tightened around then caressed her waist.
‘You can’t,’ she whispered hoarsely, a peculiar weakness overwhelming her as she took in his bronzed semi-nudity. ‘Let me go.’ The blood pounded with increasing excitement through her veins. ‘You can’t force me,’ and even as she said the words she did not really believe he would use his superior strength against her.
At eighteen she had ached for him, and he had controlled her girlish fervour with ease, but now he was unleashing the powerful expertise of his awesome masculinity on her and she had no defence. What little resistance she had left collapsing like a house of cards against his sensual onslaught.
Solo ate her body with his eyes. Dio but he wanted her, and he knew she wanted him. It was there in her pouting lips and in the jade depths of her gorgeous eyes. She was sex personified, and the fact she had once turned him down made the prospect of her ultimate surrender all the sweeter.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ he responded silkily, and cupped the smooth, creamy fullness of her breast, and trailed his thumb over the rosy tip, bringing it to rigid life, and watched her helpless, trembling response with cynical masculine satisfaction. He would seduce her slowly, and once he had her begging in his arms he would finally cure himself of the fatal attraction she held for him. She would be a body in his bed like countless others before her—until he tired of her.
Penny did not know what had hit her. One minute she was showing him the bedroom, now she was half naked on the bed drowning in a sea of sensations she did not really comprehend. The hands that had tried to push him away with a will of their own stroked over his satin-skinned shoulders, and when his head moved down to kiss her other breast her whole body shuddered in mindless delight.
‘Don’t lie, Penny,’ he drawled against her hot skin, sprinkling tiny kisses back up her throat. ‘You want me as I want you.’ Once more he found her mouth, his tongue slipping between her teeth with a seductive sensuality until she forgot she was supposed to be fighting him and welcomed the intimate probing of his tongue with innocent, wild enthusiasm. Her fingers slid around his neck and into the silky black hair of his head, her breasts pressed into the hard heat of his naked chest as he held her closer, and she surrendered to the throbbing need his mouth and hands aroused in her.
So it was a brutal shock when suddenly Solo jerked away from her. Senses swimming, her green eyes wide and wondering, she looked up into his handsome face. Hard grey eyes stared back at her.
‘This has been a long time in coming. Now tell me you don’t want me.’ His mouth curled mockingly, his gaze skimmed cynically over her full breasts, his hand flicking insolently over her rigid nipples. ‘Deny the evidence of your own body.’
Penny stared back at him, too stunned to speak, and hating him for deliberately arousing her to a point of mindless surrender, simply to point out the weakness of her own flesh.
‘Force does not come into it, Penny,’ he drawled, his eyes boring into hers with stark demand. ‘Make up your mind. You are no longer an innocent young virgin, so stop pretending and act like the mature woman I know you to be. Admit the need, the desire I can see in your eyes. Yes or no.’
Scarlet-faced, her body throbbing with unfulfilled need, she was vitally aware of Solo’s half-naked form, the dark intimacy of the bedroom, and she shuddered, unable to subdue the fierce excitement flowing through her veins however hard she tried.
She had thought herself over him long ago, and she had never considered herself to be a particularly sexual person. She’d had no trouble rebuffing the young men she had dated at university, but now she was forced to face the fact that, where Solo was concerned, he only had to look at her, touch her, and for some inexplicable reason her untried body was perfectly attuned to his. It didn’t make sense…
‘Your silence is very telling, Penny,’ Solo drawled throatily, his grey eyes burning into hers as he kissed each breast in turn, while his deft fingers unfastened her trousers and stripped them and her briefs from her body, and she let him… Hypnotised by his fiercely glittering gaze.
‘You want to be persuaded. Very feminine,’ he husked. Penny gasped out loud as slowly he slid his hand down over her stomach and swept along the length of her thigh, and then trailed his long fingers sensually down her leg with deliberate provocation. ‘Very beautiful, and I’m happy to oblige.’
Penny trembled, mesmerised by the rapt expression on his strong, lean face, and the emotions surging inside her. Then lazily he stood up, and, taking her unresisting hand, he slowly lifted it to his thigh.
‘See what you do to me, Penny.’ He pressed her hand hard against him, and her palm seemed to burn as she felt the strength of his manhood through the fabric of his trousers. Fascinated and terrified at the same time, she would have pulled back, but he spoke in a throaty, seductive murmur. ‘I need your answer, Penny.’
She gulped and then he was leaning over her; his other hand gently touched her shoulder and lower, her skin burnt. Why me? a tiny voice of sanity cried in her confusion. Why did this one man in the world have this devastating effect on her? Her fingers flexed. Horrified, she realised she was stroking Solo with tactile fingers of desire. Swallowing hard, she jerked her hand back and closed her eyes in mortification at her loss of control.
She did not know what she was, what she had become lying naked on the big bed, every nerve end in her body quivering with tension. She opened her eyes and tried to sit up. This had gone far enough, too far…
Solo was as naked as she was! Penny’s stomach clenched at the sight of his magnificent bronzed body, the flagrant proof of his manhood casually revealed. She had never seen a totally naked man in her life, and she couldn’t credit the rush of excitement that shivered over every pore of her skin simply from looking.
‘Well, what is it to be, Penny?’ Solo demanded, his voice deep and full of sensual invitation. His finger curled gently around her shoulder and eased her back down onto the bed. He draped his long body alongside hers and her pulse leapt at the contact of naked flesh on naked flesh. Rising over her, he slid his leg between hers as his mouth came down to claim her lips in a scorching kiss.
‘Decision time.’ Solo’s mouth seductively glided along the curve of her cheek, leaving only a breathing space between them; his glittering eyes held hers, demanding an answer.
For a moment a nerve-jangling fear hit her, but with the heat of his body searing into her skin, and bewitched by the sensual promise in his silver eyes, she suddenly thought, Why not? Why deny herself the experience of making love with Solo? She had always wanted to, from the first time she had set eyes on him. No other man had ever been able to make her feel a tenth of what Solo could with a glance. Whatever happened in the future, at least she would have the satisfaction of knowing she had started with the best, she thought wildly, impulsively. ‘Yes.’
One simple three-letter word, and Solo Maffeiano’s heart leapt and so did another part of his anatomy. For the first time in his life he was speechless. He looked at the exquisitely beautiful naked girl beneath him and it took all his self-control not to rush. He stroked the elegant curve of her throat, the hollow of her collarbone, and his fingers trembled.
He shuddered, and Penny was aware of every inch of his huge male body and her own, the beating of his heart, the heat, the pressure of his hips against her inner thighs as he eased her legs apart.
Emboldened, she ran her fingers over his back and felt the contraction of muscle and sinew beneath her touch. She pressed her lips to the strong cord of his throat, tasting the salty tang of his skin. Then she gasped as his hand tangled in the long length of her hair and pulled her head back.
The bronzed skin was taut across his perfectly chiselled features as he fought a savage battle for control. But his eyes… his eyes burnt dark as night as he scattered gentle kisses on her cheeks, her eyes, her nose, and finally took her mouth.
His mouth searched hers with a sensuous, building passion and with a wild, uninhibited delight she responded, her tongue duelling with his, her hands stroking feverishly over his broad back, his firm buttocks. She felt the urgent thrust of his body as, with