Miranda Lee - In the Australian's Bed - The Passion Price / The Australian's Convenient Bride / The Australian's Marriage Demand

Her cry of pain was real, Jake’s reactions swift. Shoving his own mug onto a nearby table, he scooped Angelina up in his arms, and carried her with long strides back inside and over to the kitchen. There, he sat her on the marble counter, stripped off her shoes and swivelled her round to put her stockinged feet into the larger of the two sinks. Turning on the tap, he directed the cold water over her scalded legs.

‘That water’s freezing!’ she cried out, and stamped her feet up and down in the sink.

‘That’s the idea,’ he replied. ‘It’ll take the heat out of your skin and stop it from burning. Now, stop being such a baby.’ And he kept swivelling the tap back and forth across her lower legs.

‘You’re getting my dress all wet,’ she complained.

‘I have a drier. Besides, there’s coffee on that very pretty skirt, anyway. You’ll have to take the dress off and soak it, if you don’t want the whole thing to be ruined.’

Take her dress off! If she did that, then she’d be a goner for sure.

‘Was this part of your plan for today? Spill hot coffee all over me so you could play knight the rescue and get my dress off at the same time?’

His blue eyes glittered with amusement. ‘I’d love to say that I thought of it. In fact, I might put it away in my mental cupboard of plans for seducing difficult old flames. But given you dropped the mug, Angelina, might I ask you the same thing? Was this your plan ,’ he countered, his voice dropping to a low, sexy timbre, ‘to spill coffee all over yourself so you could take off your dress in order to seduce me ?’

If only he hadn’t been so close, or his hands hadn’t been on her legs as well, or his eyes hadn’t been searching hers.

‘Could be,’ she heard herself say in a faraway voice, her head whirling. But not with the wine this time. With desire. For him. ‘Has it worked?’ she murmured, her eyes drowning in his.

His hands stilled on her legs. Then slowly but surely, he turned off the tap and scooped her back up into his arms.

‘Absolutely,’ he said.

Jake’s heart pounded as he carried her down the hallway towards the master bedroom.

This was the moment he’d been waiting and hoping for. There was no stopping him now.

Yet her eyes slightly bothered him. They seemed kind of dazed. Was she still tipsy from the wine she’d drunk over lunch? Surely not. She’d hadn’t consumed that much.

He angled her through the bedroom door and carried her across the expanse of white shag carpet towards the king-sized bed with its gold satin quilt and matching pillows. Her calling the apartment flashy popped back into his mind. If she’d thought the rest of his place flashy, he wondered what she’d make of this room.

But she wasn’t looking at the room. She was just looking at him. With those huge, liquid brown eyes of hers. Still dazed, they were. But also adoring.

Had there ever been a woman look at him quite like the way she was looking at him?

Only her, all those years ago, when she’d been just a girl. His heart flipped over at this realisation. Dear God, let him do this right this time, he thought, and laid her gently down across the bed.

She sucked in sharply when his hands slid up under the damp hem of her dress.

‘Just taking your wet stockings off,’ he explained softly, and made no attempt to do anything else as he peeled them off her and draped them over a nearby chair. Despite his own intense need, Jake knew instinctively not to go too fast. Or to do anything even remotely crude. Or aggressive.

Angelina was not like any other woman he’d known. She was different. Special. Fragile, she’d called herself this morning. He’d laughed at the time but he could see that she was right. She was fragile.

‘Do you want me to take your dress off?’ he asked. ‘Or do you want to do that yourself?’

She just stared up at him for a few moments before rolling over and presenting her back to him.

The naivete behind this trusting gesture touched him, and reaffirmed his new assessment of her. His very first instinct about Angelina had been right after all. She might talk tough, but she wasn’t tough. Or all that experienced, either. He suspected she hadn’t had as many lovers as she’d implied. How could she have, with that eagle-eyed father of hers?

The thought made him even more determined to do this right.

The zipper on her dress was long, opening up the back right down to the swell of her buttocks. The sight of nothing but a thin white satin bra strap and the beginning of what looked like a matching thong did little for his resolve to take this as slowly as possible.

‘Roll over,’ he ordered a bit abruptly.

She did so, and those eyes were on him again. Wide now, and dilated. Her lips fell apart as her breathing quickened appreciably.

He tore his eyes away from hers and bent to ease the dress off her shoulders and draw it down her arms and over her hips, down her legs and off her feet. He tried to remain cool and in command, but the sight of her soft, curvy body—encased in sexy satin underwear—was unbearably exciting.

Hell, how was he going to control himself in the face of such temptation?

His hands were unsteady as he reached to unhook the front bra clip, hesitating for a moment before exposing her breasts to his increasingly lustful gaze.

They were as perfect as he’d known they’d be. Full and lush, with dusky-tipped aureoles and large, hard nipples seemingly begging to be sucked.

But he knew that would have to wait. If he started sucking her nipples now, he would become hopelessly lost in his own desires. Hers were the ones he wanted to satisfy this first time. His male ego demanded it. And something else, some part of him which he couldn’t quite grasp yet.

‘I have to sit you up for a sec,’ he said, and did so with a gentle tug of her hands. The action had her breasts falling deliciously forward, twin orbs of erotic promise that he steadfastly ignored as he eased the bra off her body.

‘You can lie back down,’ he suggested as he moved over to put the bra on the chair with the dress and stockings.

She did, her face now flushed, her eyes still wide.

The decision to leave her with her G-string on was more for his composure than her comfort.

Her eyelashes flickered wildly when his hands went to the buttons of his shirt. Her lips fell further apart.

He undressed slowly, seemingly casual and confident in his actions, but inside he was going through hell. Never had a woman watched him so intently as he removed his clothes. There again, never had he done such a deliberate strip for a woman.

Jake knew he had a good body. Mostly God-given, but also because he looked after himself, having always worked out regularly. There was a gym and a swimming pool in the apartment complex which allowed him to keep fit nowadays with the minimum of effort. So he had no reason to be embarrassed once he was in the buff.

He had to confess that he could not recall being this turned on before. Yet he hadn’t even kissed her.

Drawing on protection at that point was premature on Jake’s usual standards, but it seemed a good idea to be prepared. Jake had an awful feeling that once he started any form of foreplay with Angelina, he would enter the danger zone. It proved strangely awkward, with her watching him with those almost awestruck eyes of hers.

He was relieved to join her on the bed, stretching out beside her and propping himself on one elbow so that he had one hand free. His right hand.

‘Wait,’ she whispered, and before he could stop her she wriggled out of her panties and tossed them away, her face flushed by the time she glanced back up at him.

He didn’t dare look down there. Or to think about how much he wanted to slide over between her legs and just do it. Now. Without preliminaries. He ached to be inside her, to feel her hot wet flesh tight around him.