Golden eyes smouldering like the heart of a fire, Rashad set her back from him and removed the gossamer fine silk slip she wore. ‘So many unnecessary layers,’ he complained thickly.

Still clad in bra and briefs, Tilda reddened, wildly conscious of his appraisal as he shed his uniform. Watching in guilty fascination, she thought how beautiful he was from the smooth golden skin of his wide, sculpted shoulders to the hard, muscular breadth of his chest and his long, lean, hair-roughened thighs. Her admiring scrutiny jolted to a sudden halt just below the low-slung waistband of his boxers, where the explicit outline of his bold maleness was all too obvious to her disconcerted eyes. Hastily she glanced away, a tiny frisson of mingled response and alarm gripping her.

‘Come here,’ he urged.

‘Can we do this really slowly?’ Tilda asked abruptly.

Surprise and amusement made Rashad smile. With quiet confidence he let his long brown fingers feather through her pale silky ringlets in a soothing motion. ‘What are you scared of? Surely not of me?’

Tilda went pink, mortified that she had let herself down with that nervous and all-too-revealing question. ‘Don’t be daft.’

Unhooking her bra with deft assurance, Rashad vented a husky sound of satisfaction and lifted his hands to cup the full, firm mounds of creamy flesh that tumbled free. ‘I promise that you will know only pleasure in this bed tonight.’

Tilda remained tense. ‘I’m not as experienced as you seem to think.’

His stubborn jaw line tautened, for he did not want to think of anything that might awaken thoughts of the men with whom she had betrayed his trust. He shut out that statement and wiped the very memory of it from his mind. If he let anger touch him again he feared that his promise of a new beginning would become empty, meaningless words and so he made no answer. Instead, he bent his head to kiss her into silence again and he stroked the delicate coral pink buds that crowned her breasts with skilful fingers.

The liquid sensation at the juncture of Tilda’s thighs became a knot of almost painful anticipation. She sucked in an audible breath, but a gasp of disconcertion was wrenched from her when he pulled her down across his thighs, though she had no thought of protest. He used his tongue to lash a lush, pouting nipple with wicked expertise. He followed that bold caress with the gliding graze of his teeth, tormenting the tender peaks into rigid, straining points.

‘Rashad…’ she gasped, her hips squirming in a forlorn attempt to assuage the throb of need he had awakened.

‘You like that?’ Venting a soft laugh of satisfaction, Rashad framed her face with lean brown fingers to hold her still. ‘I think you will like everything I do.’

He tasted her swollen mouth with erotic urgency and eased a hand beneath her hips to remove her last garment. Suddenly aware that she was totally naked, Tilda tensed and there was a hint of insecurity in the way her tongue twinned with his. Rising with her in his strong arms, he tumbled her gently down amongst the pillows. Removing his boxer shorts, he joined her on the bed. His rawly appreciative gaze feasted on the pale rounded contours of her shapely body. She lay there, her entire skin surface buzzing with a wanton response that not even an attack of almost paralysing shyness could kill.

‘I want to please you,’ Rashad muttered huskily. ‘Just as you will wish to please me.’

‘Please you?’ she whispered uncertainly.

He took her hand and closed her fingers round that part of him that she had rigorously avoided looking at. The size of him dismayed her, even while the offer of such blatant intimacy fascinated her. Her face flamed at the iron-hard heat and satin smoothness of his rigid shaft. Uncertain though she was, curiosity took over. When he rested back against the pillows and groaned with uninhibited pleasure, answering heat slivered through her and centred on the damp, tender heart of her.

‘How am I doing?’ Tilda whispered shakily

‘Too well for my control.’ Rashad laced possessive fingers in her hair and devoured her luscious mouth in an almost punitive kiss while he spread her back against the pillows. He skimmed teasing fingers through the pale blond curls below her belly and she shivered, madly, wantonly aware of the hot, moist heat of that hidden place. He found the tenderest spot of all and she moaned and pushed her flushed face into his shoulder, alternately taut and melting with delight in response. She was wildly sensitive to his erotic skill. Her head moved restively back and forth, her spine incurving in a helpless attempt to release the unbearable tension rising inside her. He tested the slick, wet heat of her with a single finger. Consumed by the sheer force of her own response, she cried out, her senses scattered with need.

She had never dreamt that she could want and crave as she did at that moment. ‘Rashad…please!’

But only when the ache for fulfilment had become a torment did he angle her back, sliding lithely and surely between her thighs. She was frantic by that stage, urging him on with eager, clutching fingers. With an earthy sound of male pleasure he eased a path into her delicate passage, restraining himself with difficulty as she was very tight.

‘You feel marvellous,’ he breathed raggedly.

Tilda was past speech, all her needs pent up in the violence of the hunger he had aroused and the astonishing newness of what he was making her feel. Only when he deepened his penetration did she feel discomfort. It took her entirely by surprise and was swiftly followed by a sharp stab of pain as he completed his possession. That final pang wrung an involuntary cry from her lips.

‘Tilda…’In bewilderment, Rashad angled back from her and stared down at her. For a split second he had thought he felt a barrier, but he could not bring himself to voice what he believed would be a foolish question. Of course she could not have been a virgin. Of course it must have been his imagination. ‘Have I hurt you?’

‘No…no,’ she mumbled, scarcely knowing what she was saying for she was not in the mood for a postmortem. All momentary discomfort now forgotten, her body was tingling and aching with desire. She was on the thrilling edge of a sensual precipice, her excitement eager and ready to fly high again. That quickening sensation of overwhelming need made her feverishly impatient and she arched up to him in a wholly instinctive movement of encouragement.

With a roughened groan, Rashad succumbed to her provocative invitation and embedded himself again in the sweet oblivion of her body. The hot, virile glide of his flesh within hers submerged her in a sensual world of the purest pleasure. Enthralled by the discovery, she rose up to him and he thrust again. The potent masculine rhythm that he set increased her hunger for him, banishing all awareness of everything but the excitement he had unleashed. At a delirious peak of ravenous need, she reached a glorious climax and abandoned herself to the sweet convulsions of writhing pleasure that engulfed her.

Afterwards, enveloped in a heavy languor, she wondered abstractedly if she would ever move again. Inside she felt like warm, melting honey and buoyantly happy. She was amazed by how close she now felt to Rashad. He kissed her slow and deep and then rolled over, carrying her with him. Content to be held, she snuggled into him, revelling in the achingly familiar scent of his skin. Beneath her cheek, his heart had a steady, reassuring beat.

With a rueful sigh, Rashad eased her up level with him and subjected her to the onslaught of frowning dark golden eyes. ‘I hurt you…I’m sorry.’

‘You noticed, didn’t you? But you are so stubborn,’ Tilda murmured rather tenderly, running a slim forefinger along the taut line of his passionate mouth. ‘So stubborn that you won’t put two and two together and come up with the right answer. Well, it seems that I’ll have to do it for you. I was a virgin.’

Rashad frowned down at her in disbelief. ‘That’s not possible,’ he muttered half under his breath.

Tilda pulled herself up against the pillows and winced at the unexpected pang of tenderness that reminded her of how intimately entwined they had been just minutes earlier.

In an equally sudden movement, Rashad sat up, dislodging the bedding. He went very still when he saw the evidence of her lost innocence on the white sheet. He was so stunned to appreciate that he had not been mistaken in his suspicions that he was silenced. There could have been no other men in her life, not even one other man, or even a single serious affair. It should have been impossible but he looked down into her clear, expectant eyes and knew it was not, for there was fearlessness in that look that challenged him to disbelieve her again.

‘So now you have to explain yourself…and a little humility would go a long way,’ Tilda told him gently, positively basking in a sense of power and willing to offer helpful hints. ‘Are you just a paranoiacally jealous guy? Because I really do need to know, if that’s the problem.’

‘That’s not the problem,’ Rashad breathed stiltedly.

‘I want to see that file-’

‘That is impossible.’ Rashad could now imagine nothing more disastrous than to show her the sleazy file that had destroyed his faith in her. What an insult that would be to add to the original injury!

‘You don’t have a choice.’

‘I have wronged you. I have misjudged you.’ His head was pounding, he could barely think straight. He was fighting to absorb and contain the shock of what he had just found out. But he could not yet move beyond it because the fallout from that misjudgement five years back had been too great. ‘I can only ask for your forgiveness.’

Tilda was seriously dissatisfied with that wooden response. She did not know exactly what she had expected from him but an ongoing refusal to do as she asked was not acceptable. ‘The file?’