He lifted himself up and moved over her, and before she could stop him, kissed her thoroughly, dipping his tongue into her mouth.
“Yuck,” she said when he finally drew back. “Thanks.”
He chuckled and lifted her remaining sweater. “Get this off.”
She grumbled and drew it over her head, and then he quickly unbuttoned her shirt and whipped that off too. Her bra followed with little more ceremony, and soon she was naked in his arms, acutely conscious that he was still pretty much fully dressed.
“My turn.” She started to pull up his sweater.
“No time.” He rolled her onto her side and then she heard the distinct sound of a condom being unwrapped.
“You’re eager,” she said, feeling drowsy and relaxed, as if she’d had all her bones removed after her climax.
“Honey, you’re so wet and swollen down there, if I don’t get inside you soon I’ll end up embarrassing myself.” He moved up close to her back and drew her into his arms, pulling the duvet and the fur blanket over them to keep her warm.
In spite of his words, he still took a while to arouse her again, stroking her breasts and playing with her nipples, kissing her neck and ear and murmuring endearments and compliments that made her sigh as she lay hazy with passion and affection for this kind, hot, sexy man. The fact that he was fully clothed and she was naked only seemed to add to her pleasure—he made everything feel so wicked, and that it was all right to be wicked—that it was part of the pleasure of sex.
How bland it had all been before, she thought as she turned her head to capture his lips briefly. Sex with Michael had been what the word vanilla was invented for—it was okay once or twice, but after a while you craved a dessert with a bit of flavour, with chocolate, cream, biscuits, and liqueur poured all over it. Felix was so…so…tiramisu.
He moved his hand down to between her legs and stroked her, then groaned. “That’s it. Time’s up. You’re so fucking wet—I’ve got to get inside you.”
“Charming,” she mumbled, unwilling to admit his words turned her on. How did the mechanics of it work in this position? She wasn’t sure what to do.
But she didn’t have to worry. “Come here.” He rolled her almost onto her back, moved her butt on his lap and hooked her leg across him. Then he pressed the tip of his erection into her folds and slowly slid into her.
She gasped as his long, hard length filled her up, sliding easily into her moistness. “Oh…”
“Yeah,” he said vehemently, stroking up her bare thigh and cupping her mound. “Oh yeah.”
She lay back and closed her eyes for a moment, just enjoying the new position and how different it felt with him inside her in this way. He moved his hips so he slid in and out of her, and she sighed, stretching like a cat.
“You have such a beautiful body.” Beneath the covers, he stroked up from her thighs to her breasts and began to play with them, thrusting all the while.
Conscious of him clothed beneath the duvet, she opened her eyes and smiled shyly. “Thank you.”
“I mean it.” He propped his head on a hand and surveyed her leisurely, admiring her breasts, stroking down to her hips and back up again. “You’re slender but not too thin. Curvy. Fantastic breasts. You have the best figure of any woman I’ve seen in real life.” He rolled her nipple between his fingers.
She didn’t know what to say to that compliment. Better than Lindsey? Surely he was just being kind because they were in bed—it was the sort of thing lovers said to each other, even if it wasn’t true. But still, it made her glow. He didn’t have to say it.
“Thank you,” she said again, not surprised to hear her voice breathless with desire. “Quite clearly you’re the sexiest man in the universe.”
He smiled. “Well, thank you too.”
“I mean it.” She reached up a hand and touched his hair. “You’re so hot. You set me alight.”
“I noticed.” His voice was filled with humour.
“I love making love with you,” she whispered, biting her lip as he dropped his hand back between her legs.
“And I love fucking you.”
She gave a little laugh. “Nice. How gentlemanly.”
“And you love it.” He slid in and out of her.
She looked away, embarrassed. Was it a bad thing, to be so turned on by his shocking statements, by the things he liked to do?
He shifted, and before she could prepare herself, he rolled her onto her front, still inside her, and lay on top of her, pinning her to the bed.
“Still shy?” he teased, nibbling her neck. “Even after what we’ve done?”
She said nothing, all the air having fled her lungs, turned on more than she could say by his sheer masculinity, his height, his weight, the scrape of his bristles on her soft skin. She’d pay for that tomorrow, but for now it just made her moan and turn her head so he could brush his tongue into her mouth.
He raised his head and thrust his hips forward, burying himself inside her, and she gasped. “Why did you change position?” she asked, shocked once again by his change from gentle, considerate lover to animal in heat.
“Not fast enough.” He thrust again. “Why, is that a complaint?”
“N-no.” She groaned, aroused once again by the feeling of being at his mercy. “Oh…”
“Is that nice, Coco?” He bit her ear and she squealed. “Tell me.”
“Yes, it’s nice.” Understatement of the year.
“Say, ‘Felix, I like being fucked from behind. It turns me on.’” He slid a hand beneath her and rolled her nipple.
She gasped. “No!”
“Say it.” He thrust harder.
She moaned, her orgasm hovering but not quite overtaking her. “Felix…”
“Say it.”
“I…I like being fucked from behind.” Her cheeks burned.
“‘It turns me on.’”
“It…it turns me on.”
He kissed her cheek and murmured, “You’re a perfect woman, you know that? A Madonna out of the bedroom. A whore inside it.”
“Felix!”
“It’s a compliment.”
“It doesn’t sound it.” Nevertheless, she automatically widened her legs, pushing back and lifting her hips as he continued to thrust. Perhaps he was right.
“Say it.” His breathing sounded harsh in her ear—he wasn’t far from coming.
“No.”
He kissed down her neck and then sucked hard where it met her shoulder, and she squealed. “You’ll give me a hickey!”
“I’m branding you.” He lifted her chin and kissed her deeply, demanding, forceful. “You think you’re innocent deep down, but you’re not. You love it, don’t you? Love being naughty—love your limits being pushed.”
“No.”
“Liar.” He was breathing heavily now. “Christ, Coco, the things we could do together, if we had the time.”
“There’s more?” She panted, things starting to throb and tighten.
He gave a deep laugh, lifting himself up so he could thrust hard and fast. “You have no idea.”
She pushed back against him as her climax swept over her, carried away on a wave of lust and longing, and pulsed around him as he finally swelled and came inside her with a triumphant roar. He continued to thrust, and her orgasm seemed to go on forever, until, finally spent, she lay limp and exhausted, in a hazy swirl of physical and emotional sensations that continued to float around and over her like the snowflakes still falling in a flurry outside.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Felix stood in the doorway to Miss Stark’s office and leaned against the doorjamb. The office manager had been busy most of the morning—he’d seen her flitting around the workroom, organising the secretaries, bossing Sam and checking her shorthand, sorting stationery and printers and having a meeting with finance about stationery budgets, and this was the first time he’d found her in her office.
Had she been avoiding him, or was she genuinely busy? Possibly a bit of both
, he thought, watching her frown as she studied a report, underlining occasionally with a pencil. She obviously had a lot to do, but equally he was pretty sure she’d purposely managed to be the opposite end of the office to wherever he was.
He folded his arms and studied her. Her embarrassment amused and fascinated him. As Miss Stark, she emanated such confidence and calm organisation—he couldn’t imagine the cool, efficient secretary ever being embarrassed or ruffled. But he knew that beneath the surface lay a completely different person—a warm-hearted, passionate woman who was thoroughly enjoying discovering the delights of sex that he was able to show her, and who had reacted to his encouraging advances with abandonment and pure joy at discovering what she hadn’t realised she’d been missing for so long.
She rested the pencil on her lips and nibbled the end. He smiled, surprised by the wave of affection that swept over him. He was rarely short of female company, and he’d been out with several women for a lot longer than he’d been seeing Coco. But somehow she’d touched his heart as no other woman since Lindsey had been able to. Why was that? Yes, she was pretty—beautiful in fact, stunning with her blonde hair, red lips and curvy figure. She was intelligent, which he liked in a woman—well able to challenge him on all sorts of matters from the law to human rights to the best Disney film. She had a good sense of humour, she was witty and sharp, she worked hard and she obviously cared deeply for her mother.
But it was more than that. She had an indefinable something—he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something about her that fascinated him in a similar way to how Lindsey had fascinated him. It wasn’t just the way she enjoyed exploring sex so much, or the way she responded so openly.
It was the way she looked at him—the way Lindsey had looked at him. Women often looked at him with interest, eyed him up, flirted with him. But Coco looked at him not just with desire, but with affection, with admiration—not in a place-him-on-a-pedestal kind of way, but with a deep rooted, grown-up, adult appreciation for the person he was.
Shit. His heart nearly stopped. I’ve only fucking gone and fallen in love with her.
At that precise moment, she looked up and saw him standing there. He watched her inhale, her eyes widen, her cheeks flush, all within seconds. She stood, flustered for a moment before she gathered her wits and got back into control, and she lifted her chin and gave him her best Miss Stark stare. But it had been there, he was sure—visible briefly like a shooting star—highlighting and reflecting the emotion he felt deep inside but had only just acknowledged.
She feels the same way about me. I’m sure of it.
Does she know?
“Hurry up,” she said. “I haven’t got all day.”
He pushed the thought away, filing it to think about later. “Morning. You’re one difficult lady to catch.”
“Yes, well, I have a busy schedule.” She fumbled with some papers on her desk.
He smiled and pushed himself off the wall to walk toward her. “I wanted to ask you a favour?”
“Oh?” She turned startled green eyes up to him.
He grinned. “Not that kind of favour.”
She blinked, and for a moment he found himself lost in memories of the night before—the way her hair had curled around his fingers as he’d slid his hand into it to turn her head to kiss her, the feel of her naked beneath him while he’d still been fully clothed, the way she’d looked up at him as he’d thrust inside her, her eyes filled with…what? Lust? Or love?
He blinked back and cleared his throat. “I’ve finished interviewing the lawyers and I’d like to speak to Sasha again. I’ve rung her and told her I’ll be visiting her at home today at two. I wondered whether you’d come with me? I think she’d rather have you there.”
“Um, yes. Of course. If you think it would help.”
“Thank you.”
Their eyes met. He held her gaze for a moment, and then she turned to look out of the window. As usual, she’d pulled her hair back off her face into a tight bun, and the starkness of the style accentuated her high cheekbones and her long neck, as well as her flawless pale skin. He knew others thought her cold and haughty, and it thrilled him that he was the only one to know that a deeply passionate creature existed beneath the frosty exterior.
He wanted to leap over the desk and take her in his arms, kiss down that neck to her breasts, rip off her clothes and make love to her until they both came in a rush of blissful ecstasy.
He didn’t, though. He cleared his throat and said, “Okay, so I’ll call by after lunch and we’ll take a taxi.”
“Sure.”
He turned and walked out of the room before he did something stupid like getting down on one knee and declaring his feelings. Yes, she looked at him with affection and desire. But how was he to know whether it was purely a physical thing or whether she just thought of him as a vibrator on legs?
Felix called in to her office at two o’clock and they went down to the taxi together. They sat in the back and he directed the driver to Sasha’s house.
Coco sat silently, looking out of the window, but Felix felt her presence with every cell in his body, and he sensed from her rigid posture, the way her chest rose and fell rapidly and the fast pulse in her throat that she was as conscious as he of the tension between them that refused to go.
He ran his gaze up her, from her slender knees just revealed by the short skirt that had risen as she’d sat, to her narrow waist and generous bust, to the strand of blonde hair that had escaped the bun and curled on her cheek. Unable to stop himself, he reached out, picked it up and tucked it behind her ear. She jumped a little at his touch, and then, surprising him, leaned her cheek briefly on his hand before turning once again to look out of the window. It was a tiny, insignificant gesture, but it warmed his heart to think there was even a slight possibility that she felt the same way he did.
The taxi pulled up at Sasha’s house on the outskirts of Wellington, and they got out. The house had a pleasant view, situated high on the steep slopes surrounding the city looking down on the harbour, the late-spring sun warm on his face. He asked the driver to wait, certain they weren’t going to be that long, judging by Sasha’s hostility during their previous meeting.
She answered the door, and to his relief gave a brief smile before standing back to let them in. They walked into a hallway leading to a smallish living room, decorated in shades of cream and brown, as bland as Sasha’s personality. There were no CDs on show, no books on the shelves. He’d hoped to garner an idea of her personality from her surroundings, but he realised he was to be disappointed.
Sasha sat in an armchair, and Felix and Coco took a seat on the sofa opposite her. A cat jumped onto Sasha’s lap and settled, and she began to stroke it. She didn’t offer them a drink.
“I’d like to start by apologising for upsetting you during our previous meeting,” Felix said, hoping he sounded sincere. “I let my wish to make sure I uncover the truth override my need to be polite, and I apologise for that.”
Sasha nodded, but didn’t respond the way he’d expected—with a social nicety by saying something like oh, that’s okay, I understand, or I’m just glad you’re trying to find the truth. It unsettled him, and he leaned back on the sofa and studied her for a moment, trying to puzzle her out, determined not to let her get the upper hand in the conversation.
He couldn’t shake the feeling of dislike he had for her, although he still didn’t really have any idea why he felt that way. Maybe it was because she seemed so hard, or that she responded with such little humour. He relied on his charm to communicate with women, but she appeared to be immune to it, and that didn’t happen very often.
The other problem was that he was struggling to understand her and the way she thought. He could understand why she felt his previous comment about wearing clothes to attract attention had been insulting, especially if she hadn’t been trying to attract Dell’s attention. But he felt angry at Sasha’s indignation that her right to wear whatever
she wanted to work was completely irrelevant to the case. Her feminist leanings, while understandable and even commendable, seemed to be obscuring the greater problem here—namely, had she led Dell on or not?
Coco sat quietly next to him, hands folded in her lap. He couldn’t help but notice again that although her skirt rode up slightly when she sat, it was a decent length, and she’d buttoned her blouse so no cleavage was on show. He liked her modesty, he realised. Did that make him old fashioned and sexist?
“I’d like to clarify a couple of things,” he said, trying not to spiral off into thoughts about her when he was trying to concentrate on Sasha. “Firstly, you stated that on the evening in question Peter Dell came into the workroom and asked you specifically if you could work late?”
“What of it?” she said.
“I haven’t interviewed the other secretaries formally yet, but one of the partners recalls that he was in the workroom when Mr. Dell entered. He says Mr. Dell asked the office generally if anyone was able to work late, and that you volunteered.”
Sasha didn’t flinch but looked him calmly in the eye. “It’s possible that was the case. I don’t really remember.”
“It’s quite important, Sasha.”
“It’s hardly the point,” she snapped. “What matters is what happened in his office, not how I got there.”
Felix held her gaze and refused to look away. The point was, of course, if she’d lied about what Dell had said, what else had she lied about?
Chapter Thirty-Five
Coco shifted awkwardly on the sofa as Felix and Sasha continued their staring match. She could feel Felix’s irritation—at both himself and Sasha—rolling off him in waves.
She puzzled over his behaviour as Sasha finally dropped her gaze to the cat in her lap and spoke to it softly. He must be used to belligerent witnesses in court all the time—he must have dealt with this sort of situation before. She knew part of the problem was that Sasha hadn’t responded to his attempts at being nice, had pretty much thrown them back in his face. But she could also see that deep down, Sasha’s attitude angered him, and part of that, Coco was sure, was her fault. It was all interlinked with this issue of attracting the opposite sex, and the confusion in reading signals. Felix was projecting his own frustration with their relationship onto this situation with Sasha, and Coco wasn’t sure he was aware of it.
Five Exotic Fantasies: Love in Reverse, Book 3 Page 21