Innocent in the Ivory Tower. Lucy Ellis

Alexei unsnapped his safety belt, glancing into the backseat at the slumbering infant. Maisy shrank back against the door, suddenly wary of what she’d stirred up.

      ‘Wh—what are you doing?’ she stammered.

      ‘I need to make a call,’ he informed her, head averted, scissoring the door open and closed.

      Lacing his hands behind his neck, Alexei walked out his frustration along the verge, taking a few deep breaths. She was a very young, very provocative woman. She was taunting him because he’d offended her. She didn’t mean to push his buttons. But she had.

      He couldn’t drive safely until he’d worked this through.

      All the men in Ravello. He’d brought it up. He’d put the words into her mouth. He’d put the thoughts into her head. Maisy was clearly no more promiscuous than he was. Yet … images he’d never be free of flashed like a viewfinder through his mind. His mother’s clients—sordid, terrifying for the child he had been. He let them flicker, then shut them off with abrupt practised closure, glancing back at the car. He could see her head bent, the gleam of all those fiery ringlets. He took a breath. This was Maisy—this was different. There was nothing more natural than his desire to take her to bed.

      Maisy sat drowning in the sudden silence. She watched him in the rear-vision mirror as he walked slowly away from the car. Even through her shot nerves she registered his back view was every bit as scrumptious as the front, and he had an amazing taut behind.

      She buried her hot face in her hands. Me and my mouth, she cursed. What was I thinking? What am I doing? It was a joke—a silly joke. But of course he doesn’t do jokes. This is all getting completely out of hand.

      She heard a click and felt the shift of weight in the car, dragging her hands away too late to find him beside her, watching her with the oddest expression. It was too late to hide her embarrassment.

      Unsophisticated, foot-in-mouth Maisy.

      ‘That didn’t take long,’ she blurted out, sounding uncomfortably breathless.

      He was watching her and there was real, undisguised heat in his eyes. Maisy’s breathing hitched and sped up. The buzzing atmosphere she recognised from her room was in the car. She had never felt anything like it, and with it came the memory of the feel of his mouth sliding over hers, the sheer force of his lust. You couldn’t dress it up as anything else—they barely knew one another, and she had been with him all the way. Why wouldn’t he think she would do it again?

      ‘I decided I didn’t need to make the call.’ A smile sat tight on his lips as he turned over the quiet engine. ‘Maybe you should reconsider all the men in Ravello, Maisy. I have a feeling you’re going to be pretty busy.’

      ‘With Kostya?’ said Maisy by rote, her mouth dry, her throat closed.

      ‘No.’ He swung the sports car fluidly back onto the highway and accelerated ever so slightly, so that the breath leapt from her body. ‘That would be with me.’