Hired: The Italian's Convenient Mistress. Carol Marinelli

that had gripped her when she’d found herself alone in a strange city—all was abating as with his mouth he soothed and excited.

      In this crazy day he had helped her too—was helping her now.

      This heady, blinding kiss was frenzied almost—like an anaesthetic, dousing pain, dimming thought. His hands knotted in her hair as he drank from her mouth, his mouth so hot on hers there was a delicious hurt. Deep lusty kisses both claimed and bestowed, and each breath she took was his, each breath she gave he gulped in. It was a dangerous kiss that could only lead moreto more. Yet somehow he made her feel safe, his strong arms holding her, his hands clutching her to him, his lips grazing her neck, the scratch of his chin on her sensitive skin making her weak. She’d never been kissed like this before—never been wanted or wanted so badly herself. The heady rush fizzed in her veins, racing around her body—stroking her pelvic floor like an inner caress. And it had to stop, because if it didn’t then they wouldn’t.

      Pulling back her head, though his arms still circled her body, she called a reluctant halt. Both were staring, both breathing as if they had run a mile. The delicious shock doused her, her own body’s response astonished her— every encounter in her life laid end to end didn’t come close to matching this.

      ‘Don’t…’ He husked his response to her unvoiced statement—disparity evident as her body thrummed in his arms.

      ‘I have to.’ She could hardly speak, her whole body so drenched with arousal, so utterly opposed to her mind, that it took every ounce of effort she possessed to walk from his room, to lie on her bed…to walk away from his.

      It was just a kiss. She told herself. A kiss because…

      Only she couldn’t answer that one. Ainslie’s fingers moved to her mouth, feeling it swollen where his lips had been. She could still feel the tender flesh of her neck where his chin had made her raw.

      And it wasn’t just a kiss—kisses had never left her weak like that; kisses had never left her lost. Which she had been, completely lost in the moment with him.

      She tried to put it out of her mind, to focus on her problems instead of letting her imagination wander, to tell herself to let it go.

      But her body said otherwise. And the slightly open bedroom doors channelled their want as they both lay alone in the oppressive silence. Ainslie, her body twitching with desire and thick, greedy need, lay there rigid, almost in desperation for the escape they had briefly found, willing herself to relax, to sleep. Trying to ignore the man who lay just metres away, who was, after one kiss, the only man who had utterly moved her.