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       ‘You’ve been a bad girl, Christina … A very naughty girl …’

       Christina gazed up at Alexander, her eyes dark with longing, her face flushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she panted helplessly. ‘I won’t do it again.’

       ‘I need to make sure of that,’ Alexander said, as he stalked across the room. He’d removed his shirt, and his torso was taut and muscular. ‘I need to teach you a lesson.’

       His gaze turned to the candle that blazed on the bedside table, the flame dancing and twisting.

       As Christina stared, the wax spilled over from the slim, white candle down to the antique silver holder. She watched as it cooled and hardened.

       ‘I think you know exactly what I have in mind,’ Alexander murmured, his voice low and husky.

       Christina could only nod, mute with longing.

       ‘But first – the sweetness,’ Alexander promised, as he moved towards her, bending down to kiss her lips, her neck, her collarbone.

       Christina moaned in delight as his mouth moved lower … past her navel … over the soft, white mound of her stomach … and then lower still, before finally, exquisitely, she felt his hot lips on the delicate, pink flesh of her—

      Estelle Humphreys glanced up in panic and slammed the book shut, hastily shoving it beneath a pile of papers. Her heart was pounding wildly, while her ears strained to listen.

      The noise came again – thump, thump, thump – and Estelle realised with relief that it was just her fourteen-year-old son, Joe, in the flat upstairs. The racket meant that he’d finished his homework and turned on his music – Kasabian, by the sound of things.

      She stood motionless for a moment, feeling her heart rate return to normal and her cheeks turn from flaming red to their more usual milky shade.

      Guiltily, she removed the copy of Ten Sweet Lessons from