The Dare Collection December 2019. Clare Connelly

that I hope seems normal.

      As he moves the paintbrush over my legs, he moves his finger inside me, and I resist an urge—just—to buck back and forth. This isn’t designed to get me off. He’s teasing me—again. Torturing me. He knows how close I am to exploding and yet he’s pulling away, his touch too light, too brief.

      ‘Nicholas…’ His name comes from my lips like a snatch of need. I hear my desperation and am unable to care.

      ‘Yes, Imogen?’ His smile shifts over his face.

      ‘Please.’ Just a simple word, but it means everything because I need him in a way that had bowled me over. I thought one night would be enough. I thought once would be enough, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

      ‘You want this?’ he murmurs, moving his finger back inside me. No, two fingers now, and it’s instantly more fulfilling, more promising, but still…

      I nod, running my hands through his hair. He draws the brush around my back, kneeling higher now, blocking me more from sight, so I do what I’d wanted earlier and move my hips to get greater purchase, to feel more of him.

      ‘You have to be patient,’ he teases, except I can hear his own urgency and I get it. He wants me as badly as I want him.

      ‘That’s physically impossible.’

      His laugh is low and husky. ‘Then I probably shouldn’t tell you that I plan to take you home and fuck you until your voice is hoarse?’

      ‘Oh, God.’ The promise is so erotic. ‘What else?’

      ‘How I’m going to run my tongue along here…’ he draws his fingers out and in ‘…to taste you as you come? How I’m going to make you come again and again and I’m going to watch you, listen to you begging me for more, begging me until you can’t think straight.’

      ‘I’m already there,’ I promise throatily.

      His laugh is a dismissal. ‘You only think you are, Imogen. Believe me, it gets worse.’

      He is right.

      We stay for another hour, and by the time we leave, my body is in a state of sensual torture. There’s no helicopter waiting for us tonight. We take his car, and I don’t sit too close because I feel as if one touch, now we’re alone, will result in a complete explosion, and a short car ride isn’t the place to satisfy that. I sit on the edge of my seat, staring out of the window at New York, the invisible paint we’d used in the black-lit room dry now and any hint of it concealed by the clothes we’ve put back on.

      But not being able to see something doesn’t remove the evidence of it and I feel every brush stroke in the fibres of my soul.

      The driver brings the car into a basement garage and I expel a sigh of relief that Nicholas clearly hears, if his soft laugh is anything to go by.

      But I’m not amused.

      I’m alive with feelings that are new to me and seriously intense.

      I am fuelled by a hunger that I insist on owning.

      Edward opens the doors and we step out, my smile polite, my mind elsewhere.

      We reach the elevator and the doors open after only a second. I contemplate jumping him but for the same reason I resisted in the car, I keep my distance now, aware that he’s watching me, trying to decode me.

      He has no idea what he’s unleashed.

      But he’s about to find out.

      The doors ping open into his apartment and the details I recall from last time flitter in my mind once more—the triple-height ceilings, a wall of pure glass, a balcony overlooking Central Park with a swimming pool and a hot tub. I know from the tour he gave me last time that there’s an indoor squash court down the corridor, a yoga studio he’s converted into a gym, four bedrooms, five bathrooms and two separate staff rooms, which he has vacant.

       ‘I don’t like living with other people, even if they’re at the end of the corridor.’

      I get his point. I hate it too. I have a cleaner who comes once a fortnight and that suits me just fine.

      As soon as the front door clicks shut, I turn around to face him, my breath dragged from my lungs, the rasping sound filling the elegant Jeffersonian lobby.

      ‘Didn’t you say you were going to fuck me so hard I couldn’t speak?’ I demand, crossing my arms over my chest.

      His expression shows surprise but only for a moment, then he’s sweeping across the tiles, scooping me up over one shoulder as if I weigh nothing and carrying me to my heaven, my desperation, the sweetest torture I’ve ever known—his bedroom.

       CHAPTER NINE

      ‘OH, MY GOD.’

      I must have fallen asleep. I push up onto my elbows to find Nicholas watching me, that unbearably sexy grin on his too-handsome face, and my heart does a painful little catapult against my ribs.

      ‘What time is it?’ I reach across the bed for his wrist and the platinum gold watch he always wears. ‘It’s seven o’clock? Why didn’t you wake me?’

      I push the sheet back, looking around for my underpants before remembering I only have paint-smeared bikini bottoms to put on. And they’re in the lounge.

      ‘Because it was more fun to watch you sleep,’ he says, his voice frustratingly relaxed despite my obvious panic.

      And I’m panicking, for no reason I can easily pinpoint. Yes, I need to get to work, yes, I have meetings in an hour. But it’s more than that.

      For some reason, spending the night feels like crossing a line that mentally I wasn’t willing to cross. It is a bigger surrendering of myself than I intended. Another line in the sand, one I hadn’t realised I wanted to abide by.

      ‘I’m serious, Nic.’ The diminutive of his name slips out, but not for the first time. As soon as I say it I have a vivid recollection of crying the shortened version of his name over and over again, as pleasure racked my body in a way I almost couldn’t process.

      ‘You got somewhere you have to be?’

      I pull a face. ‘It’s seven o’clock on a Wednesday morning. What do you think?’

      ‘I think you should cancel it and come back to bed,’ he murmurs, patting the matte black sheets. As a further enticement, he pushes the sheet back, revealing his rock-hard, naked body.

      Predictably, my insides squeeze. And despite my panic, a smile spreads over my face. ‘I can’t,’ I say, in an almost whining tone. ‘Help me find my bikini.’

      His laugh is low, a rumble. ‘Oh, no, Miss Anonymous. I have no intention of aiding your escape. In fact, if I had my way, you’d be tied to this bed so I could have my very evil way with you some more.’

      Okay.

      I have meetings. But there’s also this. I stop looking for my bathers and give Nicholas the full force of my attention. At his mention of tying me up, I remember something from our night in Sydney.

      ‘You ordered handcuffs.’

      He lifts a brow, his expression teasing, silently prompting me to continue.

      ‘In Sydney.’ Heat blooms in my face. ‘You had handcuffs put in the toy chest,’ I remind him. ‘But we didn’t…’

      He stands up, his dick at a ninety-degree angle to the rest of him, his haunches so strong and capable. ‘Yes?’

      He likes teasing me. I get it. I suck in a breath and assume my very best kickass CEO expression. ‘We didn’t use handcuffs.’

      ‘No.’ He shrugs nonchalantly,