The air was thick with the sound of laboured breathing, charged as if from a sparking live wire.

Ilsa slid her hands around to cup his jawline, fingers splaying possessively over taut skin and hard bone, her thumb swiping his reddened bottom lip. She wanted to touch him all over with her hands and her mouth, discover the grain and texture and taste of him.

Noah’s lips parted just enough that he could suck her thumb into his mouth, drawing against it as his gaze pinioned hers. She arched, pressing her pelvis and her breasts against him. He sucked hard at her thumb and she shuddered helplessly as traceries of fire ignited in her blood, from her nipples to her womb. Between her legs she felt lush dampness.

Ilsa opened her mouth to say something, she wasn’t sure what, when the room wheeled.

Noah shifted his grip, lifting her off her feet and swinging her round. Then she was sitting on the desk, Noah standing between her legs, pushing them wide.

It felt deliciously decadent but it still wasn’t enough.

He used his teeth on her thumb, just a tiny nip, but it made her shudder, squirming further forward on the desktop, pressing herself against the bulge in his jeans.

In response he pressed his palm against her lower back, holding her close while his other hand shaped her braless breast through the fabric. Ilsa’s eyelids lowered as she pushed into his big hand, her body tightening in delight at the unfamiliar sensation. Had anything ever felt so delicious?

He pressed kisses along her thumb then her palm. ‘I’d imagined our first time in a bed with a full box of condoms. But this works.’ He moved his hips and the friction of denim on silk made her eyes roll back.

Condoms! Her brain snapped into gear.

How could she not have thought of that? She’d been so busy dressing to seduce and imagining the bliss of Noah’s naked body, she’d forgotten the basics. Locking the study door had been an impulse. She’d fully expected them to end up in Noah’s bed.

She blinked up at him. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t have one.’ Some seductress she was.

Noah grinned, reaching into his back pocket and drawing out a couple of square packets.

‘Ever since you came to Istanbul I’ve carried protection, just in case.’ The look he gave her melted a vital organ or two. ‘Now, where were we up to?’

He reached around her and found her zip, lowering it slowly, the slide of his fingers against her flesh incredibly arousing. As was the look in his eyes.

‘I like that you don’t wear a bra with this.’

He spread his hand across her bare back and lowered his head. Ilsa raised her mouth to his but instead Noah kissed her neck, finding a spot near the curve to her shoulder that made her writhe and grab at him. His mouth skated past her collarbone to the tiny spaghetti strap. A second later he closed his teeth around it and dragged it off her shoulder, making the bodice droop on that side, almost revealing her breast.

Ilsa shifted, her thigh muscles clenching as his knowing gaze met hers. Did he realise she was wet between the legs for him?

He dipped his head and dragged the other strap down too.

‘Take your arms out of the dress, Ilsa.’

It was an order, his tone brusque. But, instead of being annoyed, she was excited because she read urgency in his glazed eyes and hard body.

She shrugged the rest of the way free of the straps and heard his breath hiss. For a long moment he didn’t touch her, just looked, and she forgot that this was her first time and she needed to warn him, lest he be disappointed. She was too caught up in feeling sexy and wanted.

Gently he lowered her to the desktop, pushing away something that thudded to the floor, then put his mouth on her breast.

Nothing had prepared her for the riot of sensation. For such sharp desire. His mouth, and his hand on her other breast, fogged her brain and turned her into a keening, desperate woman. She heard the wild gasps, knew they came from her mouth, but couldn’t stop them.

She held him to her breast with hands that shook. But it wasn’t enough. She needed more.

Wriggling for purchase, she lifted one leg around his solid thigh, then the other, trying to get closer to all that lovely heat.

Brilliant eyes met hers as he licked her nipple then lifted his head.

‘I like your thinking,’ he growled, scrabbling at her skirt.

Finally she felt him, flesh to flesh, his hand between her legs.

Noah’s eyes rounded as he realised she wore no underwear. ‘Idolike your thinking! If I’d known from the start you had nothing on under this dress...’