Fiancee By Mistake. Kate Walker

words were almost unintelligible, but the undercurrent of shaken laughter told its own story.

      With her arms linked around his neck, he half carried, half walked her towards the nearest room, kicking open the door before manoeuvring her inside. Leah had a brief glimpse of a Victorian-style tiled fireplace and large, squashy chairs covered in a rich bronze velvet before she was swung off her feet and deposited on the softness of the settee, Sean coming down on top of her.

      ‘Better?’ he enquired unevenly, his breathing as ragged as if he had just completed a marathon.

      ‘Much better,’ Leah assured him with a lazy smile, writhing languorously beneath his imprisoning weight.

      ‘Now perhaps I can kiss you properly.’

      When Leah opened her mouth to demand to know precisely what he had been doing before, if not kissing her ‘properly’, he promptly took the opportunity to prove exactly what he meant. The thrust and movement of his tongue was a deliberate attempt to tease and tantalise her with the promise of how a more intimate invasion of her body would feel.

      The hunger that had built with each touch, each caress, was now raging out of control. It pulsed through every nerve-end, making her twist violently beneath him. She needed to touch him more intimately, wanted to feel his hot skin against hers, wanted his hands on her own body.

      ‘You’re wearing too many clothes,’ she muttered in mock petulance, tugging at the navy sweater with impatient fingers.

      ‘I could say the same about you.’

      ‘Mmm, so you could.’ Leah moved her hips provocatively. ‘And this dress is far too tight.’

      ‘Is that a fact? Well, I think I could help you there.’

      The Lycra that made her dress cling so closely also made it easy for him to ease the top down from her shoulders, the bra beneath as swiftly discarded. Pausing only to peel off his jumper and toss it aside, Sean came back to her again, dragging her up against him and deliberately moving his chest against the peaking tips of her nipples. His smile grew into a wide grin of triumph as he heard her sigh of uninhibited pleasure at the sensation of the roughness of his body hair against their tight sensitivity.

      ‘You are one sexy lady,’ he murmured against her skin, trailing hot kisses down from the smooth roundness of one shoulder to the pink-flushed curves of her breasts. Slowly, tormentingly, his mouth moved lower, so that she was whimpering with need before it finally closed over one throbbing peak, drawing it into its moist heat.

      ‘Oh, God!’

      Leah’s body arched upwards convulsively, her head flung back in total abandon as she offered herself to the delicious sensation. Sean’s gentle tugging at her breast sent a pulse of white-hot excitement straight from its tip down to the very centre of her femininity.

      ‘Don’t stop!’ she begged, and felt his laughter feather warmly across her flesh.

      ‘I don’t intend to.’

      His hands were tugging her skirt upwards, exposing the lacy tops of her stockings, the frivolous fastenings of her suspender belt. Automatically Leah raised herself to help him.

      When his questing fingers slid over her hip-bones and under the wisp of silk that was the only flimsy barrier left between him and her most intimate core, she cried out sharply, the sound of her voice clashing with the soft chiming of a clock somewhere in the room.

      ‘God, but you’re ready for me,’ he breathed. ‘So ready. I can see that making love to you just once is never going to be enough for me. I’d want to do it again…’

      His fingers tangled in the damp curls, probed gently for a second, making her move uncontrollably.

      ‘And again…’

      Each word coincided with the stroke of the clock in the corner, creating a rhythm that forced itself through the fevered haze inside Leah’s head. It pounded against her brain, refusing to be pushed away until, in spite of herself, she found she was counting along with them.

      Six… Seven

      ‘And again!’

      Eight… Nine…

      Nine! The final stroke slashed into her consciousness like a blade of ice, incising the passion from her thoughts with a single blow.

      Nine o’clock! There was something— She had promised— Oh, God, what was happening to her?

      ‘No!’

      It was a cry of shocked distress, so sharp, so shaken that even in his state of fevered desire Sean heard it and paused in confusion. Blue eyes dark and glazed with passion went to her face.

      ‘Sweetheart…’

      ‘I said no!’

      She wrenched herself up into a half-sitting position, shaking fingers going to her exposed breasts, then down to her skirt in an ineffectual attempt to cover herself. But when she realised that Sean’s hands still lingered intimately at the top of her thighs she pushed them away with a violence that clearly surprised him.

      What had she done? How could she have let this happen? How could she have been so foolish as to let things go this far?

      Nine o’clock! She had promised Andy she would phone him at nine to let him know she had arrived safely at her mother’s house.

      But she wasn’t at her mother’s, or anywhere near it. And she certainly wasn’t safe! She was here, with a man she had met only a couple of hours before—a man she knew nothing about except for his appearances on her television set, a man she had let…

      ‘No!’

      This time it was a wail of distress and shame. How could she have forgotten? How could she have let him drive it from her mind?

      ‘This mustn’t happen! It’s wrong! So very wrong! I’m— I’m engaged to someone else!’

      She didn’t know what she had expected his response to be. A protest, at least. Or perhaps some attempt at seductive persuasion—a few sultry kisses, a murmured, Forget him, darling, he’s history. You and I are meant to be together.

      Instead, the man above her turned white with shock. The words were barely out of her mouth before he had snatched his hands away from her so swiftly that she might just have told him she was infected with some appalling disease.