His Scandalous Mistress: The Master's Mistress / Count Toussaint's Pregnant Mistress / Castellano's Mistress of Revenge

‘It would hardly be stealing when the books appear to be yours now,’ she reasoned.

‘But you do think I’m going to sell them off for profit at the first opportunity, don’t you? Don’t bother to deny it, Elizabeth.’ His tone was grim now, as he saw the truth of his accusation in her face. ‘You’re obviously as big on making assumptions about people as you are on honouring your obligations!’ he accused, with obvious disgust.

Was she? Elizabeth wondered. Perhaps. Where this particular man was concerned, anyway. He seriously threatened her peace of mind…

‘I—What are you doing in here?’ Elizabeth came to a stop in the library doorway as she saw Rogan, sitting behind his father’s leather-topped mahogany desk, her laptop open in front of him.

He looked up to raise an unimpressed eyebrow. ‘As the new owner, don’t you think I have a perfect right to be in here?’

Well… of course he had a right to enter his father’s library. His library now. Elizabeth was just surprised, having come to the library with the intention of working again this afternoon, once she had been upstairs to freshen up after they’d returned from town, to find Rogan had beaten her to it.

She stood in front of the desk to arch her own auburn brows. ‘Find anything of interest on my laptop?’

Rogan sat back. ‘Your laptop?’ he murmured slowly. ‘I thought it was my father’s.’

Elizabeth smiled at having at last been able to disconcert a man who was so self-confident he made her want to scream. ‘I prefer to work with equipment I’m familiar with.’

There it was again, Rogan noted with a frown. Elizabeth Brown liked her life ordered and predictable, even down to the laptop she used for whatever work she happened to be doing.

Rogan grimaced. ‘I had some e-mails I wanted to send.’ Damn it, if he had known this was Elizabeth’s laptop he might have had a look through some of her other files. Just in the interest of gaining further insight into what made her tick, of course. It was something Rogan was always careful to do with the people that were around him on a day-to-day basis.

He already knew what Elizabeth did; it was the rest of the information on her that was still a little sketchy. Where she came from. Who her family was. Who her friends were.

For different reasons, most probably, Elizabeth kept her personal life as close to her chest as Rogan did his own…

‘Sorry about that.’ He shut the laptop down before standing up, his eyes narrowing at the instinctive way Elizabeth instantly took a step away from him.

What the hell?

Was this woman scared of him?

No, that wasn’t fear Rogan could see in her eyes, but something else. Something much more interesting…

Elizabeth took another step back as Rogan moved out from behind the desk, once again finding herself overwhelmed by the sheer animal magnetism of the man. He really was like that predator she had been reading about last night, his movements slow and stealthy, soundless on the carpeted floor. The muscles moved smoothly in his legs and beneath his tight-fitting T-shirt as he came ever closer, the very air about him seeming to part in deference to all that rippling power.

Her eyes were wide with apprehension. ‘I—What are you doing?’

He raised dark brows over those inky eyes. ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ Even his voice sounded lower, husky, purposeful…

Elizabeth swallowed hard. ‘I came in here to work—’

‘Later.’

‘Later?’ she repeated, with a nervous sweep of her tongue across suddenly dry lips.

The blackness of Rogan’s gaze locked on to that nervous movement. ‘Later,’ he confirmed gruffly.

He was standing so close to her now that Elizabeth could feel the heat of his body enveloping her, and that heat and the subtle scent of him were acting like a drug on her already heightened senses.

The same senses that had been on alert from the moment she first set eyes on this man.

Sight. Smell. Touch…

Elizabeth gave a shake of her head in an effort to clear her mind of the foggy haze that seemed to be encompassing her. ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing, Rogan—’

‘I never play games, Liza,’ he assured her softly.

He had called her by that hateful name again, but for the moment Elizabeth was too concerned by the threat he represented to her, to her equilibrium, to bother correcting him. ‘You’re playing one right now. And it isn’t funny,’she reproved.

Rogan didn’t find this situation funny, either. In fact, he deeply regretted having started this, and was no longer sure who was challenging whom.

Elizabeth’s eyes were such a deep and drowning blue. Those sooty lashes a dark sweep against the creaminess of her cheeks. Her mouth, those full and pouting lips that had just felt the moist touch of her tongue, was tempting him to do the same. She smelled so damned good too: a mixture of some elusive floral scent and a warm and sexy femininity…

Rogan gave a low groan in his throat as he felt his body respond to her, his thighs stirring, hardening, pulsing.

Aching!

‘Rogan… ?’

Even the way she spoke his name, so huskily, so warily, was arousing. Too much so for Rogan to be able to resist tasting her. Just one taste, he promised himself. One taste of her lips, with the feel of those slender curves pressed against his much harder ones, the crush of the softness of her breasts against his chest, her thighs against his, and he would let her go.

Elizabeth barely had time to raise her hands, with the intention of warding Rogan off, before his arms moved about her. He pulled her in tightly against the hardness of his body and his head lowered so that his mouth could claim hers.

Fiercely. Hungrily. Crushing, parting her lips beneath his as he deepened the kiss. His tongue surged past her lips and into the heated cavern of her mouth.

The hands she had raised to hold Rogan at bay instead clung to him. Her fingers curled into the front of his T-shirt as she met and returned the intensity of that kiss. Those fingers tightened and she held on to the black material for support as desire ripped shockingly through her body. She could feel her breasts swelling, the nipples hard and aching, the warmth between her thighs becoming a burning sensation as she felt herself becoming wet and swollen with a need she had never known before.

She could feel the pulse of Rogan’s arousal against the flatness of her stomach as he pressed her even closer against him. Every long, thick, hard inch of him throbbed rhythmically against her, in a promise that would ease the increasing ache between Elizabeth’s own thighs as he surged powerfully inside her.

Rogan knew he had to stop this. Now. Before things got completely out of control.

Except she tasted so good. Felt so good. The softness of her curves was a perfect fit against the hardness of his.

All of her was perfect, Rogan discovered as he moved his hand beneath her blouse to touch the silky heat of her bare flesh, caressing upwards, until his fingers curved about the soft, up-tilting swell of her breast. Not too small. Not too large. Just a perfect fit in the palm of his hand.

His own body throbbed anew as Elizabeth gave a throaty groan and her head dropped back to break the kiss. As Rogan moved the soft pad of his thumb against the puckered pout of her nipple her breathing becoming laboured and ragged, and he kissed down the length of her creamy throat to push aside the collar of her blouse so that his tongue and teeth could seek out the hollows at the base of her neck.

She tasted better than anything Rogan had ever experi-enced before. The feel of her skin against his lips was a beguiling combination of feminine softness and spice.

He could feel the heat of Elizabeth’s arousal as she pressed her hips into his, sensed how ready she was for him.

So ready Rogan wanted to lie her down on the carpeted floor and take her right here and now. To thrust into her time and time again, until she screamed out his name as she climaxed, wildly, fiercely, as spasm after spasm of pleasure wrapped itself around him and she took him over that edge with her.

Rogan nudged her back towards the desk, feeling the added pressure of her body against his as the wood pressed against the back of her legs. He pushed those legs apart to step in between them, grinding his arousal against her tempting heat in an effort to relieve some of the fierceness of his own need.

He succeeded only in increasing that need until he could only move rhythmically against her, the barrier of their clothing no hindrance to the heat, the satisfaction he found between Elizabeth’s legs as he continued to surge against her. Again and again. Harder. Faster. Until Rogan felt he would lose his mind if he didn’t soon possess her for real!

This was insane, Elizabeth acknowledged achingly, as she felt the thick length of Rogan’s shaft pressed against the swollen nub between her legs, creating a fire deep inside her that quickly spread and threatened to flame totally out of control.