Lovers in law (27 page)

I loved that he was mine to
command and that, the moment I touched him, I could make him do
exactly as I wanted. In court he might be terrifying but, in my
arms, he was just a very bad boy with the body of a god and the
mind of a devil who couldn’t get enough of me.

A better woman wouldn’t have
taken advantage. But
I was ruthless in
the way I enslaved him; teasing him until his balls were ready to
explode and giving him more pleasure than any other woman ever
had.

By the time we climbed out of
the hot tub, I’d eradicated every ounce of intelligence in that
a
mazing brain of his and had him thinking
with something three feet further down his body.

But now it was my turn.

Radford untied my robe and
lay me down on the wide, white bed that I’d pictured in a hundred
steamy fantasies. In my head, I’d imagined Radford’s hot passion
but now I felt something very different as he lay me back on the
cool, white sheets.

“Let yourself go,” he
whispered, his hands moving across my newly-oiled skin, arousing me
slowly. “Leave your body behind. Feel with your heart. Trust
me.”

That night
Radford had already kissed me with passion, urgency and raw
sexiness but his lips now ignited unexplored sensations that made
me catch my breath in wonder.

Gone was the heat to be
replaced by a quiet, insistent intensity
that went beyond my body and spoke to my soul. As Radford
held me in his arms, he drew me down deep inside himself and into
worlds neither of us had tasted before. I followed him blindly,
closing my eyes and trusting him even though the power of this new
surge of emotions terrified me.

Before that night I’d
connected with men on one level only. Radford now showed me there
were many different layers to love and that I needed to let my
heart guide me into places ruled by deeper feelings, not only by
passion.

He grasped my wrists and
pushed them high up above my head so he could kiss underneath my
arms and the tender sides of my breasts. I arched upwards towards
his lips, desperate to touch him too but he held my hands fast
against the pillows.

“Relax,” he said softly
against my skin. One heavy thigh pinned my hips down, holding me
powerless beneath him. “I’ve been dreaming of this since Claridges.
Let me pleasure you slowly.”

I allowed my limbs to go limp
even though my heart was racing and my breath came in shallow
bursts. Radford’s knee forced my thighs apart. With one hand still
holding my wrists, the other moved tantalisingly slowly towards my
sex, tracing the shape of my ribs and hip bones as it
went.

My every breath emerged as a
sigh. I closed my eyes and focused on the sweet sensations beneath
Radford’s lips and the gentle sweep of his tongue across my
breasts. He wasn’t paying literal lip service to my body, he
treated it with reverence, making me feel like the most precious
thing in the world to him. This was a man who had freed himself
from the heat of passion and was now sharing the kind of love that
smouldered far below the surface.

As he shifted his weight
above me, his lips came down on mine for a kiss that took
possession of the deepest recesses of my heart. He’d asked me to
trust him once before, but I’d been too afraid to in case I fell so
deeply in love I lost myself.

“Fall and let me catch you,”
he’d once said, making it sound like the simplest thing in the
world.

So now I let go, leaned back
and allowed myself to drop over the edge.

As if sensing my surrender,
Radford’s arms tightened around me, crushing me against him.
He moved between my legs, forcing them apart
with his hips. His weight anchored me to the bed but the force of
his tenderness surging through me held me far tighter.

I adored this man –
physically, emotionally, sexually. Every cell. Every atom. Every
thought. I was indivisible from him and felt I’d absorbed him into
my DNA where he’d made a permanent imprint.

H
e
entered me gently as I tilted my hips and caught my breath. I
wanted to wrap my arms around him but he held me fast and I didn’t
struggle. Instead, I surrendered myself to his body and unlocked my
heart to receive him.

He moved slowly inside
me
– short strokes, gentle pressure,
every thrust a caress deep within me. His soft kiss told me more
about love than words ever could and my heart spoke silently to
his.

I’d lain naked with a dozen
men but I’d never bared my soul to any of them before that night.
For that part of me at least, Radford was walking across virgin
territory and I felt glad that such a perfect man was my
first.

That night, I made love with
my mind as well as my body and the pleasure was indescribable.
Until that moment, I’d thought such feelings only existed between
the pages of romance novels – fictions created to
trick us into believing in perfect love. In
Radford’s arms, on his wide, white bed, I discovered that fact was
far more wonderful than fiction, and that the feelings coursing
through me went many miles beyond perfection.

This was love like I’d never
known.
Innocent, profound and
life-changing. Passion and adoration rolled into one. All bound up
in Radford’s arms that held me tight and fought the world
away.

I came quietly, slowly, but
with a force that stopped my heart. Pleasure
flooded through me like a warm wave rolling from my centre
to the tips of my fingers and threatening to drown me.

I kissed Radford feverishly,
sensing he was coming too even though his pleasure
ran through him as slowly and quietly as mine.
Our breathing synchronised, my pulse picked up the rhythm of his,
our movements became the movements of one body in two indivisible
halves.

And
all the while, I was falling so fast into love with him the
rush obliterated every other conscious thought.

At the height of pleasure, a
dam of tears burst deep inside me. I lay beneath Radford in a state
of complete happiness and yet I cried as though my heart would
break.

Relief. Deepest joy.
Love. Trust. Belonging. Completeness. And every
emotion in between threatened to overwhelm me.

Radford
smiled down at me. He took his weight on his elbows and
tangled his fingers in my hair, wiping away the tears with his
thumbs. I curled myself around him as pleasure subsided, loving the
feel of his heartbeat resonating in my chest.

“Tonight has been the most
incredible night of my life,” he whispered against my cheek.
“You
’re amazing, Allegra Lawless. Thank
you.”

I couldn’t speak and kissed
him again, our lovers’ conversation far from over. Words were no
longer enough and I told Radford everything he needed to know with
my touch, my embrace and the way my lips met his.
With more certainty than I’d ever felt, I also
knew I wanted the conversation to go on for a lifetime.

There in Radford’s bed, with
his arms tight around me and his weight pressing me into the
pillows, I suddenly realised
a corner of
my heart had been waiting for him forever and that it had beat
unevenly without him there.

He was my missing self. The
key to unlock the second half of my life. The final piece in the
jigsaw and the person who could complete me in ways I hadn’t yet
dreamed of. I held him tighter, determined to do everything in my
power to keep him by my side for the rest of time.

Because that night I finally found
something I had no idea I’d been looking for.

It was Sunday evening before
we came to our senses; sleeping in late on Saturday and spending
the rest of the weekend
making love. As
had happened in Claridges, reality blurred in Radford’s arms and it
was as if the world didn’t exist beyond those huge windows
overlooking the Thames.

Wrapped
in his duvet and propped up against a mountain of pillows,
we talked for hours about everything and anything. Work. Family.
Friends. Hopes. Dreams. Fears. Nothing held back and every corner
of our respective lives explored.

“I’m looking forward to
meeting your friends,”
Radford said. “Are
they all as bonkers as you?”

“You have no idea.” I rubbed
my hand across his chest and
down under
the covers. “They’re all very beautiful too. Perhaps I ought to
keep you to myself.”

“Are you the jealous
type?”

“Insanely. And you’re such a
pushover. We’d no sooner met than you were letting me kiss you in
chambers. How can I be sure you’ll behave yourself?”

Laughing he rolled away from me and
opened the drawer beside his bed. “Perhaps this will convince
you.”

He held out a square, black
box. I immediately knew it came from Bvlgari and that its contents
would have been ruinously expensive. I hesitated.

“I can’t. It’s too much,” I said,
overawed by his generosity.

But he
talked me down. “Nothing’s too much for you.” He urged the
box on me and laughed again. “Besides, if I find I can’t afford it,
I’ll put Aiden’s fees up.”

Sitting up, I lifted the lid
and my hand flew to my mouth when I stared at the contents: a
delicate, white gold bracelet set with a dozen coloured stones; so
exquisite, tears sprang to my eyes.

“It’
s beautiful,” I gasped. “But I don’t deserve
this.”

“Yes you do. And it’s nowhere
near as beautiful as you.” Radford fastened the bracelet around my
shaking wrist. “I wanted to show how much you mean to
me.”

“I don’t need expensive gifts for
that. I can tell by the way you kiss me and hold me.”

“Then let me spoil you too.”

I wasn’t going to fight him –
every girl likes to be spoiled now and then, and I’d be sure to
repay him in kind later. I snuggled back into the crook of his arm
and held my hand high so the bracelet would catch the
light.

“Not long after you went to
Rome, Stephen Mercer was birthday shopping for his wife and I saw
this,” Radford went on. “Believe it or not, it’s from Bvlgari’s
Allegra collection and reminded me so much of you. I swore then
that, if my very own Allegra ever came back to me, I’d buy it for
her.”

“My very own Allegra,” I repeated,
savouring the words. “I like the sound of that.”

“So do I. Although standing
in Bvlgari that day I couldn’t let myself hope it would ever come
true.”

Our weekend in Claridges felt
half a lifetime away – a beginning and yet a brutal ending too. I
didn’t blame Radford for not holding out any hope.

“Why does the bracelet remind
you of me?” I asked. “Is it just the name?”

Radford
caught my wrist and pointed to one of the warm, golden
stones. “These are citrines,” he said, “and they’re honey coloured
like your skin in candlelight. When I met you with Aiden, all I
wanted to do was kiss your neck.”

“Yet you raced off to dinner
with someone else,” I reminded him.

“Business
, I swear. I’d rather have stayed with you. I’d been
desperate for an excuse to see you since you came back to
London.”

“And instead we met by
chance.”
I heard the deep rumble of
laughter inside Radford’s chest and propped myself up to look at
him. “What?”

“Do you honestly think it was
a coincidence?
” He grinned up at me.
“Have you any idea how many strings I pulled to get myself invited
to that party?”

“That’s so devious.” Although
I liked that he’d made the effort. “Remind me to punish you
later.”

“Oh, yes please.” His eyes
flicked wide with anticipation and I kissed him as a down payment.
“What about the other stones?” I asked when I’d done, holding out
my bracelet for him to see. “How are they like me?” He’d no doubt
feed me some terrible lines but he flirted so beautifully, I could
have listened to him for hours.

“The peridots flash like your green
eyes when you’re cross with me,” he went on. “You were angry that
first morning in chambers and it was such a turn on.”

“You antagonised me
deliberately.”

“Guilty as charged.” Although he
didn’t look very sorry. “The garnets,” he growled, his voice laced
with passion, “well…you know how much I love to see you in
red.”

“Or out of it. You still owe me a
new pair of knickers.”

He kissed the inside of my wrist,
setting my pulse alight. “I know. I can’t wait to take you
shopping.”

“And what about the
diamonds?” I was shamelessly fishing for compliments now but I
didn’t care
.

“Precious; like you are to me.”

I’d heard enough lines from
men in my life to
recognise the real
thing and looked down at Radford, searching his face for the merest
hint he was playing with me.

But those big, blue eyes of
his
regarded me softly and his smile was
warm and sexy. He was ridiculously handsome – the most handsome man
I’d ever seen – and I’d have happily spent the rest of my life just
gazing at him.