‘What does it mean?’
‘You are so beautiful. I don’t want to tear myself away to go home.’
For an insane moment she considered telling him that he could stay if he promised not to touch her. She didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t want to be alone either. The idea of lying in a man’s arms was hugely appealing. The idea of waking up with company for a change was even more seductive. She was dismayed by her own naïvety, flinching from the raw amusement she would rouse with such a silly proposition. He wanted sex. He wanted to treat her like her many predecessors in his bed-women he had enjoyed for a few weeks without love or strings of any kind before moving on to the next. Could she really want to join that nameless herd? Someone whom he used to satisfy his lust for a night or two before he became bored and sought the fresh stimulation of a new face and body?
CHAPTER FOUR
‘I LOVE your hair,’ Nikolai continued softly, combing long, lean fingers gently through the heavy fall of curls that were the colour of maple leaves in autumn, ‘and the softness of your skin.’ Having exposed the smooth silky flesh where Abbey’s slender neck met her shoulder, he buried his lips there.
The erotic touch of his mouth in that precise spot was like an electric charge to Abbey’s senses. It made her unbearably aware of the tight, pulsing sensitivity of her nipples and the hollow ache between her thighs. Both sensations urged her closer to the masculine promise of his hard physique, her breathing audible, her body on fire with a frustration that she was only just beginning to recognise. It was an ungovernable hunger that was flooding through her like an unleashed dam and threatening to wash away her every inhibition. She would never have believed until that moment how powerful such promptings could be. She would never have credited that the fierce sensual pressure of a man’s mouth and the probing invasion of his tongue could make her shake as if she were an accident victim.