London's Eligible Bachelors. Sharon Kendrick

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       CHAPTER THREE

      SABRINA was twenty minutes late. Guy had never had a woman keep him waiting in his life and he couldn’t decide whether to be irritated or intrigued. He glanced down at his watch for the umpteenth time and actually began to wonder whether he’d been stood up.

      But then he saw her crossing the square, wearing some slinky little silver-grey dress with a filmy silver stole around her pale shoulders, her legs looking deliciously long in spindly, high-heeled shoes.

      Sabrina spotted his tall, brooding figure straight away, as if he had been programmed to dominate her whole horizon. He was wearing a pale grey unstructured suit which did nothing to disguise the hard, muscular body beneath. And, outwardly at least, he looked completely relaxed, but as she grew closer she could see a coiled kind of tension, which gave him the dark, irresistible shimmer of danger. He looked completely relaxed, but there was no mistaking the watchful quality which made his grey eyes gleam with subdued promise.

      She had very nearly not come tonight, lifting the telephone to ring Guy’s hotel more than once, telling herself that this was fast turning into something she hadn’t planned. Something she wasn’t sure if she could handle.

      Or stop.

      But something had prevented her cancelling—something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Maybe it was the memory of that first, glorious sight of him. Leaving behind the knowledge that if she were never to see him again, then the world would never seem quite the same place.

      His smile widened as she approached, but he made no move towards her. Let her come to me, he thought. He wanted to watch the way she moved—her hips unconsciously thrusting forward, the fluid sway of her bottom. He imagined those hips crushed beneath the hard contours of his own, and swallowed. Come to me, baby, he thought silently. Come.

      ‘Hello,’ Sabrina said breathlessly, but something in the darkening of his eyes seemed to have robbed her of the ability to suck air into her lungs.

      ‘Hello.’ So. No blurted little excuses for being late. No shrugged or coy reasons. Her carelessness sharpened his desire for her even more intensely and he felt his senses clamour into life. ‘Where would you like to eat?’

      There was a new, dangerous quality about Guy tonight, Sabrina thought. A danger which should have frightened her, but instead filled her with a sense of almost unendurable excitement. And inevitability. ‘You know the city far better than I do,’ she said huskily. ‘You choose.’

      ‘OK,’ he said easily, and for a moment felt the penitent shimmer of guilt. As if he hadn’t just spent an hour under the hammering power of the shower, deciding exactly where he wanted to take her. He had opened his mouth to the torrent of water which had beaten down on him, his body growing hard with frustration as he remembered that Sabrina had stood naked beneath these same icy jets.

      Except that he doubted whether she had needed an ice-cold shower to ward off a desire which was stronger than any desire he could remember.

      The restaurant was close by and its menu was famous. It was private and discreet but not in the least bit stuffy; he wondered whether she would comment on its proximity to his hotel, but she didn’t.

      And it wasn’t until they were seated in the darkened alcove he had expressly requested that he relaxed enough to expel a long, relieved breath. She was here, he thought exultantly. Sabrina was here. Her hair was all caught back in a smooth pleat at the back of her head and he wanted to reach out and tumble it all the way down her back.

      ‘You look beautiful,’ he said slowly.

      The way he was looking at her made her feel beautiful. She savoured the compliment, held onto it and tried it out in her mind. ‘Why, thank you,’ she said demurely.

      ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’ He couldn’t believe he’d just said that either. Hadn’t the hard lessons of his childhood meant that he’d spent his whole life striving for some kind of invulnerability?

      ‘I nearly didn’t.’ Oh, God, she thought, please don’t ask me why. Because I might just have to tell you that I knew, if I came, where I might end up spending the night.

      ‘What changed your mind?’

      ‘I was hungry.’

      He laughed as the waiter came over with the menus, and Sabrina took hers with hands which had begun to tremble. She wondered whether Guy had noticed.

      He had. But he hadn’t needed to see her fingers shaking to know that she was working herself up to a fever pitch of sexual excitement which almost matched his own. That was evident enough from the soft line of colour which suffused the high curve of her cheekbones and the hectic glitter of her eyes. The way her lips looked all swollen and pouting, parting moistly of their own volition, the rosy pink tip of her tongue peeping through. And the way the buds of her tiny breasts pushed like metal studs against the silvery silk of her gown.

      His СКАЧАТЬ