Rose had never felt quite so exposed. She wasn’t ashamed of her body. She simply recognised its limitations. Lights off worked when it came to dealing with those limitations and to have him looking at her like that...
She sneaked a glance at him and felt a surge of thrilling excitement because his eyes were dark with masculine appreciation.
‘I’m not exactly the most voluptuous woman on the face of the earth,’ Rose apologised, blushing. ‘That’s why I can go without a bra a lot of the time. Not much there to contain.’ She laughed and watched his finger as it continued to circle her nipple, moving onto the other.
‘You should never have hang-ups about your body,’ Arturo said thickly. ‘It’s amazing. Your nipples are stunning...dark...succulent...’
‘Arturo!’
He laughed and shot her a wicked look from under his lashes. ‘Is that the sound of you begging me to continue telling you why you should be proud of your body?’
‘No!’ But she laughed, a little breathless laugh that was unsteady with anticipation.
‘I’m going to have fun tasting them,’ Arturo told her conversationally. ‘Does it turn you on to imagine the feel of my mouth on your nipple?’
‘Stop!’
‘You’re red as a beetroot.’ Arturo grinned and gently tilted her averted face so that she was looking at him.
He vaulted off the bed, fumbled to make sure protection was handy and then he began getting undressed.
Rose stared.
She forgot all about her inhibitions because never had she seen anything so glorious in her life before.
He was all muscle and sinew, his broad shoulders tapering to a washboard-flat stomach. He ditched the shirt and raised his eyebrows with amusement at her rapt expression.
‘You have no idea,’ he murmured, taking a step towards her, at which she promptly hoisted herself onto her elbows, automatically leaning towards him, ‘what that expression is doing to my libido.’
‘Really?’ Riveted, Rose continued to stare at him.
‘Really,’ Arturo said drily, ‘but you’ll see for yourself soon enough...’ He burst out laughing when her eyes skittered away just as he began unbuttoning his trousers.
He seemed to revel in the intensity of her gaze.
The trousers were off.
The boxers followed suit.
Rose gulped. He was more than impressive. Big, thick, throbbing with want. Standing there, he was absolutely lacking in inhibition, carelessly indifferent to the perfection of his nakedness.
Rose sat up, then slid off the bed to stand in front of him. She was half naked and now all she wanted to do was yank down the skirt but, before she could, he stayed her fluttering hand and moved towards her, holding her just for a moment so that she could feel his hardness pressing against her belly.
‘Allow me...’ he murmured.
Arturo wasn’t going to rush anything, even though his body must be clamouring for satisfaction.
He eased the skin-tight skirt off her to reveal plain cotton panties. For a few seconds, Arturo stilled.
He was kneeling and he drew back to look at her. Hands on her bare bottom, Arturo delicately teased the folds of her womanhood with a gentle touch, causing her to gasp and then exhale on a whimper.
When his tongue slid into the slippery crease she gasped again, this time on a guttural moan, and her fingers curled into his hair as she opened her legs wider to receive his attentions.
Rose was melting. Every bone in her body was turning to water as his tongue flicked over her, squirming deeper until he located the pulsing bud of her core.
The pleasure was intense, unbearable almost, nothing that she had ever felt before or could ever have imagined feeling. It was pure sensation and every thought, confused or otherwise, shot straight out of her head.
She realised that she was moving against his mouth in an unconscious rhythm.
She almost squeaked a protest when he drew back and stood up to lift her off her feet so that he could deposit her onto the bed, as though she weighed nothing at all.
Rose was expecting something fast and furious but instead he pinned her hands above her head, ordered her not to move a muscle and then sat back on his haunches to gaze at her with open admiration.
If this was how he was in bed with a woman, she thought in a heated daze, then she was surprised that there wasn’t a demanding queue of ex-lovers banging on her front door, braying for him to return to bed with them.
‘Just for the moment,’ he said huskily, ‘indulge me and allow me to take charge.’
With her hands still above her head, burrowed underneath the pillow, Rose half smiled.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t take charge in everything you do?’ she teased, ‘because if you are then I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true. Some people have accused me of occasionally being somewhat...assertive.’
He seemed determined to assert himself right now. Starting with her breasts.
He kissed them, nuzzled their softness, making her writhe and stretch underneath him, her movements feline and sensuous. He licked one nipple with his tongue and then sucked on it, drawing it into his mouth and teasing the sensitive tip with his tongue. As he ministered to her breast, he dipped down to rest his hand between her thighs, lightly covering her mound with the palm of his hand and then pressing down in lazy circular movements.
Bliss.
Rose was dripping wet and she didn’t care. She was explosively turned on. Something about the position of her arms heightened the sensitivity of her breasts and each flick of his tongue and caress of his hand made her want to cry out loud.
He trailed a path of kisses along her stomach and she inhaled sharply, wanting more than anything for him to taste her down there again, there between her legs where the ache desperately craved his touch.
As he found that place and began, once again, to tease her with his tongue, she arched up, spread her legs wider and bucked against his questing mouth.
Sensation started with an electric ripple that spread outwards with the force of a tsunami until she was lost in a world dictated by her physical response to his mouth. She could no more have strung a coherent thought together than she could have grown wings and taken flight.
When she came against his mouth it was with such force that she cried out, hands clutching the bed linen, her whole body arching, stiffening and then shuddering as everything exploded inside her.
She eventually subsided on a wave of mind-blowing contentment.
‘Felt good?’ Arturo lay alongside her, then curved her against him, pushing his thigh between her legs.
Rose linked her fingers around his neck and darted some kisses over his face. ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at him with such genuine apology that he winced.
‘Sorry about what?’
‘Just lying there and...um...enjoying myself...’
‘You have no idea how much enjoyment I got from pleasuring you.’
Rose smiled and curved against him, taking the initiative this time, adoring the hard, muscled lines of his body as she ran her hands over it. Along his shoulders, over his hard, sinewy chest, taking time to tease his flattened brown nipples.
His erection was thick and pulsing and she lowered herself into a position where she could take him into her mouth and he, manoeuvring her, could take her into his.
An exchange of intense pleasure that brought her right back up to the edge from which she had only recently descended.
Rose had never experienced such a lack of inhibition. She had always approached the opposite sex from a position of caution, a place where mechanisms were in place to prevent her from being too hurt. She’d never let go with anyone, not that her life had been cluttered with an abundance of men, and it astounded her that, of all the people in the world, she should be so free and open with one who wasn’t destined to play any kind of permanent role in her life.
It didn’t make sense.
But wonderfu
lly open was exactly what she was feeling as she licked and teased and sucked him, as she felt him move between her thighs, tickling her with his tongue, their bodies fused as one.
They both knew when the time was right for the foreplay to end before it cascaded into orgasm.
Arturo eased her off him, groaning as their bodies broke contact. It was a matter of a few fumbling seconds and then, protection in place, he positioned himself over her.
Rose could barely contain her excitement. Her whole body ached for the ultimate satisfaction of having him inside her and when he drove into her, thrusting hard and firm, she groaned long and low.
He filled her up and with each thrust she came closer and closer to the brink.
* * *
Art had never been with anyone as responsive as she was. It was as though he was tuned in to her, sensitive to just how far he could take her before she came, able to time his own orgasm to match hers, and when they came it was mind-blowing.
Deep inside her, embedded to the hilt, he drove hard and felt her shudder and cry out just as he rocked with waves of such intense pleasure that he couldn’t contain his own guttural cry of satisfaction.
It was a few moments before they could unglue their bodies from one another. Unusually, Art didn’t immediately feel the urge to break the connection by escaping to have a shower.
Instead, he slid off her and held her. What the hell had he done? He’d come here on a mission and this most definitely had not been any part of his mission.
But he looked down at her flushed face, her parted mouth, felt the warmth of her beautiful body pressed against his, and all he wanted to do was have her all over again.
Art knew that this was a weakness. In fact, sleeping with her at all had been a weakness. Since when had any woman taken precedence over common sense and, more importantly, work?
And what happened now?
Art knew what should happen. He should walk away. He should walk away and keep on walking until he hit London and the reality of his life there. He should put an immediate end to this charade and conduct whatever business needed conducting through his lawyers and accountants. The land belonged to him and tiptoeing around that stark fact was a matter of choice rather than necessity.
Okay, so maybe if she got stuck in and took a stand, the community would view his development as a blot on their landscape and react accordingly to the newcomers buying properties, but that wouldn’t last. Within six months everything would settle down and life would carry on as normal.
His presence here and his willingness to do his best to ease the process would bear testimony to his capacity for goodwill.
It would also be useful because, in due course, he would be putting in another planning application and a hostile community would make that more difficult.
But in the end he would get what he wanted because he always did.
And, in the meantime, this...was a complication.
‘What are you thinking?’ Rose asked drowsily, opening her eyes to look directly at him. ‘No,’ she continued, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘Mind reader, are you?’ Art smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. He cupped her naked breast with his hand and marvelled at how nicely it fitted. Not too big, not too small.
‘You’re thinking that it’s time you went back to your bedroom and you’d be right because it’s late and I want to go to sleep.’
‘Is that the sound of you kicking me out of your bedroom?’ he murmured, moving in to nibble her ear and then licking the side of her neck so that she squirmed and giggled softly.
‘It’s the sound of a woman who needs her beauty sleep.’ She wriggled away from him so that she could head for the bathroom.
‘But what,’ Art heard himself ask, ‘does a red-blooded man do if he wakes in the early hours of the morning and needs his woman by his side?’
Rose stilled but when she answered her voice was still light and teasing. ‘He goes downstairs for a glass of milk?’
‘Wrong answer.’ Art heaved himself into a sitting position and pulled her towards him. ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but let’s spend the night together...and, by the way... I’d like it if you called me Art. Not Arthur...not Arturo. Art.’
CHAPTER SIX
ART GAZED AT the vast swathes of empty land around him. Open fields. The very same open fields that had confronted him on day one when he had arrived with a plan and a deadline.
Slight difference now. The plan and the deadline had both taken a battering. He’d slept with Rose over a week and a half ago and even as his head had urged him to turn his back and walk away, his body had argued against that course of action and had won.
They’d shared a bed every night since then. He couldn’t see her without wanting her. It was insane but whatever attraction kept pulling him towards her, it was bigger than all the reserves of willpower at his disposal.
And the land...
Art strolled to the very spot where the protesters had set up camp. There were some stragglers but most had left. He’d been busy arguing his corner whilst making sure not to stand on any soapboxes bellowing his opinions. He’d listened to everything that had been said and had quickly sussed that, however fervent they were about the abstract notion of the land being developed, when it came down to basics, the offer of those very same heartless developers doing some good for their community had won the day.
Financial assistance for the primary school; a fund towards the local library, which also served as a meeting place for most of the senior citizens; playing fields to be included on some of his land which, as it happened, suited Art very well indeed, bearing in mind his future plans for the site.
Art had advised them to contact the team of lawyers working for DC Logistics.
‘There’s always a solution when it comes to sorting problems,’ he had asserted, safe in the knowledge that they would find no hindrance to their requests. Not only was he happy to ease the situation but he was positively pleased to be able to do so because he had grown fond of all of them, had seen for himself, first-hand, how strongly they felt about the land.
In London, community spirit of that kind was noticeably absent and he’d been impressed by what he’d seen.
And, crucially, Rose had more or less conceded that it was the best solution because, like it or not, those tractors and cranes would move in sooner or later.
His job here was done and satisfactorily so.
He could be pleased with himself. He could start thinking about step two. He knew in his gut that there would be no obstacles in his way and step two had always been top of the agenda. Art might have been cynical when it came to the romantic notion of love, but familial love, discovered in the most unexpected of places, had settled in his heart and filled the space there.
He’d thought outside the box and it had paid off. Now, as he looked at his land, he realised that thinking outside the box and getting what he’d wanted had come at an unexpected cost.
Rose.
He abruptly turned away, headed for the battered Land Rover which couldn’t have been more different from his own fleet of super-charged, high-performance cars.
She’d temporarily loaned him her car.
‘I’ll be buried in case files for the next week or so.’ She had laughed, her arms wound around his neck, her eyes sparkling, her half-clad body pressed against his. ‘You’ll want to be out and about. Lord knows you’ve become some kind of mentor to half the protesters...with that promise of yours that the developers are going to meet their extravagant demands! Mind you, I’ll be pleased to have my kitchen table back.’
Art would have to come clean. There was no way around it. He couldn’t believe that he had been disingenuous enough, when thoughts had entered his head about sleeping with her, to believe that he could have a fling and walk away.
Two adults, he had argued to himself. Two consenting adults who fancied one another. What was the problem? All he had to do was make it clear to her fro
m the very start that he wasn’t going to be hanging around and his conscience would be clear.
He’d approached all his relationships with the opposite sex like that. With honesty and no promises. If some of them had become distraught when he’d walked away because they’d been pointlessly looking for more than he had in him to give, then so be it. Not his fault. How could it have been when he’d done nothing but warned them off going down that road?
But the situation with Rose was different and that was something he had failed to factor in.
He’d conveniently whitewashed the whole business of why he had turned up, unannounced, on her doorstep into something that wasn’t really relevant—he wasn’t going to be sticking around so she would never actually discover his true identity. Therefore, why did it matter who he was?
Except it did.
And now he would have to pay the price for his not-so-innocent deception.
It was not quite six in the evening. He had spent the day partly in the library, where he had worked in pleasurable peace, and partly in a five-star hotel near Oxford, where a high-level meeting had been arranged with the CEO of a company he intended to buy.
He wondered whether his attack of conscience had been kick-started by that return to the reality of his high-powered city life. Sitting at that table, back in his comfort zone of work, business and making money...had it brought him back down to earth with a bump? Reminded him of the single tenet he had always lived by—work was the only thing upon which a person could rely?
Art didn’t know. He just knew that he owed Rose more than a disappearing act.
He made it back to her house within fifteen minutes, to find her still in her office alone, Phil having gone for the day.
Rose looked up and smiled.
He’d told her that he didn’t do commitment and he didn’t do domesticity and yet they’d cooked together and discussed everything under the sun from world politics to village gossip.
‘You’re just in time,’ she said, standing up and stretching. ‘If I read any more of this file I’m going to end up banging my head on the desk in frustration. You wouldn’t believe the spurious arguments this company is using to get rid of one of their longest-serving employees just because it would be cheaper for them to get a young person on board.’
The Tycoon’s Ultimate Conquest Page 8