Damn him, he was going to talk her into an orgasm. ‘Don’t you dare do this to me,’ she hissed. ‘I want you inside me. Not this bullshit.’

‘You have no idea what I dare. I’m not Andy or Michael. Not even close. So you’ll have to deal with whatever I choose to do to you.’ The blue of his eyes was stone-cold.

Her carnal agitation gave way to apprehension, she felt a shiver run up her spine. What had she gotten herself into? This isolated house, this man who was looking at her with such indifference as though they’d not spent the night together, as though he’d not given her pleasure a thousand different ways, as if he were a stranger.

‘I know everything about you,’ he said, as though she’d asked. ‘When your period starts, how you like to masturbate, why you eat your fries with mayonnaise instead of ketchup, how you read lying down on your stomach. Your favourite childhood book, TV programme, candy bar. What little I don’t know, I’m going to discover in the next six days. Now raise your arms.’

She shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t have come here. Don’t touch me – I mean, please don’t touch me,’ she added quickly, remembering the last time she’d said that to him. ‘Please – I shouldn’t have come here – gotten involved with …’

‘Me, I know. I’m sorry. I’ve frightened you.’ Bending, he gently brushed her lips with his. ‘I have to treat you more gently,’ he said, his breath warm on her mouth. ‘I keep forgetting you’re new to all this.’ He stood up, smiled faintly. ‘Just tell me no when you don’t like something. I won’t do it.’

‘I should leave,’ she said. But her voice was unsteady, because temptation was only inches away smiling at her and she wanted him still, without logic or reason. ‘It’s intimidating. Being all alone here.’

‘Would you like me to call in some of the staff?’

‘No!’

‘They could stay outside the door then or down the hall. I could key in the kitchen on your phone – whatever you want. Just don’t go,’ he quietly said. ‘I want you to stay.’ Taking her hand in his, he lifted it to his mouth and kissed her fingertips one by one, turning her palm at the last and pressing it lightly to his mouth. ‘I promise not to frighten you.’

She shouldn’t be so easily comforted; she should have more sense. ‘How do you know about Andy and Michael?’ she asked, because she wasn’t going to leave, not really.

‘Max finds out everything.’ Dominic gave her a heart-breakingly beautiful smile. ‘But I don’t care about your … friends if you don’t care about them.’ A heretical concept had he taken the time to reflect; that it mattered whom she’d fucked.

‘I don’t care. I never did. They were just friends with benefits. It wasn’t like this with you – where I can hardly breathe for wanting you, where I can’t stop wanting you every minute, every second. I’ve never craved anything in my whole life as badly.’ She glanced down, mortified at her shameless desire. But she wanted him on his terms, on any terms. She looked up. ‘So add me to your trophy case with all the others.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said, feeling strangely gratified. ‘I don’t have a trophy case, but if I had one, you’d be the pride and joy of my collection.’

Her familiar smile reappeared. ‘I like when you’re charming.’

‘I like you anytime.’ He held out the bra, because talk of other women for any length of time was never good. ‘I’d like you even more if you put this on. You’d make me very happy.’

She grinned. ‘As long as it’s not a one-sided happiness.’

He looked amused. ‘I understand that’s a given with you, Miss Hart. Three for you, one for me, four for you, one for me. Is that about right?’

‘You’re such a dear,’ she said with a playful flutter of her lashes. ‘Show me what you can do.’

He laughed. ‘Is this a teaching moment or a test of my stamina?’

‘Both.’

‘Then we both win.’

‘We are compatible, aren’t we?’ she teased.

‘We have our moments.’ Finding a woman you were compatible with rather than one that was simply available – a novel concept. Miss Hart was opening new horizons for him. He helped her lift her arms to slide through the bra straps and after gently fitting each breast into the lacy cups, he snapped the front closure. The lace barely covered a quarter of her lavish breasts, the silk fabric straining under its load, the straps nicely adjusted by Mrs Hawthorne to showcase the spherical beauty of the pale, fleshy mounds. ‘Very pretty,’ he murmured, brushing his fingers over her nipples compressed under the top rim of the white lace. ‘Can you feel that?’

She smiled at him. ‘A little.’

Her response was so perfectly attuned to his agenda, he wondered for a flashing moment whether she’d arrived on his doorstep in answer to his prayers. Pragmatic to the core, however, he decided that Miss Hart’s highly charged libido was more likely the reason for their accord.

Sliding his index fingers under her nipples just enough to ease them above the snug rim of lace, he tenderly stroked the tips into taut, hard buds while she softly purred and moaned and gently rocked back and forth on the dragons and peonies.

‘Wait,’ he whispered, releasing her nipples. ‘I’ll be right back.’