Cinderella's Christmas Secret - Sharon Kendrick Page 0,15

her face and let his gaze scan over her like a dark searchlight.

‘Your first time,’ he said again.

It was half statement and half question. ‘That’s right,’ Hollie replied, swallowing down her sudden nervousness that this was going to turn into some sort of interrogation session and she would come over as a freak. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Mind?’ He seemed to mull this over in his head. ‘Why should I mind? You’re an adult. You have free will. You came to a decision that you wanted to have sex with me. I’m flattered, of course, and more than a little interested to know why.’

She wondered if he was fishing for compliments. Did he want her to say he was so gorgeous that she hadn’t been able to resist him? And wouldn’t that have been the truth? But Maximo Diaz needed no boost for his ego, not from her. Certainly not when he was lying there, dissecting what had just happened between them with all the cool detachment of a scientist in the lab. ‘Does there have to be a reason?’

He shrugged and the ripple of muscle beneath his broad shoulders was more than a little distracting.

‘Most women wait—though I guess you’ve waited quite a long time already—for a long-term relationship in which they can feel comfortable. Something which has a little more depth.’ He paused. ‘And history.’

It sounded like an accusation. Or a reproach. Was he somehow disappointed that she hadn’t made him wait? ‘Maybe I’m not most women.’

‘No. Maybe you’re not. In fact, I would take that as a given. You are certainly very surprising. You confounded my expectations which, believe me, doesn’t happen very often.’ He gave a short laugh before fixing her with that glittering black gaze again, their bodies still very close, the slick of his sweat-sheened skin sticky against hers. ‘So which is the real you, I wonder—the efficient mouse who slaves away behind her desk, or the minxy hostess in fancy dress who wiggles her bottom so provocatively when she walks?’

‘It was the shoes which made me walk that way.’

‘Ah, so we must blame the shoes, must we?’ he questioned gravely.

‘I borrowed them,’ she explained, when she saw the glint of mockery in his eyes. ‘Oh. I see. You’re teasing me.’

‘Yes, I am teasing you, mia belleza,’ he said, and his voice suddenly deepened into a velvety note of intent. ‘But not for very much longer, because teasing inevitably provokes desire. What I would most like to do to you right now is to kiss you again and then to—’

‘Make love?’ she put in eagerly, then could have kicked herself for her naivety, which was surely responsible for the sudden tension which had entered his body.

‘Well, that is one way of describing what we are about to do, though you need to remember that this has nothing to do with love.’ His golden olive features hardened. ‘Love is a concept invented by society. As a bribe, or a threat. As a marketing tool used by big businesses. Or as a method of control—a way of regulating women’s behaviour.’

Hollie opened her mouth to object to what sounded like pure cynicism, until she realised that she agreed with him. Every single word. Hadn’t her own mother carried her supposed ‘love’ for her father around with her like some dark jewel pressed close to her heart—guarding it and polishing it and making it more important than anything else in her life, including her own daughter?

‘What does it have to do with, then?’ she questioned boldly, because why wouldn’t she be bold when she had come this far? When she was naked and glowing with physical satisfaction, even though the turn of the conversation was proving a little too raw for her liking. But then the insistent little clench deep at her core made her realise that she would prefer to stop talking altogether, and start kissing...

Did he read her body language? Was that why he reached out to stroke her face, his thumb whispering to her neck, where it lingered on the frantic little pulse which was beating there? Hollie shivered as he continued with his journey and it seemed to take for ever before he reached her nipple, his eyes not leaving hers as he massaged its diamond hardness, a small smile playing at the edges of his lips as it pebbled beneath his thumb. And she realised he still hadn’t answered her question.

‘It has to do with sensation. With feeling,’ he answered, as if he’d read her