IT WAS THE best meal she had ever had in her life although, as she reluctantly left a morsel of the crème brulée in its dish because she physically couldn’t manage another mouthful, Rose had to admit that it was much more than the quality of the food that had made the evening quite perfect.
It was the fact that she was here with Arturo.
They had not had an opportunity to talk, to really talk, since he had moved in and for four hours they more than made up for that. He was fascinating. He knew so much. He could converse with ease on any topic and he had a wonderful knack of drawing her out of herself, making her open up in a way that revealed to her just how private she had become over the years.
He could be self-deprecating one minute and, almost without pausing to draw breath, ruin the illusion by being astoundingly arrogant—but arrogant in a way that somehow didn’t manage to get on her nerves. She couldn’t understand how that was in any way, shape or form possible...but it clearly was.
And he’d made her think—about the protest and other ways that might be found to bring about a positive outcome. He had touched only once more on the subject and the notion of inevitability had been aired—yes, it was inevitable that the land would be developed, but that suggestion he had planted in her head was beginning to look quite promising. She had certain trump cards and there was much that could be done to improve the village.
She was tipsy and happy as they stepped out into the velvety black night.
‘I haven’t had such a lovely time in ages,’ she confided as a taxi pulled to a stop as soon as they were outside. She waited until he was in the back seat with her before turning to him. The darkness turned his face into a mosaic of hard shadows and angles and, just for a few seconds, she felt a tingle of apprehension that warred with the warm, melting feeling making her limbs heavy and pleasantly blurring her thoughts.
She was smiling—grinning like a Cheshire cat—but he was quite serious as he looked at her.
‘You look as though you can’t wait for the evening to end,’ she said lightly, sobering up, smile wavering. ‘Don’t blame you. You must be accustomed to far more exciting company than me.’
* * *
Looking back at her, Art thought that she couldn’t have been further from the truth. He hadn’t sat and talked with any woman for that length of time for years. In the normal course of events, an expensive meal would have included some light conversation but the evening would have been overlaid with the assumption of sex and the conversation would have been geared towards that.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Something about you,’ Rose admitted truthfully. ‘You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met before and if I can see that, then so can everyone else. You strike me as the sort of guy who’s never short of female company. Is that why you steer clear of involvement? Because you don’t see the point of settling down when there are so many fish in the sea?’
‘I steer clear of involvement because I watched my father ruined by too much of it.’
‘Oh.’ Rose paused. ‘How so?’ she asked seriously.
Art had surprised himself by that admission and now he wondered what to say. A series of divorces? A carousel of avaricious blonde bombshells who had been out to feather their own nests? A fortune depleted by the demands of alimony payments? Where to start?
Art had been defined by one disillusionment after another, from the isolation he had had to endure as a child when his father had retreated into himself after his wife’s sudden death to the abruptness of having to deal with boarding school, and all played out to the steady drumbeat of his father’s failed relationships and the consequent, expensive fallout.
He shifted, stared briefly out of the window then back at her. Her gaze was calm, interested but without fuss and fanfare—curious but not overly so.
‘My father had a habit of repeating his mistakes,’ Art told her heavily. ‘He was always quick to get involved, only to regret his involvement but then, just when he’d managed to free himself from one woman, he would repeat the cycle all over again. Your mother had her way of coping with losing her husband...’ His mouth twisted into a crooked smile. ‘My father coped in a slightly different way.’
‘But in a way that would have equally damaging consequences... We certainly didn’t strike jackpot when it came to childhood experiences, did we?’ She shot him a rueful smile and reached out, almost impulsively, to rest her hand on his.
The warmth of her hand zapped through him like a powerful electric charge, tightening his groin and sending a heavy, pounding ache between his thighs.
With relief, he recognised that the taxi was pulling up outside her house.
He was in urgent need of a cold shower. Maybe even a cold bath. Blocks of ice would have to play a part. Anything to cool the onset of his ardour.
‘All experience,’ he said neutrally, pushing open his door and glancing back at her over his shoulder in a gesture that implied an end to the conversation, ‘is good experience, in my opinion. But I’m very glad you enjoyed the evening.’
He all but sprinted to the front door. She fumbled with the front door key and he relieved her of it, acutely aware of the brush of her skin against his.
‘I don’t usually drink as much as I did tonight,’ Rose apologised with a little breathy laugh, stepping past him into the hall. ‘I’m beginning to think that I should get out more, live a little...’
‘All work and no play... You know the saying...’
* * *
For a few moments they both stood in the semi-darkened hallway, staring at one another in taut silence, and the breath caught in her throat because she could see the lick of desire in his eyes, a sexual speculation that set her ablaze with frantic desire because it mirrored her own.
‘Right, well...’ Rose was the first to break the lengthening silence. ‘Thanks again for a brilliant evening...’ She began turning away but then felt his hand circle her arm and she stilled, heart racing, pulse racing—everything racing.
‘Rose...’
With one foot planted firmly in the comfort zone of common sense and the other dangling precariously and recklessly over the edge of a precipice, Rose looked at him, holding herself rigid with tension.
‘It would be madness.’ Arturo looked away, looked back to her, looked away again, restless and uncomfortable in his own skin and yet powerless to relieve either discomfort.
‘What?’ Rose whispered.
‘You know what. This. Us. Taking this any further.’
For a few seconds she didn’t say anything, then eventually she murmured, briefly breaking their electrifying eye contact, ‘I agree.’
‘You can’t even begin to understand the complications...’
‘Do I need to?’
‘Explain.’
‘We’re not anticipating a relationship.’ She tilted her chin at a defiant angle. Sex for the sake of sex? She’d never contemplated that. The urgent demands of lust, the taste of a passion that was powerful enough to make a nonsense of her principles...well, those were things that had never blotted her horizon. ‘We don’t have to think about all the complications or all the reasons why it wouldn’t make sense for us to...to...’ She reddened and caught his eye.
‘Make wild, passionate love until we just can’t any longer?’
‘You’re just passing through...’
‘Sure that doesn’t bother you? Because I won’t be staying. A week, tops, and I’ll be gone and that’ll be the last you’ll ever see of me.’
‘You wouldn’t be curious to see where the protest you joined will end up?’
‘I know where it’ll end up.’ He clearly didn’t want to talk about that. He raised his arm to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand, a light, feathery touch that made her sigh and close her eyes.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ she breathed unevenly, her eyes fluttering open to gaze at his impossibly handsome face. She stepped back and took his hand. If this was wrong, then why did it feel so right? Before hitting the stairs, she kicked her shoes off and then padded up ahead of him, still holding his hand, glancing back over her shoulder twice, wishing that she knew what was going through his head.
She shyly pushed open her bedroom door and stepped in, ignoring the overhead light in favour of the lamp by her bed, which cast an immediate mellow glow through the room.
It was a large square room, with high ceilings and both picture rails and dado rails.
Arturo had not been in it before. He looked around briefly and then grinned. ‘I didn’t take you for having such a sense of drama...’
Rose laughed, walked towards him and linked her arms around his waist. ‘I’m sensible when it comes to pretty much everything but—’ she looked at the dreamy four-poster king-sized bed with floaty curtains and dark, soft-as-silk bed linen ‘—I used to dream of having a four-poster bed when I was a kid.’
‘Was that when you were waiting for your mother to reappear?’ Art murmured, burying his face into her hair and breathing in the sweet smell of the floral shampoo she used.
‘How did you guess?’
* * *
‘I’m tuned in like that.’ A memory came from nowhere to knock him for six—a memory of his mother leaning over him, smiling, with a book in one hand. Had she just read him a story? Was she about to? She was dressed up, going out for the evening.
He clenched his jaw as the vivid image faded. ‘Enough talk,’ he growled, edging them both towards the bed. Rose giggled as her knees hit the mattress and she toppled backwards, taking him with her, although he niftily deflected the bulk of his weight from landing directly on her. But he remained where he was, flat on his back next to her.
‘The canopy has stars,’ he commented, amused, and he heard the grin in her voice when she replied.
‘That’s the hidden romantic in me.’
Art turned his head to look at her and she did likewise.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ she said flatly, before he could jump in with another warning lecture on his nomadic tendencies—warning her off the temptation to look for more involvement than was on the table.
‘Worry about what?’
‘I may have the occasional romantic lapse, but I’m pretty level-headed when it comes to men, and latching onto a good-looking guy who has an aversion to putting down roots is the last sort of guy who would tick any boxes for me.’
‘I tick at least one box,’ Art murmured, smiling very slowly.
‘Well, yes...you tick that one box.’ Flustered, she held her breath as their eyes locked.
‘Never knock the physical attraction box. It’s the biggest one of all.’
‘We’ll have to agree to differ on that.’
‘Think so?’ Art grinned, settling on his side and manoeuvring her so that they were now facing one another, clothes still on and that very fact sending the temperature into the sizzling stratosphere. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t talk too fast if I were you...’ He slipped his hand under her top and took his time getting to her breast, waiting until her breathing had become halting, her eyelids fluttering and her nostrils flaring. Then and only then did he touch her, cup her naked breast, feel the tight bud of her nipple. He’d spent the meal in a state of heightened awareness and the feel of her now was electrifying.
While he was busy telling her just how fast he could make her believe in the importance of sexual attraction because nothing was better than good sex, and he was very, very adept at giving very, very good sex, he was simultaneously on the verge of blowing it by getting turned on too quickly. In his book, speed and good sex rarely went together for a sensational experience.
He kept looking at her, holding her gaze, while he played with her nipple.
He wasn’t going to go a step further until he got himself under control.
But, hell, those sexy eyes that were just on the right side of innocent, however sassy she was, were doing a million things to his body.
‘You think you can convert me?’ Rose breathed, squirming with want.
‘No harm in trying.’ Art let loose a low, sexy laugh. In one slick movement, he eased himself up to straddle her prone body, caging her in with his thighs. He hooked his fingers under the top and began slowly tugging it up.
‘No bra,’ he murmured. ‘I like that.’
* * *
‘I...’ Rose gulped and wished that she hadn’t switched any lights on at all, although would she have sacrificed the joy of looking at him to preserve her modesty? She felt faint as her top rode higher and then the whisper of cool air brought goosebumps to her naked skin. Automatically, she lifted her arms to cross them over her bare chest and, just as fast, Arturo gently pushed them aside and stifled a primal groan of pleasure as his eyes feasted on her.
‘Beautiful,’ he whispered, circling one straining bud with the tip of his finger.
Rose had never felt quite so exposed. She wasn’t ashamed of her body. She simply recognised its limitations. Lights off worked when it came to dealing with those limitations and to have him looking at her like that...
She sneaked a glance at him and felt a surge of thrilling excitement because his eyes were dark with masculine appreciation.
‘I’m not exactly the most voluptuous woman on the face of the earth,’ Rose apologised, blushing. ‘That’s why I can go without a bra a lot of the time. Not much there to contain.’ She laughed and watched his finger as it continued to circle her nipple, moving onto the other.
‘You should never have hang-ups about your body,’ Arturo said thickly. ‘It’s amazing. Your nipples are stunning...dark...succulent...’
‘Arturo!’
He laughed and shot her a wicked look from under his lashes. ‘Is that the sound of you begging me to continue telling you why you should be proud of your body?’
‘No!’ But she laughed, a little breathless laugh that was unsteady with anticipation.
‘I’m going to have fun tasting them,’ Arturo told her conversationally. ‘Does it turn you on to imagine the feel of my mouth on your nipple?’
‘Stop!’
‘You’re red as a beetroot.’ Arturo grinned and gently tilted her averted face so that she was looking at him.
He vaulted off the bed, fumbled to make sure protection was handy and then he began getting undressed.
Rose stared.
She forgot all about her inhibitions because never had she seen anything so glorious in her life before.
He was all muscle and sinew, his broad shoulders tapering to a washboard-flat stomach. He ditched the shirt and raised his eyebrows with amusement at her rapt expression.
‘You have no idea,’ he murmured, taking a step towards her, at which she promptly hoisted herself onto her elbows, automatically leaning towards him, ‘what that expression is doing to my libido.’
‘Really?’ Riveted, Rose continued to stare at him.
‘Really,’ Arturo said drily, ‘but you’ll see for yourself soon enough...’ He burst out laughing when her eyes skittered away just as he began unbuttoning his trousers.
He seemed to revel in the intensity of her gaze.
The trousers were off.
The boxers followed suit.
Rose gulped. He was more than impressive. Big, thick, throbbing with want. Standing there, he was absolutely lacking in inhibition, carelessly indifferent to the perfection of his nakedness.
Rose sat up, then slid off the bed to stand in front of him. She was half naked and now all she wanted to do was yank down the skirt but, before she could, he stayed her fluttering hand and moved towards her, holding her just for a moment so that she could feel his hardness pressing against her belly.
‘Allow me...’ he murmured.
Arturo wasn’t going to rush anything, even though his body must be clamouring for satisfaction.
He eased the skin-tight skirt off her to reveal plain cotton panties. For a few seconds, Arturo stilled.
He was kneeling and he drew back to look at her. Hands on her bare bottom, Arturo delicately teased the folds of her womanhood with a gentle touch, causing her to gasp and then exhale on a whimper.
When his tongue slid into the slippery crease she gasped again, this time on a guttural moan, and her fingers curled into his hair as she opened her legs wider to receive his attentions.
Rose was melting. Every bone in her body was turning to water as his tongue flicked over her, squirming deeper until he located the pulsing bud of her core.
The pleasure was intense, unbearable almost, nothing that she had ever felt before or could ever have imagined feeling. It was pure sensation and every thought, confused or otherwise, shot straight out of her head.
She realised that she was moving against his mouth in an unconscious rhythm.
She almost squeaked a protest when he drew back and stood up to lift her off her feet so that he could deposit her onto the bed, as though she weighed nothing at all.
Rose was expecting something fast and furious but instead he pinned her hands above her head, ordered her not to move a muscle and then sat back on his haunches to gaze at her with open admiration.
If this was how he was in bed with a woman, she thought in a heated daze, then she was surprised that there wasn’t a demanding queue of ex-lovers banging on her front door, braying for him to return to bed with them.
‘Just for the moment,’ he said huskily, ‘indulge me and allow me to take charge.’
With her hands still above her head, burrowed underneath the pillow, Rose half smiled.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t take charge in everything you do?’ she teased, ‘because if you are then I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true. Some people have accused me of occasionally being somewhat...assertive.’
He seemed determined to assert himself right now. Starting with her breasts.
He kissed them, nuzzled their softness, making her writhe and stretch underneath him, her movements feline and sensuous. He licked one nipple with his tongue and then sucked on it, drawing it into his mouth and teasing the sensitive tip with his tongue. As he ministered to her breast, he dipped down to rest his hand between her thighs, lightly covering her mound with the palm of his hand and then pressing down in lazy circular movements.
Bliss.
Rose was dripping wet and she didn’t care. She was explosively turned on. Something about the position of her arms heightened the sensitivity of her breasts and each flick of his tongue and caress of his hand made her want to cry out loud.
He trailed a path of kisses along her stomach and she inhaled sharply, wanting more than anything for him to taste her down there again, there between her legs where the ache desperately craved his touch.
As he found that place and began, once again, to tease her with his tongue, she arched up, spread her legs wider and bucked against his questing mouth.
Sensation started with an electric ripple that spread outwards with the force of a tsunami until she was lost in a world dictated by her physical response to his mouth. She could no more have strung a coherent thought together than she could have grown wings and taken flight.
When she came against his mouth it was with such force that she cried out, hands clutching the bed linen, her whole body arching, stiffening and then shuddering as everything exploded inside her.
She eventually subsided on a wave of mind-blowing contentment.
‘Felt good?’ Arturo lay alongside her, then curved her against him, pushing his thigh between her legs.
Rose linked her fingers around his neck and darted some kisses over his face. ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at him with such genuine apology that he winced.
‘Sorry about what?’
‘Just lying there and...um...enjoying myself...’
‘You have no idea how much enjoyment I got from pleasuring you.’
Rose smiled and curved against him, taking the initiative this time, adoring the hard, muscled lines of his body as she ran her hands over it. Along his shoulders, over his hard, sinewy chest, taking time to tease his flattened brown nipples.
His erection was thick and pulsing and she lowered herself into a position where she could take him into her mouth and he, manoeuvring her, could take her into his.
An exchange of intense pleasure that brought her right back up to the edge from which she had only recently descended.
Rose had never experienced such a lack of inhibition. She had always approached the opposite sex from a position of caution, a place where mechanisms were in place to prevent her from being too hurt. She’d never let go with anyone, not that her life had been cluttered with an abundance of men, and it astounded her that, of all the people in the world, she should be so free and open with one who wasn’t destined to play any kind of permanent role in her life.
It didn’t make sense.
But wonderfully open was exactly what she was feeling as she licked and teased and sucked him, as she felt him move between her thighs, tickling her with his tongue, their bodies fused as one.
They both knew when the time was right for the foreplay to end before it cascaded into orgasm.
Arturo eased her off him, groaning as their bodies broke contact. It was a matter of a few fumbling seconds and then, protection in place, he positioned himself over her.
Rose could barely contain her excitement. Her whole body ached for the ultimate satisfaction of having him inside her and when he drove into her, thrusting hard and firm, she groaned long and low.
He filled her up and with each thrust she came closer and closer to the brink.
* * *
Art had never been with anyone as responsive as she was. It was as though he was tuned in to her, sensitive to just how far he could take her before she came, able to time his own orgasm to match hers, and when they came it was mind-blowing.
Deep inside her, embedded to the hilt, he drove hard and felt her shudder and cry out just as he rocked with waves of such intense pleasure that he couldn’t contain his own guttural cry of satisfaction.
It was a few moments before they could unglue their bodies from one another. Unusually, Art didn’t immediately feel the urge to break the connection by escaping to have a shower.
Instead, he slid off her and held her. What the hell had he done? He’d come here on a mission and this most definitely had not been any part of his mission.
But he looked down at her flushed face, her parted mouth, felt the warmth of her beautiful body pressed against his, and all he wanted to do was have her all over again.
Art knew that this was a weakness. In fact, sleeping with her at all had been a weakness. Since when had any woman taken precedence over common sense and, more importantly, work?
And what happened now?
Art knew what should happen. He should walk away. He should walk away and keep on walking until he hit London and the reality of his life there. He should put an immediate end to this charade and conduct whatever business needed conducting through his lawyers and accountants. The land belonged to him and tiptoeing around that stark fact was a matter of choice rather than necessity.
Okay, so maybe if she got stuck in and took a stand, the community would view his development as a blot on their landscape and react accordingly to the newcomers buying properties, but that wouldn’t last. Within six months everything would settle down and life would carry on as normal.
His presence here and his willingness to do his best to ease the process would bear testimony to his capacity for goodwill.
It would also be useful because, in due course, he would be putting in another planning application and a hostile community would make that more difficult.
But in the end he would get what he wanted because he always did.
And, in the meantime, this...was a complication.
‘What are you thinking?’ Rose asked drowsily, opening her eyes to look directly at him. ‘No,’ she continued, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘Mind reader, are you?’ Art smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. He cupped her naked breast with his hand and marvelled at how nicely it fitted. Not too big, not too small.
‘You’re thinking that it’s time you went back to your bedroom and you’d be right because it’s late and I want to go to sleep.’
‘Is that the sound of you kicking me out of your bedroom?’ he murmured, moving in to nibble her ear and then licking the side of her neck so that she squirmed and giggled softly.
‘It’s the sound of a woman who needs her beauty sleep.’ She wriggled away from him so that she could head for the bathroom.
‘But what,’ Art heard himself ask, ‘does a red-blooded man do if he wakes in the early hours of the morning and needs his woman by his side?’
Rose stilled but when she answered her voice was still light and teasing. ‘He goes downstairs for a glass of milk?’
‘Wrong answer.’ Art heaved himself into a sitting position and pulled her towards him. ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but let’s spend the night together...and, by the way... I’d like it if you called me Art. Not Arthur...not Arturo. Art.’