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How To Host A Seduction

Harlequin Enterprises Limited

Chapter One

Making love to Ellen Talbot had just proven what Christopher Sinclair had suspected since first meeting this remarkable romance editor at a friend's wedding-no woman had ever affected him like she did. No woman had ever come close.

Ellen left his heart thundering, his muscles vibrating so hard that he collapsed against the sheets, unable to do much more than press his shell-shocked erection into the cradle of her warm thighs and try to catch his breath. His thoughts raced with the singularity of the event and just how shattering making love to her had been. Their first time. Damn.

Locking his arms around her, Christopher savored the feel of her bare curves, her long, long legs tangled with his, their skin clinging in a thin sheen of sweat. He'd never even realized he could feel the way he felt when he was with her.

The lack had nothing to do with experience. He'd just celebrated his thirty-third birthday and could honestly say he'd lived most of those years, had explored the challenges life tossed his way and added a few variations of his own. He'd experienced his share of incredible lovemaking and mind-blowing orgasms with some very lovely ladies.

Not one of those women had ever left him like this, so demolished he could only hang on tight until he recovered.

And he needed to recover to gauge the effect he'd had on Ellen.

Pulling her closer, he inhaled the fresh scent of her hair, a shiny sheet of sable that cascaded over his arm and the pillow, cool silk to the touch. Her full breasts pressed against his chest, the tips he'd explored so thoroughly earlier sealed to his skin as if an extension of him. The lines had blurred. Christopher wasn't quite sure where he ended and Ellen began.

"Mmm." She breathed the sound on a sigh.

Even annihilated from the most awesome sex he'd ever had, Christopher managed a smile at the pleasure in her voice.

"Mmm, yourself," he said.

Forcing his fingers from where they'd been idly threading through her hair, he hooked a knuckle beneath her chin and coaxed her to look at him.

She lifted her gaze ... and his heart pounded impossibly harder. Her hazel eyes reminded him of a forest in autumn, a sultry, mysterious place where woodsy greens, browns and golds met in a striking clash of color he'd thought about often in the months since they'd started dating.

But now he found himself staring into eyes he didn't recognize, eyes that seemed more golden than before, more mysterious. Eyes that reflected how contented Ellen was. And damn if he didn't have the ridiculous urge to pound his chest in pride that he'd leveled her with their sex as much as she'd leveled him.

This was another singular sensation, and Christopher found himself grinning as her lashes feathered over those incredible eyes and she rested her cheek on his shoulder with another sigh, a breath that expelled across his skin in a soft burst.

He pressed a kiss to her brow, wanted to drift off with the scent of her filling his nostrils, to the whisper of her breathing. "Go to sleep. I want to wake you up with my mouth and make love to you while you're still half asleep."

Just the thought of this drowsy eyed beauty unfolding beneath him, of sinking into her moist heat in the quiet of late night, made his blood surge in a valiant effort at recovery.

But Ellen went rigid. The melting softness of her warm curves suddenly vanished, and before his orgasm-soaked brain could even register what was happening, she slid out of the bed.

"I never spend the night with anyone."

In one fluid move she stood, every glorious naked inch of her bathed in the silvery moonlight streaming through windows that overlooked the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

The sight of her, almost unreal with her long slim curves and pale loveliness, distracted him. By the time he'd thought to grab her, she was halfway across the room.

Christopher shook his head to clear it, then forced himself up on an elbow to watch her snag her hose from where he'd draped them over the armoire after he'd savored the pleasure of peeling them off her shapely legs.

"Really?" Here was an interesting turn of events. "Never?"

"Never," she shot back.

Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she sent it flowing down her back, then scooped up her cocktail dress from a chair. The black beads caught a moonbeam, glinted in the darkness. Every perfunctory motion belied the repletion she'd just demonstrated in his arms.

He recognized what was happening-Ellen was tossing up invisible walls and putting miles of distance between them.

"Why don't you ever spend the night with anyone, love?"

Plucking her bra from where it had landed on the floor, she glanced up at him from beneath that incredible fall of hair and said, "Relationship rule number one-Senators' daughters do not get caught sneaking out of anyone's bed the morning after."

Christopher watched her sashay toward the bathroom, an awesome display of moon-glazed skin and lithe motion, before she disappeared inside. The door closed. The lock clicked with a note of finality that echoed through his bedroom. Through him.

He sank back against the pillows, smiled. "Well, Ms. Talbot, damn good thing I'm not just anyone."

And he wasn't. He was a man who knew what he wanted.

Ellen.

As Senator Talbot's youngest daughter, she had to weigh consequences more carefully than a woman from a less visible family. He understood and respected her situation, which had meant easing into their relationship slowly. No problem. Ellen was definitely worth the wait. And three months of dating, and waiting, had only heightened the chemistry between them, had let them become acquainted through very imaginative foreplay.

But Christopher was also a man who'd made a career of seeing possibilities where others saw dead ends, of turning impossibilities into successes. The solution to this problem was a no-brainer. Just like always, he'd meet a challenge with a challenge, play the odds, take the risks and get what he wanted.

Ellen.

When she emerged from the bathroom, completely dressed and coolly distant, he was ready.

"Marry me."

She stopped short in the doorway, lifted her gaze, those fascinating eyes still glimmering with golden lights.

"Marry me, love."

She blinked as though he must be some sort of mirage and she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Marry you?"

"Yes."

She continued to stare, a frown slipping beneath her composure, the slightest crease between arched brows-a slip she'd never have made if not truly shocked by his proposal. "We've only been dating three months ... we've only slept together once."

"I'm ready to peel off that dress and go for round two."

That seemed to wake her up again. "Christopher!"

"We're right together." Covering the distance between them, he reached out to trace her lower lip, was pleased when she shivered in reply. "Do you doubt that after tonight?"

For an instant, she looked as if the wind had been knocked out of her, but then she backed away so fast she stumbled. He reached out to steady her, but she shrugged him off.

"You're crazy. No one gets married after sleeping together once. That's against all the rules."

He stared hard into those beautiful eyes, hoped she recognized how determined he was. "I'm not just anyone, love. And we need to establish right here and now that rules were meant to be broken."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from How To Host A Seduction by Jeanie London Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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