Читать книгу The Platinum Collection - Эбби Грин, Maisey Yates - Страница 70

CHAPTER SIX

WOW!

For a while it was the only word in Michael’s mind. He had been conscious enough of his heaviness on top of Lucy to roll onto his side, but he took her with him, ensuring their togetherness continued. She hooked her leg around him, as intent as he was on maintaining their intimate connection. Her incredibly sexy breasts were softly heaving against his chest. Her warm breath was wafting over his throat. Her arms embraced him as though she wanted to stay clamped to him forever.

She was...amazing!

So uninhibited about showing her desire for him, voicing it, moving on it... no woman in his memory had ever been so actively inviting, making him feel he was amazing to her. His heart started thumping again as he recalled her peeling off her yellow dress, revealing the lovely curve of her back, the long glorious legs and her cheeky bottom fringed in white lace. Then stepping back to stroke him...

His mind had been so blown by her he might well have forgotten the condoms if she hadn’t brought up the safe sex issue. He was glad that she had. It was best to be careful. They had no history between them. Only today. But there were going to be a lot of tomorrows. He’d get a health clearance as soon as he could, do away with the condoms so there’d be nothing between him and the whole sensual experience of Lucy Flippence.

His PA’s sister...

Amazing!

She was certainly the best possible consolation prize for losing Elizabeth to Harry for a month.

When Michael grew too soft for her to hold him in, she sighed and moved her head to look at him, her big brown eyes shiny with pleasure, a smile of contentment curving her mouth. ‘That was fantastic, Michael,’ she said happily.

‘Fantastic!’ he agreed, grinning in turn.

‘Shall we go and have a shower together?’

‘Nothing I’d like better.’

She laughed, disentangling herself from him and rolling off the bed. ‘I’ll go and turn the taps on. We don’t have a mixer in the shower and you have to be almost a rocket scientist to get the temperature right using both taps. I don’t want you to get scalded and—’ her eyes danced teasingly ‘—I don’t want you to have a cold shower, either.’

She made him laugh. She made him feel happy. He suddenly realised he hadn’t felt this happy for a long time. The sunshine girl... He smiled over the aptness of the name as he followed her to the bathroom.

Showering together was another sensual delight, caressing each other with soap, doing what should have been foreplay, except they’d been in too much of a hurry. He loved her breasts, large enough to fill his hands and firm enough to hold their beautiful shape. The areolae were brown, a very distinctive frame for her enticing nipples, which he’d definitely pay more attention to later this evening...though possibly not much later. He was hardening again under Lucy’s erotic ministrations.

‘Mmm...’ she murmured, looking down at him and cocking her head with a considering air. ‘Maybe we should do what we have to do first, or we might never get it done.’

‘What do we have to do?’ he asked, dropping a kiss on her forehead.

‘Pack a bag for Ellie. And we could open your bottle of wine and eat what I’ve prepared.’ Lucy met his gaze, eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘Not that you look as if you need to build up your strength, Michael, but it might be even better if we wait a bit.’

‘Okay.’ He didn’t mind waiting, knowing what was coming. ‘Elizabeth won’t need much,’ he informed her. ‘She’ll be wearing the island uniform while she’s on duty, the same as Harry had on today—white shorts and T-shirt with the Finn Island emblem. She’ll be supplied with those clothes.’

‘So, it’s toiletries, make-up, underclothes....’ Lucy turned off the taps, stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel for herself and handed him one as she listed the items to be packed. ‘Pyjamas, dressing-gown, the gorgeous caftan I bought her for swanning around in.’ She grinned at him. ‘It will certainly catch Harry’s eye.’

‘I’m not sure that would be doing your sister a favour.’

The remark earned him a sharp look. ‘You think he wouldn’t be good for her?’

Michael shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘What then? Ellie is very dear to me. I don’t want her hurt.’

He shrugged. ‘I simply have the impression she doesn’t approve of my brother. The way he flirts...’

‘Mmm...probably doesn’t trust him yet. I think she was badly let down by a guy about two years ago. Put her right off men. Harry will have his work cut out winning her over, but she is attracted to him. No question.’ Lucy wrapped her towel around her, tucking it in above her breasts.

‘What about you?’ he asked, wrapping his own towel around his waist.

‘What about me?’

‘How long have you been unattached?’

‘Oh, a couple of weeks,’ she answered, waving an airy hand as she headed out of the bathroom.

‘You weren’t devastated by the break up?’

‘Not at all. I’d been going off him for some time and I finally called it a day.’

She entered a second bedroom. He followed, watching as she opened a built-in wardrobe and lifted down a medium-size travel bag from the top shelf. ‘This should do,’ she said, smiling at him as she turned to lay it on the bed, waving at a chair in front of a computer desk. ‘Take a seat while I pack.’

He sat, noting that Elizabeth’s room was very different from Lucy’s—no vivid colours, less random clutter, more orderly, somehow not as endearing in personality. ‘Why did you go off him?’ he asked, curious about Lucy’s dislikes in a man.

She rolled her eyes. ‘He was getting to be a control freak, wanting everything his way. In my book, relationships should be a two-way street. I am not going to be told what to do, what to wear or what to say, and he actually started answering for me when people asked me questions....’ She threw up her hands.

‘No respect for the person you are,’ Michael deduced, liking her stance for individuality.

‘How come you’re unattached?’ She tossed the question at him, returning to the wardrobe to fetch clothes.

‘I wasn’t available enough for the last woman I was involved with. She thought I should take off from work any time at all, specifically when she wanted me to.’

‘Ah!’ Lucy grinned at him as she brought an armload of garments to the bag. ‘No respect for your position.’

He nodded. ‘Altogether too self-centred.’

She shook her head, wryly remarking, ‘It starts off good. You think it’s going to be great. Then it all goes downhill.’ Her eyes sparkled brightly at him. ‘Let’s make a deal, Michael. I won’t try to change you and you won’t try to change me. If we don’t gel as we are, then we accept that and part with no hard feelings.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

He didn’t want to change one thing about Lucy Flippence. Her directness and spontaneity were a delight. He imagined her last guy had been the type to want to catch a butterfly, put it in a bottle, poison it and pin it to a board so it could never fly away and attract anyone else’s eye. She was well rid of him.

‘I’ll just grab Ellie’s toiletries and make-up from the bathroom and pack them before I add the good stuff. Don’t move. I’ll be right back,’ she instructed.

It was strange being in his PA’s bedroom. It actually felt like an intrusion of her private life, which he’d known nothing about until Lucy had enlightened him. He hoped Harry would be careful with Elizabeth, not treat her feelings lightly if he pursued the attraction that Lucy was so sure of.

Maybe a trip over to the island might be a wise move, to check out what was happening between them. In a month’s time Michael wanted a fully functional Elizabeth back in the office with him, and that might not be how it would end up if his brother messed with her emotions.

Lucy waltzed back in with her plunder from the bathroom.

‘Are you free this coming weekend?’ he asked her.

‘Free as a bird,’ she answered blithely, placing Elizabeth’s essentials in the bag.

Or a butterfly, Michael thought, smiling over his image of her. ‘We could go over to Finn Island, see how your sister’s doing, stay Saturday night and enjoy the facilities ourselves.’

Her face lit with delight and she clapped her hands in excitement at the prospect. ‘I’d love that, Michael.’

‘I’ll call Harry tomorrow, set it up.’

‘Wonderful! I know about Finn Island, of course—exclusive getaway, open bar, gourmet food—but I’ve never been there. Do you go often yourself?’ she asked as she returned to the wardrobe to select more clothes.

‘No. Harry oversees everything to do with the island.’

‘I didn’t mean for business.’

‘For pleasure?’

‘Yes. I imagine it’s very romantic.’

Michael laughed. ‘With the right companion, yes. It’s not such a paradise with the wrong one.’

‘Well, I hope it will be paradise for us,’ she said, grinning at him while proceeding to load up the bag. ‘This should see Ellie through. She can tell me on the weekend if she needs more.’ Having zipped it shut, Lucy grinned at him again. ‘Now food and wine and fun in the kitchen.’

Michael was happy with that program.

She led him back to the living room, where she whipped away her towel, picked up the yellow dress, put it on—without underclothes—and turned to him as she did up the tie belt, her eyes dancing teasingly. ‘This is safer for me while cooking, but you can keep your towel, Michael.’

He did, enjoying the idea that he was as accessible to her touch as she was to his in the wraparound dress. She quickly provided glasses and he opened the bottle of wine, while she removed a prepared salad and a plate of prawns from the refrigerator.

It was fun in the kitchen. Lucy was playful, provocative and positively entrancing. She had a wonderfully expressive face and he loved watching it as she talked and laughed, loved how her dress swished with the sway of her hips and the bodice gaped with each movement of her breasts. She was so delectably female, absolutely adorable and incredibly sexy.

The meal they sat down to was perfect: prawns cooked in a Thai dressing with a touch of ginger and chilli, accompanied by a very tasty salad. Lucy ate with uninhibited relish. Just watching her enjoy the food was erotic. She emitted a joy in life that Michael realised he’d been missing ever since his parents had died.

There’d been pleasures—many of them, from many sources—but this unadulterated sense of joy bubbling over... His mother had been like that, as though every day the sun shone just for her, and life was always beautiful. The gift of happiness, he thought. Lucy had it, too. Maybe he had found the woman he could spend the rest of his life with.

The fanciful thought surprised him. What had it been—about nine hours since he’d met Lucy? She made an incredible impact, but it was far too early to be entertaining any thoughts about a future with her beyond the month he’d given himself. As she’d said herself, it starts off good then it all goes downhill. Right now it was great, but ‘downhill’ was probably on its way, sooner or later.

After they had cleaned up after their meal they returned to the bedroom, both of them intent on a slower build-up to ultimate intimacy. Michael loved Lucy’s total lack of inhibitions, her innate sensuality, the exquisite delicacy of her tantalising caresses. She inspired him to stroke, kiss and taste her all over, revelling in her responses. It was an act of extreme control to hold off taking her until she begged him to do so, intense need making her voice shrill. His own excitement was at fever pitch and their coming together was even more incredibly satisfying than before.

He was conscious of a wildly primitive elation, almost a sense of triumph in bringing her to such a powerful peak of wanting him. She climaxed almost immediately and he exulted in the hot creaminess of her as he drove towards his own climax—a fiercely ecstatic release that left him floating in a sea of joy.

When he finally kissed Lucy goodbye that night, he carried the joy with him. How this relationship would turn out—whether they’d be compatible as a couple or not—he didn’t know and didn’t care. He was going to take whatever he could of Lucy Flippence until the joy of her ran out.