Miranda Lee - It Started With One Night - The Magnate's Mistress / His Bride for One Night / Master of Her Virtue

But Max was not there.

Disappointment rather than relief showed her that nerves were not the most dominating force in her body at that moment. Desire was much stronger.

Whirling, she hurried down the hallway which led to Max’s den, his favourite area of the penthouse when he was up and about. It was actually two rooms, connected by concertina doors which were always kept open. The first room you entered was a study-cum-library, a very masculine room with no windows, book-lined walls, a desk in one corner and several oversized, leather-studded chairs in which to sit and read. The next room was the billiard room, which had a huge, green-felted billiard table, a pub-like bar in one corner, complete with stools, and lots of French doors which opened onto the balcony.

Max was an excellent snooker player and had tried to teach Tara in their early days together, when they had time for more than bed. But she was never much good and they hadn’t played in ages.

Tara wasn’t about to suggest a game today. She had other games in mind, a thought which both shocked and stirred her. She’d never thought of making love as a game before.

Her hand shook as it reached for the brass door knob but no way was she going to back out now. But she didn’t barge straight in. Tara had been brought up with better manners than that. She tapped on the door before she opened it, then popped her head inside.

Max, she swiftly saw, was sitting in his favourite chair, bathed in a circle of soft light from the lamp which stood behind the chair. Yes, he was wearing the white towelling bathrobe, she noted. And yes, nothing else, not even on his feet.

But he wasn’t exactly sitting around, impatiently waiting for her to wake up so that he could make love to her again. He was working. And drinking. His laptop was open and balanced across his thighs, he was sipping a very large Scotch and chatting to someone on the phone at the same time.

Max was one of those rare men who could actually do more than one thing at a time.

‘Ah, there you are,’ she said, containing her irritation with difficulty.

Instead of asking him if it was all right if she interrupted him, as she usually would have, Tara walked straight in and shut the door behind her.

He was taken aback, she could see. But that was just too bad. This was her time with him, no one else’s.

When he put up his hand towards her in a stopping gesture and kept on talking—something about a website—rebellion overcame Tara’s usually automatic tendency to obey him. Slowly, she moved towards him across the expanse of dark green carpet, her hips swaying seductively, her breasts moving underneath the wrap. The act of walking parted the silky material around her knees, giving tantalising glimpses of her bare legs.

One of his brows arched as he eyed her up and down. ‘I’ll have to speak to you later, Pierce,’ he said into the phone. ‘Something’s just come up.’

‘Much later,’ Tara said as he clicked off the call. Pierce was only Max’s PA, after all. He could wait.

Max smiled an odd smile before dropping his eyes back to the laptop screen. ‘I have something I have to finish up here first, Tara,’ he said without looking up at her again. ‘Why don’t you toddle off back to bed and I’ll join you there as soon as I can?’

Pique fired her tongue before she could think better of it. ‘What if I don’t want to go back to bed? What if I want to stay here? What if I want you to stop working right here and now?’

Slowly, his eyes rose. Hard and glittering, they were, just as she liked them. He sipped some more of his drink whilst he studied her over the rim of the glass.

His gaze was knowing. He was mentally stripping her, making her face flush and her nipples tighten.

‘Make me,’ he said at last, his voice soft and low and dark.

His challenging words sent a bolt of electricity zigzagging through her, firing her blood and her resolve not to weaken. Because she knew what he wanted. He wanted to see her, all of her. Not lying in a bed, but standing upright, in front of him. Facing him.

Her heartbeat quickened whilst her hands went to the sash on her wrap. She might have fumbled if the knot had been difficult, but she only had to tug the ends of the ties to make the bow unravel. In a split-second, the sides of the wrap fell apart.

But he showed no reaction whatsoever, just went back to sipping his drink.

Shock at his low level of interest held her frozen, and finally, his eyes dropped back to the screen in his lap.

‘Go back to bed, Tara,’ he said. ‘Clearly, you’re not cut out for the role of seductress just yet.’

Stung, she stripped the robe off and dropped it to the floor. When he still didn’t pay her any attention, she went right up to him and banged the lid of the laptop down.

‘Look at me,’ she hissed.

He looked at her, his narrow-eyed gaze now travelling with exquisitely exciting slowness over every inch of her nakedness.

‘Very nice,’ he murmured. ‘But it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.’

‘You might see something new,’ she threw at him, ‘if you put that drink down. And that infernal computer.’

He closed the laptop and placed it beside the chair, but kept the drink. He looked her over again as he leant back into the chair and took another mouthful of whisky.

Now fear did return. The fear of making a fool of herself.

‘I’m waiting,’ he said, and finally placed the near-empty glass on the small round side-table next to the chair.

Tara swallowed.

‘Come, come, Tara. This is your show. I’m curious to see how far you’ll go before you turn tail and run. I’m not going to help you one little bit.’

Tara gaped at him as the realisation struck that he didn’t just want her to parade herself in front of him. He wanted her to make love to him.

If he’d issued this type of challenge on any other day before today, she probably would have turned tail and run. But today was a different day in more ways than one. Today, a new and exciting dimension had entered their relationship and she refused to retreat from it.

Don’t think, she told herself as she stepped forward to stand between his stretched-out legs. Just do what he thinks you don’t dare to do.

She heard his sharp intake of breath when she knelt down and reached for the sash on his robe.

Don’t look up at his face, she warned herself shakily.

She didn’t want to see any undermining shock, or surprise, in his eyes. He’d told her once he didn’t mind how provocative or assertive she was in private. Well, he was just about to get a dose of provocative assertiveness, even if she was quaking inside.

The sash on his robe was as easy to undo as her own, being only looped over. Pushing the sides of the robe back was not so easy, because she knew what would confront her when she did so.

Her eyes widened at the sight of him.

So his apparent uninterest had all been a lie! He was already aroused. Fiercely so.

Tara resisted the urge to close her eyes and put her mind elsewhere. Her days of cowardice were over. She would look at him there, and touch him there, and kiss him there.

Yet oddly, once she started stroking the velvety length of him, once she felt Max quiver and grow even harder beneath her hands, any reluctance or revulsion melted away. Tara found herself consumed by the intense desire to make the beast emerge in him again, to drive him wild with pleasure and need, to love him as she had never loved him before.

Max could not believe it when she took him into her mouth, making the blood roar through his veins, his flesh expand even further, threatening to make him lose all control.

Surely she would not want that. Surely not!

Max groaned his worry that he might not be able to stop himself. Then groaned again when her head lifted, showing him that he had wanted her to continue more than anything he had wanted in a long time.