Free Satin Dreams by Maggie; Davis Page B

feel a distinct hard bulge.  
    It was going to happen.  
    She gasped instinctively as he lowered his head.  
    “Ah, you’re so beautiful.” His chiseled features, the longlashed black eyes, were right in hers. Nicholas Palliades seemed to want to have sex with her very much; the strong fingers gripping her waist were trembling slightly. In fact, his expression was filled with a hunger that frightened her. “I’m crazy,” she heard him mutter, “to do this, but I had to have you.” His hands laced through her hair, pulling the coppery strands loose around her face. “I thought of doing this, this afternoon when I saw you from the back of Mortessier’s showroom.”  
    Alix stood still as a statue, telling herself that everything would go smoothly if she just didn’t panic. She was alarmed, though, at Nicholas Palliades’s burning intensity; it was so out of place in the cool, cynical dinner partner who’d talked of women, and what they would do for money.  
    He was looking at her oddly. “Are you all right?”  
    She couldn’t even nod. She was standing in his arms rigidly, waiting for his kiss. Wasn’t that what he intended to do?  
    His hands pulled the narrow rhinestone straps from her shoulders. “This never happens to me.” He muttered to himself. “I don’t lose my head like this.”  
    Under the pressure of his fingers the heavy, beaded bodice fell to the tips of her breasts and caught.  
    He regarded it with slitted eyes. “How can one woman be so tantalizing?” She knew he didn’t expect her to answer. “All that fire,” he rasped. “That creamy white skin.”  
    Alix tried not to shudder as he lifted his big hand and trailed the tip of his finger, feather-light, down the rise of her breast, testing its silky softness.  
    The touch did terrible things to Alix. She jumped so violently, she almost fell out of his arms.  
    “My God, I frightened you!” He grabbed her tightly. “No, no, I’m not going to hurt you, you have nothing to be afraid of.” His expression turned dark. “Has someone abused you? Is that what has happened?”  
    Wide-eyed, shaken by her body’s curious reaction, Alix could only stare at him, her thoughts in an uproar. “Ah,” she began. “I—”  
    He didn’t let her finish. “No, no, it’s impossible, nothing like that could have happened. You look too innocent.” He drew her closer and bent his head. His warm lips brushed hers, traced a line from her cheek to her chin, and then back again, gently parting her lips. “I wouldn’t want to think about anything like that,” he murmured against her opened mouth. “It would spoil this.”  
    Eyes wide open, Alix let herself be kissed. The long tangle of Nicholas’s black lashes, the fine lines at the corners of his eyelids, the tendrils of curly black hair against his forehead ... he filled her vision. His body felt vibrant and strong as his warm tongue thrust between her lips, the kiss exploring so sweetly and deeply that she went from frozen resistance to a state of sensuous surprise.  
    She closed her eyes, leaning into the feeling with a little thrill of expectancy. But, abruptly, he pulled back from her. His fingers caught the zipper in the back of the dress and pulled it down. “Now I want to see if the rest of you is perfect, too.”  
    The heavy, beaded evening dress slithered down and fell to the carpet at her feet. Suddenly she was wearing only sheer panty hose and green satin shoes, her breasts and shoulders bare except for dangling strands of her tousled red hair.  
    She heard the quick intake of his breath. “My God, you’re so beautiful you’re unreal.”  
    Alix swayed toward him, caught up in a state of strange physical excitement that was terribly distracting; she hoped he wasn’t going to start the business about her hair and breasts again. She couldn’t bear it.  
    He murmured, “You haven’t had too much to drink, have you?”  
    Drink? The room was swimming, hot