The Devil to Pay by Rachel Lyndhurst Page A

her naked and to bring her to orgasm without even taking his jacket off. Professional high-achieving career women probably did it all the time, she reasoned, and got on with their normal lives the next day. She would do the same. She’d bet anything he was fresh and perky and smelling like the men’s fragrance section of Fortnum & Mason’s already. There was no way he could outdo her, or seduce her so easily again!
    ****
    Rianna’s cold fingers fumbled with the clip of her seatbelt on board Daniel’s executive jet. The helicopter transfer from the hotel to a private airstrip had been hair-raising just like Daniel, fast and ferocious. She didn’t like heights and was grateful the twenty-minute journey had been in darkness. Had she been able to see the sky and land swaying from side to side beneath her feet, there was every possibility she would have been violently sick all over Flash Boy Bracchi’s designer shoes.
    “You look remarkably pristine for this hour of the day,” Daniel shouted over the roar of the jet engines as they prepared for takeoff.
    “I did remember to wash, if that’s what you mean,” Rianna replied, casting a sharp eye over his dishevelled hair and dark stubble.
    Daniel’s fingertips rasped across his jaw and he shot her a look that landed a hot spear of awareness in her pelvis. “I should have mentioned last night there was a shower on board. Sorry, my mind must have been elsewhere.”
    “The hotel bathroom was more than adequate, thank you,” she replied tightly. “Hot water and everything.”
    “I mean ,” he added in a lower, more deadly voice, “we could have shared one this morning. There’s enough room in there for two.” Undeterred by her pointed silence and refusal to look him in the eye, he continued. “You can’t deny a thorough massage with the best organic shower gel money can buy wouldn’t appeal, surely? My hands are strong. And I know what it would do for me—”
    “Breakfast of some sort would be good,” she mumbled, a wild lava-flow of blood pulsing in every region of her body. “I’m quite clean enough.”
    A few minutes later, the aircraft levelled out of a silky smooth takeoff and Daniel levered himself up from the soft cream leather of his seat. Rianna found it impossible not to glance sideways at him and found he looked at her with a smile so wicked, with eyes so hooded with blatant suggestion, that the breath turned to stone in her lungs. The invitation was there.
    No. No. No!
    At least her brain was saying that, but the hot liquid feeling between her thighs was screaming out an entirely different response.
    “So I can’t persuade you?” Daniel undid the first couple of buttons of his shirt as he leant lazily against Rianna’s headrest. His gaze scorched like lasers over the swell of her breasts beneath her white blouse and she could feel her treacherous nipples harden obediently in response to him.
    “No,” she replied and crossed her arms tightly across her chest as a steward approached with a drinks tray. Her mouth suddenly felt very dry.
    “Okay, cara , not quite ready,” he replied smoothly and turned toward the back of the plane. “But it will only be a matter of time.”
    Rianna closed her eyes and inhaled sharply as she heard him singing something unrecognisable in Italian as he strolled away.
    Damn the man.
    Daniel spent ages in the shower which Rianna convinced herself, was a good thing, because it gave her a chance to enjoy breakfast alone. She made fast work of some delicately slivered exotic fruit followed by crisp grilled pancetta and flat mushrooms, relishing every mouthful after the previous night’s barely touched meal.
    “That smells good.” Daniel stole a piece of buttered toast from her plate and shamelessly slung his large frame into the adjacent seat, oblivious to the fact he had startled her. “I wish I’d had pudding last night actually and bread. I’m starving.”
    It took Rianna a moment to regain her mental