Kitabı oku: «Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds», sayfa 3

‘And, let me guess…black lace suspenders?’

She blushed at his gentle mockery. It seemed like such a ridiculous cliché, and yet the garter belt had made her feel wickedly sexy when she had been clipping it onto her silky stockings. She had bought the lacy black underwear on her second wedding anniversary, in a vain attempt to inject some excitement into her marriage bed. Of course, she hadn’t known at the time that Michael’s excitement was reserved for his busty blonde mistress!

Holding her rosy-cheeked gaze, Adam smoothed his spread hand slowly back up over the hem of her skirt and across the front of her thigh until he encountered the betrayingoutline of her suspender, pressing lightly to imprint it on his palm.

‘Anything else?’

All her attention was concentrated on his hand on her leg.

‘I beg your pardon?’

He took another swallow of whisky, watching her over the silvery rim. ‘I asked if you were wearing anything else?’

She licked her lips. ‘You mean a-apart from my dress?’ she said huskily.

‘I mean under your dress,’ he clarified, removing his hand, but leaving behind its heated brand on her thigh.

Her eyes widened and she nodded jerkily. What kind of woman didn’t wear panties when she went out, for goodness’ sake? What if she got knocked over in the street, or was ambushed by a freak gust of wind? The potential for embarrassment was enormous. Even Lisa, who was an ardent minimalist, wore tanga briefs to cover the bare essentials!

‘Black lace?’

She nodded again, riveted by the breathtaking boldness of that pantherish stare. He sipped his whisky and she had a strong premonition that what he was planning to say next was in the nature of a challenge.

‘Would you take them off for me, if I asked you to?’

The air was sucked from her lungs and a molten wave of heat scorched through her veins.

‘Y-You mean…here? Now?’

He tilted his head. ‘Have I shocked you?’

Senseless.

Regan was furious. She’d thought she had been doing so well! And now he had flung down this outrageous gauntlet.

There was a faint smile on his face as he waited to see what she would do next, and to Regan the hint of mocking detachment in his regard was an added insult. She had a lowering suspicion that he wouldn’t be surprised if she melted in a puddle of stammering embarrassment—that he had seen through her sophisticated charade to the nervous little mouse beneath.

No! She wasn’t going to be shocked by his indecent proposal. Wasn’t this precisely why she had come here—to play adult games, to experiment, to explore beyond the limits of her own experience? To celebrate her freedom from the tyranny of lies by flinging open the doors on her sequestered sexuality?

Aware of the danger she was courting, Regan was gripped by a powerful urge to shake up that infuriating masculine self-assurance…to pay him back, shock for shock. It struck her quite forcibly that, in spite of the explicit sexual threat that Adam represented, she was less afraid now than she had been all evening.

So…Adam wanted to see how far she could be pushed, did he? Well, now was the time to show him that she was more than equal to his game. Maybe if she had been more keen to indulge in sexual role-playing during their marriage then her husband would have been less keen to stray—except that Michael had never encouraged his loving wife to be anything other than strictly conventional in bed.

Conventional and boring!

Without a word Regan reached up under her skirt and hooked her shaking thumbs into the high-cut sides of her bikini panties.

Adam’s face was suddenly wiped clean of all expression and he moved with lightning swiftness, his thighs tensing as he leaned abruptly forward to clamp a preventive hand on her forearm.

‘I’m sorry…I was teasing you. I apologise for my lack of finesse,’ he said, coolly snatching his gauntlet back out of her reckless grasp. ‘I’d hate to spoil our evening by rushing pleasures that are better savoured. I’m afraid the potent combination of a sensuous woman and an excellent Scotch temporarily overwhelmed my self-control—not to mention my good manners,’ he added, with just the right touch of rueful self-derision. He settled back with his whisky, looking up at her with carefully modified solemnity.

Smooth-talking devil! He might have been only teasing, but he had been in full control of all his faculties. He had been testing her compliance.

Pumped for action, Regan was tempted to ignore his glib apology and go ahead with her daring act of defiance. However, he had just referred to her as a sensuous woman, and for that delicious compliment she was almost willing to forgive him. If he had called her beautiful she wouldn’t have believed him, but to be sensuous a woman didn’t have to have model-girl looks. Beauty was only skin-deep, whereas sensuality was innate—and therefore infinitely more desirable as far as Regan was concerned.

She reluctantly removed her hands and ran them slowly up and down the side-seams of her dress, deliberately wiggling her hips as she smoothed the rumpled fabric back into place. It felt wild and wanton, stroking herself like this in front of him, but it was the kind of thing that a sensuous woman would do—inviting a man to share her feminine appreciation of her own body.

He watched, his face softening with a return of his former amusement, but this time it was laced with a measure of wry respect.

‘Why don’t you join me?’ he murmured, intrigued by the hint of shy excitement in her slinky self-absorption.

‘Thank you, I will…’ she purred, caught up in her performance, her eyes glowing with smug triumph as she sank onto the empty cushions beside him. The couch was long enough to take his full length—and wide enough for an orgy, she thought, nervously.

‘I meant in a drink,’ he explained, toasting her with his glass.

‘Oh…’ Her sultry look dissolved. ‘I did have a vodka and tonic around here somewhere…’ She frowned vaguely about.

‘Forget it. Just go ahead and help yourself to another,’ Adam advised with the careless ease of a man who never had to worry about a budget—for alcohol or anything else. Lounging at his ease, he obviously expected her to play hostess while Pierre was occupied in the kitchen.

She thought she had probably infused enough alcohol into her system as it was, but a drink would give her some occupation for her nervous hands.

She stood up, ultra-conscious of her lack of grace as her narrow heels tilted awkwardly into the thick pile of the carpet and almost tipped her sideways into his lap. ‘Shall I freshen yours, too?’ she asked, to distract him from her clumsiness.

‘No, it’s fine,’ he said, swirling the contents of his glass. ‘You pour a mean Scotch.’

Regan shrugged with her hands. ‘My father was a big whisky-drinker—’ She bit her lip as she turned away, annoyed at her slip. She knew the cheap rot-gut that had killed her father by the time she was ten had little in common with the smooth, expensive, aromatic spirit that Adam savoured.

‘And your husband? What about him?’

Her body stiffened as she swung back to face his grating accusation.

‘My what?’

He caught at her left hand, lifting it to the light so that they both could see the faint band of pale skin on her ring finger. He immediately let it drop, as if contaminated by her touch.

‘Are you married?’ he demanded harshly.

She hesitated. Just what kind of man was she dealing with? ‘What if I said yes?’

The light grey eyes hardened to cold steel. ‘Then I’d politely show you the door. And Derek would cease to be part of my acquaintance. He knows my opinion on the subject: I don’t sleep with other men’s wives. And I despise cheating and deception—No-one gets a second chance to breach my trust. So if you are married tell me now, before this goes any further, because I make a very bad enemy…’

Regan was stunned by the ruthless force behind his pronouncement. He possessed the will, the wealth and the power to protect his personal honour, and wouldn’t hesitate to use those weapons to threaten and punish anyone who sought to compromise it in pursuit of their own interests.

‘I’m not married,’ she declared huskily, her curiosity more than satisfied.

Unfortunately, his suspicion was too sharp to be easily blunted by the belated admission.

‘But you were,’ he rapped out. ‘Divorced?’

If she hadn’t been so naive for so long she might have been able to say yes with dignity. As things stood, there was little honour in being Michael’s widow.

She shook her head and looked down, disturbed to find herself twisting the non-existent ring on her finger.

‘Widowed. Mi—my husband was killed in a car crash.’

There was a brief, splintering silence.

‘I’m sorry.’

Her chin jerked up at the deep gentleness of his tone, her cheeks stinging as if he had reached out and slapped her. The cold steel had gone from his eyes, to be replaced by a smoky speculation that made her angry heart burn. She didn’t want tenderness, dammit! All she wanted from him was one night of simple, uncomplicated lust.

‘Don’t be.’

His eyes narrowed at the clipped command.

‘Like that, was it?’ he mused, still with that threatening undertone of softness.

She raked her fingers through her hair, and flicked the ends over her shoulder in a gesture half-nervous, halfdefiant. ‘You can’t begin to imagine what it was like,’ she said with a tight smile. ‘And I’d rather you didn’t bother.’

‘How long ago did it happen?’

She tossed him a frustrated look. She could guess what he was thinking—he was wondering whether she was acting out some psychological trauma associated with her marriage.

With a vengeance!

Her eyes flashed. ‘Long enough.’

Eight months. Long enough for her to have found out why Michael had insisted on handling all their joint finances. He had spent their savings, run up credit card debts, mortgaged the house and taken out loans for which, as his next of kin and inheritor of his estate, she was liable. The absence of a will had compounded the legal problems, and only after months of trying to straighten out the chaotic financial tangle her lawyer had informed her that there was little left to inherit.

And two weeks ago she had finally discovered why.

Two weeks ago she had received a tearful visit from Michael’s long-term—mistress, the earthy, voluptuous Cindy…and his three-and-a-half-year-old son.

Her last remaining shred of respect for Michael had vanished as she had been forced to face the degrading truth that for the entire duration of their marriage her husband had been living an expensive double life. One that she, all unknowingly, had helped finance!

Well, tonight she would have her revenge.

Tonight she wasn’t going to be the sweet, understanding little woman, bravely swallowing her pride and doing what was expected of her.

Tonight she was going to be the ruthless user, the unrepentant sinner…

Chapter Four

‘SO YOU don’t miss having a husband?’

Like a hole in the head, Regan wanted to snap. Instead, she channelled her anger into another emotion.

‘I miss…certain things about being married…’ She tossed Adam a suggestive smile and swung back over to the bar. Conscious of his eyes levelled on her back, she relaxed her shoulders and moved with an exaggerated sway of her hips, the way she had seen Lisa move on the catwalk.

Drink in hand, she strolled back with that same, slinky roll and crossed her legs as she sat down, letting her skirt ride up above her knees as far as it liked.

‘Would you like me to do that for you?’ she offered, as he eased a hand across the back of his neck, digging his fingers into the tense muscle.

‘You do massage?’

‘I’m not a qualified masseur or anything,’ she said innocently, ‘but I’m sure I could give you a rub that would ease some of your tension.’

‘I think having your hands on my body is more likely to increase rather than decrease my tension,’ he said, with the faint smile that turned her insides to marshmallow.

She cleared her throat of a tiny obstruction. In the background she was vaguely aware of Pierre, moving to and fro from the kitchen to the table. ‘So…what sort of things do you normally do to unwind after a hard day at the office?’ she asked.

From his bland expression she knew he was going to tease her again. ‘Well…I find flirting with a warmly receptive woman very relaxing.’

‘Then you should soon be a positive puddle of contentment,’ she responded, equally bland.

His quick grin was white and wolfish. ‘I already feel myself melting. And what do you like to do to relax, Eve?’

‘Oh, read, sew, cook…’ she said demurely. She lowered her lashes and slowly lifted them again. ‘Make love…’

‘Interesting. I usually find that the act of sex has the opposite effect,’ he murmured, topping her with stunning ease. ‘I don’t feel in the least relaxed when I’m inside a woman’s body. I’m all edgy and agitated, and every muscle feels explosively hot and tight with urgency…’ He paused to take a swallow of whisky, enjoying the way her violet eyes widened and the pulse at the base of her bare throat kicked up a storm. ‘But perhaps the feelings are very different for a woman…’

Regan hoped not! She mastered the impulse to throw herself on top of him and demand that he demonstrate right there and then.

She gave a blasé shrug of her slender shoulders instead. ‘Men and women aren’t so very different—’

‘Honey, if you think that, then you must have skipped human biology in high school,’ he interrupted drolly.

In fact her mother had removed her from class whenever there had been a danger she might be contaminated by sex education disguised as legitimate learning.

‘I took Classics rather than Sciences,’ she retaliated. ‘But I meant in terms of having equal sexual needs and desires.’

‘Equal but different,’ he agreed. ‘I don’t suppose my sexual fantasies are the same as yours.’

He sounded so smugly certain she immediately wanted to take him down a peg or two. ‘Which is not to say yours are any better than mine!’

He almost choked on the dregs of his whisky as a chuckle rumbled up from his chest. ‘If I show you mine will you show me yours?’

Her blank response prompted him to continue. ‘Didn’t you ever play doctors and nurses as a kid?’

‘I was an only child.’

‘And? Surely there was some chubby little charmer in the neighbourhood who suggested disappearing into the nearest wardrobe with his play-stethoscope and handy torch?’

‘If he had, he’d have found himself without a head.’

‘So you were an aggressive, assertive little girl?’ he speculated, looking deeply intrigued.

‘I was very biddable and angelic,’ she said primly, using a straight face to imply that her truth was actually an outrageous lie. ‘But my mother was extremely vigilant where the seven deadly sins were concerned.’

‘Thereby not giving you much of a chance to be anything else,’ he guessed with uncomfortably swift perception.

‘I’m sure I still have my trusty halo here somewhere,’ she said, delicately patting her fingertips down the side of her dress.

‘Somewhat tarnished by now, I suppose?’ he drawled, his gaze following the taunting trail.

‘Oh, I take it out every now and then and give it a good polish,’ she said, exhilarated by her newfound ability to hold her own against his quick wit.

‘And groom your golden wings?’

‘No wings,’ she dimpled, ‘but I do have a pitchfork in my other dress.’

‘Ahh…a woman of dangerous contradictions. I see my first act should not have been to kiss your hand but to pat you down for concealed weapons.’

She spread her arms in graceful offering. ‘Feel free to do so now; I won’t hold it against you.’

‘Not even if I beg?’ As a laugh gurgled in her throat his eyes flicked across to the elevated dining area, where Pierre was placing a bottle of Krug champagne into a silver ic-ebucketon the table, next to a covered chafing dish. He drained his glass and set it down. ‘It looks as if Pierre has served up. Shall we?’

Two elegant place-settings were angled next to each other at the head of the oval table; the overhead down-lights were dimmed, and the dancing flame of a slender candle was dully reflected in the burnished surface of the wood. A sheaf of the palest pink roses in a fan-shaped hand-blown vase complemented the oval white place-mats gleaming with silver and crystal.

Adam politely said something about washing his hands, and followed Pierre briefly into the kitchen. When he returned Regan was still standing behind the chair at the head of the oval table, her hands balled by her sides, her face mantled with a light flush that made him eye her thoughtfully. As he approached she drew back the chair and invited him to be seated with a tilt of her head.

‘Usurping my gentlemanly duties?’ he murmured, accepting the courtesy with a lazy smile, and Regan picked up the white damask napkin from beside his plate and snapped out the starched folds to drape it across his lap. ‘When I told Pierre that we wouldn’t need him for the rest of the evening, I envisaged that I would be waiting on you,’ he added.

‘I thought you might feel in the mood to be pampered,’ said Regan, unfolding her fist and casually laying another item on top of his napkin.

He glanced down, and she was elated to see the ripple of shock glaze his features. His eyelids drooped and the hard jaw slackened and it was several exhilarating heartbeats before he regained sufficient mastery of his expression to hike up a mocking eyebrow.

‘Misplaced something, Eve?’ He lifted the wisp of black lace above the level of the table, dangling it from his crooked finger.

‘Not at all,’ she drawled. His eyes were irresistibly drawn to the outline of her hips and she made the most of it, sliding her bottom onto the padded chair with provocative slowness and squirming to make herself comfortable.

‘Tease!’ His soft accusation was redolent with masculine appreciation as he watched the performance.

Her dress slid against her bare skin and the slight coolness between her legs made her feel dangerously vulnerable, especially when her knee brushed his under the table. She pressed her quivering thighs together, excited by her daring. It felt so good to be so thoroughly bad that she wondered why she hadn’t tried it years ago.

He danced the swatch of lace on his crooked finger. ‘Then what’s this? Some form of nouvelle cuisine appetiser designed to stimulate my jaded palate?’

It was her turn to look glazed as he dropped the skimpy black panties onto his gold-rimmed white plate and picked up his fork to lightly stir the frothy lace.

‘I must admit, they do look good enough to eat.’ He twirled the fork into the silky fabric, winding it up as if it was an exotic form of pasta.

‘Adam—no!’ she squeaked, clapping her hands to her mouth to contain her appalled laughter. She hadn’t expected such an obvious sophisticate to possess such a mischievous sense of humour.

He paused, looking wickedly crestfallen. ‘You don’t wear edible panties?’ he asked.

She had seen them in novelty gift shops and thought them embarrassingly tacky. ‘Certainly not!’

Her scandalised denial made his mouth twitch. ‘Then I suppose I’ll have to settle for whatever Pierre has rustled up,’ he said, calmly plucking the panties off his fork and tucking them casually into his breast pocket. He lifted the domed lid of the chafing dish to reveal a fragrant pile of steaming stir-fried vegetables burnished with a sesameflecked sauce. ‘Will you have some?’

Regan tore her eyes away from the lace frothing out of his pocket. ‘No, I don’t think so…’ She watched him heap a generous serving of the vegetables onto his plate. ‘Are you a vegetarian?’

He shook his head as he poured Krug into two longstemmed glasses of Edinburgh lead-crystal. ‘I asked Pierre to prepare something that would digest easily. I know a meal is considered the conventional prelude to seduction, but I don’t think one should make love on an overly full stomach. Do you?’

The glass of champagne he handed her nearly slipped through her fingers. ‘I—I never really thought about it…’

‘You mean you usually just act on your natural instincts—I like that in a woman.’ His approving look was transferred to his food as he savoured it with all his senses. ‘Mmm…this is good. Here. Try a taste.’ He held out a piece of glazed carrot on his fork and Regan automatically leaned forward to take it in her mouth.

‘Good?’ he asked, tempting her with another offering, this time of succulently crisp green pepper.

The sticky sauce was sweet, yet tart, and hotly spicy on the tongue. ‘Scrumptious,’ she admitted, her eyes half closing with bliss as he trailed the tines of his fork from her moisture-glossed lower lip. The gentle scraping against the soft pad of flesh sent a little shiver down her spine.

‘Are you sure you won’t have some?’

‘Well…maybe a little.’ She yielded to his culinary seduction, deciding that tonight no temptation was worth resisting.

As they ate Adam kept the conversation to light, entertaining subjects that rarely threatened to get too personal, but the look in his eyes was extremely personal and with every bite Regan was made more aware of the fact that he was a man and she was a woman—and that he had her panties in his pocket. Her daring tease had had the desired effect, and Adam was making no secret of his gently simmering arousal. He watched her mouth as she ate and her eyes as she sipped at her champagne; he watched the way her small hands balanced the solid silver cutlery and how her throat rippled when she swallowed; he seemed to find special fascination in the delicate skin that stretched across her collarbone and the movement of her breasts against her dress as she gestured and spoke.

Unused to being the focus of such concentrated masculine attention, Regan found herself increasingly responsive to the charged atmosphere created by his cool wit and hot, knowing looks. Just looking at him was like plugging directly into an electrical circuit—her whole body hummed with a pleasurable buzz of nervous anticipation. She noticed the easy flexibility in his strong wrists as his scarred hands tipped the heavy champagne bottle, the sexy lines that amusement carved in his taut cheeks and the muscle that jumped in his jaw when he mentally withdrew to brood on some private thought.

She was so caught up in her heightened self-awareness that when Adam finally pressed his napkin against his mouth all she could think of was how it would feel if he pressed her to those firm lips…

She found out when he suddenly threw the rumpled napkin down on his empty plate and with a rough sound of impatience reached over to jerk her out of her chair, tumbling her across his lap.

‘And now you can make good on that promise,’ he growled, supporting her slender back with one powerful arm as his other hand cupped her squirming hip, forcing her soft bottom against the bunched muscles of his thighs.

Her startled cry of alarm had made her breathless. ‘What promise?’ she gasped, her head falling back against his shoulder as she recognised she was helpless against his strength, even had she wanted to struggle…

‘This one,’ he rasped, silking his hand up under her dress, over the tops of her stockings, to stroke the satiny skin of her inner thighs, his fingertips drifting so close to the core of her feminine heat that she felt the fierce electrical jolt of his imaginary penetration.

Regan instinctively snapped her legs together, her squeak of shock smothered by his mouth coming hard down on hers, plundering her senses with a ruthless expertise that left her weak and panting.

He kissed her until she thought that her head was going to explode and her heart accelerate out of her chest. This was no coy flirtation—his forceful kisses were in brazen earnest. And after a slightly clumsy start Regan abandoned herself to his miraculous passion, splinters of delight cascading through her senses. His tongue slid in and out of her mouth, deftly stroking her in ways that made her twist feverishly in his lap, seeking even more intimate contact, sliding her arms around his neck and running her fingers up the back of his scalp to sift through his luxuriant dark hair, tugging at it in her eagerness to experience everything he had to offer.

But it still wasn’t enough—he was too controlled and she needed more, much more—so she leaned hungrily into his devouring kisses, using her teeth and tongue to encourage him to stop holding back, to be rougher, more reckless…

He refused to co-operate, and she ran a hand down the side of his face, over his gritty jaw and down his flawed throat to his open collar, where she ripped blindly at the buttons to gain access to that tantalising strip of hair-roughened chest. Under the dark mat of hair his skin felt smooth and hot to her fingertips, and she curled her nails into the resilient wall of flesh, revelling in the way his muscles bunched and rippled at the warning prick of five tiny daggers.

He grunted, his knuckles digging into her soft flesh as he flexed the hand trapped between her clenched thighs, forcing it gradually higher until his thumb brushed against the soft nest of hair protecting her femininity.

He broke the kiss and her head fell back against his shoulder. He bit at her exposed throat and then suckled at the glowing red marks. ‘You’re so incredibly hot for me,’ he rasped as her sultry need irradiated the torrid, enclosed space between her thighs, misting the tip of his thumb. ‘So ready for me…’

Had there been an odd note of surprise in his gloating words? ‘Isn’t that what you wanted?’ she managed threadily.

‘What I want from a woman and what I get are not always the same thing,’ he murmured, moving his thumb the infinitesimal distance to final contact and watching her violet eyes bloom with colour so vibrant and intense that it was beyond the palette of any artist. ‘But you may be unique in that respect. You’re not going to have to fake a thing with me, are you, Eve?’ This time his purring voice was purely triumphant.

‘You’re hot for me, too,’ she countered, flattening her hand over his steamy chest.

He bent and licked her mouth. ‘Hot and hard,’ he conceded in an inflammatory whisper, moving his hips so that she felt the explicit truth of his words rubbing against her bottom.

He continued to kiss her with the same, slow, teasing rhythm with which he controlled the delicate movements of his thumb. Only when he felt her quivering thighs relax and her hips begin to lift towards his tantalising touch did he withdraw his hand to cup her breast, his fingers finding and moulding the stiff nipple through the fine fabric, drawing it out to an exquisite peak of sensitivity.

‘Adam…’ Regan’s protest was a soft moan as she squeezed her thighs together, trying to ease the burning ache created by the loss of his vital touch at the core of her femininity.

‘Eve…’ He said something else that she didn’t hear over the thunderous roar of her blood, and when his arms braced, gently yet inexorably easing her away from his body, a brief battle ensued that left him smouldering with sensual amusement.

‘I said…I think it’s time we adjourned to the bedroom while we can both still walk,’ Adam said, his hands firm on her narrow waist as he rose with her struggling figure and set her squarely on her feet. ‘I’d prefer to finish this in the luxury and comfort of a well-sprung bed…wouldn’t you?’

His smile was mildly taunting, as if he sensed how close she had been to ravishing him right there in his chair.

Finish this? What if she didn’t want to finish it? What if she never wanted to relinquish this glorious feeling of voluptuous well-being?

‘Shall we…?’ He turned her gently in the direction of the bedroom and invited her company with a spurring little pat on the bottom that ended in a lingering caress.

In spite of her turmoil Regan remembered to snatch up her beaded bag as they passed the couch, hugging it to her fast-beating heart as she walked down the wide hall and into the big bedroom which she had found so intimidating. Someone had already been in to turn on the recessed lights and fold back the corner of the dark bedcover to display an inviting expanse of lustrous black silk. Pierre, setting up the final scene for seduction, thought Regan as she noticed how some of the lights were angled to pool on the bed, making it appear to float above the pale carpet.

Adam was emptying his trouser pockets, placing the contents on the top of a tall dresser. He flicked open the remaining buttons of his shirt and reached for a nearby switch on the wall, illuminating an adjoining bathroom that Regan had failed to notice earlier, so intent had she been on the bed.

‘You won’t mind if I take a shower first, to rinse off the grime of the day?’ He stripped his shirt down his arms and tossed it onto a chair by the wall, her lacy panties still decorating the pocket.

He stretched unselfconsciously, enjoying the freedom of his own skin, and Regan lost any chance of making a polite reply.

His nipples were dark brown against the lightness of his skin, mounted on slabs of muscle which were covered by a thicket of dark silky hair flecked here and there with rare strands of silver. The scars that marked his throat ended in a shiny swirl just below his collarbone, the rest of him—as far as she could see—was well nigh perfect. His belly was flat, with hints of corrugated muscle that flexed and rippled along his front and sides when he lifted his arms. The hair on his chest formed an inverted triangle, narrowing abruptly to a thin, downy line that ended well above his indented navel. In the huge mirror on the far wall Regan could see the reflection of his long, lean, unblemished back. He had already started to unbuckle his plain black leather belt and her eyes dipped helplessly to the obvious thrust of his arousal against the expensive black fabric of his trousers.