Passionate Fantasy. Sharon Kendrick

      His touch was just—magic.

      Cool yet warm.

      Firm yet gentle.

      He tipped her head back a little and she was transfixed by the blinding blaze of the silver-grey eyes, unable now to stop the trembling of her mouth as it parted, as if impelled by him to do so ... waiting ... waiting ... waiting ...

      His eyes gleamed and he nodded, as if satisfied. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s very powerful. You feel it too. Don’t you?’

      ‘Feel—wh-what ... ?’ she stammered.

      He gave a click of impatience, the gleam leaving his eyes, and as the light left them they became as cold and as impersonal as if they’d been fashioned from metal.

      ‘Oh, come on, Kitty,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t deny what your body accepted minutes ago. Because you can’t, can you? Your eyes are begging me to kiss you, aren’t they?’

      ‘N-no. They aren’t,’ she lied ineffectually.

      He smiled. ‘And do you know, I’m very tempted? Very tempted indeed!’

      He was teasing, playing games with her—he must be. And it hurt. Gorgeous, world-famous film directors didn’t feel tempted to kiss girls like her. ‘Try it,’ she said shakily, over-reacting by a mile, ‘and I’ll slap your face.’

      He laughed. ‘That might be interesting—purely for its novelty value,’ he murmured arrogantly.

      She brought her chin up as her eyes flashed angrily at him.

      ‘Go on, then.’ His voice had dropped to a deep, dark caress, and Kitty felt her breasts tighten with the tingle of anticipation. ‘I dare you. Slap my face.’

      She stared back at him, unable to move, her mind at odds with her body as she forgot all about Caro and why she was here, forgot all about everything other than the need to know what kissing him really would be like.

      And, oh, heavens, she was just about to find out as that devastating dark head dipped down towards hers and his mouth found her lips.

      For a second, there was a blaze inside her heart as she realised that the man whose face had graced a thousand movie-goers’ magazine covers was actually kissing her—Kitty Goodman with the ginger hair. It was every woman’s fantasy come to brazen, beautiful life.

      And then she forgot just who she was kissing; her attention and her senses were all caught up with just how he was kissing. It was a soft, slow exploration, with scarcely any pressure on her mouth to begin with and with nothing but their lips touching at all. Which all changed when he shifted his head just a fraction to give him greater access to the moist, eager interior of her mouth, and she slipped her hands up to clutch at his shoulders as his tongue flicked with sensual ease to lick at hers, as though he were slowly licking cream off the top of a pudding.

      She felt that pleasurable ache as the tips of her breasts clamoured into disbelieving life, her eyelids falling helplessly over her eyes, so, so tempted to move her hands down from his shoulders, to slip them inside his towelling robe and to touch and caress his bare chest ...

      And then he stopped kissing her, and stood staring down at her thoughtfully as she fought to drag some air into her starved lungs. To her horror she discovered that her desires had become actions and that her palms were lying against the hard nakedness of his chest, fingers fanned out over his nipples in as provocatively inviting and sexually possessive a gesture as it was possible to make.

      ‘Oh, God!’ she cried, wrenching her hands away with lightning speed.

      A slow smile curved his mouth. ‘I’m still waiting,’ he murmured softly.

      ‘W-waiting for what?’ Not to make love to her here, surely?

      ‘Why, for you to slap my face,’ he concluded arrogantly.

      She was stung, shocked, ashamed; a red mist of fury swam before her eyes, and she swung her hand up to hit him, but he was too quick for her, easily capturing her small wrist in his hand.

      ‘Not now, Kitty,’ he admonished sardonically. ‘That’s what’s known as shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, wouldn’t you say?’ And he waved his hand in the direction of a state-of-the-art cooker, and gave her an amused smile. ‘I’ll leave you to your cooking. I don’t know about you, but I seem to have worked up the most enormous appetite.’

CHAPTER FOUR

      KITTY’S fingers inflicted cruel punishment as she slammed the dough down yet again on the flour-covered marble board which lay on Darius’s pristine work-surface.

      What an utterly stupid, stupid thing to do, she told herself, her hands moving in time with her thoughts as she viciously kneaded the bread she was making. Darius had wanted sandwiches—well, she would give him sandwiches to die for!

      She closed her eyes briefly. What had she been thinking of, sneaking around the house like a second-rate sleuth in an amateur-dramatic society’s annual production?

      And not just that, she reminded herself as the heel of her hand came down hard on the elastic mixture. Because then ... Her cheeks flared with remembered chagrin. Then she had displayed the kind of fawning behaviour which was on a par with the woman in the black dress in the restaurant— the one with the ridiculous name—whose behaviour at the time she had so despised. Going gaga just because he’d touched her—even though he was thoroughly disreputable. No, far worse than that, she hadn’t just gone ga-ga, she’d gone completely overboard. And if he hadn’t stopped kissing her, she probably would have been tugging at the belt of that too-short robe to get her hands on even more of that smooth brown flesh. What must he have thought? Or was his spell over women so mesmeric that any woman taken into the arms of Darius Speed was doomed to behave so pathetically?

      Kitty pounded the dough. What had happened back there? She’d seen stars, heard violins, swooned in his arms—all the things which were supposed to happen when you fell ...

      She shook her head and actually laughed aloud. Now she really was letting her imagination run away with her. All that had happened was that the king of seducers had given her a taste of his considerable expertise at kissing. Imagine all the women he must have kissed over the years. Small wonder that a brief demonstration should act as such a powerful aphrodisiac. Although it was a little shaming to have been such a walk-over— why, she’d gone out with Hugo for nearly six months and her reactions towards him couldn’t have been more different ...

      She took a deep breath as she covered the dough with a damp tea-towel and put it to one side to rise, looking up as she heard the kitchen door open, her hackles rising protectively as she steeled herself for Darius.

      But it was Simon who smilingly appeared, his shiny brown hair gleaming, dressed in the habitual Australian male summer uniform of knee-length shorts worn instead of trousers, teamed with accompanying long socks. He had a pleasant face with regular features and none of the brooding watchfulness of his employer. In the normal course of events Simon was, Kitty decided, the kind of man who would never have a problem with women— but she suspected that he would always play second fiddle to the colder, harder but infinitely more attractive Darius.

      ‘Hi!’ His eyes lit up. ‘How’s it going?’

      ‘Great, thanks,’ said Kitty, relaxing instantly, thinking what a pleasant and genuine smile he had.

      There was something almost of the big brother about Simon—not that she had any brothers to compare him with, of course, but he made her feel somehow safe—the very opposite to how her boss made her feel.

      Was she at ease with Simon simply because they’d shared a meal that evening? Because they were both in the subordinate roles of employees? Or was it because he seemed so uncomplicated and easygoing when compared