by Trish Morey
‘I don’t even know your name.’ Her words were breathless, but it was the best she could manage when her mind was shell-shocked and every other part of her body was busy screaming yes.
‘Does it matter?’
Right now? God, he had a point. He could tell her his name was Jack the Ripper and she’d have trouble caring. But still...
‘I should go home,’ she managed to say, trying to remember the good girl she always figured she was and the plan she’d had—something about a taxi and a bottle of Riesling in the fridge and a cheating cousin she wanted to forget about—but she was having trouble remembering the details and wasn’t that a revelation?
Wasn’t that what tonight was supposed to be all about—forgetting?
He pulled away, letting her go even though the distance between them was scant inches. Even now her body swayed into the vacuum where his had so recently been. ‘Is that what you want? To go home?’
She saw the tightness in his shadowed features as if it was physically hurting him to hold himself back, she felt the heat rising from his strong body and she knew what it must be costing him to leave her to decide when the power in his strong limbs told her that he was powerful enough to take whatever he wanted. The concept was strangely thrilling. The perfect stranger. Powerful, potentially dangerous, but giving her the choice.
A choice never so starkly laid out in her mind.
A choice between being responsible and playing it safe and going home and sitting stewing about what she’d missed, or being reckless for once in her life and taking what was on offer—one night with a man whose touch promised to make her forget all the things she’d wanted to forget. One night with a stranger. Her cousin would be horrified, and right now wasn’t that good enough reason in itself?
Besides, all her life she’d played it safe, and where had that got her? Nowhere. She’d done nothing wrong and yet she’d lost more today than she’d ever thought possible.
Tonight was no night to play it safe.
‘No,’ she said, her tongue tasting an unfamiliar boldness on her lips. ‘I want to spend the night with you.’
‘One night,’ he said, and she recognised it as a warning. ‘That’s all I can offer you.’
‘Perfect,’ she said with a smile because that was all she wanted. ‘One night is all I want.’ Tomorrow she could pick up the shattered pieces of her promises and work out where she went from there.
His eyes glinted in the street lighting, a flash of victory that came with a spark of heat, and he reached out his fingers to push a wayward tendril of her hair behind her ear, making her skin tingle. ‘My name is Rashid.’
‘Tora,’ she said, even as she trembled under his touch.
He took her hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing it to his lips. ‘Come, Tora,’ he said.
CHAPTER THREE
NICE, SHE REGISTERED vaguely as he swept her through the marble-floored lobby of one of the oldest and classiest hotels in Sydney. Very nice. People dreamed of spending a night at The Velatte—ordinary people, that was. Clearly the man at her side was no ordinary person. But then, she already knew that. No ordinary person had ever set her pulse racing just by his presence. No average garden-variety man had ever set fires under her skin merely with his touch.
And now it was anticipation of a night with this far from ordinary man making the blood spin around her veins and her knees feel weak.
The lift whisked them to a high floor, his arm wound tightly around her, another couple in the lift the only thing that kept him from pulling her into his kiss, if the heated look in his dark eyes she caught in their reflection in the mirrored lift walls was any indication—mirrored panels that also gave her the chance to steal a closer look at the man she’d agreed to spend the night with. The flash of strobe in the darkened bar had shown her a face of all straight lines and planes—the dark slash of brows, the sharp blade of his nose, the angles of his jaw—but now she could see the softer lines of his mouth and the fullness of his bottom lip and the curve of flesh over high cheekbones. The combination worked.
It was then she realised that his eyes weren’t black but the deepest, deepest blue, like the surface of the bottomless ocean on a perfectly calm day.
He was beautiful, way too beautiful to be by himself, and the good girl in her wondered why he was, while the bad girl in her—the newly found bad girl who drank cocktails in basement bars and threw herself at random men on a whim—rejoiced. Because right now she was the one here in this lift with him.
He opened the door to his room that turned out to be a suite because it was a sitting room they entered, decorated in modern classics in grey and cream and illuminated with standing lamps, lending the room a subtle golden glow. Oh, no, this man was definitely not ordinary. He was either loaded, or his employer’s accountant was going to have a heart attack when the expense-account bill came in.
‘It’s huge,’ she said, overwhelmed, wondering just who this man she’d met in a nightclub and with whom she’d agreed to a night with actually was.
‘I got an upgrade,’ he said dismissively, as if that explained a suite fit for a king, as he headed towards a phone. ‘Something to drink?’
Her mouth was dry but only because every drop of moisture in her body had been busy heading south ever since he’d asked her to spend the night. ‘Anything,’ she said, and he ordered champagne for two and put the receiver down, the fingers of one hand already unbuttoning his shirt.
‘The bedroom’s through here,’ he said as he led the way into a room with furniture in both gloss white and dark timber, with white louvre glass doors opening onto a terrace beyond. A super-king-sized bed with a plump quilted headrest and snowy white bed linen held pride of place against the opposite wall.
‘So,’ he said as he reefed off his shirt and tossed it onto a chair in the corner, exposing a chest that wouldn’t have looked out of place on her annual firefighters’ fundraising calendar. ‘Shower first?’
She stood transfixed, drinking in his masculine perfection, the sheer poetry of tightly packed muscle under skin, until his hands moved to his belt, and with a jolt she realised she should be doing something, too, not standing around ogling him and waiting to be seduced.
This wasn’t a seduction after all. Clearly he’d done his seducing in getting her here. This was more like getting down to business.
‘Oh, right,’ she said, her tummy a mass of flutters, the bad girl inside her overruled by the good girl who was suddenly aware of how far out of her league she was, and not just because this man came with serious money. Here he was, shedding clothes and shoes in a lighted room more easily than an autumn tree shed its leaves in the wind and no doubt expecting her to do likewise. She slid off her shoes, her fingers playing at her buttons as she remembered what she’d put on this morning, wishing she’d worn something a bit more exciting under her boring black skirt and shirt than her even more boring underwear. Not that she had a seduction collection, exactly, but she might have managed to wear something that at least smacked of lace.
She swallowed as she pulled the shirt free from the waistband of her skirt and eased it over her shoulders, feeling more self-conscious by the second as she stood there in her department-store skirt and regulation bra. ‘I didn’t dress for...’
He looked at her, a frown tugging at his brows, as he shrugged off his trousers, revealing denim-coloured elastic fitted boxers that fitted his hard-packed body so well, there were no bulges anywhere—except where there should be.
Oh, my...she thought, her stomach flipping over, her mouth Sahara dry, and she wondered how long the champagne would take to arrive. She didn’t need the alcohol particularly, but her mouth sure could do with the lubrication.
‘I’m not interested in your underwear,’ he said as he padded on bare feet towards her, his steps purposeful rather than rushed. He lift
ed her chin with the tips of his fingers and pressed his lips lightly to hers while his other hand eased the tie from her hair, making her scalp tingle, pulling it free so that her hair tumbled heavily over her shoulders. His fingers skimmed down her throat and to her shoulder, found the strap of her bra and curled a fingertip beneath, before slipping it away down her arm. He pushed the hair back and dipped his head and pressed his lips to her bare shoulder and breath hissed through her teeth. ‘I’m interested in what lies beneath.’
She shuddered on a sigh, her breasts achingly tight, as she felt his clever fingers at her back as he slid her bra away. And then her skirt was riding low and lower over her thighs before she realised he’d even unzipped it. ‘Very interested,’ he said, standing back to take her in, dark storm clouds scudding over the deep ocean blue of his eyes. He touched the pads of his thumbs to her bolt-like nipples and twin spears of sensation shot down deep into her belly, triggering an aching pulse between her thighs. Her groan of need was out before she could haul it back, but he didn’t seem to mind as he sucked her into a deep kiss that amplified the sensations.
‘What happened to the brazen woman who accosted me in a bar?’
She was a fraud. Tora swallowed. ‘She was angry. She was proving a point.’
‘Is she still angry?’
‘Yes, but now she just wants to forget why.’
‘Oh,’ he said, his eyes gleaming as he swung her into his arms and headed for the shower. ‘I can make you forget.’
* * *
Her stranger was true to his words. Granted, he had steam, a rainforest shower head and slippery gel on his side, but his clever hands and mouth had a way of making her forget everything besides being naked with a man she wanted to bed her with a compulsion and an urgency she’d never felt before—an urgency he didn’t seem to mirror.
When he’d turned on the taps and shucked off his underwear, she’d gasped at his size, not with fear, but with anticipation. She wasn’t a virgin. She knew how things worked and what generally happened and, if she was totally honest, she’d always wondered what it would be like to make love with a man so well equipped. But then he’d hooked his fingers into the sides of her underwear and pushed them down and she’d imagined that a minute or two of foreplay in the form of soaping each other’s skin, and they’d be making love right here in the shower.
Apparently he wasn’t in such a rush.
He kissed her again, long and deep, as she clung to his shoulders, while the torrent rained down upon them, his slippery hands in her wet hair, down her throat to cup her breasts before sliding down her sides, the touch of his long fingers relaying the dip of her waist in a way she’d never felt or seen so clearly in her mind’s eye before. Every curve his fingers seemed to find, every jut of bone explored on their seemingly leisurely but purposeful way south. It almost felt as if his fingers were mapping her terrain.
She gasped again, into his seeking mouth this time, when one hand cupped her mound. She felt his lips smile around hers before his mouth dipped to her throat, to kiss her shoulder and then worship her breasts on his way down to kneeling before her, his lips traversing her belly, his fingers deep between her thighs and the pulsing flesh that lay within.
Oh, God. She shuddered as he parted her legs, turning her face up into the spray as his fingers opened her to him. Exposed her to him. She thought she knew about sex. She’d thought this would be over in a minute. But she might just as well have known nothing. She felt like a virgin all over again.
She knew nothing at all, but...
Pleasure.
It came upon her in waves as his tongue lapped at her very core, teasing her beyond existence, beyond reason, as all she knew was sensation.
His tongue. The steam. The water cascading over her and his fingers teasing, circling her aching centre.
Right now there was nothing but sensation, and the inexorable build to a place a man had never taken her. A place she’d never believed it possible for a man to take her unassisted. This man was taking her all the way.
She felt his fingers stray closer until they edged inside her. She felt the tug of his mouth on her screaming nub of nerve endings and she felt the surge coming. She bit her lip to stop from crying out but there was no stopping the wave that washed over her and the cry that came all the same as her body broke around him.
* * *
He supported her before her knees could give way and she fell, and she felt him there, at her core.
Yes, she thought, because even on her way down from the highs he’d taken her to she still wanted this—wanted him deep inside her—more than anything.
But then, just as she thought she had him, just as her muscles worked to urge him in, he pulled away on a curse and slammed open the shower door.
She blinked as he pulled a towel from a rack and wrapped it around her, swinging her into his arms.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said, still trembling after her high and back to the virgin she wasn’t, fearful she’d done something wrong.
‘Nothing,’ he said as he deposited her in the centre of the big wide bed before pulling out a drawer, ‘that this won’t fix.’
He tore the top from the foil packet and rolled the condom down on him and suddenly it made sense and she was glad one of them was still thinking.
‘Now,’ he said, his face grim as he positioned himself between her legs, ‘where were we?’
And the virgin inside her turned wanton as she wrapped her hand around his bucking length and felt his power and his need within her fingers, and placed him at her core. ‘Right here.’
His eyes flared with heat as he growled with approval, and her heart skipped a beat as he took her hands and pinned them each side of her head, their fingers intertwined, and then with one long thrust he was inside her and sparks went off behind her eyes.
It was sex, she had to remind herself, just sex, because in that moment it had seemed that the world as she knew it revolved around that moment and that moment only.
He leaned down and kissed her then, so sweetly and reverently that she wondered if he’d felt it, too, this tiny spark of connection that went beyond physical, before he let go her hands and raised himself higher and slowly withdrew. She almost whimpered at the loss, wanting to hold him inside and keep him there, but then he was back, lunging deeper if that were possible, the slide and slap of flesh against flesh bringing with it that tidal flow of sensation, in and out and building each time until their bodies were slick with sweat. There was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to hide, and the next wave surge crashed over her and washed her away.
She clung to him as he went with her, tossed helplessly in the foaming surf of her undoing, gasping for air, not knowing which way was up.
He pressed his lips to her forehead before he slumped beside her. ‘Thank you,’ she heard him say between his ragged breaths, and she wondered if he could read her mind, for they were the exact same words she wanted to tell him.
* * *
He watched her sleep in the yellow-grey light, watched the slow rise of her chest and listened to the soft sigh as she exhaled, all the time wondering at a woman who had turned up exactly when he’d needed her. A woman who had made him forget the shocks of today so well that he’d almost forgotten to use protection.
When had that ever happened before?
Never, that was when.
He shook his head. He was more affected by today’s revelations than he’d realised if he could forget something so absolutely fundamental. There could be no other reason for it. Other than the way she’d come apart so furiously that he hadn’t wanted to wait, he’d wanted to follow her right then and there.
Propped up on his elbow, he lay alongside her, watching her eyelids flutter from time to time. Her hair splayed wild around her head and against the pillow. Tangled. Elemental. He touched a finger to
one of the coils, felt the silk and steel within the shafts of hair and congratulated himself for walking down the stairs into that basement bar.
One night with a stranger had never been so desperately needed and so satisfying.
Almost.
He leaned over, pressed his lips to hers. Her eyelids fluttered open and momentary surprise gave way to a tentative smile. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said as her smile turned wary. ‘Is it time for me to go?’
‘No way,’ he said as he pulled her into his arms. ‘You’re not going anywhere just yet.’
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS STILL dark when her phone buzzed, only dull yellow street light filtering up from the street far below sneaking between the gaps in the curtains. Disoriented and aching in unfamiliar places, Tora took a while to work out where she was let alone manage to stumble from the bed and find where she’d left her bag. Groggily she snatched up her mobile and stole a glance over her shoulder. Behind her Rashid lay sprawled on his front, legs and arms askew as he slept. He looked magnificent, like a slumbering god, somehow even managing to make a super-king-sized bed look small.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, and listened while Sally apologised for calling her on her day off, but it was an emergency and could she come in?
She closed her weary eyes and put a hand to her head, pushing back her hair. How much sleep had she had? Not a lot. Not a good way to go to work, especially not when she had news to tell her friend—bad news—and she’d really wanted more time before breaking it. ‘Are you sure there’s nobody else?’
But she already knew the answer to that or Sally wouldn’t have been calling on the first day off she’d had for two weeks. ‘One more thing,’ Sally said, once she’d told her she’d be there in an hour. ‘Pack a bag and bring your passport. Looks like you might need them.’