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He had the advantage of knowing exactly what she looked like without thereat painters of sensuous female nudes

Not Rubens, but Renoir, he decided, his i back to his Paris apartainst the disordered pillows, her smooth skin rosy with a delicious warmth, her opulent breasts fir with pleasure as he played with theht of the la body as he wrestled her into eager subht, sultry heat

He felt the hot stirring in his groin with a savage ae of predatory lust that powered his male desire to hunt, capture and dohts on his oal

‘Why can’t I?’ he challenged, content for the e her naïve belief that she was in control, for the sheer anticipated pleasure of proving otherwise ‘You left your door wide-open, so youme to follow you…’

Veronica’s fingers contracted against her scalp in instinctive rejection of the Freudian possibility that she had wanted him to invade her private space

‘I left it open for the breeze—’

‘And whatever the breeze blows in,’ he pointed out, his lazy smile belied by his watchful intent ‘It’s not as if I’er As you can see, I’m just the boy from next door’

His darkening eyes swept over her and Veronica was suddenly made aware of her upraised arms and unconsciously provocative pose She wrenched her hands down froled strands of hair

‘Or is that the proble hi inside in brazen defiance of her expressed command ‘You’re embarrassed to admit that you had a wild sex romp with the boy next door’

‘You sound like a cheap tabloid newspaper headline,’ she snapped, instinctively jabbing at the place she thought he would be most vulnerable

‘I’ve just had a crash course,’ he said with a gri but cheap when they’re shelling out for sleaze’

‘Well, thankfully that’s outside my experience’

‘And what’s inside your experience? Picking up anonyners in bars for—well, ould you prefer to call it…a “torrid night of passion”?’

Veronica clenched her hands at her sides Did he really think she was that shamefully indiscriminate? ‘I—you—’

‘Yes, you and I,’ he cut through her faltering atteether And now you seehtens you more, Veronica—the fact that I’ure tucked away in your memories, or the fact that I’ve turned out to be someone you can’t just walk away from?’