Just Once. Susan Napier

know whether to be insulted or flattered.

      ‘I thought we were here to settle an argument about who played Velda in Kiss Me Deadly,’ she said, glancing at the wide, flat screen hanging on the wall above a sleek, electronic box. ‘You said we could watch it here on DVD.’

      ‘I have a better idea,’ he said, walking towards her.

      ‘Oh?’ Her tongue darted out to moisten her dry lips, heat beginning to flush through her belly and breasts at the fierce expression in his eyes. He hadn’t kissed her in the taxi coming over, but he had wanted to, and his restraint had made his desire all the more exciting.

      ‘We both know Maxine Cooper was Velda, so let’s forget the movie and I’ll show you the real reason I always stay in this particular penthouse…’ he purred, taking her hand and beginning to lead her towards the spiral staircase in the corner of the room.

      Oh, God, what height of decadence was he about to reveal? A solid-gold bed with sheets of red silk? A black marble spa pool filled with champagne?

      But they kept climbing up past the sprawling main bedroom and stepped out through folded shutters into a magical scene, shaded lights around the high walls illuminating a lush green jungle of plants and a riot of heavily perfumed spring flowers.

      ‘The roof garden…for my exclusive, and very private use…’he said softly, allowing her to walk ahead of him across the dense fan of green grass that divided into winding pathways of creeping groundcover curving around enclosed thickets of soft ferns and spiky palms.

      ‘It’s fantastic,’ she murmured, her high heels sinking into the turf as she paused by a shrub smothered in starry-white flowers and inhaling the heady night-perfume of Mexican orange blossom.

      ‘That’s what I think. Whenever I’m here in town and I start to feel like a victim of my own success, I skip out on the crowds and come up here to mellow out for a while. It’s the perfect cure for mood disorders…a little piece of Eden. And now it has its very own Eve…’ She heard a faint activating beep and turned to the sound of soft music rising from hidden speakers.

      To her shock Drake had shed his footwear and his white silk shirt and was stripping the belt from his dove-grey trousers. At her gasp his hands stilled.

      ‘Have you changed your mind?’

      It was on the tip of her tongue to claim that he was assuming way too much. But they would both know it for a lie.

      ‘No, but—I…should we? Out here?’

      ‘Why not? It’s warm, the grass is soft and the air is sweet, and we’re literally closer to heaven than anywhere else in town. But if you’re worried we might get buzzed by a police helicopter…’He picked up the remote control he had used to operate the sound system from the glass table beside him and pressed a button. With a low rumble a curved roof of tinted panels extended from the far end of the walled garden and eclipsed the distant stars, finally clicking home against the granite side of the building.

      When Kate looked down from this fascinating piece of engineering Drake was stepping out of the last of his clothes, exposing himself without false modesty to her wide-eyed gaze, his large hands, curled into loose fists, hanging quietly at his sides, the angle of the lights painting intriguing shadows in the hollows of his sculpted perfection.

      ‘I want to make love to you now,’ he told her with arrogant confidence.

      ‘So I see,’ she said shakily, trying to look and sound blasé rather than panic-stricken by his impressive proportions, the thick nest of dark hair in his groin framing a magnificence that would put any one of his highly sexed heroes in the shade.

      He shifted restlessly, the muscles bunching in his thighs. ‘Aren’t you going to reciprocate?’ he murmured, nodding at the classic, sleeveless ‘little black dress’ that she had dressed up for the evening function with cropped blue jacket of oriental design.

      Not quite sure how to begin, Kate automatically did what she would normally do at home when preparing for bed, and reached up to pull the pins out of her smooth chignon and let her hair flow like warm caramel through her fingers, shaking her head to fan out the remaining kinks. Then she hesitated, biting her lip as she wondered where she was going to put the pins.

      ‘That’s it?’ he rasped tightly. ‘That’s all you’re going to do? You’re not even going to take off your shoes?’

      She thought he was angry, impatient with her nervousness. ‘Uh, no, I—’ The pins fell from her fingers, spearing silently into the grass around her feet as she realised he wasn’t angry at all…far from it! If it was possible, he appeared to be even more aroused than before, prowling towards her stiff-legged, his eyes gleaming black in the muted light, the tension in his voice purely sexual.

      ‘You playing the tease, Katherine?’

      ‘No, of course not!’ she denied breathlessly, hypnotised by the fluid play of light and shadow across the shifting planes of his hard body as he continued his hunting prowl across the grass, masculinity personified. As she watched he unfurled a fist, and showed her a palm full of little foil packets. So many? She felt a thrill of exquisite apprehension tingle through her bones, her confidence overpowered by his physiological perfection, her own physical flaws suddenly magnifying themselves in her mind. She instinctively wrapped her jacket across her breasts as he came to a halt, his body crowding hers.

      ‘No? The blushing virgin, then?’ he said, tossing the handful of foil to join her scattered hairpins.

      She blushed.

      ‘Hardly!’

      ‘You’ve been around, then?’ he said slyly, plucking at the lower edge of the jacket where it poked out below her folded arms.

      She tilted her nose up at his deliberate crudity. ‘No, I have not “been around”,’ she sniffed. ‘But I have occasionally been in the vicinity,’ she admitted with a prim dignity that made his teeth flash white in the darkness.

      ‘Not my vicinity, sweetheart, or you wouldn’t be acting so cool.’

      Cool? She was practically burning up!

      ‘It’s just—’ She felt something warm—something hard yet invitingly soft—kiss her belly button through her skirt, but she didn’t dare look down for fear of losing what little remained of her self-control.

      ‘Just what?’ he goaded. ‘Just that you’re getting cold feet?’

      Damn it, if he backed off now she would kill him! She forced her arms to loosen. ‘No!’

      ‘No,’ he echoed with gritty satisfaction. ‘So it must be that you’re just too prim and proper to get naked on a first date,’ he taunted cockily, his heavy hands settling on her bony hips, his long thumbs massaging the slippery fabric over the smooth skin of her lower belly. ‘You’ve already decided on letting your hair down with me…’he leaned forward to brush his face through the shiny curtain veiling the side of her neck, and inhale the subtle scent of her shampoo mingled with the faintest trace of musky feminine arousal ‘…mmmm…but the lady obviously wants to be warmed up a little before the main action. You don’t want to take them off, ergo you want me to make love to you with your clothes on…’

      Her silver eyes widened. ‘You can do that?’ she blurted foolishly.

      Her scepticism made him purr like a sexy tiger.

      ‘Oh, baby, I can do anything you want…’

      His big hands slid caressingly down her flanks and slipped under the knee-length hem of her dress, raking up the skirt with his forearms as his hands stroked slowly back up her legs to span her hips.

      ‘Hmm, stockings…that makes things easy…’ he discovered on the way up. ‘Oh, no…stay-ups,’ he corrected himself as his fingers found the delicate band that encircled the silky-fine skin of her upper thighs. ‘Even easier…’

      He sighed when he found the narrow strip