British Bachelors: Perfect and Available: Mr. Jessica Hart

felt lust crawling deeper, digging in. It would take over completely if she didn’t regain control, but his skimming fingers were searing such delicious patterns on her skin she couldn’t think clearly.

      ‘Bound to be that,’ she agreed breathlessly. ‘And the whole article thing. It’s getting a bit out of hand. We’re spending too much time together.’

      ‘Yep,’ said Max, as his fingers played on the inside of her thigh, higher, higher, higher, until Allegra squirmed in her seat. ‘We should stop right now.’

      ‘We should,’ she managed.

      ‘Unless...’

      ‘Yes?’ Her breathing was too choppy to get anything else out.

      ‘Unless we get it out of our system,’ Max suggested. Had his voice always been that deep, that darkly delicious? ‘Just one night, and then we can forget all about it. What do you think?’

      Think? How could she be expected to think when his fingers were stroking so exquisitely that she couldn’t breathe properly and she was giddy with the dark pleasure of it? Oh, God, if his hand went any higher, she would come apart.

      If it didn’t, she would explode. Either way, they would end up with a horrible mess all over the taxi seat.

      Struggling to stop herself pressing down into his hand, she scrabbled for some words to put together. ‘I think...that’s...a good idea...’ she gasped and Max smiled, a wicked smile she hadn’t known he possessed.

      When he withdrew his hand, Allegra almost moaned in protest before she realised that the taxi had stopped in front of the house. Max paid the driver while she made it waveringly to the front door on legs that felt boneless.

      She was still fumbling with the keys as Max came up behind her. Wordlessly, he took them from her and opened the door.

      ‘After you,’ he said, but there was a telltale hitch in his voice that made Allegra feel obscurely better. So it wasn’t just her having trouble breathing.

      She didn’t want to put on the hall light, so she waited, trembling with anticipation, in the dark until Max had closed the door behind them. A muted orange glow from the street lights outside filtered through the glass pane above the door. It was enough to see him turn, see the gleam of his smile as he moved towards her, and then his hands were on her and at last—at last!—his mouth came down on hers, angling desperate and demanding.

      This time there was none of the piercing sweetness she had felt in the restaurant. Instead his kiss was hot and fierce, and Allegra felt need explode inside her, vaporising the last lingering remnants of rational thought. Her mind went dark and she kissed him back, wild with hunger, wanting his hands on her harder, hotter, harder.

      No, there was no sweetness now. It felt like more of a struggle as to who needed most, who could give most, who could take most. Allegra scrabbled for his tie, at the buttons on his shirt, while his hands pushed up her dress urgently and his mouth blazed a trail to her breast. The hunger rocketed through her, so powerful it thrilled and terrified her in equal measure, and when they broke apart the narrow hallway echoed with the rasp of their ragged breaths.

      Chest heaving, Max pressed their palms together and lifted their arms slowly above her head so that he could pin her against the wall.

      ‘We’re going to regret this,’ he said, even as he bent his head to kiss her throat, making every cell in her body jolt, turning her insides molten.

      ‘I know.’

      ‘It’s crazy.’ His lips drifted downward in a searing trail over her skin that left her breathing in tatters.

      ‘You’re right,’ she managed, sucking in a gasp as he explored the sensitive curve of her neck and shoulder and arching into the wicked pleasure of his mouth.

      When he released her wrists to jerk her closer, she whimpered with relief. Now she could tug his shirt free so that she could slide her palms over his firm, smooth back, letting herself notice how his muscles flexed beneath her touch. He was gloriously solid, wonderfully warm. She wanted to burrow into him, lose herself in him.

      ‘It’ll just spoil things,’ she said unevenly, holding onto the track of the conversation with difficulty.

      ‘It will. It’ll never be the same again,’ said Max, his voice low and ragged. ‘I’m never going to be able to forget how you taste,’ he warned her. ‘I’ll never forget how you feel, how soft you are.’

      ‘So...we should stop,’ she tried, even as she pressed him closer, revelling in the feel of how hard he was, how strong, how male. Her blood was thumping and thudding and throbbing with urgency and she wanted him so much that she couldn’t think about anything else.