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impossible to consider. She bit at her nail, a tight feeling growing in her belly. For the first time in her life the fears she’d carried for so long about turning into her mother and all that meant seemed flimsy—they didn’t hold water any more. She was different. The warm feeling of reassurance she’d imagined she’d felt just now surged back even stronger. And it scared her slightly, as she’d never in a million years have said that Ari was a reassuring type of man.
She stopped pacing. What if she could do this? Instead of running away, why not face this and vanquish the demons that had been plaguing her? Already she felt different; she had to admit she’d enjoyed the less restrictive wardrobe, and even though her reflex was still to cover up it was diminishing. She’d caught some of the men looking at her earlier in the ballroom, and instead of wanting to hide away she’d found herself straightening up, feeling a very fledgling sense of confidence trickling through her.
Had Aristotle helped her come to this? It didn’t feel like the diminishing needy power that she’d seen her mother crave. It felt like an innately feminine power, pure and strong.
She thought about it again, tested the words: what if she did this? Just went over there to that door, opened it and walked through.
Before she knew her legs had even carried her Lucy stood at the door, breathing short shallow breaths, her heart thumping. She’d once read a book: Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway. Was she brave enough? To step across the line?
As if in answer to her own question, an intense yearning spread through her. She wanted this—wanted this man and what he promised more than she wanted to look at all the reasons for not doing it. He was right. The thought of repressing this desire was … inconceivable.
With a shaking hand she touched the doorknob, took a breath and turned it. She shut her eyes as the door opened silently. A lurid mental image of Aristotle lounging back against black silk sheets, hands behind his head with a mocking smile, nearly made her slam it shut. But she resisted the impulse and opened her eyes.
It took a second for Lucy’s eyes to adjust, and the scene greeting her was as erotically charged as she could have imagined and yet surprisingly benign. Through the open bedroom door, across the wide expanse of opulent sitting room, Lucy could see the reflected figure of a sleeping Aristotle in his bed in a slightly open mirrored wardrobe door.
Far from black silk, the sheets he lay on were white, like hers. He’d thrown off the main covers and lay now, half propped up, with just a sheet hitched up to his waist. She’d seen his naked torso the other day, but now she looked her fill. It was long and lean and bronzed and hard, and exquisitely muscled. More superlatives filled her head but she couldn’t articulate them. He was simply the most devastating specimen of a man she’d ever seen—not that she’d seen many, she had to acknowledge wryly, but she felt fairly sure that Aristotle could take his place among some of the most beautiful men on the planet.
Unruly inky black hair flopped with incongruous youthfulness onto his forehead, making him look much less like the feared CEO of Levakis Enterprises and instead like someone altogether more vulnerable and human.
Lucy’s breath snagged when her eyes rested on those lean hips and then moved down lower, to where the strategically placed sheet was tented slightly over his lap. Hot colour poured into her cheeks at the intense and immediate reaction to even such subtle provocation.
A sound made her eyes dart up, and suddenly the sleeping god of perfection was no more—he was awake, light green eyes darkening even as she looked at him. Lucy belatedly realised that, as if in a dream, she’d walked right into his room and was now standing at the foot of his bed, the dim light of one lamp imbuing everything with innate intimacy.
Her hands gripped the sides of her robes together, knuckles showing white. Reality slammed into her, and she suddenly wondered if she’d suffered some kind of paralysis as she couldn’t seem to move.
‘I …’
Aristotle was completely still, awake and watchful now.
‘You …?’
The sound of his voice resonated deep within her.
‘I … I don’t think … That is … perhaps I should—’
‘Come here.’
The words were uttered with deep implacability, and Lucy’s legs felt shaky. She’d come too far to go back now, so she moved forward jerkily, around the bed, until she was standing just a few feet away, eyes glued to his, mesmerised.
He lifted a hand and gestured. ‘Come closer.’
Lucy looked desperately for any sign that he mightn’t be as über-cool as he looked. And at the last second, just when she was contemplating running while she still could, she saw it: the light sheen of sweat beading his brow and the pulse beating fast at the base of his neck.
But, even so, it was as if the old, safe Lucy was calling her back through the doors, willing her to slam them shut between her and this man and this craving, aching need within her. She even turned and looked, as if to judge the distance.
Immediately her hand was taken in a ring of heat. Lucy looked down to see her wrist dwarfed by his bronzed hand. She looked at him, and gulped.
‘Lucy, are you sure you want this? Because if you stay there’s no going back.’
And in that instant Lucy mentally shut the doors behind her. She didn’t want to go back. She wanted to go forward and free herself of this unwanted baggage she’d been carrying.
She shook her head and felt her hair slip around her shoulders. ‘I’m not going.’
He pulled her irrevocably towards him, and then she was there, legs leaning weakly against his bed, His eyes never left hers as he brought her wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss against the pulse, his tongue flicking out. She gasped and felt as if he’d branded her, even with that small move.
And then he let her hand go and leant on one elbow. ‘Take off your clothes.’
When he said the words, Lucy felt only an intense explosion of heat in her pelvis. She was far beyond disgust or shock. Without breaking eye contact she undid her thick robe and let it drop to the floor. She still wore the dress, which gaped open, and her shoes. She stepped out of the shoes and bent to put them neatly under the chair. Then she stood and looked at Aristotle again.
He had made no move, but his eyes had turned so dark with lust that the green looked almost black. His gaze burnt into her.
With a tremor in her hands she pulled the zip down all the way, and then slowly peeled the dress off her shoulder and down, baring breasts only just confined by a strapless lace bra. Her awful self-consciousness seemed to have faded away to another place. Another person.
Hands on her hips, Lucy wriggled slightly to ease the dress down and over her womanly shape. The veritable waves of heat coming from Aristotle as his eyes followed the path of her dress nearly had Lucy melting on the spot. The heavy silk pooled at her feet, and she stepped out with an innate grace she was entirely unaware of.
Seeing a heavily brocaded chair beside the bed, Lucy lifted one leg to rest her foot there and started to peel one stocking down, only belatedly becoming aware of the eroticism of her pose. She sensed it in the way Ari had stilled even more, felt it in the intensity of his gaze on her, and for the first time in her life, found herself glorying in her innate femininity.
Aristotle knew that the only thing keeping him from jumping out of the bed and burying his aching hardness into her as she bent like that over the chair was the knowledge that, given one touch of her skin, he’d lose all control. When he’d seen her standing at the foot of the bed like a vision, his feeling of pure desire twinned with what had felt suspiciously like joy had made him act gruffer than he would have liked. He gripped the sheets tight in both hands now. It felt hard to breathe. The fact that he also felt more out of control than he’d ever felt with another woman was uncomfortable. Finesse in this kind of situation was a distant memory.
A curtain of dark