The sofa, of course, would kill any uninvited thoughts, but he glanced at it, dismissing it as quickly as he saw it.
She was sound asleep, and his bed was infinitely more comfortable than any sofa, especially one that required making up and thus a hunt for bedlinen which would take for ever, considering he had no idea where it was stored.
He soundlessly slipped under the covers and lay down completely still, willing his arousal to subside.
When she restlessly turned over, so that she was now facing in his direction, Theo almost groaned. The small vest left little to the imagination, revealing as it did a generous cleavage which he had never before glimpsed under her daily uniform of baggy tops. His breathing was ragged as he raked her flushed face, her slightly parted lips and the tousle of soft blonde hair framing her face.
He didn’t trust himself to look any lower, just in case he lost control.
Lord only knew how long he would have remained there, relishing the pleasurable novelty of wanting a woman with no possibility of having her, if she hadn’t stretched—a very small movement that brought her hand into immediate contact with his chest.
He froze as her eyes flew open, and then she shrieked, drawing back from him in horror.
‘Keep it down!’ he snapped.
‘What are you doing here!’
‘This is my bedroom, remember? The one you agreed to share?’
‘I didn’t agree to share the bed!’ Heather’s nervous system was in a state of wild disarray as her eyes locked with his. At the back of her mind, the information was sinking in that he wasn’t wearing anything above his waist. What her hand had come into contact with had not been the comforting touch of sensible flannelette pyjamas. Was he wearing anything below? Her whole body began to burn as her imagination dived off its springboard and took flight.
‘The sofa isn’t made up,’ Theo informed her. Far from staunching his erection, the shadows and angles of her flustered face were proving an even bigger turn-on.
‘Then go and make it up! You can’t stay in this bed with me! You promised…’
‘I never promised anything,’ Theo breathed unevenly. ‘And stop getting so worked up. It’s a big bed.’ Which didn’t explain why they were lying a matter of ten inches away from one another. He had made no attempt to widen the distance between them. She had certainly tried, but to go any further back would result in her falling off the edge. He could feel her body quivering with tension and ordered himself to get a grip.
‘Are you wearing anything?’ Heather heard herself stutter, and his silence was telling. ‘You’re not, are you?’
‘I don’t possess any pyjamas. I’ve never seen the point of them.’
‘How could you be so…so…disrespectful?’ Heather whispered, tears gathering at the back of her eyes.
‘Disrespectful?’ Theo was flabbergasted. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, yes, you do!’ Heather said bitterly. ‘You’re so contemptuous of me that you don’t care whether I’m in this bed or not! You don’t even care whether you’re wearing anything or not! Because as far as you’re concerned I might just as well be a…a…sack of potatoes!’
In the tense silence that greeted this remark Theo reached out and took her hand.
‘Except,’ he whispered roughly, ‘a sack of potatoes wouldn’t have this effect on me!’
Heather felt the hard throb of his erection, and for a few seconds time seemed to stand still. The sexual awareness which had been kept under tabs for so long broke through its flimsy barriers and rushed through her like a tidal wave.
She could hear her own uneven breathing, like someone who has completed a marathon uphill. Every muscle in her body was quivering. He still had his hand covering hers, forcing her to feel for herself the effect of her proximity.
‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘I don’t think what you’re feeling is the result of a man who is contemptuous of you…’
‘You need…need to go and sleep somewhere else…’
‘And then pretend in the morning that none of this happened? Why would I do that?’ He released her hand, but only so that he could smooth his fingers over her waist, then under the small cropped vest to the bountiful curve of her breast.
Theo groaned. Take away the shapeless garments and she was all woman, all voluptuous, curvy woman, with breasts a man could lose himself in.
With one swift movement he angled his body up so that he was looking down at her.
In the half-light he looked devilishly sexy. His arms were strongly muscled and his beautiful mouth…his beautiful mouth was drawing closer.
With a stifled, hungry gasp, Heather closed her eyes and was lost in his urgent, devouring kiss. With a will of their own her arms curved around his neck, pulling him towards her, and her body writhed, pleading to be stilled.
Eventually, Theo drew back from the kiss—but only so that he could transfer his attention to her neck.
Had he wanted this all along? Had he watched her without even realising it himself? Created fantasies around her? He didn’t think so, but if he hadn’t why was it now that his body was acting as though attaining the conquest of some private yearning?
He roughly pushed up her vest and then kneeled back on his haunches, the better to appreciate what he had known all along. She wasn’t built along the lines of those stick insects he went out with. As a connoisseur of women’s bodies, he could say with his hand on his heart that he had never before set eyes on such gloriously abundant breasts. He reached down and felt the weight of them in his hands, and then, very slowly, appreciating every second of the experience, he rubbed the pads of his thumbs over her defined nipples. The tips were hard and he watched, fascinated and unbearably turned on, as she wriggled under his touch, her eyes still firmly closed and her hands balled into fists.
‘You have amazing breasts,’ he breathed shakily, and her eyes flickered open.
‘By that, I take it you mean big?’ She had never, ever associated the word big with anything complimentary, at least not when it came to her body, but the way he was looking at her now was making her feel very sexy, very proud of the breasts she had become accustomed to concealing.
‘Amazing,’ he corrected. He bent down and tenderly began to suckle on one full nipple, licking and drawing the swollen bud into his mouth until she was moaning with pleasure.
Heather feverishly lifted the vest over her head while he continued his assault on her breasts, dividing his attention between the two until she thought she was literally going to pass out from ecstasy. During those long nights when she had wistfully wondered what it would be like to have him make love to her, see her as a woman instead of someone he had grown accustomed to having around, the way you might grow accustomed to having a pot plant around, during those nights she had never dreamed that the reality would be so exquisitely more fulfilling.
With every fibre of her body she responded to his caress.
She reached to touch him, to feel him, and shuddered with a heady sense of power when he groaned in response.
So this was what it felt like to have this beautiful, wonderful, clever man surrender! To see him shed that formidable control! She arched up and he wrenched the shorts off her, hands hot and urgent.
Heather shifted and felt his hands cover her down there, then his fingers were exploring her telling wetness, rubbing and pressing against the pulsating sensitised bud that sent shock waves of pleasure racing through her.
With a feeling of aching, pounding anticipation, she felt his mouth travel over the flat planes of her stomach—the stomach she had always unfavourably compared to her sister’s, the stomach he didn’t seem repulsed by—until he was nuzzling into the soft downy hair that veiled her womanhood.
‘You can’t!’ Heather gasped, and he looked up and met her eyes with an amused smile.
‘Have you never been touched there before?’
‘Not in that way!’
‘What way?’ Her look was a mixture
of innocence and excitement, and it slammed straight through him, making his blood boil with desire. For one brief moment Theo wondered where all this suffocating sexual tension was coming from. For a man who prided himself on being an expert lover, a lover who took his time and was a master of finesse, he seemed to have been reduced to a wild animal with only one thought on his mind—possession.
Submitting to primal urges he thought he had mastered a long time ago, Theo breathed in her erotic, musky smell and tenderly flicked his tongue into her.
It took a superhuman feat of will-power not to rise up and thrust into her. Her wetness was driving him crazy, as was her wanton writhing as he explored her with his mouth. Her soft femininity was slippery, and the sweetest thing he had ever tasted. He knew when she was about to tip over the brink, and before she could do that, he quickly and efficiently took the necessary precautions.
By the time he took her, Heather was well on the way to cresting the peak, and just a few deep thrusts sent her hurtling into a sensory experience that was unique for her. Her whole body shuddered as she surrendered to the waves of pleasure that crashed through her, eventually subsiding into a warm glow of pure contentment.
From restless slumber, she was now fully awake. Actually, her body felt charged in a way it never had before. To think that this beautiful man had brought her to such heights, had sated himself in her, filled her with absolute joy.
She turned to him and sighed. ‘That was wonderful.’ A tiny frown creased her forehead. ‘Was it okay for you? I mean,’ she continued anxiously, ‘I’m not very experienced…’
‘You turn me on just the way you are,’ Theo growled, pulling her closer to him and possessively draping one leg over hers.
‘Did you mean for this to happen?’ Heather asked. ‘No, of course you didn’t. So why did you make love to me?’
Faced with this direct question, Theo was lost for an answer.
‘I mean, was it just because I happened to be in your bed? I know you probably think I’m crazy,’ Heather continued, suddenly aware that this might not quite qualify as lazy post coital conversation, ‘but I really need to know, Theo.’
‘Why? Didn’t you enjoy it?’ He stroked her hair away from her face, touched by her anxiety.
‘I thought it was the most wonderful experience I’ve ever had,’ she answered truthfully, and that was enough to send a charge of pure masculine pride soaring through him.
‘The most wonderful…?’ he teased, smiling when she nodded. ‘That puts a lot of pressure on me,’ he said gravely.
In a split second Heather realised the error of her ways. She had succumbed to him without so much as a struggle. A few half-hearted protests, but then she had foolishly yielded—of course he would now be looking at the whole situation with a sense of mounting alarm.
Theo did not like women who clung. Nor, she imagined, would he like women who behaved like inexperienced, infatuated adolescents. He would want them cool and carefully controlled. She wondered how to backtrack and, even more importantly, how she could assume the façade of being cool and controlled when she had never been either.
‘I’m sorry,’ Heather apologised stiffly.
‘Why be sorry? We just shared a mind-blowing experience.’ And out of nowhere, Theo mused. Which just went to prove the point that around every corner a surprise lay in wait. Who would have thought that the woman whose company he had found utterly relaxing and unthreatening could conceal such depths of fire?
‘Which,’ he added lazily, ‘is why I feel under such pressure. I mean, how am I going to top my first performance?’
Heather felt herself go weak with relief. Why would he say that if his intention was to curse himself for his weakness and chuck her out?
Thoughts of moving on with her independent life flew out of her head faster than water pouring down a plughole. She loved this man. They had made love and it had been, in his very own words, a mind-blowing experience. She felt as though she was suddenly walking on the clouds. Giddy with joy, she curled against him.
‘You have a very sexy body,’ Theo murmured, filling his hand with her lush breast. ‘Why do you spend so much time covering it up?’
‘You should know, Theo,’ Heather said shyly, barely able to believe her ears. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be a connoisseur of women? I’m not built…well, along the lines of a model, am I?’
Theo didn’t answer. He was finding it difficult to remember why he had ever been attracted to his past models. He slid his hand along her side, enjoying the womanly dip of her waist and the full, smooth rise of her hip.
‘You don’t know what it’s like going through your teenage years without the advantages of being thin.’ Especially, Heather thought, when you had a sister who looked like hers. ‘Boys made snide remarks at school and my girlfriends felt sorry for me. It just wasn’t cool to have a figure like mine, so I learned to cover it up.’
For the first time she felt truly proud of her curves, especially when he so blatantly enjoyed them. He pushed her gently onto her back and pleasured himself at her breasts. A man could lose himself in them!
Heather sighed with enjoyment and languorously squirmed under his exploring mouth. The heat that had subsided was building up again, and with a soft moan of anticipation she parted her legs so that he could touch her.
Want, need, love and utter fulfilment bathed her in warm joy, and as she curled her fingers into his hair she gave herself up utterly to the experience.
CHAPTER FIVE
OBSERVING his own situation through detached eyes—something Theo was remarkably good at—he knew that he should be feeling trapped and restless. He was, after all, currently occupying his own private vision of hell. His working hours had been severely curtailed. The past fortnight had seen him first at the hospital, where his mother had been recuperating after heart surgery, and then latterly at his apartment, where he had insisted she remain for at least another couple of weeks, until she was strong enough to venture back to Greece.
She had dutifully grumbled, but had given in without too much persuasion.
Theo suspected that his mother was secretly enjoying the relaxation of being pampered. Heather spent part of her day working on her portfolio, but seemed content to sacrifice the remainder to taking his mother for little walks and experimenting with Greek food in the kitchen under Litsa’s eagle-eyed tutelage.
‘It helps me,’ his mother said tetchily, when he tried to convince her that she needed to take it easy. ‘And I am not doing the cooking, Theo. Just supervising. What would you want me to do? Lie in bed all day like an invalid?’
He had diplomatically refrained from pointing out that she was an invalid, whether she chose to accept the fact or not.
Litsa had never been one to sit around doing nothing, and she wasn’t about to change the habits of a lifetime. She was also in her element, bonding with the woman she imagined to be her future daughter-in-law—and Theo couldn’t blame her. She had, after all, waited long enough.
The fact that his mother was dealing with an illusion was something that only impinged slightly on his conscience. The advantages of the situation as far as his mother’s health was involved were too self-evident. Her progress, the consultant had told him a few days earlier, had been really impressive. Theo didn’t think that would have been the case had she been sitting in his flat from dawn till dusk on her own, with nothing but her own worries and doubts for company.
No, Heather had been good for her—as had the pleasantly warming thought that she was dealing with her son’s significant other.
And at the moment, it happened to suit him as well. Even though the invasion of his working life should have had him fuming.
He snapped shut the lid of his laptop computer and headed for the jacket hanging in the wardrobe of his office.
Jackie, his personal assistant, popped her head around the door and surreptitiously glanced at her watch. She knew that his mother was staying with him, and that there had been a minor medica
l problem which had been dealt with, but it still shocked her whenever she walked into his office at five-thirty to find him getting ready to go.
‘Whatever it is, Jackie,’ Theo said, without looking around, ‘you’ll have to cancel it. I’m on my way out.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘No buts.’ He slipped on his jacket and turned to her. ‘After five-thirty I’m off duty, until my mother is on her feet and back in Greece.’ He began packing his computer into its leather case. He could use his mother as his excuse for the temporary derailment of his working hours, and, yes, he knew that he had to be there for her, that waltzing in at ridiculous hours, long after she would have retired for the night, just wasn’t on, but the prospect of Heather waiting for him back at the apartment was an enticing one.
And why not enjoy the holiday? Theo decided, irritably aware that Jackie was still hovering.
‘Why don’t you head home as well, Jackie?’ he said kindly. ‘The reports can wait till tomorrow.’
Jackie grinned at him. She hadn’t lasted three years as his PA without having a good sense of humour and an ability to speak her mind in the face of any gathering thunder clouds.
‘I think I’ll make that remark a special entry in my diary tonight,’ she said tartly. ‘Considering it’s the first time you’ve ever been known to admit that anything can actually wait until tomorrow.’
‘Keeping diaries is a very sad hobby for a woman in her forties,’ Theo informed her gravely.
‘Well, I hope you’ve managed to keep in your diary a certain date for tomorrow evening.’
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