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

‘Can’t I?’ he said, in the tone of a man who could be whatever the hell he wanted. ‘You can’t have us both, honey—it’s him or me.’

‘But he’s such a hunk!’ she pouted, pretending to peep around his elbow at his reflection.

His eyes narrowed warningly above his silky smile. ‘You think so…?’

‘Well…he’s in much better shape than you are,’ she said, walking her fingers daintily up his chest. She had reached a nipple and stopped to explore. ‘He has much bigger muscles.’

‘Bigger than this?’ he growled, grabbing her dancing fingers and pulling them down to his groin. She gave a little squeak as he folded her hand around himself, stunned by the feel of the rigid shaft stroking against her palm as he undulated his hips. He felt as hard as steel, yet satiny soft and smooth as he slipped through her fingers, so hot that she could feel sympathetic perspiration breaking out all over her body. Her fingers felt too swollen for her skin, stiff and clumsy as she tried to be gentle, knowing from her self-defence classes that men were extremely sensitive to pressure in that part of their anatomy. To the sharp scent of soap was now added the potent, musky aroma of male desire.

‘Too much for you to handle, Eve?’ he taunted, hardening further under her featherlight fumbling. He picked up her other hand and enfolded snugly it around the base of his shaft. ‘Here, why not use both hands…? And no need to treat me like spun glass—I won’t break.’

She gulped, looking helplessly down at his captive manhood framed by her cupped hands, and the thick cloud of hair in his groin. All that throbbing power in her fragile grasp, she wondered…all that magnificent masculinity hers to command…

She contracted her fingers, unconsciously licking her lips, and a groan ripped from his chest. He gripped her by the shoulders, pulling her close so that her hands were crushed between them and the tips of her breasts scraped against his chest.

‘Well, do you think I measure up?’ he asked harshly as his body threatened to career out of his control.

‘To what—the Empire State Building?’ she said, striving to match his banter.

She felt his jolting laugh clear to the precious heaviness nestling hotly in her hands.

‘I’m flattered you even mention us in the same breath, Honey, but speaking about comparing measurements…’

He reached around her back and she felt her zip give all the way down her spine and instinctively reached up to clutch at the loosening fabric over her breasts.

His groan of explicit regret as she released him made her blush, and she babbled defensively, ‘I hope you’re not expecting the pyramids here—I’m not very big…’

‘So you told me earlier,’ he murmured, tugging away her folded arms so that the dress slithered to her hips. ‘Small and perfectly proportioned for your size,’ he approved, as her rosy round breasts came into view, the pert nipples trembling with each shallow rise and fall of her ribcage. ‘A very tempting little mouthful…’

And so it proved as he bent her back over his arm and cupped her breast, lifting it to his mouth so that he could lick at the dark pink crown, circling and flicking at it with his tongue until it ripened into a plum-red berry that he could nibble and suck with lusty pleasure before transferring his attention to its neglected twin. Wave after wave of delight crested through Regan’s body as her dress slipped to the floor and was impatiently kicked away.

She wasn’t even aware of moving, but the backs of her knees hit the side of the bed and she felt him dip and wrench away the covers with one hand an instant before she sprawled backwards onto the cool sheets, taking him with her. She squirmed underneath his heavy weight and he laughed exultantly, rolling with her into the middle of the wide bed, his thighs pushing heavily between hers as he pinned her to the slippery silk. He ran his hands down her stockinged legs and crouched back on his knees to flip off her dainty shoes before manacling her ankles and wrapping them around his lean flanks as he came back down on top of her, crushing his arousal against the moist thicket in the V of her body, shuddering with tension as he braced himself on bended elbows above her panting body.

‘You’re so beautifully responsive that you drive me wild,’ he said hoarsely, cupping her head in his scarred hands. ‘Look at me—I can’t control myself. So much for my fine boasts about foreplay…’

Her violet eyes drank in the glorious sight of him—the dominant male, helpless in the grip of the passion that she had generated…

‘Oh, Adam…’ She knew then that the real gift she was taking away tonight was far more valuable than diamonds. This wonderful, sexy stranger had given her the confidence to be a woman again.

She arched her hips in an age-old invitation and raised her arms to pull him down to her hungry mouth. ‘It’s you I want, not your clinical expertise,’ she told him in a sultry husk that carried the warm ring of truth. ‘I’d rather have honest lust than a textbook demonstration of the Kama Sutra…’

His heavy-lidded eyes gleamed with richly sensual amusement as he succumbed to her steamy challenge, reaching down between them to where their bodies almost joined. ‘Then, Eve, shall we open the gates of paradise…? And maybe what we find there will enable me to rise to the occasion and give you both …’

‘WELL, Lass, it won’t be long now.’

Regan glanced in amusement at her employer, who was fidgeting in his eagerness to get to their destination.

‘Next on the right!’ The bullhorn bark belied his benign, roly-poly appearance, and she swiftly returned her attention to her driving.

Two months ago she wouldn’t have had the confidence to chauffeur the big, expensive Jaguar, but since That Night she had discovered an adventurous spirit within herself which had encouraged her to believe that she could conquer all her problems if she just had the courage to try.

That Night.

It stood in capitalised italics in her memory. Her deliciously guilty secret. Her infamous one-night stand.

She had forbidden herself to think about it during the day, although there was no keeping Adam out of her nighttime fantasies—which was exactly where he belonged, she told herself sternly. She had never heard another peep out of Cleo about that evening, and her chief feeling was one of ardent relief that she had got away with her reckless stunt. But one tiny, primitive part of her couldn’t help harbouring a brooding disappointment that Adam obviously hadn’t asked Derek for a return visit from the non-existent ‘Eve’. It would almost be worth having her cover blown to have him affirm that he had enjoyed their night of unbridled passion so much that he wanted to repeat the experience.

But, given the way that she had left, sneaking out before dawn while he was still asleep, and her parting gesture, she knew she should count herself lucky that there had been no embarrassing repercussions.

‘Here! Turn here! Now! Now!’ A stubby freckled finger stabbed in front of her nose.

‘Yes, I can see the sign,’ she said mildly.

Sir Frank gave a wry chuckle as they flashed past the huge billboard advertising the Palm Cove condominium and marina development and turned off the main highway onto the wide, winding road which cut across the narrow, hilly peninsula of land jutting out into the waters of the Hauraki Gulf.

‘Sorry, it’s just that I’m looking forward to seeing Hazel’s face when I tell her that all her worries are over.’ He beamed smugly as he envisaged his sister-in-law’s gratitude.

Since his doctor had diagnosed his heart condition Sir Frank had been trying to cut back on his stress levels, with mixed success. He had given up driving, fatty foods and smoking his beloved cigars, but he had found it harder to relinquish his habit of command. Selling the large development company which he had expanded from the single soft furnishings store he had inherited from his father was proving a wrench, even though it was staying more or less in the family—bought by a corporation headed by the man who was on the verge of marrying Hazel’s orphaned granddaughter.