“What time is it?” she asked, disorientated by the darkness and Lucien’s nearness.

“Almost midnight.”

Sophie squinted at him. She’d been asleep for more than three hours. Oh God. She was in a sex club. Heaven only knew what was happening beneath her.

“Lucien. This is wrong. I shouldn’t be here.” Her voice came out hoarser than she’d expected.

He shook his head and disappeared for a few seconds, then returned with a tray. He placed it down on the bed next to her, then sat down alongside it.

“Eat. You must be hungry.”

Sophie glanced down at the array of food. Delicate sandwiches. Bowls of fruit. Chocolate truffles.

She looked up at Lucien again, wondering how he could expect her to sit there naked and snack. She was his PA. He was her boss.

“Is this how you welcome all new staff, Lucien? A trip to a sex club, a quick fumble, and a sandwich? It’s not very classy.”

She’d aimed to offend, but he just laughed off her rudeness.

“That wasn’t a fumble, Sophie. It was a prelude.”

She’d been half-considering eating a sandwich, but the idea lost its appeal at his words. “A prelude?”

He nodded and helped himself to a cherry from the bowl.

“A prelude.” He sank his teeth into the dark, glossy skin of the cherry and ripped the flesh from the stone.

There was always an element of surprise in conversations with Lucien; he was as unpredictable as quicksilver. Sophie watched him in silence and waited for more.

“I have a proposition for you.” He reached for another cherry.

Sophie shook her head. Where had her reality gone? She suddenly understood how Alice had felt when she’d tumbled down that rabbit hole. Had someone plucked her out of her own life and dropped her into a fantasy? She was naked in a sex club watching a Viking warrior suck on a cherry. This was not her average Tuesday evening. She couldn’t speak. She didn’t know any appropriate words.

“Stay with me this week.”

Whoa. She knew the answer to that one.

“What? No!” He might be gorgeous, but he was clearly crazy.

“Give me one good reason why not,” he said, then stretched out next to her on the bed and dangled another indecently big cherry over his mouth by the stalk.

“Because… because I don’t want to, for one thing.”

“Of course you do, you’re just afraid to admit it.” Lucien laughed and bit the cherry in half. “A better reason, please.”

Sophie shook her head. “You are the cockiest man I’ve ever met.”

“Yada yada yada.” He gestured for her to move on, and she stared at him, frustrated. She was trapped. Her clothes were strewn across the other side of the room, and the sheet was pinned beneath his body. Short of treating him to a strip show there was no getting away from this conversation, and he knew it perfectly well.

He turned big, innocent blue eyes on her. “Do you have a cat? Is that it? Is Mr. Tibbles going to die without you going home to feed him?”

She narrowed her eyes and looked away. “I don’t have a cat.”

“A dog, then? Two screaming kids?”

Sophie sighed and flopped back on the pillow, the sheet clutched under her arms. “It’s just me and Dan.”

“Who isn’t there.” The quiet starkness of his words stripped away Sophie’s anger and left her defenseless.

“Right. Let’s start this conversation again. Stay with me until Sunday.”

Sophie propped herself up on one elbow and turned to him.

“What for?”

His eyes slid to hers. “Because you owe it to yourself. Because you’re young, and beautiful, and there is so much more to sex than you’ve experienced so far. You deserve to know it all, to feel it all, and I want to be the one to show you.”

“Has it occurred to you that I might not want to know?”

He shook his head with a low, sexy laugh. “It’s occurred to me that you think you don’t want to know. But then I touch you, and you come alive.” He reached across and picked a peach from the tray. “Aren’t you curious, Sophie? Really, don’t you want to know?”

Convention decreed that Sophie should refuse, but his directness demanded the same candour from her. She couldn’t bring herself to lie, yet equally couldn’t allow herself to admit the truth.

Lucien turned the peach over in his hands, knowing full well that it was so much more than an innocent piece of fruit.

He trailed a fingertip down the curve of it, and he may as well have been stroking her bottom. He was doing it again, subtly infiltrating her thoughts. If he ever gave up his life as the king of a sex empire, he’d make a crack hot hypnotist.

“Stay because I want you to, Sophie.” He brought the peach up to his nose and inhaled deeply.

“Stay because I can make you feel better than anyone else ever has.” He put the peach to his mouth, closed his eyes, and sank his teeth in deep.

Sophie’s nipples stiffened beneath the sheet. She couldn’t deny it. He’d won. She wanted his mouth on her rather than that peach, but the words wouldn’t come out.

He propped himself up on his elbow, mirroring her pose, then offered the peach up to her lips, close enough for her to taste it. “Bite.”

She closed her eyes and obeyed his command.

“It tastes like you.” His words caressed her as she ate the soft flesh. “Sweet.” His fingers touched her mouth as she swallowed. “And tempting.” Sophie couldn’t stop herself. She opened her mouth and sucked his finger in, swirling the sweet peach juices around him with her tongue. When she opened her eyes, he slid his finger slowly out of her mouth and into his own.

“I like the taste of you,” he said. “Tell me you’ll stay.”

Sophie gave him the tiniest of nods. “I’ll stay,” she whispered, then cleared her throat. “I’ll stay,” she repeated, louder this time. “I want to stay with you, Lucien.”

Lucien’s answering smile was full of sexual promise, and in one swift movement he leaned over and rolled Sophie on top of him. He was fully clothed, and there were layers of bedding between them, but Sophie could still clearly feel his arousal pressing up into her stomach.

His hands swept down the length of her exposed spine, making her gasp. She was nude apart from her hold-up stockings, and Lucien wasted no time in helping himself.

He filled his hands with her backside. “Now that’s peachy,” he said, with a sidelong glance at the abandoned plate of fruit, then he snaked a hand around the back of her neck to pull her mouth down onto his kiss. Fireworks exploded in her gut as his tongue slid over hers and his hips rocked, hard into softness. She couldn’t help it, she opened her legs a little for him, and his fingers slid into the crevices of her backside. His other hand moved to cup her head against his.