Carole Mortimer - From New York With Love

Needless to say he had not been best pleased that he had allowed the distraction of those thoughts of Cyn to infringe on his business meeting, but one look at her tonight, dressed in those snug-fitting black denims and the delicate blue blouse, with the silky darkness of her hair loose about her shoulders, and his earlier feeling of irritated dissatisfaction had instantly been replaced by desire.

‘I thought that I had been invited up here for dinner,’ she snapped now. ‘Not to witness a male strip show!’

Lucien made no effort to hold back his grin of satisfaction at her obvious discomfort at seeing his bare chest. It seemed only fair when he had thought of her all afternoon. When his shaft was now an uncomfortable, painful throb against his denims. ‘I’m wearing more now than I would be on a beach,’ he reasoned.

‘Unless you haven’t noticed, we don’t happen to be on a beach.’ She frowned. ‘And I do not have any intention of providing your amusement for the evening.’

He eyed her mockingly. ‘Oh, I haven’t even begun to be amused yet, Cyn.’

‘And as far as I’m concerned you aren’t going to be, either!’ She placed her glass down noisily on the coffee table before straightening and turning, with the obvious intention of walking out on him.

Lucien reached out and grasped her arm as she would have stormed past him—only to ease up on the pressure of that grasp as he saw the way she winced. ‘Are your wrist and arm still hurting you?’ he rasped.

‘No. I—they’re fine.’ She gave a dismissive shake of her head, her eyes avoiding meeting his piercingly questioning gaze. ‘You just caught me unawares, that’s all.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

She sighed her impatience. ‘I don’t care whether or not— What are you doing?’ she demanded as Lucien released her arm before moving his hands to the front of her blouse, his fingers unfastening the tiny blue buttons. ‘Lucien? Stop it!’ She slapped ineffectually at his hands.

‘I don’t trust your version of “fine”, Cyn. I intend to see for myself,’ Lucien muttered grimly as he continued unfastening those buttons.

‘Stop it, I said!’ She pulled sharply away from him—a move immediately followed by a delicate ripping sound as Lucien refused to release his hold. The gauzy blouse ripped completely away from the last remaining buttons, leaving Cyn’s breasts completely bared to his heated gaze.

Full and beautifully sloping breasts...tipped by two perfect rosy-red nipples...those nipples were plumping and hardening in tempting arousal as Lucien continued to look down at them appreciatively.

CHAPTER SIX

‘I CAN’T BELIEVE you just did that!’ Thia was the first to recover enough to speak, staring accusingly at Lucien even as her shaking hands scrabbled desperately to pull the two sides of her blouse together over her bared breasts, feeling mortified by her nakedness in front of a man she already found far too overpoweringly attractive for comfort.

Her knees had once again turned to the consistency of jelly at the heat she saw in those silver eyes...!

‘I believe, if you think about it, you’ll find that we just did that,’ Lucien drawled hardly. ‘You pulled away. I didn’t let go.’ He shrugged.

Thia bristled indignantly, clutching on to anger as a means of hiding her embarrassment—and arousal—at the continued heat in Lucien’s gaze. ‘You shouldn’t have been unbuttoning my blouse in the first place!’

‘I wanted to see your bruises. I still want to see them,’ he added determinedly.

‘You saw a lot more than my bruises!’ she snapped. ‘And I believe we’ve already had one discussion about my feelings concerning what you do or don’t want. In this instance what you wanted resulted in the ruination of a blouse I was rather fond of and saved for weeks to buy.’

‘I’ll replace it for you tomorrow.’

‘Oh, won’t that be just wonderful?’ She huffed her exasperation. ‘I can hear your telephone conversation with the woman in the shop now—Send a blue blouse round to Miss Hammond’s suite at Steele Heights Hotel. I ripped the last one off her!’ She attempted to mimic his deep tones. ‘Are you laughing at me, Lucien?’ Thia eyed him suspiciously and she thought—was sure!—she saw his lips twitch.

He chuckled softly. ‘Admiring the way you sounded so much like me.’

‘Well, I certainly can’t stay and have dinner with you now.’

‘Why not?’ All amusement fled and his expression darkened.

‘Hello?’ She gave him a pitying look. ‘Ripped blouse and no bra?’

‘I noticed that.’ Lucien nodded, silver eyes once again gleaming with laughter even if his expression remained hard and unyielding. ‘We’ve met three times now, and on none of those occasions have you been wearing a bra,’ he added curiously.

Thia’s cheeks blushed a fiery red as she thought of the revealing gown she had been wearing last night—no way could she have been wearing a bra beneath that. And the intimacy of Lucien’s caresses in his office earlier today had shown him that she hadn’t been wearing a bra under her pink crop top, either. As for ripping her blouse just now and baring her breasts...!

‘I—the uniform I have to wear when I’m working at the restaurant is of some heavy material that makes me really hot, so I usually go without one and it’s just become a habit,’ she explained defensively.

‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ If she were honest, Thia’s initial shock and anger were already fading and she now felt a little like laughing herself—slightly hysterically—at this farcical situation. Hearing her blouse rip, seeing the initial shock on Lucien’s face, had been like something out of a sitcom. Except Thia didn’t intend letting him off the hook quite that easily...

Oh, she had no doubt that ripping her blouse had been an accident, and that she was as much to blame for it as Lucien was. But if he hadn’t been behaving quite so badly by insisting on having his own way—again!—he would never have been in a position to rip her blouse in the first place. Or to bare her breasts. And that really had been embarrassing rather than funny.

Besides, she really did find Lucien far too disturbing when he was only wearing a pair of faded denims and showing lots of bare, muscled flesh. Her ripped blouse was the perfect excuse for her to cry off having dinner with him this evening.

‘We haven’t talked about the Jonathan Miller situation yet.’

Lucien had just—deliberately?—said the one thing guaranteed to ensure Thia stayed exactly where she was!

* * *

Lucien had found himself scowling at the idea of Thia working in a public restaurant night after night, wearing no bra, with those delicious breasts jiggling beneath her uniform for all her male customers to see and ogle.

Just as it now displeased him that Cyn was so obviously rethinking her decision about not having dinner with him only because he had mentioned the Jonathan Miller situation.

The other man had physically hurt her, was responsible for her having had nowhere to sleep last night other than that disreputable hotel, and yet Miller hadn’t given a damn what had happened to her when he’d thrown her belongings haphazardly into a suitcase this morning and handed them over to Lucien.

Worst of all, Lucien now knew, from his conversation with Miller, that the other man had been using Cyn for his own purposes. He had believed—wrongly, as it happened—that her presence in his apartment in New York would give the impression that his affair with Simone Carew, was over. Something Cyn was still totally unaware of...

‘Well?’ he rasped harshly.

She gave a pained frown. ‘Perhaps you have a T-shirt I could wear? And maybe you could find one for yourself while you’re at it?’ she added hopefully.