Best Modern Romances Of The Year 2017. Maisey Yates

why don’t you tell your stepfather that you can’t make it tonight because you’re catching up with a friend?’

      ‘I already have.’

      ‘But you don’t like Arabella,’ Raul pointed out. ‘So why don’t you meet me instead?’

      She laughed a black laugh. ‘You’re not a friend.’

      He wasn’t.

      ‘No,’ he answered honestly. ‘I’m not.’

      She was about to take a sip of her coffee when he added something else.

      ‘I could be for tonight, though.’

      ‘I don’t think so.’ Lydia gave a small laugh, not really getting what he had just said—or rather not really thinking he meant it.

      ‘Do you have many friends?’ she asked, replacing her cup. Perhaps her question was a little invasive, but she’d told him rather a lot and was curious to know about him.

      ‘Some.’

      ‘Close friends?’ Lydia pushed.

      ‘No one whose birthday I need to remember.’

      ‘No one?’

      He shook his head.

      ‘I guess it saves shopping for presents.’

      ‘Not really.’

      Raul decided to take things to another level and tell her how things could be. In sex, at least, he was up front.

      ‘I like to give a present the morning after.’

      Lydia got what he meant this time.

      She didn’t blush. If anything Lydia felt a shiver, as if the sun had slipped behind a cloud.

      It hadn’t.

      He was dark, he was dangerous, and he was as sexy as hell. Absolutely she was out of her depth.

      ‘I’m here to sightsee, Raul.’

      ‘Then you need an expert.’

      Lydia stared coolly back at this man who was certainly that. She wondered at his reaction if she told him just how inexperienced she was—that in fact he would be her first.

      Not that it was going to happen!

      But what a first, Lydia thought.

      She went to reach for water but decided against it, unsure she could manage the simple feat when the air thrummed with an energy that was foreign to her.

      He was potent, and Lydia was tempted in a way she had never been.

      She glanced down to his hand, and that was beautiful too—olive-skinned and long-fingered with very neat nails. And it was happening again, because now she imagined them inside her.

      Oh!

      She was sitting at breakfast, imagining those very fingers in the filthiest of thoughts, and she dared not look up at him for she felt he could read her mind.

      ‘So what are your plans for today?’ Raul asked.

      His voice seemed to be coming from a distance, and yet he was so prominent in her mind.

      She could take his hand, Lydia was certain, and be led to his bed.

      Oh, what was happening to her?

      ‘I told you—sightseeing, and then I’m shopping for a dress.’

      ‘I wish I could be there to see that.’

      ‘I thought men didn’t like shopping.’

      ‘I don’t, usually.’

      His eyes flicked to the row of buttons at the front of her dress and then to the thick nipples that ached, just ached for his touch, for his mouth. And then they moved back to her face.

      ‘I have to go,’ Raul told her, and she sat still as he stood. With good reason: her legs simply refused to move. Standing would be difficult...walking back over to the hotel would prove a completely impossible feat.

      Please go, Lydia thought, because she felt drunk on lust and was trying not to let him see.

      He summoned the waiter, and though he spoke in Italian he spoke slowly enough that she could just make out what was being said.

      Hold this table for tonight at six.

      And then he turned to where she sat, now with her back to him, and lowered his head. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her.

      He did not.

      His breath was warm on her cheek and his scent was like a delicious invasion. His glossy black hair was so close that she fought not to reach out and feel it, fought not to turn and lick his face.

      And then he spoke.

      ‘Hold that thought till six.’

      Lydia blinked and tried to pretend that she still felt normal, that this was simply breakfast and she was somehow in control.

      ‘I already told you—I can’t make it tonight.’

      Then he offered but one word.

      ‘Choose.’

CHAPTER THREE

      WHAT THE HELL was happening to her?

      Lydia watched him walk across the street and then disappear inside the hotel.

      He did not turn around. He didn’t walk with haste.

      She wanted him to hurry, to disappear, just so that she could clear her mind—because in fact she wanted him to turn around.

      One crook of his finger and she knew she would rise and run to him—and that was so not her. She kept her distance from people—not just physically but emotionally too.

      Her father’s death had rocked every aspect of her world, and the aftermath had been hell. Watching her mother selling off heirlooms and precious memories one by one, in a permanent attempt to keep up appearances, and then marrying that frightful man. Finding her friends had all been fair-weather ones had also hurt Lydia to the core. And so she held back—from family, from friends and, yes, from men.

      She was guarded, and possibly the assumption made by others that she was cold was a correct one.

      But not now—not this morning.

      She felt as if she had been scalded, as if every nerve was heated and raw, and all he had done was buy her breakfast.

      She sat alone at the table. There was nothing to indicate romance—no candles or champagne—and no favourable dusk to soften the view. Just the brightness of morning.

      There had been no romance.

      Raul had offered her one night and a present the following morning. She should have damn well slapped him for the insult!

      Yet he’d left her on a slightly giddy high that she couldn’t quite come down from.

      * * *

      Sightseeing as such didn’t happen.

      When she should have been sorting out what to do about tonight she wandered around, thinking about this morning.

      But finally she shopped, and accepted the assistant’s advice, and stood in the changing room with various options.

      The black did not match her mood.

      The caramel felt rather safe.

      But as for the red!

      The rich fabric caressed her skin and gave curves where she had few. It was ruched across her stomach and her hand went to smooth it before she realised that was the desired effect—it drew the eye lower.

      Lydia