"I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble."

As he took her hand and kissed it, he snagged her gaze, and Trish felt a shiver of awareness zigzag through her body and zero in on the sensitive spot between her legs.

"No trouble," he murmured, the heat she could see in his dark eyes leaving her in no doubt he knew exactly the effect he had on her. "It will be my pleasure."

Retaining his hold on her hand, he began to caress the palm with the pad of his thumb, and Trish forgot to breathe. He was so handsome, so sexy, and she was so damn wet. And if he asked her again, she had her answer all ready.

"Ah, here we are," he said, as the chauffeur drew into the curb and then got out and opened the passenger door.

Georges took Trish's bag from the trunk and set it down on the sidewalk. "Do you wish me to escort mademoiselle inside, m'sieu?"

"No, Georges. I'll take care of that."

"It's okay," Trish interrupted. "It's not that heavy. I can manage."

Before she could grab the bag, he'd beaten her to it and was heading for the door. "You have a key for this apartment, or do we need to check in with the concierge?"

Trish fumbled in her purse. "I have it here. My friend gave it to me the last time she came home. The apartment's on the third floor, but she said there's no elevator. You don't have to come up. I'll be fine."

She might have guessed she was wasting her breath. He was already halfway up the first flight, and she hurried to catch up.

By the time they reached the top floor and he put her luggage down outside apartment 3B, she was having trouble catching her breath, and he was breathing quite normally.

"Get lots of exercise, do we?" she muttered, shooting him a weak smile.

Taking the key from her hand, he grinned, opened the door, and ushered her and her bags inside. But instead of leaving, he pushed the door closed with his foot, took her purse and dropped it on the floor, and pulled her into his arms.

He began to kiss her, a delicious, forceful kiss that had her head spinning and robbed the breath from her body. His tongue tangled with hers and his teeth nipped her lips, but it was the most wonderful, exciting kiss she'd ever shared-a kiss that consumed every fiber of her being and made her shake with needs she couldn't put into words.

"I thought I could wait, but I can't," he said urgently as he pushed up her dress and pulled down her panties.

She was already wet, but the instant his fingers slid between her folds and squeezed her clit she felt another rush of moisture.

"Can you spread your legs a little?"

Fueled by the same need, she kicked off her panties and did as he asked, and he slid two fingers up inside her.

"Feel good?"

"Oh, yes." She closed her eyes and began to ride his fingers. "Feels fantastic," she said. But that was a lie. What he was doing to her wasn't nearly enough. She wanted to feel that big cock of his sliding up inside her and-

"But not quite so good as the real thing, hmm?" he said, reading her mind.

"No," she agreed, opening her eyes and wondering what the hell she thought she was doing, getting finger-fucked by a stranger. "But maybe next time."

"No, now. Just give me a minute." Removing his fingers, he plucked a condom from his wallet. After taking the condom out of the foil package, he dropped his pants and slipped it over his erection. Then he lifted her up. "Wrap your legs around my waist."

Trish did as he asked, feeling his aroused penis nudge against her as he positioned her slit over the tip and pushed inside.

He again captured her mouth and his tongue began doing a great imitation of what his cock was doing lower down. Trish had never been kissed like this before, or made love to quite this way. Every nerve, every fiber of her being was alive and demanding attention, and she was loving every moment of it.

Once he was all the way inside her, he withdrew and pushed in again, each time deeper than the time before, until she felt a gradual tightening…as if she were being slowly pushed to the edge of a cliff and was about to fall off.

But then suddenly, it happened. The world around her exploded, and the way he was slamming into her, she knew it was happening for him, too. Until, with one, final thrust it was over. He still held her and he was still kissing her, but gradually the earth stopped moving, and she let her legs slide down his body until her feet touched firm ground.

"Wow!" she said softly when he released her mouth and began pressing kisses over her face. "That was really something."

"That," he whispered against her lips, "was just the appetizer." He cupped her face in his hands and pressed one last kiss against her bruised lips. "And now, chérie, much as I might wish otherwise, I really must go. I promise I'll return as quickly as I possibly can, yes?"

"Sure. See you later," she said, wanting to believe he'd be back, but still a tad uncertain.

He straightened his clothing and then left, closing the door behind him.

For a couple of seconds, Trish stayed where she was and stared at the closed door. Assuming he comes back, if that's the appetizer, then what's the main course? The friend he'd mentioned? Carl? Carlos? Something like that. She couldn't remember the name exactly.

She bent down and picked up her purse, but as her fingers closed around her discarded panties, she froze. The friend's name wasn't important, but what about his name?

She knew for sure she hadn't introduced herself, and she couldn't remember him doing so either. In fact, incredible and unbelievable as it might seem to the rest of the world, she'd taken her sexual inexperience one step further by allowing herself to be fucked by a total stranger. She didn't know his name, his phone number, his address, or anything else about him. He hadn't mentioned his company's name or the name of the company in Toronto. All she knew about him was that he owned an expensive black car and had a chauffeur called Georges. Then again, she didn't know that for sure. For all she knew, the car and driver both belonged to the company he worked for rather than him personally. They could also have been rented from one of those agencies that specialized in meeting executives at airports.

Feeling like a prize fool, Trish carried her things into the bedroom and stripped off the rest of her clothes. On the negative side, she'd been had by a very charming and handsome opportunist and she wanted to kick herself for being so gullible. She wasn't some wide-eyed teenager, for heaven's sake. She was a woman who'd just turned thirty-she ought to have known better than to fall for all that high-powered testosterone and TLC. On the other hand, the man had saved her the cost and the hassle of finding transportation from the airport into the city, he'd had the good manners to use a condom, and he'd taught her more about the pleasures of sex in the past few hours than she would have learned by herself in a lifetime.

"Hey, it wasn't all bad," she murmured, allowing herself a self-satisfied smile as she emptied her suitcase on the bed and looked for the bag containing her toilet articles. "In fact, some parts of it were beyond great…even if I don't know Sir Galahad's real name."

She was tired from the overnight trip, but still too excited to think about sleeping. She hung a dress, a jacket and a couple of skirts in the closet to prevent them being crumpled to the point of needing a trip to the drycleaners, then she picked up her toilet bag and headed for the bathroom.

The shower water was hot the way she liked it and had one of those massaging attachments designed to iron out the kinks. She turned the massage dial up to the max, lathered her body with shower gel and after ten minutes under the hot spray and less than one under the cold, she felt almost as good as new.