Contracted For The Petrakis Heir. Annie West

Her throaty pleas had been sweet as wild honey and had prolonged her sensual torture. For he’d lingered, experimenting, revelling in each gasped exclamation.

      By the time he’d slipped his fingers across that nub at the centre of her need, it had taken barely a caress for her to lift off the bed, shuddering as she gasped out her release. And again when he’d nuzzled her there...

      Adoni closed his eyes at the vivid memory of musk and sweet femininity, of silky thighs clamping round him and her choked little cries of disbelief as rapture took her.

      He’d almost come undone there and then, so aroused was he by this woman. Yet she’d been worth the wait. Finding his own completion, deep-seated within her velvet heat, watching her slate-blue eyes blaze in wonder as her body reached that pinnacle a third time. That was a pleasure that would stay with him well into the future. He couldn’t remember another climax so intense it felt as if he’d lost a part of himself.

      But he’d eagerly lose himself again and again with a lover like Alice Trehearn. Even now, gasping for breath as they fought their way down from that incredible high, her fingers splayed possessively across his thigh.

      If this was how it was when they barely knew each other’s bodies, what would it be like when they were even better attuned?

      How would it feel if she did for him some of the things he’d done for her?

      Adrenaline slammed into his blood, hurtling around his body at dangerous speeds.

      ‘Well, I’m glad you know what you’re doing.’ Her voice was an uneven whisper. ‘That was amazing.’

      Something about the hoarse strain in her tone made Adoni open his eyes and turn his head.

      She too lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, her pert breasts rising and falling with her rapid breathing. The sight of them, the memory of their sweetness on his tongue, sent a charge of energy back to his groin.

      Again? So soon?

      Adoni smiled, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled the scent of sex underlain with the orange blossom fragrance of her hair. There was something overwhelmingly attractive about a woman who made a man feel all man.

      He opened his mouth to murmur something suggestive when his gaze rose to her face and his mouth snapped shut.

      Her pale brow was furrowed in thought and those full lips pursed as if something other than bliss occupied her brain. His gaze moved to a reddened patch of skin on her slender throat. Razor burn. He’d kissed her there as he powered into her, stifling the need to yell his triumphant pleasure with a ravaging caress of her tender flesh.

      ‘Alice?’

      She blinked rapidly and to Adoni’s consternation he saw fat tears spike her dark lashes.

      He didn’t do emotion. Not with lovers. Sex was about pleasure, scratching an itch, not—

      Her tongue slipped out to swipe her reddened lips and, despite his sudden tension, Adoni’s sex stirred.

      ‘Sorry.’ She swiped her cheeks with the heel of her palm. ‘I’m feeling a little...overwhelmed. It will pass, I’m sure.’ Her laugh sounded strained. ‘It was just so much more than I expected.’

      She turned her head and snared him with her brilliant eyes. Adoni’s heart knocked his ribs in a rough, unfamiliar rhythm.

      ‘Thank you.’ Her mouth turned up into a crooked smile that did something devastating to his internal organs.

      ‘My pleasure.’ What a weird conversation. They were so...polite when just seconds ago he’d been deep within her, pulsing out his climax and revelling in her broken gasps of wonderment and the close embrace of her body.

      He wanted to kiss her again, see if the promising stirrings of his lower body would strengthen. But that mouth was so solemn. That puckered brow so serious. Above all, there were those crystal teardrops clinging to her thick, bunched lashes. Those made him pause and rethink.

      ‘I need to see to the condom.’ Even as he said it, an inner voice rose in protest, telling him he could have her again, find easy satisfaction with this unlikely siren.

      But a lifetime’s caution came to his aid. He refused to get involved with feminine tears and...feelings.

      He levered himself from the bed and strode across to the bathroom. Strange how, with every step, he felt the weight of her gaze. It was as if she touched him, a light caress that strayed from his shoulders, down the sweep of his spine to his buttocks and thighs, then back up to the bunching muscles of his glutes. A shiver of awareness rippled through him.

      Again, temptation rose to turn back to Alice and take more of what they’d already shared. Instead Adoni kept walking. It was only when he closed the bathroom door behind him that the tension pushing at his shoulders eased.

      In the end he decided on a cold shower, sluicing water off his face and relying on the chill to douse his libido. It would be too easy to fall back into sex with Alice Trehearn. Her combination of naivety and forthright ways attracted as he couldn’t recall being attracted before. She was different, possibly unique, and something about her cut straight through his hard-won caution to the instinctive risk-taker deep within.

      Which was why Adoni would take stock before having sex with her again.

      That they would have sex again was a certainty. He might be cautious but he wasn’t a self-denying fool.

      He grabbed a towel, roughly drying his hair, then leaned forward, considering the shadow darkening his jaw. He should shave, out of consideration for Alice’s delicate skin. Yet he hesitated. He’d gone blindly into sex with a stranger and got more than he’d bargained for, in satisfaction and pleasure. But in tears too, and that made the hackles of caution rise.

      For a second he hesitated. That in itself piqued his anger. He prided himself on his quick decisions, yet with this woman he was second guessing. Frowning, he reached for a towel and wrapped it around his hips. They had some talking to do.

      After that there’d be time for shaving and for more sex.

      Lots more sex.

      Adoni repressed the urge to smile as he crossed the vast bathroom. Already he was fantasising about where the next time would be. The whole time he’d showered he’d been picturing Alice naked with him under the icy spray. Or naked on the sofa by the fire. Or up against the big picture window that gave his owner’s suite its multi-million-dollar views of central London.

      He swallowed, his mouth drying as he thought of those delectable legs wrapped around his waist, her sultry mouth open as she gasped her pleasure and—

      Adoni slammed to a stop. The sheets were a riotous tumble on the vast, empty bed but Alice wasn’t beneath them. He frowned.

      Was that a door he heard closing down the corridor?

      ‘Alice?’ He cast about, expecting to see her in some dim corner of the room, but she wasn’t there. Nor was that abomination of a dress.

      A niggling sensation started up in his belly. He couldn’t place it but it reminded him of the nerves he’d felt the first time he’d gone, virtually penniless, to beg for a loan to start his business. When he’d had nothing to recommend him but his bright ideas and determination to succeed or die trying. Anything to prove to Vassili Petrakis that the son he’d disinherited was a man to be reckoned with.

      The memory of that day halted him, mid-stride. His frown became a scowl. Nothing could compare to the way he’d felt that day.

      Yet that curious, unsettled feeling persisted.

      His stride lengthened as he headed down the corridor, checking out each room as he went. She was nowhere to be found. He paced the sitting room. Hadn’t she left her shoes beside the couch? Hadn’t her purse been there too?

      ‘Alice?’ He swung round, taking in the unmistakable emptiness.

      She’d gone. Not just gone, but run away without