generally only attended by the rich and famous. The women she glimpsed on the way in seemed very polished and the clothes they wore were elegant, slinky and revealing. In her plain black dress, she felt mousy and funereal, and as a queue stand was removed for them to move upstairs to the VIP area she tensed even more. A cocktail adorned with cherries already awaited her and she ate the cherries slowly, aware that she was already a little merry after the wine over dinner following on the champagne. Her attention was stolen by the semi-nude dancer on a little platform sinuously twisting and moving to the beat of the music. It was a very sexy display and she turned her head away to concentrate on Sev instead, surprised that his attention was still on her and not on the dancer.
‘I wish I could dance like she can,’ she said with a rueful grin.
Sev smiled, megawatt charisma blazing from that slashing smile because he had believed he had heard every possible comment on that performer from other women, every one of whom had viewed the dancer as competition and had found some excuse to denigrate her or her performance. But Amy, he was beginning to appreciate, did not like to speak ill of anyone. Why else did she call her late mother only sharp? According to the file he had, Lorraine Taylor had been, at best, a thoroughly dislikeable woman and an uncaring parent.
Sev rested an arm along the back of the booth and angled his body towards her, his black shirt pulling taut across his muscular torso, his long powerful thighs slightly splayed, accentuating the bulge at his crotch. In spite of herself, her eyes were drawn there, and a curl of heat ignited in her pelvis because the force of attraction was so strong that, for the first time ever, she was seriously wondering...
In haste she lifted her head, her cheeks a heady pink, and she collided involuntarily with Sev’s intent gaze and her heart skipped an entire beat before drumming back to life at greater speed, her tummy turning over as if she had gone down in a lift too fast. His hand eased down onto her shoulder and he urged her closer for his mouth to taste her parted lips. It was a shocking, seriously sexy manoeuvre because it was slow and measured, his lips firm and full and demanding while the rolling, twirling exploration of his tongue twinned with hers. She had never felt anything like the fierce hunger his mouth induced or the crazed surge of response racing up through her like a leaping flame, ripping through every defence yet bringing with it a sense of connection that she couldn’t bear to deny.
The gradually deepening passionate intensity of that kiss sent her hands flying up into his hair, melding to his skull, fingering through the luxuriant strands of his dense blue-black hair to keep him close. Her body came alive with a great swoosh of feeling and she was astonished even more by how much she loved that adrenalin rush of sensation: the sudden urgent, almost painful tightening of her nipples driving the throbbing rise of liquid heat at her feminine core. She pressed her thighs together. It was all new to her and incredibly exciting.
Sev lifted Amy and set her back on the seat beside him because inexplicably she had ended up practically on his lap. Had he hauled her closer in the heat of the moment? Or had she approached him? He was breathing in quick shallow bursts, so aroused he was in pain and, while Amy had welcomed her response, Sev was fighting that overpowering need to the last ditch. He wondered if his overreaction could be laid at the door of his awareness that he could not possibly have sex with her. Did she have the magical allure of forbidden fruit? In the circumstances, touching her would be taking advantage because he was only faking his interest in her. And then, she was Oliver Lawson’s daughter, he reminded himself squarely, so nothing intimate would be appropriate. Even so, those reminders did nothing to curb the aching pulse at his groin or his incredulity that any woman could push him so easily to the very edge of his control.
‘Er...’ Mortified to find herself almost reclining across Sev, wondering how the heck that had happened and if she had thrown herself at him in the midst of that kiss, Amy snaked