From New York With Love: Rumours on the Red Carpet / Rapunzel in New York / Sizzle in the City

‘I’m starting to get a complex, Cyn,’ he murmured ruefully.

Her startled gaze was quickly raised to his. ‘You are...? But you’re beautiful, Lucien,’ she murmured huskily.

‘So are you.’ Lucien slowly lifted his arm to hold out his hand to her again, holding his breath as the nervousness in Cyn’s gaze told him that she might turn tail and run if he made any sort of hasty move in her direction. Something he found surprisingly endearing rather than irritating.

Cyn was so different from the women he had been with in the past. Beautiful women, certainly, but it was usually a pampered and sometimes enhanced beauty, after hours spent at beauty salons and spas or beneath a plastic surgeon’s knife. And all those women, without exception, had been confident of their perfectly toned bodies, of their sexual appeal.

Cyn, on the other hand, obviously had no time or money to spend at beauty salons or spas. The sleekness of her body was just as nature had intended it, as was her breathtaking beauty. A beauty that was all the more appealing because Cyn seemed so completely unaware of it, of its effect on him and every other man she came into contact with. The women in New York society might have no interest in furthering the acquaintance of student/waitress Cynthia Hammond from England, but Lucien very much doubted the men felt the same way!

And Lucien was the lucky man who had her all to himself—for tonight, at least...

* * *

Thia was frozen in place—couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could only continue to stand in the bathroom doorway as she stared across at Lucien in mute appeal, inwardly cursing herself for her gauche behaviour but unable to do anything about it.

‘Please, Cyn!’ he said gruffly.

It was the aching need that deepened Lucien’s voice to a growl which finally broke her out of that icy cage, causing Thia to take one step forward, and then another, until she finally stood beside the bed, allowing Lucien to reach out and enfold one of her trembling hands in his much warmer one.

He lifted it slowly to his lips, his gaze still holding hers as those lips grazed the back of her knuckles, tongue rasping, tasting. ‘You are so very beautiful, Cyn.’

The warmth of his breath brushed lightly against her over-sensitised skin. She swallowed. ‘I believe you’ll find the saying is Beautiful as sin...’

‘Nothing could be as beautiful as you.’ He gave a slow shake of his head.

At this moment in time, Thia finished ruefully inside her head. Right here and right now she had Lucien’s complete attention. But tomorrow it would be different—

Oh, to hell with tomorrow!

For once in her carefully constructed life she was going to take not what was safe, or what she could afford, but what she wanted.

And tonight she so very much wanted to be here with Lucien.

She lowered her lashes and pulled her hand gently from his grasp, before moving to unfasten the belt of the robe, shrugging the black silk from her shoulders and hearing Lucien’s breath catching in his throat as she allowed the robe to slide down her arms to fall onto the carpet at her feet. She was completely naked in front of him as she finally raised her lashes to look at him.

* * *

‘You’re exquisite,’ Lucien groaned, taking the time to admire each and every curve and dip and hollow of her naked body before moving smoothly up onto his knees at the edge of the bed, nullifying the difference in their heights, putting his face on a level with hers as his arms moved about the slenderness of her waist.

Her hands moved up to clasp onto his shoulders as he pulled her in closer to him. Her skin felt so soft and she was so slender Lucien felt as if he could wrap his arms about her twice. His palms spread, fingers splayed across her shapely bottom, as he settled those slender curves into his much harder ones before touching his mouth lightly against hers.

Lucien moved his lips across her creamy soft cheek to the softness beneath her ear, along the column of her throat. The rasp of his tongue tasted the shady hollows at the base of her throat as one of his hands curled about the gentle thrust of her breast, the soft pad of his thumb unerringly finding, stroking the aroused nipple.

‘Look at the two of us, Cyn,’ he groaned throatily. ‘See how beautiful we are together,’ he encouraged as she looked down to where his hand cupped her breast. He looked at that contrast himself. Ivory and bronze...

Her skin looked so white against the natural bronze tone of Lucien’s. Ice and fire. And fire invariably melted ice, didn’t it?

Thia’s inhibitions were melting, and her earlier apprehension along with it, as she twined her arms over those strong, muscled shoulders, her fingers becoming entangled in silky dark hair as she initiated a kiss between them this time—gentle at first, and then deeper, hungrier, as their passion flared out of control.

Lucien continued to kiss her even as Thia felt his arms move beneath her knees and about her shoulders. He lifted her easily up and onto the bed, lying her down almost reverently onto the black silk sheets before stretching his long length beside her, his gaze holding hers before his head lowered, lashes falling down against those hard cheekbones, and his lips parted. He drew her nipple into his mouth, gently suckling, licking that aroused nub, even as his hands caressed the ribcage beneath her breasts, the slender curve of her waist, before moving lower still.

Thia arched into his caresses as her nervousness faded completely and pleasure coursed through her—building, building, until she moved restlessly against him, needing more, wanting more. She was groaning low in her throat as she felt Lucien’s fingers against the silky curls between her thighs, seeking and finding the nubbin hidden there and moving lower still, to where the slickness of her juices had made her wet, so very wet, circling, moistening her swollen lips.

His thumb pressed delicately against the nubbin above and still she wanted more, needed more. She felt as if she were poised on the edge of a precipice, one that burned. Flames were licking up and through her body, sensitising her to every touch of Lucien’s hands, to every sweep of his tongue across the swollen hardness of her nipples, as he divided his attentions between the two, first licking, then suckling. Each lick and suck seemed to increase the volcanic pleasure rising between her thighs.

‘Please, Lucien!’ Her fingers tightened in his hair and she pulled his head up, forced him to look at her with eyes that glittered pure silver. His lips were swollen and moist. ‘Please...!’ she groaned beseechingly. ‘Lucien...’

He moved so swiftly, so urgently, that Thia barely had time to realise he now lay between her parted thighs.

‘You are so beautiful here, Cyn,’ he murmured. His breath was a warm caress as the soft pads of his thumbs slicked her juices over those plump folds and the sensitive knot of flesh above. ‘Look at us, Cyn,’ he encouraged gruffly. ‘Move up onto your elbows and show me those pretty breasts.’

Thia would have done anything Lucien asked of her at that moment. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes fever-bright, as she looked down at him, at his hair midnight-black against the paleness of her skin, bronzed back long and muscled, buttocks taut.

His gaze held hers as he cupped his hands beneath her bottom and held her up and open to him. ‘I’m going to eat you up, Cyn,’ he promised, and his head lowered and his tongue swept, rasped against her slick folds.

Over and over again he lapped her gently, and then harder, until Thia was no longer able to hold herself up on her elbows as the pleasure grew and grew inside her. Lucien’s fingers were digging almost painfully into the globes of her bottom as he thrust a tongue deep inside her slick channel, sending her over that volcanic edge as the pleasure surged and swelled, surged and swelled again and again, taking Thia into the magic of her first ever climax.

It was the first of many. Lucien continued to pleasure her, taking her up to that plateau again and again, each time ensuring that he took her over the edge and into the maelstrom of pleasure on the other side, until Thia’s throat felt ragged and sore from the sobbing cries of each climax. Her body was becoming completely boneless as those releases came swifter and fiercer each time, and Lucien’s arms were looped beneath her thighs now, holding her wider to allow for the ministrations of his lips and tongue, increasing her pleasure each and every time she came.

‘No more, Lucien!’ Thia finally gasped, her fingers digging into his muscled shoulders. Blackness had begun to creep into the edges of her vision and she knew she couldn’t take any more. There was foreplay and then there was hurtling over the edge into unconsciousness. Which was exactly what was going to happen if her body was racked by one more incredible climax! ‘Please, Lucien. I just can’t...’ She looked at him pleadingly as he raised his head to look at her, his cheeks flushed, lips swollen and moist.

‘I’m sorry—I got carried away. Are you okay?’ He gave a shake of his head.

‘Yes...’

‘You just taste so delicious...’ He groaned achingly as he moved up beside her, his hands shaking slightly as he cupped the heat of her cheek. ‘Like the finest, rarest brandy. I just couldn’t stop drinking your sweet essence. Taste yourself, Cyn,’ he encouraged huskily, and brushed his lips lightly against hers.

The taste was sweet and slightly salty, with an underlying musk. Thia’s cheeks blazed with colour at the knowledge that Lucien now knew her body inside and out, more intimately than she did. That he—

She tensed to stillness as the telephone began to ring on the bedside table. Lucien scowled his displeasure and didn’t even glance at the telephone. ‘Ignore it,’ he rasped.

‘But—’

‘Nothing and no one is going to intrude on the two of us being together tonight. I won’t allow it,’ he stated determinedly.

‘But it could be important—’

‘Obviously not,’ he murmured in satisfaction as the telephone fell quiet after the sixth ring, allowing him to reach out and remove the receiver to prevent it from ringing and disturbing them again.

He rolled onto his back, hands firm on Cyn’s hips, and lifted her up and over him. Her thighs now straddled his, and the dampness of her folds pressed against the hardness of his shaft as she sat upright, the swell of her breasts, tipped by strawberry-ripe nipples, peeping through the dark swathe of her hair.

‘Do you have birth control, Cyn?’

‘I didn’t think...’ she groaned. ‘I—no, I don’t.’ Her cheeks were fiery red. ‘Do you?’

Lucien would have preferred there to be nothing between him and Cyn the first time he entered her, but at the same time he liked that her lack of protection indicated she wasn’t involved sexually with any other man right now.

He reached out and opened a drawer on the side table before taking out a silver foil packet and opening it. ‘Would you...?’ he invited huskily.