A Groom For The Taking. Rebecca Winters

clean, male skin. No man in the world had ever smelled so good. So sexy. So edible.

      The lift doors opened with a loud ‘bing’. Neither of them paid it any heed.

      Hannah pulled her head away from its heavenly pillow and looked up into the most beautiful mercury-grey eyes on the planet.

      She threaded her fingers deeper into Bradley’s hair, her thumb caressing the soft spot beneath his ear. His eyes grew dark, like the sky before a winter storm.

      The swaying stopped. He pulled her tighter still, and the air escaped her lungs as her head rocked back on her all but useless neck. Moonlight slanted across his strong, angular profile as though all it wanted was to touch him too.

      So big, she thought, so tall. So private. So exceptional. So, so beautiful.

      Bradley lifted her off his feet and placed her gently on the floor. The marble beneath her bare feet was ice-cold, but the rest of her was filled with a licking flame so hot it barely registered.

      Neither did the lift doors as they slowly slid closed.

      And then, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, Bradley bent his head and kissed her.

      Hannah’s eyes fluttered closed as fireworks exploded behind her eyes, and then down and down and down her body, until she felt as if her blood was made of popping bubbles.

      He pulled back, his lips hovering millimetres from hers. Giving her the chance to stop things before they went any further. But it was way too late. The kiss was out there. For eternity. There was no going back now.

      Whether it was because of the press of her hips to his, or the miserable groan that rumbled through her, he held back no more.

      He slid his hand deep into her hair and his mouth plundered hers until she could barely breathe for the intensity of feeling cascading through her.

      When his tongue slid knowingly across hers that was the absolute end of her. She was gone—lost in a swirl of sensation and heat and need. She lifted up onto her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing as close as she could. Needing to feel his warmth, his skin, his realness. Aflame with the impossible desire to crawl inside him.

      But in her bare feet he was too tall, too big, too far away, and she wanted to be closer. She wanted to be a part of him.

      Buoyed by frustration and desire for the liberating sense of release she leapt into his arms, wrapping her legs about his hips.

      His hands cupped her, holding her as if she weighed nothing. But his kiss deepened, heated, ratcheted up a dozen levels—as if she meant anything but nothing to him. As if his own long-held frustration had broken through a dam and now nothing was going to stop it.

      And then his lips were on her neck, her collarbone, her bare shoulder. His teeth sank into the tendon below her neck and she cried out in pleasure, her hands gripping the back of his head. The most delicious heat she had ever known pooled deep inside her.

      She sighed and murmured, ‘If I’d had a clue this would feel this good I’d never have been able to hold back all these months.’

      Hannah felt Bradley stiffen in her arms. Then the lift went bing. Or maybe it happened the other way around.

      Either way, the sound of the lift opening registered somewhere in the fuzz that was Hannah’s brain at about the same time she felt Bradley’s arms unwinding from around her.

      She looked into his eyes, confusion taking hold of her still liquefied system. But she didn’t have time to decipher a thing as a pile of Elyse’s friends spilled out of the lift, laughing, screaming, half way to being drunk.

      She scrambled to fix her hair. Her lipstick. Her crumpled clothes. Then saw her discarded shoes were in their stumbling path. She leapt away from Bradley, grabbed the shoes out of their way before somebody impaled themselves on a stiletto.

      ‘Hannah Banana!’ one of Elyse’s oldest friends called out, grabbing her and trying to pull her in their wake. She managed to extricate herself and tell them to have fun. And then, as suddenly as they’d appeared, there was nothing left of them but their echoing laughter.

      The quiet foyer was filled with nothing but the sound of her puffing breaths. Adrenalin poured through her like a flood, till her body shook from the shock. Her body—which was still throbbing from head to toe as it baked in the intensity of Bradley’s kiss.

       Bradley.

      Shoes gripped in her tight fist, she glanced up to find him watching her. A huge dark shadow of a figure in the pale moonlight. Hands in pockets. Still as a mountain.

      The lift ‘binged’ again. This time instinct had her stepping inside. The doors started to close until she reached out and held them at bay.

      ‘Coming up?’ she asked, shoes swinging against her leg.

      A muscle worked in his jaw as he flicked a glance up in the direction of their suite. Then he took a step back. ‘You go. I’m going to track down a nightcap.’

      The fact that they had a crazily well-stocked bar in their über-suite seemed to have eluded him. Or perhaps not. Hannah felt a wretched little cramp in her stomach. She wished Elyse’s friends would return, so she could throttle them one by one.

      ‘Okay,’ she sing-songed, as though she didn’t realise she’d just been wholeheartedly rejected. Then, falling back into ever helpful assistant mode, she said, ‘I’m pretty sure the foyer bar is open all night.’

      He nodded. Yet didn’t move.

      The cramp in her stomach gave way to hope. Maybe he was being a gentleman, waiting for a sign from her. Though she wasn’t sure she knew a bigger sign than throwing herself into a guy’s arms and wrapping her thighs around him.

      The lift ‘binged’ several times, ready to get a move on. She clenched her teeth and jabbed at the ‘open door’ button till it shut the hell up. Didn’t it realise what a delicate moment this was?

      Maybe that was the problem. Maybe subtlety didn’t work on mountains. Maybe the guy needed not a sign but a sledgehammer.

      ‘Bradley, would you like to—?’

      ‘Get some sleep.’ He cut her off. ‘It’s been a big day.’

      Her stomach sank like a stone dropped into the lake behind their hotel. She desperately tried to locate some dormant thread of sophistication somewhere inside her but just ended up babbling. ‘Right. Sleep. What a great idea. Just what I need.’

      Clearly to him what had just happened was just a kiss. And a little necking. And, okay, some extremely dextrous fondling. Maybe it was an everyday occurrence for him and it had simply been her turn. Maybe she’d come on too strong and he already regretted it. Maybe. But then again he’d absolutely come on to her first.

      As her head began to spin, the only thing Hannah knew was that she should take his advice and get the hell out of there before she said or did something really stupid.

      She looked away to jab hard and fast at the number for their floor. ‘Goodnight, Bradley.’

      He nodded. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

      Slowly, slowly the lift door closed. When her own reflection stared back at her and the lift began to rumble she could still see his face clear as day. Dark. Stormy. Stoic.

      Somehow, some way, whatever forces had come together to create that moment back there had disappeared as if in a puff of smoke. If only she knew why.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      BRADLEY cradled the now lukewarm cup of coffee in his palms as he sat in the big, empty foyer bar.

      Unfortunately the mind-numbing normality of a late-night coffee hadn’t