The Mills & Boon Stars Collection. Cathy Williams

      ‘Sugar cloys,’ Leo husked and he wondered if that was the very basic truth that explained his reaction to her. She was independent and outspoken and he had never met anyone quite like her before.

      He stroked a finger across the pulse flickering madly at her collarbone and her breath tripped in her throat. ‘You keep touching me...’

      His eyes glowed potent gold. ‘I can’t keep my hands off you. Is it a problem?’

      Grace’s lashes screened her eyes. She wasn’t used to being touched and he did it with such ease and spontaneity. Her mother had been physically demonstrative, when she had been sober, and their brief time at the commune in Wales had been almost happy. But, after her mother’s death, her uncle’s family had been much more reserved and Grace had received little physical affection from them. ‘No, not a problem,’ she said in a low voice, thinking she had better watch herself with him because somehow he was getting under her skin in a way she had not foreseen.

      ‘Thee mou, it is as well because I’m not sure I could stop.’ Leo slid off his jacket and tossed it on a nearby chair, a lean brown hand tugging roughly at the knot on his silk tie and casting it aside.

      I’m only with him to have sex, to lose my virginity and gain a little experience, Grace reminded herself doggedly. No other feelings should enter the equation. If she kept it simple and straightforward, she wouldn’t get hurt as her mother had been hurt, putting her future in a man’s hands and learning her mistake too late. She had only been a little girl when she had first found out about her father’s betrayal but the memory of her mother’s pain had lingered.

      ‘Hey...’ Leo turned her head back to him to stare down into her haunted eyes. ‘Where did you go just now? Bad memories?’

      Grace reddened with chagrin. ‘Something like that...’

      ‘Another man?’ Leo gritted, appalled by the rage that flooded him at the idea that she might be thinking of a lost lover while she was with him.

      ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but no,’ Grace countered succinctly, lifting her chin. ‘I don’t allow men to screw with my mind.’

      ‘Only your body?’ Leo breathed, reaching for both her hands to tug her to him.

      Her copper lashes lowered and she glanced up at him from beneath their spiralling cover. ‘Only my body. I hope that’s a deal?’

      ‘We’re talking too much,’ Leo gritted, on fire from that provocative upward glance of hers, scarcely able to credit that she was warning him off wanting anything more than sex. Wasn’t that his line? Hadn’t that always been his line? It made him feel curiously insecure, not a sensation he enjoyed.

      His mouth enveloped hers again and the piercingly sweet thrust of his tongue made her shudder, heat surging up from her pelvis, sending fingers of flame to make her nipples tingle and swell.

      ‘I’m going to undress you very, very slowly...’ Leo asserted, ‘revealing only one tiny piece of you at a time.’

      Her tummy performed a somersault, consternation filling her as she wondered if she would be up to that sophisticated challenge.

       CHAPTER THREE

      LEO’S LIPS WERE aggressive and smooth on Grace’s as he lifted her and laid her down gently on the bed, breaking contact only to flip off her shoes and let them fall.

      Grace breathed in deep, mastering her nervous tension, terrified of letting it show. Of course she could have told him the truth that she was a newbie in the bedroom, but she was convinced that it would seriously dent her desirability in his eyes. And being treated as if she were rather more beautiful and seductive than she was felt especially good to her at that moment. She wondered where the bathroom was, knew she would have preferred diving in there to undress before reappearing casually wrapped in a towel or something. But wouldn’t that be aping a fifties bride on her wedding night? Shyness and inhibitions were not sexy, she told herself impatiently.

      ‘I love your hair,’ he told her, stroking the tumbled strands as he sank down on the bed at the same time as he removed his cufflinks and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘It’s a gorgeous colour.’

      ‘I got called “Carrots” at school and hated it for years,’ Grace recalled with a rueful grin.

      ‘When you smile, meli mou, your whole face lights up,’ Leo said softly, lowering his head to claim another passionate kiss that rocked her even where she lay, her body behaving like a Geiger counter detecting radiation, strange new reactions awakening inside her.

      His shirt parted, giving her a glimpse of broad, strong pectoral muscles and washboard abs that made her mouth run dry. He was excessively good to look at, what one of her friends would term ‘man candy’. The pool of warmth at her pelvis spread. He turned her over, ran down the zip and gently spread the edges back, kissing one slim white freckled shoulder and then the other and tugging her back against him.

      ‘Do you always go this slow?’

      No, he didn’t and, considering that he was already hugely aroused, Leo had no idea why he was determined to be the perfect lover for her. ‘Depends on my mood... I want to savour you...’

      He slid the sleeves down her arms and paused to appreciate the full globes filling the cups of her bra before he succumbed to temptation. With a soft little sound of impatience, he snapped loose the catch on the bra and raised his hands to cradle her superb breasts, massaging the creamy flesh, pressing her flat to explore them with his mouth and lingering over her straining rosy nipples.

      ‘You have amazing breasts,’ Leo muttered thickly as he dallied there, employing both his tongue and the glancing edge of his teeth to tease the straining buds.

      Grace was rather more amazed at the effect he was having on her ignorant body. A hungry ache stirred at the heart of her. All of a sudden catching her breath was a challenge and she ran her fingers through his luxuriant black hair, surprised by how soft it was and how right it felt to touch him. She had thought she might have to steel herself to respond to him, genuinely hadn’t expected to be quite so caught up in the process as she was, had even believed that throughout the process some part of her quick and clever brain would be standing back assessing and judging. Instead as he lifted her to find her mouth again Grace was engaging in some exploration of her own, hands sliding below the open shirt to trace his wonderfully honed muscular torso, skimming over the flat male nipples and the etching of crisp dark hair sprinkled there before sliding down to stroke the flexing muscles of his taut stomach.

      ‘Don’t...not this first time,’ Leo urged, pulling back from her to slide off the bed. ‘I’m too close to the edge.’

      Grace blinked, bemused, having assumed he would be as eager to be touched as she was. And, ‘not this first time’? Was that simply his prodigious self-assurance doing the talking for him? Her body all aquiver about even the thought of a single experience and the unlikelihood of her wanting a second, Grace watched him strip off his clothing with something less than the laid-back cool she had come to expect from him.

      Everything came off at once, ensuring that she had little time to be curious about what her first aroused male looked like. He was larger than she had assumed he would be, but that was only a point of academic interest, she assured herself nervously, surveying the prodding length and breadth of his bold shaft. She knew she would stretch and she envisaged neither pain nor anything else that might reveal her inexperience. After all she had gone horse riding from an early age and believed any physical barrier would be long gone. With the same focused intellectual interest, Grace wondered why she literally felt overheated when she looked at Leo naked, her body hot, her breath catching in her throat as if she lacked oxygen.

      ‘You’re very quiet,’ Leo remarked, coming back down to her, dropping several foil-wrapped contraceptives on the bedside cabinet, soothing Grace’s instinctive terror of