who never refused to gamble against fate or to take up a challenge. And she held her breath now, wondering how he would respond. She couldn’t resist glancing into the mirrored wall to her side to take another peek at him.
His shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, exposing an exciting ‘V’ of male flesh. Impulsively she took a step towards him. She wondered how it would feel to caress that flesh with her lips, to taste and tease it until he had no option but to reach for her and—
She could feel her body melting with arousal. Everything about him tormented her senses in ways she had never imagined. Just looking at him made her want him. She could feel her face burning, her heart racing at the explicitness of her own thoughts and fantasies. She felt shocked by them.
Her heart thumping, she continued to study him. Over six foot, with very thick rich brown hair just touched with honey-gold where the fierce heat of the sun had lightened it. In the close confines of the lift she could smell the cool expensive tang of his skin. Everything about him looked expensive. From his clothes and his haircut to his elegantly discreet watch. Everything apart from his hands which for some reason, whilst immaculately clean, were slightly callused. Her stomach lifted and clenched with female excitement at the thought of those hands, so tellingly male, pressed against the soft femininity of her own skin.
She had started to breathe too fast, betrayingly fast, she recognised as his glance locked on her mouth.
‘Go ahead,’ she heard him urging her shockingly. ‘Go ahead, hon, and do what you want to do. And you do want to, don’t you?’ he guessed, his voice dropping until it was a low sexy murmur, as rawly sensual as though he had actually caressed the most sensitive parts of her body with the rough male heat of his tongue.
Somehow she had actually put one hand against his chest!
His skin was warm and tanned, with tiny lines fanning out from his eyes. His eyes…
Her breath locked in her chest and another wave of sensual dizziness filled her. She had never, ever seen eyes so blue before. It was a denser, deeper, stronger blue than the bluest sky she had ever seen, the colour so intense that she felt her own golden-brown eyes must look totally insignificant in comparison.
‘I can’t,’ she responded shakily, too lost in her own desire to conceal what she was feeling from him. ‘Not here.’ Her voice faltered and fell to a husky whisper. ‘Not in the lift.’ But as she spoke her gaze went betrayingly to where his jeans were now visibly straining against the tautness of his arousal.
‘Liar!’ he taunted her softly. ‘I could take you here and now. And if you want me to prove it—’ His hand was already reaching for the buckle of his belt.
Jaz felt dizzy with the aching intensity of her fevered longing. Impulsively she moved even closer to him, and then stopped.
The knowing smile that accompanied the look he was giving her brought a deep flush of colour to Jaz’s skin.
He had the whitest, strongest teeth, and it was hard not to imagine him biting them into her skin with deliberate sensuality. A fierce, shocked shiver ran through her at the explicitness of her own thoughts, and she moved a little uncomfortably, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
‘Careful, hon,’ she heard him warning her. ‘If you keep on looking at me that way I guess I’m just going to have to give you what those big eyes of yours are asking me for. In fact…’
Jaz shook her head and tried to deny what he was saying, but it was too late for her to say or do anything. He had moved so quickly, so light-footedly for such a big man, and he had somehow imprisoned her against the back of the lift, his hands planted firmly either side of her as he lowered his head until his lips were resting on hers.
The feeling of being surrounded by him, by the heat of his body, the weight of it that was almost resting on her, the scent of it that filled the air around her, was so intensely erotic that she felt almost as though he had laid her bare and actually touched her. She shuddered as he placed his hand on her breast, caressing it through the fine silk of the dress she was wearing. He bent his head and she turned her own to one side, then cried out in protest as she felt his lips caressing her nipple through the fine silk.
Swooningly Jaz closed her eyes. She ought not to be doing this. It was so dangerous. Common sense told her that. But her hand had already gone to his groin, seeking, stroking, needing the hot hard feel of him to prove to her that she was not alone in the savage almost frightening urgency of her need. The sensation of him swelling fiercely beneath her touch soothed her fractured ego, just as the sudden rough acceleration of his breathing brought her a swift feminine surge of triumph. She was not alone. He wanted her as much as she wanted him!
The lift shuddered to a halt and the door opened. Immediately she pushed past him.
They stepped out of the lift together, Jaz aware that her face was burning hotly and that her legs felt so weak they were barely able to support her. What if they had remained in the lift for longer? Would he…? Would she…?
As she turned away from him she heard him saying softly to her, ‘Let’s go to your room.’
Helplessly she stared at him. He was a man totally outside all her previous experience—which she had to admit was less than worthy of any kind of comparison. She had always led an unfashionably sedate kind of life, compared with the lives of her peers. Her battle to prove to her parents how important her chosen career path was to her had not left her with time to indulge in the sexual experimentation of other girls her age.
But it was a life which suited her and which she had always been very happy with. Sexual adventures of the kind that involved kissing tall, dark, handsome men in lifts were not something that had ever remotely interested her—or if they had she was certainly not prepared to admit it publicly, she hastily amended, as she wordlessly led the way to her hotel bedroom with her head held high but her heart thumping frantically in a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
It was only when they reached the door that qualms of conscience made her hesitate. She turned to him as she searched in her bag for her key.
‘I don’t think—’ she began, but he had taken her bag from unresisting fingers and was reaching out to draw her into his arms. In the same movement he slid open the door.
‘What is it that you don’t think, hon?’ he asked her with male emphasis. ‘That you don’t want this?’
Jaz’s whole body shook in the hard embrace of his arms as he bent his head and kissed her, a long, slow, lingering kiss that melted her bones and her will-power. They were inside the room, now and he had closed and locked the door, all without letting go of her, and now in the soft darkness he was still kissing her. Though what he was doing to her mouth was more, much more than merely kissing it. What he was doing was…
Jaz shuddered convulsively as his hands touched her body lightly, delicately, knowingly…This man knew women…He knew them very, very well. She could feel it in his touch…feel it in him. His tongue caressed her lips, as though he sensed and wanted to soothe her fears, circling them slowly and carefully, until the delicate pressure of his tongue-tip became not soothing but frustrating, tormenting…making her want…
The darkness seemed to increase her awareness of him, of the hot, musky male scent of his body. It made her doubly aware of the feel of his skin against her as she felt the roughened rasp of his jaw on her cheek, and the corresponding texture of his jacket sleeve against her bare arm. She was almost intoxicated by the cool fresh hint of cologne he was wearing.
In her mind’s eye she could see him in a very different environment from that of her hotel room—the Bourbon court had been exited from France to New Orleans, and it didn’t take much imagination on Jaz’s part to picture him at Versailles at the height of the Sun King’s reign. How well he would have fitted into that sophisticated and splendid milieu; his sexuality would have driven the court ladies into swooning fits of desire—would have had much the same effect on them as it was having on her right now!
He was like no other man she had ever met, dangerous and exciting, and she