Page 37 of Royally Promoted

‘I’m driven to honesty. Carry on—I’m listening. Despite the obvious distractions.’

‘Malik, I know you’re going to marry someone suitable, and in fact this leads me on to something else I want to say. When you get married, you’re probably going to end up living here.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Common sense. A girl from here probably isn’t going to want to put down roots and start a family so far away from her own family, her friends, everything she’s accustomed to.’ She paused for breath without allowing any interruption. ‘Chances are you might end up splitting your time, at best. In which case, I don’t fit in. I’m here on temporary loan to you, Malik, but I have my own life and my own family in England, and I wouldn’t be able to hop from one continent to the other as your secretary.’

She drew in a deep breath and powered on. ‘So we...we... Yes, we want one another, and it’s all about lust and it’s going to end, and let that time be when we return to London. Or when I return to London. I’ll leave and start looking for another job and all I ask is that you give me a good reference.’

‘You’re giving me a timeline? I have no idea how you’ve managed to leap to so many conclusions, Lucy. You’ve married me off and, having married me off, you’ve now got me house-hunting for somewhere to live here because the woman I marry couldn’t possibly have any interest in relocating to London.’

‘Even if you did decide to return to London to work and live with whoever you’ve chosen to marry, then it still couldn’t work out for us. For me working for you—I would feel awkward and terrible for your wife.’

‘Marriages of convenience don’t obey the same rules.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Romantic attachments assume secondary importance to practical considerations. I give you my parents.’ He frowned. ‘Although, to be fair, maybe time mellowed what they had into something different. No matter; they would never have been like perhaps your parents were... I’m guessing there was nothing arranged about their marriage...?’

‘They fell in love at university. Met on the very first night at the freshers’ ball and, five daughters later, they’re still together, holding hands and having fun.’

‘They’re in love,’ Malik murmured.

‘It does happen, Malik—love and marriage and happy-ever-afters.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘But not for you.’

‘Not for me,’ Malik concurred with a shrug. ‘I’m not cut from that cloth. You are, however, which is why it’s important that we both accept the limitations of this...magical thing that’s materialised between us.’

He reached out and stroked the side of her face and then trailed a lazy finger just underneath the neckline of her tee-shirt.

‘Malik, I can’t think when you’re doing that.’ She flicked at his finger, but half-heartedly, because what more was there to talk about? She wanted to feel him again, next to her, under her, on her and in her.

‘Good. Thinking can be overrated.’

‘We still have things to work through.’

‘And we will—scout’s honour. Let me undress you.’

She hitched a soft moan as he tugged at her tee-shirt and then his eyes darkened when she obliged and pulled it over her head.

‘Let’s get back into bed,’ he coaxed, standing up and tugging her with a nod to a very tempting bed.

This time Lucy undressed before his lazy, intent, appreciative dark gaze. She didn’t rush. By the time she was lying in blissful abandon on the sheets, she was wet and ready for him. He parted her legs with his hand and inserted two fingers into her, slip-sliding them over the wet crease that sheathed her clitoris.

Naked on the bed, she could see the swelling of his erection and she nearly passed out when, his fingers still moving inside her, his dark eyes locked to hers, he began teasing the throbbing bud of her clitoris.

She dearly wanted to finish what they had been talking about. There was a lot happening in her head and she wanted to put it all into neat, manageable categories. She’d always loved a list.

Her body had other ideas, though. Her eyelids fluttered and she sank down the bed in little wriggling movements. She pushed her breasts up to him and sighed with pleasure when he began to pay them some attention. A girl could get dangerously used to this was the thought that floated in her head as she gave in to physical responses that were a lot more compelling than the intellectual ones she knew she would have to return to.

She discovered that he was absolutely right when he’d said that satisfaction could be guaranteed without penetration—a lot of satisfaction for both of them, as it turned out. She was spent at the end of an hour of sensual exploration, and then was tempted into more than just ‘satisfaction guaranteed, no penetration necessary’ as she spasmed against his mouth.

She tortured him with feathery kisses everywhere... She took his bigness into her mouth and used her hand and tongue to drive him to the very same place he had taken her. Then, when neither of them could handle the heat any longer, she sensually eased on his contraception, straddled him and felt him swell and release just before she did the same.

She flopped next to him, utterly exhausted, hair everywhere, her body damp with perspiration.

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