by Penny Jordan
‘That was Jules’s idea.’ Carly smiled.
‘Yeah, great—and cool, too. We’ve had the goodie bags made out of the same fabric!’
Carly nodded her head. Using the magazine’s past covers as a basis for the design theme of the event had been the result of a brainstorming session held between Lucy, Jules and herself when they had first been approached to pitch for this event.
Getting a canapé menu organised that would translate into plates of food put together in the magazine’s house colours had proved to be a major headache, though, with several chefs refusing the commission before Carly had had the bright idea of getting one of the top catering colleges to take it on as a showcase for the talents of their students.
She was just keeping her fingers crossed that the results would be as impressive as the sample plates they had seen photographs of earlier in the year.
‘And it may sound kinda silly, but I’ve always had a thing about Italian men—’
‘I’m sorry—I have to go.’
The young woman, who had spent the best part of the last fifteen minutes congratulating herself on having got Ricardo’s exclusive attention, just about managed not to stamp her expensive heel down into the turf as he cut through her breathless words and started to walk away. Her chagrin gave way to resentment as she saw that he had left her to go to someone else—a woman who was standing with a group of caterers, of all things. Grudgingly she acknowledged that the white linen trousers her competitor was wearing did do full justice to legs that, as the male sex would have it, went all the way up to her armpits.
Carly smiled her thanks at the team leaders of the hired catering staff. It was nearly nine in the evening and most of the guests had left. Most, but not all. Not, for instance, the baby blonde whom she had seen clinging fragilely to Ricardo’s arm earlier in the afternoon, whilst she had been talking to a trio of famous British fashionista sisters whom she knew, in a roundabout sort of way, via mutual contacts in London.
The clients had just told her how pleased they were with the event, and her New York opposite number had said that she knew her agency would want to do business with Prêt a Party again.
All in all, a successful event. A successful event but not, so far she was concerned, a personally successful or mood-enhancing few hours. But then she was not here for her own benefit, was she? Carly reminded herself, as she dismissed the waiting staff and wondered how long it would be before she could reasonably suggest to Ricardo that they leave.
Two men—executives from a big New York PR agency to whom she had been introduced earlier—were approaching her. She forced her lips to widen in what she hoped looked like a genuine professional smile.
‘Good event,’ one of them told her approvingly. ‘Harvey thought it was real neat—didn’t you, Harv?’
‘Yeah,’ the second one agreed. ‘Real neat!’
Ricardo increased the pace of his stride. Every time he gave in to his need to look for her Carly was surrounded by other men. And he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one little bit!
‘Sorry to break up the party,’ he announced untruthfully now, as he reached the trio.
Immediately the two men fell back, leaving an empty space at Carly’s side, which Ricardo promptly filled. As he did so he deliberately stood so that he was blocking out the other men—and anyone else who might have wanted to approach Carly.
‘Have you seen everything you want to see?’ Carly asked him brightly. All afternoon she had been reminding herself that she was supposed to be making sure that Ricardo was so impressed with Prêt a Party’s skills that he offered them a contract.
Ricardo was tempted to tell her bluntly and in explicit detail that she was what he most wanted to see—preferably lying naked on his bed, with that look in her eyes that said she wanted him like crazy.
Instead he nodded his head tersely and asked, ‘How soon can you be ready to leave?’
Her New York counterpart had already assured her that there was no need for her to stay, and she had spoken with the clients.
‘I’m ready now.’
‘Fine. Let’s go, then.’
Carly didn’t really want to move. Ricardo was standing right next to her, and if she turned towards him now they would be standing body to body…like lovers…
‘What’s wrong? Missing the attention of your new friends? Want me to call them back?’
Instead of turning towards him, Carly took a step back.
‘No, I don’t,’ she told him quietly. ‘And as for what’s wrong—I was just wishing that I didn’t ache so much for you to take me to bed!’
She turned away from him and started to walk towards the helipad, trembling inside from the shock of actually having told him what she was thinking and how she felt. Her face and body both felt equally hot, but for very different reasons. Her face was burning because of her embarrassment, but her body was burning because what she had said to him was the truth.
Ricardo caught up with her before she had taken more than three steps, his hand on her arm halting her progress until he could stand four-square in front of her.
‘Is that an admission or is it an invitation?’ he asked silkily.
Carly forced herself to look up at him, and to hold his gaze as she responded calmly, ‘Both!’
Ricardo couldn’t even remember how many women had propositioned him over the years, never mind count them, but none of them had ever spoken to him like this—simply and directly, admitting and owning their need for him.
‘That’s quite a change of heart! Why?’
‘I suddenly realised how much I would regret it if I went to my grave without knowing you.’
‘Knowing me?’
His voice was cynically mocking as he moved aside so that they could continue to walk together to the helipad.
‘Without having sex with you,’ Carly corrected herself steadily. ‘Obviously it goes without saying that it is only sex that we both want.’
‘Less than twenty-four hours ago you were outraged because I’d paid for your clothes. Now you’re offering to have sex with me?’
‘I was furious because I felt what you’d done implied that I could be bought. Choosing freely to have sex with you is completely different.’
‘Indeed. Didn’t it occur to you that I might feel equally insulted by your suggestion that I would want a woman I had to bribe into bed with me?’ he challenged her.
They had almost reached the helipad.
She had spoken to him, touched a deeply secret part of him, as no other woman had ever done, and instinctively he felt wary of his own emotional response to that. At the same time he also felt challenged by the fact that she was so obviously determined not to allow herself to become emotionally involved with him. A woman who wanted to give herself freely to him physically whilst refusing to become emotionally involved? Shouldn’t that knowledge delight him instead of irking him? he taunted himself derisively. He certainly wasn’t going to refuse her, was he?
Carly wondered what he was thinking. Was Ricardo shocked by what she had said? Turned off by it? Indifferent to it? Should she have been less direct, and instead created an artificial opportunity for him to come on to her if he wanted to do so?
Ricardo had gone to speak to the ground staff brought in to take care of the helicopters lined up away from the helipad. She could feel her stomach muscles clench as he walked back to her.
‘I was watching you earlier on today,’ he told her softly. ‘Imagining just what it would be like to have those long legs of yours wrapped tightly around me whilst I took you. How do you like it best? Tell me!’
Shocked pleasure rushed through her, hot, sweet and intoxicating. A dizzying, breathtaking sensation of open and responsive arousal.
Ricardo watched her, acknowledging that the look of dazzled, dazed anticipation in her eyes was doing more to arouse him than he would have thought possible.
‘Time to go,’ he said, nodding in the direction of the waiting helicopter.
/>
‘You’ve been very quiet. Second thoughts?’ Ricardo challenged Carly as he piloted them towards the landing pad of his New York building.
‘About what? Telling you that I want you? Or the fact that I do want you?’
Did she realise how the musical sound of her voice could play on a man’s desire, heightening it and arousing him? Ricardo wondered as he looked directly at her.
‘Either.’
Carly shook her head. She had spent most of the flight surreptitiously sneaking glances at Ricardo and then imagining herself touching him, learning him, allowing the fantasy that she hoped would soon become a reality to guide and slightly shock her thoughts. She’d touch first with her fingertips, tracing the bones that shaped him, and then with her hands as she absorbed the strength of his muscles and the taut smoothness of his flesh. And then finally with her lips and her tongue, as she explored every delicate hollow and plane of him.
The heat that constantly beat through her body was roaring now, pulse-points of urgency throbbing not just between her legs and in her breasts but everywhere—her fingertips, her toes, her lips—everywhere…
‘I’ve said more than I should,’ she admitted huskily.
‘Yes,’ Ricardo acknowledged coolly. ‘You have. Haven’t the other men in your life preferred to do their own hunting and their own propositioning?’
There was a small jolt as the helicopter hit the ground.
She waited silently for Ricardo to climb out and then come round to help her. Above them, stars glittered in the darkness of the night sky, but it was impossible for them to compete with the brilliance and colour of the New York skyline.
His hands on her body felt hard but remote. Rejecting? Had she got it wrong? Had she misunderstood? Had he merely been pretending before that he wanted her?
He had set her free, and she had no option other than to walk ahead of him to the lift foyer door.
Ricardo followed her and activated the lift. Within seconds they were stepping out of it into his own private entrance foyer, and within seconds of that he was opening the door to his apartment.
‘Dolores and Rafael are away for a family event,’ he told her.
Carly nodded her head. Disappointment was a cold, sick, leaden lump weighing down her body. It struck her how ironic it was. Had someone previously suggested to her that she would find herself in this kind of situation, the feelings she would have expected would have been shame and humiliation, rather than the gut-wrenching sense of disappointment she actually did have.
All those years of silently, determinedly telling herself she had a right to her pride had obviously not made as big an impression on her psyche as she had believed.
They were in the large square hallway. It was nearly eleven o’clock. She turned away from Ricardo, intending to make her way to her suite and the sleepless night she suspected lay ahead of her.
‘This way.’
His fingers closed round her bare forearm and immediately her flesh reacted in a burst of over-sensitivity and raised goosebumps.
This corridor was unfamiliar, its walls hung with what she suspected must be priceless pieces of modern art. At the end of it was a pair of double doors. Ricardo opened one of them without releasing her.
Silently she walked through it into the darkness that lay beyond. Ricardo let her go, and she heard the quiet snap of the door closing.
She could feel him standing behind her, and waited for him to switch on the lights, but instead he turned her round, his hands gripping her upper arms.
CHAPTER TEN
‘Now. Now you can tell me that you want me.’
His voice was a raw sound of out-of-control male need.
A thrill of shocked delight exploded inside her. She could feel herself shaking with excitement as he pulled her into his own body and took her mouth with explicit sexual hunger.
Her response to him rolled over her like an eighty-foot wave, swamping her, picking her up and taking her bodily. She had no defence against it, nor did she want one.
His tongue, seeking and demanding, thrust hotly between her lips without any preliminaries. Her small sob of pleasure was submerged beneath his own sounds of overriding need. His hands were on her body, tugging down her top, pushing aside her bra.
Carly moaned as his hands grazed her nipples, and then moaned again more sharply when he took one between his thumb and forefinger and began to tease it into hard, tight, aching need. Without knowing she was doing it Carly ground her hips against him, mimicking the hard thrust of his tongue between her lips.
‘Don’t,’ he cautioned her thickly. ‘Do you want me to completely lose control and take you here?’
Getting her back here without touching her had strained his self control to its limits. And now…
‘Yes,’ Carly told him quickly, feeling the words catch against her throat. ‘I want you to take me, wherever and whenever you want—but most of all I want you to do it now. Now! Ricardo, now!’
Did she realise that she had just destroyed the last shreds of his control, what her hungry, half-moaned words were doing to him?
‘Now?’ he repeated.
His eyes, accustomed to the darkness, showed him the pale glimmer of her breasts. He stroked his forefinger round one nipple and watched her whole body surge with pleasure. He could feel the muscles locking in his throat. He bent his head and took the tight sexual flowering of her desire for him into his mouth, savouring the sensation of the smooth swell of her breast before running his tongue over her nipple, all the time trying to hold onto his sanity, to stop himself from pushing her up against the wall and tearing the clothes off her so that he could have the pleasure of sinking as deep inside her as he could get.
Carly could hear someone start to moan, but it took her several seconds to recognise that she was the one making the noise. She felt as though she were on a long slide, unable to stop herself from plunging into her own pleasure. Not wanting to stop herself.
Reluctantly Ricardo released her nipple, his fingers immediately returning to enjoy its arousal.
‘How do you want it?’ he demanded softly. ‘Do you have a favourite position? Do you want to take care of the condom issue or shall I?’
Carly looked at him and took a deep breath. ‘I think this is when I should tell that I don’t have very much previous experience,’ she announced carefully.
‘What?’
She couldn’t tell whether the harshness in his voice came from anger or disbelief.
‘What does that mean?’
Carly swallowed, and then said in a small voice,
‘Actually, I’m afraid it means that I haven’t…There hasn’t…I’m still a virgin.’
‘What? You’re joking, right?
Carly shook her head.
He released her abruptly and stood back from her, looking at her for what felt like for ever.
‘I can’t think of one single reason why the hell you would be a virgin.’
‘Actually, there are several,’ Carly responded with dignity. ‘For one thing…Well, I don’t suppose the opportunity has been there at the right time or with the right man,’ she hedged.
Her revelation was the last thing Ricardo had expected. If she had kept to her virgin purity until now why was she, to put it crudely, offering it to him on a plate? Did she think he would feel some sort of moral responsibility towards her? Was that it? Was she setting some sort of trap for him? Would she try to use emotional blackmail to turn mere physical intimacy into something more?
If he had any sense he would send her back to her own room, right now, but somehow, in some way, a part of him was actually responding to what she had told him with a primitive surge of male possessiveness. It actively liked the thought of the sexual exclusivity of being her first lover, of knowing that the sensuality he would imprint on her would remain with her throughout her life, that if the experience he gave her was truly pleasurable then she would treasure it all her life. And she would not be comparing him to anyo
ne else. Was he really that vain? That insecure? Ricardo grimaced to himself, knowing that he wasn’t.
‘You damn sure don’t act like a virgin,’ he told her grimly.
Probably because when she was around him she didn’t think that she was. Mentally, in the privacy of her own thoughts, the intimacy she had with him had gone well beyond the bounds of virginity.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you?’ Carly offered.
Ricardo looked at her with incredulity.
‘Don’t you think it would have been obvious? Especially given the kind of intimacy I’d planned to—’
He saw the excitement begin to burn in her eyes and he cursed himself for the way his body immediately responded to it.
‘Are you sure this is what you want? An affair that—?’
Carly stopped him. ‘I don’t want an affair. I just want to have sex with you.’
‘Just sex?’ Ricardo questioned, not sure that he believed her.
‘Yes. But of course if you’d rather not…’ she added lightly.
No one gave that kind of challenge to Ricardo.
‘You’ll cry “enough” before I do,’ he told her against her mouth.
He was barely brushing her lips with his own, a feather-light touch that, as Carly quickly discovered, made her hunger for more. Her own lips clung to his, willing him to part them with his tongue as he had done before, and a shudder of visible pleasure gripped her body when finally he did so, thrusting the seeking point of his tongue deep and hard within the warm softness of her mouth.
His hand cupped the back of her head and his tongue plunged deeper, twining with her own. She could feel the heavy slam of her heart as it banged against her ribs—or was it his?
He was holding her right up against him, so close that she could feel his erection. And she wanted to feel it. And not just to feel it—she wanted to see it, touch it…experience it deep inside her.
She felt weak and dizzy with arousal, her whole body shuddering with pleasure when Ricardo cupped her breast and then slowly circled his fingertip around her nipple. Lazy delicate circles that were driving her insane. She sucked in a deep breath and felt the corresponding tightening low down in her body. Unable to stop herself, she reached out and touched the hard ridge of male flesh, mimicking Ricardo’s caress as she circled the head of it with her fingertip and then traced its whole shape through the fabric of his clothes. It felt thick and strong. Her fingers trembled and so did her body.