt, after that last remark, as to what he was going to do about it.
One of the sleeves of his suit was pushed up, exposing a good deal of immaculate white cuff. Those loose strands of hair that fell tantalisingly over his forehead even though he’d raked them back were curling damply from the steam. He looked flushed, dishevelled and incredibly sexy.
‘Come here, Grace,’ he urged softly.
SHE didn’t want to. She wanted to ask him to leave. But his eyes were as compelling as his voice had been and, while her lips wouldn’t move, her feet had no such reservations.
Fuelled by an inner fire that his masculinity had stoked, as much a slave to her desire for him now as that teenager had been all those years ago, she moved towards him, drawn by an insistence stronger than her will, stronger even than all her instincts of self-survival.
When she was but half a pace away he reached out and let his fingers curl around the nape of her neck, closing those extra inches as he brought his head down to hers.
Surprisingly, his lips grazed one corner of her mouth, so gently that Grace sucked in her breath from the exquisite tenderness of his action.
His breath was warm and so feather-light against the curve of her cheek that the sensuality of it sent shivers along her spine. She turned her head, her mouth aching for contact with his. He laughed softly, denying it, drawing a small, plaintive sound from her lips.
‘Why rush it?’ he whispered against her ear, and even the deep timbre of his voice was arousing her—as he knew it would, she realised helplessly, lured deeper into the sensual heaven he was creating for her.
With one hand resting against his shirt beneath his open jacket, Grace could feel the warmth of him and the steady rhythm of his heart. His biceps flexed under fingers that were locked tensely onto his immaculate sleeve just below his shoulder. Even the cut and elegance of his clothes couldn’t disguise his latent strength, the whipcord power of his body.
‘Seth…’ she murmured as wanting became a need that spread like bushfire, radiating excitement, heat and tension along her veins.
‘Pleading?’ he mocked softly. But then he was covering her mouth with his own, his arms coming fully around her, pulling her into the hard angles of his taut, aroused body, his groan lost in the warm cavern that was yielding to his sensual plunder now.
No man had ever made her feel like this, Grace acknowledged, her arms sliding up around his neck. No one! Only this man! And now she knew why all her potential relationships with other men had failed. Because after Seth she had wanted to feel like this with someone else, just once, and it had never happened for her. Never in eight long years.
The scent of him was intoxicating as her eager fingers slid into the dark strength of his hair, locking him to her to prolong the kiss, wanting it never to stop.
When he did it was only to allow his lips to follow the scented column of her throat, forcing her head back as her body reacted with a will of its own, arching, yielding, guiding him along its secret paths to unleash the pleasure to which only he had ever possessed the key.
Somehow he had tugged open her blouse and pushed aside the scalloped lace of her white bra, and as his mouth closed over the erect, tingling peak of her breast the pleasure spilled out in a spiral of throbbing need.
‘Seth…’
She shouldn’t be doing this! There was a frantic little voice inside her head: he despises you! she tried telling herself. But her feeble attempts to remind herself were lost in the delirious heat of all that he was doing to her as she helped him remove her jacket and blouse, and felt him release the button on her skirt and draw down the zip like it was second nature to him to be undressing her.
He murmured some appreciative sound as the clinging little garment slid to the floor, followed by the bra he had unclasped, so that she was standing there in only her white satin string and sheer black hold-ups.
Later she would regret this, she knew, but for now what did it matter what he thought about her? All that mattered was that she was in his arms, this man who had been born to be her lover, because he was right, she accepted with a painful intensity. He was the only man she wanted. The only man she had ever wanted.
His hands caressed her breasts, his slightly callused palms an excruciating pleasure as they teased and tormented the pale, swollen aureoles.
Wild for him, drugged with desire, she tugged at the buttons of his shirt, allowing him to help her in removing his jacket, dragging his shirt out of his waistband.
The feel of his taut, warm skin as he pulled her back against his hair-roughened body sent pulsing sensations rocketing through her.
Her breathing laboured, Grace caught his groan of need, her excitement a stifling heat that held her rigid as he moved to allow his tongue to travel down and down along her eager body.
He was on his knees, his long fingers caressing the gentle curve of her buttocks, playing across the smooth, pale flesh above the black lacy tops of her stockings.
She moved convulsively and he caught her to him, his mouth hot against the core of her femininity beneath the damp scented satin of her string.
She was on that beach again, paralysed by the depth of her wanting, her body moving of its own accord, for him to douse the fire he had aroused in the only way it could be doused.
‘Oh, mercy…’ He shuddered violently against her and the next instant he was lifting her up, finding his way instinctively to the room with the big double bed.
Somehow they were lying there naked together and those hands caressing her body were as familiar as a pathway home.
She jerked against him, eager for his possession, but he was determined to make her wait, treating her to a practised and abandoned eternity of consummate love-play, just as he had promised he would.
A long time later when she was damp and sobbing with desire, thinking she would die of wanting if he didn’t take her soon, gently he parted her thighs