The Royal House of Niroli Collection. Кейт Хьюит
and chuckle with amusement.
‘I think I must have jumped the gun a bit. Maybe I should have kept that for our second date.’
‘I can’t believe you said that…’ She glanced around to see if anyone had seen her mortifying moment, but to her relief no one had appeared to, or if they had they were too polite to stare. She brought her gaze back to his. ‘You’re joking…right?’
He leaned forward again and took one of her hands in the warmth of his, his dark gaze holding hers. ‘What if I wasn’t?’
She pulled her hand out of his, her mouth tightening with reproach. ‘Please don’t make fun of me. I might not have the experience of other women my age, but I’m not a complete fool.’
‘I had no intention of making fun of you. It kind of slipped out. I didn’t even know I was going to say it until the words were out of my mouth—honestly.’
She gave him a hardened little glare. ‘I know what you’re up to but it won’t work with me. You’re only here for a month and you’re looking for a playmate to pass the time.’ She got to her feet and thrust her napkin on the table. ‘Go and find someone else to warm your bed. I’m not interested.’
Alex gave the waiter a handful of notes and brushed past the other diners to follow her, finally catching up to her a couple of blocks down the street. ‘Amelia, listen to me.’
‘Go away.’
‘Damn it, will you stop walking so fast and listen to me for a minute?’
She swung around to face him, her chest heaving, her eyes flashing with green and brown sparks of fury. ‘You really take the prize for the biggest ego. I thought my first lover was bad, but you surpass him in spades.’
He stood watching her without speaking, a small smile tipping up the edges of his mouth.
‘Stop looking at me like that.’ She glared at him crossly.
‘Like what?’
‘You keep smiling at me.’
‘You make me want to smile.’
‘I don’t want you to smile at me.’
‘Then you’re going to have to stop doing that.’
‘Doing what?’
‘That little thing you do with your mouth.’
She scowled at him. ‘What little thing?’
He took her hands in his and pulled her up against him.
‘That pursed-lipped thing. You do it all the time. It drives me crazy. It makes me want to kiss you.’
‘That’s…that’s ridiculous,’ she said, staring at his mouth.
‘Is it?’ He pressed a hand to the small of her back and brought her even closer.
‘O-of course it is…You hardly know me…’
‘I know. It’s never happened like this before.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re just saying that to tempt me into allowing you to kiss me.’
‘Is it working?’
‘Is…is what working?’ She was still staring at his mouth, her gaze mesmerised by its sensual contours, made all the more captivating by the gentle curve of his smile.
He lowered his head until his lips were so close to hers they almost grazed them as he spoke. ‘I’ve wanted to kiss you from the first moment I saw you on my back fence.’
Amelia knew if she moved her lips to form a single word the battle to keep him at bay would be lost. She stood, totally transfixed, her body tingling all over at the feel of his pressed so closely, his maleness against her femaleness, his muscular strength against the yielding softness of hers.
But then, almost without her realising she was doing it, her tongue sneaked out to moisten her lips and involuntarily brushed against his bottom lip, sending sparks of electricity right through her.
‘You really shouldn’t have done that, little elf.’ This time his lips did graze hers, his warm wine-flavoured breath mingling with her quickly expelled one.
‘I—I didn’t mean to do that…’ she breathed, her lips buzzing with sensation as they moved against his.
He pressed a soft, barely touching kiss to her mouth. ‘Sure you did.’
‘No…’ She kissed him back, softly, shyly. ‘No…no…I didn’t…’
He smiled against her lips, making them instantly vibrate with intense longing. ‘You’re lying to me. You really want to kiss me. I can tell.’
‘No…it’s you that wants to kiss me.’
He lifted his head a fraction, just enough to meet her gaze, his eyes dark and gleaming with desire. ‘You’re right. That’s exactly what I want to do.’
Amelia watched as his gaze dipped to her mouth, the thick black lashes fanning down over his eyes, his head coming down…
‘Wait!’ She placed her flattened palm to his chest.
He lifted his head to look down at her. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘We’re standing in the middle of the street,’ she whispered as some people strolled by.
‘Are we?’
‘You know we are.’
He looked down at her mouth again. ‘I forgot about that.’
She gave a small, embarrassed laugh. ‘Just as well I reminded you. We could have made complete fools of ourselves.’
‘I guess we’ll have to do this some other time, then.’
‘I guess.’
He held her gaze for a long moment without speaking.
‘I’m sorry about dinner,’ she began awkwardly. ‘I shouldn’t have rushed out of the restaurant like that.’
‘We can always go back in and start over,’ he suggested. ‘I’m sure the waiter won’t mind. Besides, I’m starving.’
‘So…shall we do it?’ she asked after a tiny pause.
‘Do what?’ he said, looking at her mouth again.
‘Go and have dinner.’
‘Oh, I thought you were talking about the other thing.’
She wrinkled her nose at him. ‘What other thing?’
‘This other thing,’ he said, and before she could do a thing to prepare herself his mouth came down and set fire to hers.
CHAPTER SIX
AMELIA felt the full-throttle passion of Alex’s kiss in every nerve and cell of her body, leaving her starved senses reeling. His tongue was slow and languorous at first, but then as if fuelled by his growing desire it became more demanding, drawing hers into a mutual sexy tango that sent lightning bolts of feeling to her toes and back. She could feel his reaction to her against her stomach, the rapid thickening of his body reminding her of how very powerful human desire was and how easily it could slip out of one’s control.
She fought against her own response but her body seemed to have a mind of its own, unleashing a wild and uncontrollable urge to feel more and more of his touch. It made her press closer and closer against his hardness, her breasts swelling as if reaching out to him for his intimate attention, her skin prickling with the need to feel his body move and slide against hers.
She felt the moistening of her feminine core where the pulse of desire was already drumming a primitive beat low and deep inside her, her whole body humming with an escalating need she had never experienced