Christy McKellen – Good Girl (страница 1)
One week of pleasure...with an Italian bad boy!
Good girl Juno Darlington-Hume is getting a sexual education in this steamy second installment of Christy McKellen’s Sexy Little Secrets miniseries.
I’ve always been in my famous sisters’ shadows. I’m the smart one. Not the sexy one. Not the beautiful one. But a PhD won’t satisfy me in bed. And I can’t satisfy anyone else if I don’t know what I’m doing. So I’m ready to learn the secrets of physical desire...
Italian playboy Alessandro Ricci is just the expert I’m looking for. Tall, dark and drop-dead gorgeous, Alessandro has a reputation for providing absolute pleasure. He’s agreed to spend one week showing me
From magical Florence to the golden Tuscan countryside, he’s taking me to ever-higher peaks of ecstasy, letting me get closer than any other woman. Soon our “no emotions” deal is turning into something I never expected: intense connection in every way imaginable. I’m falling hard! But when I learn he’s tipped off the paparazzi to our every location, I have to wonder—was he just using me to save his bad reputation?
Sexy. Passionate. Bold. Discover Harlequin DARE, a new line of fun, edgy and sexually explicit romances for the fearless female.
Formerly a video and radio producer, CHRISTY McKELLEN now spends her time writing provocative, passionate, seductive romance. When she’s not writing she can be found enjoying life with her husband and three children, walking for pleasure and researching other people’s deepest secrets and desires. Christy loves to hear from readers. You can get hold of her at christymckellen.com.
Good Girl
Christy McKellen
ISBN: 978-1-474-08691-2
GOOD GIRL
© 2019 Christy McKellen
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
For Lycia, godmother extraordinaire.
Thank you for being there.
Contents
ALESSANDRO RICCI IS phenomenal in bed.
At least that’s what I’ve heard other people say about him. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t know, for two reasons: firstly, I’m a virgin, and secondly, he refused to sleep with me when I asked him to.
It wasn’t my finest hour.
The first time we met was at my father’s fiftieth birthday party. Even amongst the plethora of filthy rich, gregariously glamorous socialites that had been invited he stood out like the Sirius star system on a clear night.
I was making my way, head ducked, through the throng of partygoers to a quiet corner to hide out for a while, needing a break from the excruciating, polite conversation that my bully of a father demanded I make with his friends and associates, when my shoulder bumped against something solid and unyielding. Turning to flash whomever it was a look of apology, my gaze locked with a dazzling pair of eyes and my whole world came to a screeching halt, air whooshing from my lungs and a wave of heat rushing up my neck to flood my face.
You see Alessandro Ricci isn’t just handsome—he’s
And his body. It was enthralling to behold. Broad shoulders tapering down to narrow hips and long, athletic legs. He was a good few inches taller than me, and I’m no shorty, so I guessed he was well over six foot. He was wearing an exquisitely tailored suit, which clung to his body like it loved him, and a crisp white shirt open at the collar to reveal a V of tanned olive skin and just the merest promise of dark, downy hair on his muscular chest.
If you asked me to produce an image of the picture-perfect male figure, he’s exactly what I’d draw.
Caught in that moment, like a wraith between worlds, I found it intensely difficult to look at him—he was that dazzling—but at the same time I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
He in turn looked back at me—or rather assessed me—as if he was stripping me naked with his eyes.
Those incredible eyes.
It makes my body rush with a prickly sort of heat just to think about them now. They were a bright, iridescent green that seemed to glow with a deep, secret knowledge. As though he knew exactly what to do to me to turn me into a gibbering wreck. Instinctively I knew they’d be things I’d never experienced before. Hot, dirty, sinful things.
My whole body throbbed with an unfamiliar sensation that made me clench my trembling hands into fists in an attempt to centre myself.
No one has ever made me feel like that before. Not even Adam.
I’m sure it’s something Alessandro must do to all women, though. According to the people I’ve asked about him, he’s reputedly a world-class seducer and an incorrigible playboy but, even so, when he smiled at me like that it made me feel somehow special and most unusually—attractive. I’ve always been compared unfavourably to my beautiful older sisters—I know I appear washed out and pale in comparison to them, like a photo that’s faded in the sun—and this knowledge has rather knocked my confidence when it comes to attracting men.
I do have one outstanding feature, though—my hair, which reaches all the way down to the middle of my back and is a warm chestnut colour. But, honestly, I’ve never really liked it. It makes me stand out too much. I like to be able to position myself quietly on the sidelines and watch what’s going on around me rather than thrusting myself right into the middle of things like Maya and April do.
I know—logically, and away from Sandro’s mesmerising charisma—that the whole encounter had been a purely physical reaction I’d had to his pheromones, rather than a cerebral connection. I’m usually attracted to someone for their intelligence and enterprise rather than something as superficial as their looks—but it hasn’t stopped me from still wanting things from him.
Wanting him to do things
What exactly those things are, I’m not entirely sure, but I’d bet my first-class degree he’d know exactly what to do to push my buttons. He certainly had that air about him, as if he’d been born with the ability to give women pleasure and was more than happy to utilise it.
The scientist in me makes me suspect he’d make a fascinating anthropological study subject.
Anyway, after I finally managed to pull myself away from his tractor-beam gaze, I hid away in the nearest bathroom and attempted to bring my racing heartbeat under control. Staring at my flushed face in the mirror, I thought about the way he’d looked at me with such intense interest that I’d felt the sensual effect of it all the way down deep inside me. It had made my blood thrum and my skin goose-bump and I’d had a sudden impulsive craving to master that skill myself. As I reflected on how powerful having this ability would make me feel, a germ of an idea began to form in my mind.