Their eyes remained locked as the intense moment stretched, filled with emotions too complex for her to name. They formed in a deep knot of nameless yearning in her aching pelvis.
He flicked his wrists and caught hers, reversing the role of captor and captured as he jerked her down hard. Lily lost her grip on his shoulders and her elbows gave way. With a soft cry she lay there, her breasts crushed against him, her hair a flaming curtain that fell forward, brushing his chest and face, their own shadowed silken tent cutting out the outside world.
Holding her eyes, he tipped her over, bringing them to lie side by side.
‘You want this?’
She nodded and shivered as he slid his hand to her breast, the breath hissing through her nostrils as she hitched in a sharp breath of pleasure and closed her eyes.
‘I’m going to touch you.’ His words trickled over her like warm honey.
‘Where?’ she whispered back.
He smiled and flicked his tongue across her earlobe. ‘All over.’
‘Truly?’
‘Cross my heart.’ He took her hand and placed it on his chest. Only a thin rim of green remained as her dilated pupils expanded some more.
‘What will you do then?’
‘I’ll taste you.’
Her insides melted. ‘I love looking at you.’
The confession drew a throaty growl as he hauled her hard up against him and fitted his mouth to hers. His lips moved with sensuous skill across her parted lips. By the time his tongue plunged deep she was floating on a sensual sea of pleasure and longing.
He kissed as though he’d drain her. She ought to have been feeling empty, but she felt more alive than she ever had in her life. As she kissed him back, winding her slim arms tight around his neck, she revelled in the feel of his male strength and his hard body.
The kiss was deepened, her small cry lost in his mouth as it went on and on. He was drinking her all and she wanted to just keep giving.
When they broke apart, both breathing hard, he looked as shaken as she felt.
‘You sure?’
‘Totally.’
The room was quiet as they undressed each other. There were many pauses along the way to touch and caress, to explore and admire, and when there were no longer clothes they lay down side by side on the bed.
His hand moved down her flank, drawing her leg across his hip as he cupped one perfect breast, stroking the tight, sensitised centre before he bent his head and fitted his mouth to it.
She sighed deeply and sank her fingers into his hair, stroking his scalp through the thick dark pelt. The drift of hair on his body was just as dark. He had a man’s body. As he lifted his head she held his eyes while she ran a finger down the centre of his chest, following the thin dark demarcation line of his body hair over the flat belly and lower.
He groaned as she cupped him, curling her fingers around his erection before she slid slowly down his body, tracing the line her finger had made with her tongue.
He endured her ministrations for as long as he could until with a deep groan he grasped her shoulders. She lifted her head, her passion-filled eyes hot as she responded to his urging and slithered up along his body until they lay face to face, noses almost touching, sealed as close as bodies could get without penetration.
‘My turn.’
‘All over?’
There was a carnal intent in his slow smile as he tipped her onto her back and knelt over her. ‘I never break a promise.’
He didn’t. By the time he parted her legs and slid into her he had taken her to the edge several times, seeming to know exactly what she needed before she knew it herself, taking her places that she hadn’t known were on the map!
When he finally entered her she was a screaming mess of pleasure-soaked nerve endings. The sensation of him moving inside her, beautifully filling her, driving her deeper into herself, making her aware of her own body, made the slow-burn fuse he had lit simply explode.
Coming back to earth was a gentle, warm feeling of contentment. She turned with a lazy smile to him. ‘You really didn’t miss anywhere. In fact you went places I didn’t know I had.’ Before pressing her face to his chest and falling asleep—no nightmares this time.
* * *
‘What does a man have to do to wake up beside you in bed?’ He made it sound like a joke, but it was deadly serious. When he’d woken at the crazily early hour to find nothing but the lingering perfume of her body in the space beside him, his sense of loss had been profound.
Lily picked up the freshly brewed pot of coffee, her expression staying composed as the sight of him standing there looking rumpled and utterly gorgeous with his feet bare, his jeans unbelted and his shirt open dismantled her nervous system cell by cell.