JACQUELINE BAIRD - Paper Marriages - Wife - Bought and Paid For / His Convenient Marriage / A Convenient Wife

‘Pay! You mean—you—’ She stopped, spluttering, then started again on a rising note of incredulity. ‘You mean me ? You think I am for sale with the house?’ she screeched, renewing her efforts to scramble from under him.

Solo stopped her by grabbing her wrists and pinning them above her head in one strong hand, and throwing a long leg over her slim hips. ‘I’m accepting your offer, Penny.’ His grey gaze was intent on her furious face. ‘So long as I get exclusive rights to your body for as long as I want.’

‘My offer… My body!’ she gasped.

‘Yes.’ His eyes didn’t leave her face. ‘Starting now,’ he insisted with silken emphasis.

CHAPTER THREE

PANIC-STRICKEN, Penny arched up, trying to dislodge Solo’s weight from her body, but it was a futile exercise as his mouth with unerring accuracy covered hers. Forcing her head back onto the bed, and prising apart her soft lips, he began a ravishing exploration with tongue and teeth in a kiss that shattered her romantic concept of a kiss for ever.

Before when he had kissed her it had been a gentle invasion, but now it was a blatantly sensual demand to possess, and to her shame she felt the rising heat of desire scorch through her, heating her blood to fever pitch.

As he sensed her capitulation Solo’s mouth softened on hers, and with the tip of his tongue he soothed her swollen lips, before raising his head. Her glorious eyes were dilated with desire and her lips softly parted. She was his for the taking…

Penny drew in a deep, shuddering breath of air. She was so caught up in him she was hardly aware he had released her wrists. And before she could recover from the shock of his kiss his hands slid to her hips and in one swift movement had flipped her jumper up and over her head, and tossed it aside.

‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ Solo opined huskily, his sweater removed in a flash. His eyes bored into hers with undisguised sexual intent.

‘No. Please,’ Penny breathed, shaken to the core by the devastating awareness of the powerful naked torso looming over her stirring a terrifying weakness in her. She was compelled to touch the hair-roughened chest so that her no please sounded weak even to her own ears. But he was not listening. His arm slid around her waist, and arched her slender body off the bed, removing the lacy scrap of bra with a deftness that smacked of long experience.

She spread her hands on his chest in a belated effort to push him away. ‘No.’

‘You invited me.’ His face tightened, and his silver eyes glittered with a deep angry passion over her face and lower down to her firm, lush breasts.

Invited! Was he mad? ‘No way,’ she cried. ‘I don’t want this!’

Molten silver eyes held hers ‘Your body tells me otherwise.’ His gaze dipped sensually over her bare breasts as his long fingers tightened around then caressed her waist.

‘You can’t,’ she whispered hoarsely, a peculiar weakness overwhelming her as she took in his bronzed semi-nudity. ‘Let me go.’ The blood pounded with increasing excitement through her veins. ‘You can’t force me,’ and even as she said the words she did not really believe he would use his superior strength against her.

At eighteen she had ached for him, and he had controlled her girlish fervour with ease, but now he was unleashing the powerful expertise of his awesome masculinity on her and she had no defence. What little resistance she had left collapsing like a house of cards against his sensual onslaught.

Solo ate her body with his eyes. Dio but he wanted her, and he knew she wanted him. It was there in her pouting lips and in the jade depths of her gorgeous eyes. She was sex personified, and the fact she had once turned him down made the prospect of her ultimate surrender all the sweeter.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ he responded silkily, and cupped the smooth, creamy fullness of her breast, and trailed his thumb over the rosy tip, bringing it to rigid life, and watched her helpless, trembling response with cynical masculine satisfaction. He would seduce her slowly, and once he had her begging in his arms he would finally cure himself of the fatal attraction she held for him. She would be a body in his bed like countless others before her—until he tired of her.

Penny did not know what had hit her. One minute she was showing him the bedroom, now she was half naked on the bed drowning in a sea of sensations she did not really comprehend. The hands that had tried to push him away with a will of their own stroked over his satin-skinned shoulders, and when his head moved down to kiss her other breast her whole body shuddered in mindless delight.

‘Don’t lie, Penny,’ he drawled against her hot skin, sprinkling tiny kisses back up her throat. ‘You want me as I want you.’ Once more he found her mouth, his tongue slipping between her teeth with a seductive sensuality until she forgot she was supposed to be fighting him and welcomed the intimate probing of his tongue with innocent, wild enthusiasm. Her fingers slid around his neck and into the silky black hair of his head, her breasts pressed into the hard heat of his naked chest as he held her closer, and she surrendered to the throbbing need his mouth and hands aroused in her.

So it was a brutal shock when suddenly Solo jerked away from her. Senses swimming, her green eyes wide and wondering, she looked up into his handsome face. Hard grey eyes stared back at her.

‘This has been a long time in coming. Now tell me you don’t want me.’ His mouth curled mockingly, his gaze skimmed cynically over her full breasts, his hand flicking insolently over her rigid nipples. ‘Deny the evidence of your own body.’

Penny stared back at him, too stunned to speak, and hating him for deliberately arousing her to a point of mindless surrender, simply to point out the weakness of her own flesh.

‘Force does not come into it, Penny,’ he drawled, his eyes boring into hers with stark demand. ‘Make up your mind. You are no longer an innocent young virgin, so stop pretending and act like the mature woman I know you to be. Admit the need, the desire I can see in your eyes. Yes or no.’

Scarlet-faced, her body throbbing with unfulfilled need, she was vitally aware of Solo’s half-naked form, the dark intimacy of the bedroom, and she shuddered, unable to subdue the fierce excitement flowing through her veins however hard she tried.

She had thought herself over him long ago, and she had never considered herself to be a particularly sexual person. She’d had no trouble rebuffing the young men she had dated at university, but now she was forced to face the fact that, where Solo was concerned, he only had to look at her, touch her, and for some inexplicable reason her untried body was perfectly attuned to his. It didn’t make sense…

‘Your silence is very telling, Penny,’ Solo drawled throatily, his grey eyes burning into hers as he kissed each breast in turn, while his deft fingers unfastened her trousers and stripped them and her briefs from her body, and she let him… Hypnotised by his fiercely glittering gaze.

‘You want to be persuaded. Very feminine,’ he husked. Penny gasped out loud as slowly he slid his hand down over her stomach and swept along the length of her thigh, and then trailed his long fingers sensually down her leg with deliberate provocation. ‘Very beautiful, and I’m happy to oblige.’

Penny trembled, mesmerised by the rapt expression on his strong, lean face, and the emotions surging inside her. Then lazily he stood up, and, taking her unresisting hand, he slowly lifted it to his thigh.

‘See what you do to me, Penny.’ He pressed her hand hard against him, and her palm seemed to burn as she felt the strength of his manhood through the fabric of his trousers. Fascinated and terrified at the same time, she would have pulled back, but he spoke in a throaty, seductive murmur. ‘I need your answer, Penny.’