Sandra Marton - Mistresses - Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds

He glanced down, and she was elated to see the ripple of shock glaze his features. His eyelids drooped and the hard jaw slackened and it was several exhilarating heartbeats before he regained sufficient mastery of his expression to hike up a mocking eyebrow.

‘Misplaced something, Eve?’ He lifted the wisp of black lace above the level of the table, dangling it from his crooked finger.

‘Not at all,’ she drawled. His eyes were irresistibly drawn to the outline of her hips and she made the most of it, sliding her bottom onto the padded chair with provocative slowness and squirming to make herself comfortable.

‘Tease!’ His soft accusation was redolent with masculine appreciation as he watched the performance.

Her dress slid against her bare skin and the slight coolness between her legs made her feel dangerously vulnerable, especially when her knee brushed his under the table. She pressed her quivering thighs together, excited by her daring. It felt so good to be so thoroughly bad that she wondered why she hadn’t tried it years ago.

He danced the swatch of lace on his crooked finger. ‘Then what’s this? Some form of nouvelle cuisine appetiser designed to stimulate my jaded palate?’

It was her turn to look glazed as he dropped the skimpy black panties onto his gold-rimmed white plate and picked up his fork to lightly stir the frothy lace.

‘I must admit, they do look good enough to eat.’ He twirled the fork into the silky fabric, winding it up as if it was an exotic form of pasta.

‘Adam— no! ’ she squeaked, clapping her hands to her mouth to contain her appalled laughter. She hadn’t expected such an obvious sophisticate to possess such a mischievous sense of humour.

He paused, looking wickedly crestfallen. ‘You don’t wear edible panties?’ he asked.

She had seen them in novelty gift shops and thought them embarrassingly tacky. ‘Certainly not!’

Her scandalised denial made his mouth twitch. ‘Then I suppose I’ll have to settle for whatever Pierre has rustled up,’ he said, calmly plucking the panties off his fork and tucking them casually into his breast pocket. He lifted the domed lid of the chafing dish to reveal a fragrant pile of steaming stir-fried vegetables burnished with a sesameflecked sauce. ‘Will you have some?’

Regan tore her eyes away from the lace frothing out of his pocket. ‘No, I don’t think so…’ She watched him heap a generous serving of the vegetables onto his plate. ‘Are you a vegetarian?’

He shook his head as he poured Krug into two longstemmed glasses of Edinburgh lead-crystal. ‘I asked Pierre to prepare something that would digest easily. I know a meal is considered the conventional prelude to seduction, but I don’t think one should make love on an overly full stomach. Do you?’

The glass of champagne he handed her nearly slipped through her fingers. ‘I—I never really thought about it…’

‘You mean you usually just act on your natural instincts—I like that in a woman.’ His approving look was transferred to his food as he savoured it with all his senses. ‘Mmm…this is good. Here. Try a taste.’ He held out a piece of glazed carrot on his fork and Regan automatically leaned forward to take it in her mouth.

‘Good?’ he asked, tempting her with another offering, this time of succulently crisp green pepper.

The sticky sauce was sweet, yet tart, and hotly spicy on the tongue. ‘Scrumptious,’ she admitted, her eyes half closing with bliss as he trailed the tines of his fork from her moisture-glossed lower lip. The gentle scraping against the soft pad of flesh sent a little shiver down her spine.

‘Are you sure you won’t have some?’

‘Well…maybe a little.’ She yielded to his culinary seduction, deciding that tonight no temptation was worth resisting.

As they ate Adam kept the conversation to light, entertaining subjects that rarely threatened to get too personal, but the look in his eyes was extremely personal and with every bite Regan was made more aware of the fact that he was a man and she was a woman—and that he had her panties in his pocket. Her daring tease had had the desired effect, and Adam was making no secret of his gently simmering arousal. He watched her mouth as she ate and her eyes as she sipped at her champagne; he watched the way her small hands balanced the solid silver cutlery and how her throat rippled when she swallowed; he seemed to find special fascination in the delicate skin that stretched across her collarbone and the movement of her breasts against her dress as she gestured and spoke.

Unused to being the focus of such concentrated masculine attention, Regan found herself increasingly responsive to the charged atmosphere created by his cool wit and hot, knowing looks. Just looking at him was like plugging directly into an electrical circuit—her whole body hummed with a pleasurable buzz of nervous anticipation. She noticed the easy flexibility in his strong wrists as his scarred hands tipped the heavy champagne bottle, the sexy lines that amusement carved in his taut cheeks and the muscle that jumped in his jaw when he mentally withdrew to brood on some private thought.

She was so caught up in her heightened self-awareness that when Adam finally pressed his napkin against his mouth all she could think of was how it would feel if he pressed her to those firm lips…

She found out when he suddenly threw the rumpled napkin down on his empty plate and with a rough sound of impatience reached over to jerk her out of her chair, tumbling her across his lap.

‘And now you can make good on that promise,’ he growled, supporting her slender back with one powerful arm as his other hand cupped her squirming hip, forcing her soft bottom against the bunched muscles of his thighs.

Her startled cry of alarm had made her breathless. ‘What promise?’ she gasped, her head falling back against his shoulder as she recognised she was helpless against his strength, even had she wanted to struggle…

‘This one,’ he rasped, silking his hand up under her dress, over the tops of her stockings, to stroke the satiny skin of her inner thighs, his fingertips drifting so close to the core of her feminine heat that she felt the fierce electrical jolt of his imaginary penetration.

Regan instinctively snapped her legs together, her squeak of shock smothered by his mouth coming hard down on hers, plundering her senses with a ruthless expertise that left her weak and panting.

He kissed her until she thought that her head was going to explode and her heart accelerate out of her chest. This was no coy flirtation—his forceful kisses were in brazen earnest. And after a slightly clumsy start Regan abandoned herself to his miraculous passion, splinters of delight cascading through her senses. His tongue slid in and out of her mouth, deftly stroking her in ways that made her twist feverishly in his lap, seeking even more intimate contact, sliding her arms around his neck and running her fingers up the back of his scalp to sift through his luxuriant dark hair, tugging at it in her eagerness to experience everything he had to offer.

But it still wasn’t enough—he was too controlled and she needed more, much more—so she leaned hungrily into his devouring kisses, using her teeth and tongue to encourage him to stop holding back, to be rougher, more reckless…

He refused to co-operate, and she ran a hand down the side of his face, over his gritty jaw and down his flawed throat to his open collar, where she ripped blindly at the buttons to gain access to that tantalising strip of hair-roughened chest. Under the dark mat of hair his skin felt smooth and hot to her fingertips, and she curled her nails into the resilient wall of flesh, revelling in the way his muscles bunched and rippled at the warning prick of five tiny daggers.