Page 23 of Cinderella's One-Night Baby

‘Now I am a real princess,’ Gabrielle teased as the door opened.

Only when he turned his back to her so he could unfold himself out was she able to take the moment to properly compose herself without his watchful stare on her before swinging her legs out of the car, taking Andrés’s hand and joining him in the Imperium’s private underground car park.

If he didn’t have such tight hold of her hand she thought it possible her shaky legs really would have given way.

She had never imagined...neverdreamed...that pleasure could be so intense. That a climax could leave you feeling like your bones had melted.

And if she’d thought about it, she wouldn’t have dreamed that she could behave in such a wanton way and not feel an ounce of shame...but that was part of the Andrés effect, she realised. It wasn’t just that he wore his sexuality like a second skin but the look that pulsed in his hypnotic eyes, the sense that this was a man who embraced all the sensual pleasures life had to offer...and as she thought this, the spent flame deep in her pelvis flickered back to life at the sensual discoveries that lay ahead of her.

She wished she could tell him that she’d just experienced her first ever climax but feared it would lead to a conversation she mustn’t have. She’d already proven herself incapable of lying to him and...

Oh, just stop thinking!

Stepping into the elevator Andrés guided her to, she met his stare as the doors closed around them.

To think they hadn’t even made it into his apartment yet...

A burst of laughter came from nowhere, and she wrapped her arms around his waist and gazed up at Andrés’s devastatingly handsome face.

He squeezed her bottom. ‘Are you going to share the joke?’

‘There is no joke. I just felt like laughing.’ Gabrielle lifted herself onto her toes and kissed him.

No point in analysing what had just happened to her. She’d made the choice to embrace the Andrés effect and it was more potent than she could have dreamed, but just as with everything else that had happened to her that evening, come the morning the magic would go pop and she would return to her real life. Nothing like this would ever happen to her again.

No point either, in worrying that she was already finding Andrés’s kisses headily addictive.

The elevator door slid open.

She hadn’t even felt it move.

Happily slipping her hand into his, she stepped into a different welcome room to the one she’d arrived at via the atrium and as a far more elaborate door to the other welcome room swung open, an unexpected thought made her heart lurch and rooted her feet to the floor.

‘What’s wrong?’ Andrés asked.

‘Sophia.’ Gabrielle didn’t think she could look the Spanish woman in the eye. It was one thing approving—suggesting—a border guard accompany her brother to a party as a last-minute substitute, quite another for the brother to bring that same border guard home.

He coaxed her over the threshold. ‘You have nothing to worry about. She’s flown back to Seville.’

A man who looked to be around the fifty mark and who was wearing a monogrammed black polo shirt withAMembroidered into it materialised. Andrés acknowledged him with a nod then held his arms back so the man could remove his dinner jacket for him, all the while continuing their conversation, saying, ‘She messaged earlier. Said she was bored being stuck in the apartment on her own and wanted to sleep in her own bed. Thank you, Michael,’ he added in English to the man Gabrielle assumed was some kind of butler. ‘You can finish for the evening now.’

The man bowed his head. ‘Goodnight, sir.’

‘Goodnight, Michael.’

As if by magic, the man disappeared as unobtrusively as he’d appeared, although Gabrielle thought she might have had a better idea of the direction he’d taken if her stare hadn’t been glued to Andrés.

Suddenly she felt very much aware that it was only the two of them and for the first time experienced a frisson of nerves, nerves that increased when he took her hand and led her through a different door to the one she’d taken earlier. It was a kitchen. A kitchen so startling in its contrast to her own tiny cooking space that all she could do was shake her head in awe.

‘Champagne?’ Andrés asked.

‘Sure you can manage without your butler to do it for you?’ she teased.

That was better. He’d sensed the stillness of his apartment working to feed Gabrielle’s nerves. Her teasing already felt familiar. Felt good.

‘I’m sure I can work it out,’ he said with wry self-deprecation, then opened the fridge. This one was full of food. Closing it, he opened the adjacent one and was greeted with rows and rows of white wine, rosé and champagne. Selecting a bottle of Louis Roederer, he opened cupboards in the search of champagne flutes.

‘You don’t know your way around your own kitchen?’ she said with a splutter of laughter as he opened the third cupboard.

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