the meaning of restraint?
He understood it—he valued it because he had seen the sort of selfish excess and chaos that came with it—and yet understanding the meaning of restraint did not prevent his rampant hormones exploding. They overrode his iron control as his dark smouldering stare travelled slowly over her body.
‘So what couldn’t wait until the morning? Where’s the fire?’ He struggled to inject some amusement into his voice, but the combination of vulnerability and sheer unadulterated feminine sexiness had got to him in a place Seb had thought he’d hermetically sectioned, sealed off...when...
He couldn’t remember exactly what age he’d begun to worry he’d inherited his parents’ genes. It had kept him awake nights until he had realised that recognising your weaknesses meant they weren’t going to trip you up; it was all about control.
Control, he told himself, struggling to recall the meaning of the word as he breathed his way through the conflicting needs to comfort her and tear off her clothes and sink into all that luscious softness.
‘Fire?’ she echoed, blinking up at him.
If there wasn’t one, there would be—she looked hot enough to ignite anything within a fifty-yard radius, he decided, dragging his gaze from the plumpness of her trembling lips as he reminded himself that she might be as attractive as sin and twice as tempting, but Mari Jones was not destined to share his bed. Even if it hadn’t been essential that he kept things on a professional footing, she was not the sort of woman he would have entertained having any sort of relationship with.
Even so, it would have been much simpler if she had been unattractive or, for that matter, had one single flaw physically. His eyes moved from the fabric that had begun to cling with an electrostatic charge to the long shapely length of her legs, drawing his attention once more to the suggestion of shadow at their apex, and he forced himself to focus instead on the many flaws she had personality-wise.
The temper, he thought, sweating now, the mulish obstinacy, but most of all the sheer emotional excess in everything she did. She cried, she laughed, she screamed, she fought, and none of these things she did in moderation—he doubted she was even capable of it.
It didn’t matter how pretty the packaging, he pitied the man who eventually tried to domesticate this red-headed witch. It would take a saint or someone equally capable of making a walk in the park a full-blown drama.
The thought triggered an image, a memory he’d thought he’d forgotten. The day his parents had managed to make such a harmless outing a front-page headline. The moment his mother had pushed his father into the lake had been caught on camera for posterity, as had been their making up, but what Seb remembered was the nauseous, churning sensation of shame in his stomach and the desire to vanish.
When he had run away from the scene, his passionately reunited parents had not noticed their three-year-old son was missing until later that night.
The memory enabled him to claw back some semblance of control. He took a step back and stood there waiting.
Her stomach went into free fall as she glanced up at him through her lashes. He looked like the modern-day flesh-and-blood version of some sort of Greek god in his close-fitting boxers that did a very poor job of concealment, his dark hair standing up spikily, his jaw deeply scored with stubble. A primitive thrill shot through her body as she drank him in, in great greedy gulps.
‘I’m sorry. It was a m-mistake.’
‘Probably,’ he agreed huskily. ‘Calm down, you’re shaking.’ He caught her slim hands and pressed them between both of his.
The action might have been meant to soothe, but it did the opposite. Mari reacted to the contact like a cattle prod, throwing her arms wide to break the connection.
‘I was looking for the kitchen. Do I go right or left?’
There was a long pulse of silence. It buzzed in her ears like a cloud of bees. Mari waited until it became unbearable.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
He was so still, his stillness projecting a tension that was evident in the skin taut over his face. The tension emphasised each slashing angle and perfect plane. Even at a moment like this Mari marvelled that a man could be that beautiful, not just aesthetically because of the sculpted outline of his lips or the symmetry of his bold features, but it was the underlying earthy quality that charged the air around him.
‘This has been a long day. I’ll get Tomas to fetch you—’
‘Don’t wake the poor old man, just tell me how to get there!’ She struggled to flatten the panic she could hear in her voice. ‘Please, Seb.’
She shook her head resolutely, too stressed to interpret the strange way he was looking at her, wishing he’d put on some clothes.
‘You’ll get lost. I’ll show you,’ he said, but didn’t move.
‘No!’
‘Yes!’
They both spoke and moved at the same time, colliding.
Maybe he was a bastard; maybe he was just his parents’ son. You couldn’t choose your genes, and why fight nature? he thought as he reached for her. ‘Later,’ he murmured as he pulled her up hard against him and, one hand on her bottom, the other tangled in her hair, he pulled her head back and fitted his mouth to hers.
She melted into him, soft and warm, her arms going up to circle his neck as she gave a little sigh into his mouth, and kissed him back.
The hungry kiss went on and on, until with a groan he pushed her away and turned his back to her.
‘Get out of here,’ he growled. ‘While you still can.’
The sudden rejection left her trembling. She could still feel the strength of his arms, the hardness of his erection against her belly. Mari bit her lip, and thought to hell with pride—she didn’t care if he knew. She didn’t care who knew. She wanted him, and if that meant begging she would, even at the risk of rejection!
‘Let me stay, Seb, please. I don’t want to go.’ She had never wanted anything less in her entire life; she felt dizzy with the sweet hunger that coursed through her veins.
He swung back, took one look at her standing there and with a groan swept her up into his arms and stalked across to the bed with his prize.
He laid her on the bed and knelt beside her, sweeping her wild curls from her cheek and forehead, smoothing them out onto the pillow. The expression of fierce concentration on his face made her stomach flip.
One hand beside her face, he bent down and kissed her softly, running his tongue along the inner surface of her lower lip, tracing the pouting outline before he slid inside, his tongue tasting every inch of the moist interior. His free hand moved to one breast, cupping it through the thin fabric, his thumb running up the lower slope to graze then tease the engorged rosy peak. Then he covered it with his mouth, wetting the fabric and drawing a hoarse cry of pleasure from her aching throat.
Mari arched up to him, tangling her fingers in his hair, feeling his big body curved over her, tensing a little as his hands slid under her nightshirt, up her thighs, then relaxing, her head pushing back into the pillow because it felt so good.
The sensations shooting through her felt like an electrical storm. The frantic feeling escalated until he suddenly levered himself upright.
Her blue eyes flew wide open in protest.
‘You’re overdressed.’ At some point, Mari had no idea how or when, her little shrug had gone, but before she had time to consider how she felt about being naked in front of him he took the hem of her nightshirt in his two hands and pulled. The middle seam parted with a loud ripping sound until the only thing holding it together was the prissy little bow.
Holding her eyes with a wicked smile, he very slowly undid the bow and peeled the fabric apart, then her insides dissolved some more as she closed