The Devil to Pay (6 page)

“Goodnight, Daniel.” Rianna gasped as she pushed his chest away from her tightened sensitive breasts, and her eyelids fluttered open to see the square fullness of his bottom lip, unmistakable sexual promise in every millimetre of it. The taste of him danced like a spell on her tongue, champagne and dark magic. His breath was close enough to fan her eyelashes, his glittering eyes slicing up every ounce of composure she had left, sending burning arrows of lust to the apex of her thighs.

“We
do
have an early start.” Rianna’s voice shook as she pushed her palms against his chest and shoulders again, but not strongly enough to even convince herself she would send him away.

Rianna felt his hand brush against her hip as he swiped the key behind her and the bedroom door silently opened.

His voice was low and silky. “The sooner we get to bed, the sooner we can go to sleep.”

Chapter Four

Daniel eased her into the bedroom, kissing her hard as he kicked the door shut behind them. His mouth then left hers and drifted to the nape of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair. “Turn around,” he muttered. “I’ll help you with your dress.”

Rianna obeyed, her movements stiff and jerky with excitement, and found herself facing a full-length mirror opposite the four-poster bed. Standing behind her, Daniel tugged down the zip of her dress before slowly sliding the fabric off her shoulders. She shivered when she saw him silently watching her reflection as the dress slithered to the floor. She turned to kiss him again, but he twisted his face away. “Kiss me again,” she pleaded.

“Keep still,” he replied, ignoring her request as his fingers dipped to cup a lace-covered breast and his other hand released the catch of her bra. He tossed the garment to one side, leaving her naked save for her small black panties.
“Now watch.”

Rianna swallowed as she saw them both in the mirror, the dim lamplight casting shadows on her pale skin as his long fingers brushed lightly across her breasts and teased her nipples into sharp peaks. With dark intent in his eyes, he began to ease down her panties with one hand, and she wriggled to help him.

“Take off my necklace, too,” she murmured in a low voice she barely recognised as her own. That particular piece of jewellery had no place in what was happening.

He took both of her hands and placed them over her breasts, squeezing each of them gently before taking his own hands away. “Continue,” he breathed as he went to deal with the clasp of her necklace. “Show me how you like to be touched.”

“Daniel, I—” She gasped, closing her eyes as she felt the tips of her breasts pebble under her fingertips, sending sharp, heat arrows directly to the juncture of her thighs.

“Open your eyes,” he insisted and eased her closer to the glass. “Watch yourself. See how breathtaking you are.” He slithered the cold beads of her necklace down the length of her spine as he kissed the nape of her neck, and then dropped them silently into his jacket pocket.

Rianna’s eyes flickered open to see her pupils were huge and glittering as his hands slipped around her waist. The fingers of one hand traced a feathery path downwards until they reached the soft triangle of hair below. His other hand splayed across the smoothness of her stomach, pulling her back flush against the rigidity of his arousal and holding her still as he began to thread his fingertips even lower. His shirt cuffs scraped against her soft flesh, hard and deliciously cold.

“Don’t be shy,
cara
, your breasts are so beautiful. Enjoy them like you do when you’re on your own...”

Being his captive intensified the heat building inside her and she writhed as he grew closer to her centre. “Like this?” she breathed and pinched each nipple lightly until they were shaped into hard maroon points, and her breath started to come in sharp, desperate bursts.

The chill of his expression reflected in the mirror sent a renewed shock of lust coursing through her as if she was being seduced by a fallen angel, the most dangerous but irresistible and intoxicating of lovers. She pushed herself against him and gasped as she felt his erection through his clothing, hot and hard between the cheeks of her bottom.

“
Just
like that,” he growled, as his fingers began to move against her heated flesh. “And with your fingers? Is it like this?” he added, increasing the delicate friction over her clitoris. “Or more like this?” He slid the long middle finger of his other hand inside her slick entrance and bit lightly on her shoulder as she moaned her assent and arched her hips to give him even better access.

“Yes,” Rianna cried desperately and began to shake. “But more—”

As if sensing her sudden weakness, he slowly lowered them down until he was on his knees, and Rianna was now still facing the mirror, but trapped on his lap. Instinctively, she opened her thighs as wide as she could and her breath caught as he slid a second finger inside her, followed by a third.

She rolled her breasts feverishly against the palms of her hands and turned her head to one side. “Oh, God, yes,” she whispered as she felt herself begin to climax.

“
Watch
,” he ordered fiercely and nudged her head back straight.

She met his brooding reflection in the mirror, devouring the sight of her parted thighs and the way his quick fingers disappeared into her dark heat and then re-emerged, glistening with her collusion. She watched his nostrils flare and his lips part with lust as she flicked erotically at her inflamed nipples and helplessly cried out as she felt control slipping away.

The intoxication of their sex act dissolved all conscious thought and as she reached orgasm, she saw her body shudder, and her breasts tremble. It was like watching a stranger as her hands fell away, and a blush of colour rippled out cross her entire body. Her breath came hard and fast until the quake of her release faded away and, feeling light-headed and helpless, she allowed him to lift her up and carry her toward the bed.

“Good?” he murmured, his breath hot and urgent against her hair.

Still overcome, Rianna nodded because it had been the most spectacularly erotic experience she had ever had. Her fingers rasped against the fine fabric of his suit and she bit down hard on her bottom lip to suppress the urge to speak, to reveal her need to hear him utter tender words, to whisper reassurances about what she had just allowed him to do to her. For what she had allowed him to see. He lowered her onto the bed and paused to look down at her for a moment
,
Did he sense she was becoming uncertain? How would he react now if she had qualms about taking things further?

“I don’t think we’re going to be needing this,” he said softly as he reached for the knot of his tie.

“Let me help you,” she whispered and reached out with numb fingers, unsure how she would continue and equally unsure about how she could stop matters quickly reaching their inevitable conclusion. And did she really want this to stop? Her mind buzzed with adrenaline and fear as he bent over her and she began to loosen the silk knot at the base of his strong, tanned throat. She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed and felt a shiver course through her.

“Put these back on,” he instructed as she slithered away the tie and went to reach for the top button of his shirt. He took the glass beads out of his pocket before shucking off his jacket and throwing it on the floor. “They look fantastic against your bare skin.”

Rianna gasped with shock as he trickled the cold beads across her naked breasts, watching their progress with slumberous indigo eyes as they bounced off the rigid crests of her nipples. She could feel his breath against her breasts, smell his cologne and sense the sexual power coiled up inside him. He eased a knee against the bed between her legs and brushed her hair aside to fasten the clasp around her neck.

She heard the click of the glass as he fumbled and the spell was suddenly broken. The reality of what she was doing hit her. This wasn’t how she should behave. “No.” she announced flatly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t—”

“Don’t worry,” he replied quietly, kissing her lightly on the jaw. “I have protection. Everything will be fine.”

She could hear the anxiety in her voice. “You don’t understand.” She pushed him away and covered her breasts with folded arms. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m sorry. I don’t want to.”

“That’s not what you were saying a few minutes ago,” he replied silkily. “You wanted
more
.”

“It was a mistake. A big mistake. It should never have happened. I don’t know what possessed me.”

“I think it must have been the devil himself, the way you were responding to me,” he persisted. “You’d have let me do anything. You were so turned on.”

“No! Not true!” she protested, disturbed by the imagery he used, so close to her own dark fantasy at the time, it was as if he could read her mind. “I went too far. I’m sorry, but you’d better leave now.”

Daniel rose slowly to his feet, his expression impassive. “If you’re sure that’s what you want?”

“It is.”

He leant across her to pick up his tie from the bed and his cufflink lightly grazed her bare hip as he did so. He smiled lazily down at her. “Then don’t worry about it, but you know where I am if you change your mind.”

****

Rianna was staring blindly into the darkness when the “sunrise” alarm clock illuminated her pillow at four a.m. It was a gentle nudge into the new day, but her body ached with the toxicity of a sleepless night and with what she had allowed it to do the previous evening. She’d probably snatched a few fractured hours when she wasn’t thinking about Daniel Bracchi and what had happened. She hadn’t dreamed it. It was a fact. She’d almost had sex with her boss on their first working day!

Rianna had forced herself to be rational when Daniel slipped back to his own room even though her sex ached for more of him. She refused to even fantasise about getting up, crossing the corridor to where he lay and creeping into his bed. She had been tempted, badly, but was under no illusions. She’d happened to be in the right place at the right time, both in the supermarket and overnight in the hotel, an easy opportunity. A convenient, but brief, sexual release. A rub for the ache of his executive boredom. He’d even come readily prepared with “protection”.

Daniel wanted to get into her knickers, nothing more, and she’d let him get that far without an ounce of resistance. Now she needed to work out how she dealt with the fall out. Well, she knew how she
felt
about it. She’d never been so drawn to the raw, physical sexuality of a man in her life and she hadn’t been disappointed. The power of their sexual encounter was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Her body still hummed with pleasure and a dark wicked voice inside her head suggested she should go back for more, whispered she should finish what she’d started and then reminded her she had been a disgraceful tease.

Hopefully she hadn’t ruined everything. He’d seemed quite unphased about her change of heart, but that didn’t make giving into the attraction the right thing for her to do in the first place. He was lethally attractive, but he was an accomplished womaniser and worse still, her boss. She was here to do a job, an important one and she’d been badly burnt the last time she’d played with fire. It would be sensible to make sure nothing like it ever happened again.

Rianna forced herself upright amongst the cloud-like pile of Egyptian cotton pillows and ran her fingertips through the thatch of her hair.

Shower.

She needed to put on her best front. Daniel was bound to be walking perfection, however ungodly the hour, and he needed showing she was totally unaffected by what had happened between them the night before, that she was cool and detached. So she’d let him pleasure her body? She’d permitted a virtual stranger to strip her naked and to bring her to orgasm without even taking his jacket off. Professional high-achieving career women probably did it all the time, she reasoned, and got on with their normal lives the next day. She would do the same. She’d bet anything he was fresh and perky and smelling like the men’s fragrance section of Fortnum & Mason’s already. There was no way he could outdo her, or seduce her so easily again!

****

Rianna’s cold fingers fumbled with the clip of her seatbelt on board Daniel’s executive jet. The helicopter transfer from the hotel to a private airstrip had been hair-raising just like Daniel, fast and ferocious. She didn’t like heights and was grateful the twenty-minute journey had been in darkness. Had she been able to see the sky and land swaying from side to side beneath her feet, there was every possibility she would have been violently sick all over Flash Boy Bracchi’s designer shoes.

“You look remarkably pristine for this hour of the day,” Daniel shouted over the roar of the jet engines as they prepared for takeoff.

“I did remember to
wash,
if that’s what you mean,” Rianna replied, casting a sharp eye over his dishevelled hair and dark stubble.

Daniel’s fingertips rasped across his jaw and he shot her a look that landed a hot spear of awareness in her pelvis. “I should have mentioned last night there was a shower on board. Sorry, my mind must have been elsewhere.”

“The hotel bathroom was more than adequate, thank you,” she replied tightly. “Hot water and everything.”

“I
mean
,” he added in a lower, more deadly voice, “we could have shared one this morning. There’s enough room in there for two.” Undeterred by her pointed silence and refusal to look him in the eye, he continued. “You can’t deny a thorough massage with the best organic shower gel money can buy wouldn’t appeal, surely? My hands are strong. And I know what it would do for me—”

“Breakfast of some sort would be good,” she mumbled, a wild lava-flow of blood pulsing in every region of her body. “I’m quite clean enough.”

A few minutes later, the aircraft levelled out of a silky smooth takeoff and Daniel levered himself up from the soft cream leather of his seat. Rianna found it impossible not to glance sideways at him and found he looked at her with a smile so wicked, with eyes so hooded with blatant suggestion, that the breath turned to stone in her lungs. The invitation was there.