For an age they stood there, swaying to the music, their mouths fused together, breathing each other in. The swaying bodies surrounding them disappeared into a haze; there but out of sight, the music reduced to a distant beat.
He wanted to consume her. He needed to consume her.
However much she might hate him, Grace belonged to him.
And he belonged to her.
A dancing couple inadvertently knocked into them.
Luca broke away with a muttered oath.
The room came swimming back into focus. Grace came swimming back into focus. She looked dazed, her eyes blinking furiously, her outward features exactly mirroring what he felt inside.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, taking her hand and tugging her off the dance floor.
She didn’t resist. Indeed, she didn’t say a word as they wove through the increasingly drunken revellers and out of the ballroom. Keeping a firm hold on her hand, he texted his driver to meet them at the front of the hotel.
Minutes later the driver opened the back door and they got inside.
‘Take us back to our hotel,’ Luca commanded.
Only when the limousine was moving and the privacy window had been erected did he turn to face her.
Her small chest heaved with short, ragged breaths. There was a wildness in her eyes, something feral seeping out of her pores.
‘Come here.’ His voice thick, he snaked a hand around her neck and pulled her to him.
She didn’t need to be told twice. She pounced onto his lap and threw her arms around him.
Their lips came back together and he leaned back into the plush leather upholstery, cradling her head tenderly as he did so.
He had no idea what the nectar of myths and fables tasted like but knew it could never be sweeter than his wife’s kisses. The most potent aphrodisiac could never evoke the desire one kiss from her could unleash.
Grace was the most openly sensuous woman he had ever known with a sex drive that perfectly matched his own. She’d never feigned coyness and what she initially lacked in experience she had more than made up for in enthusiasm. He had loved that raw honesty about her. The first time she had taken him into her mouth she’d knelt before him and fixed those hazel eyes on him. ‘I’ve never done this before,’ she’d said matter-of-factly. ‘So sorry if I do it all wrong.’
It had ended up being one of the most incredible experiences of his life.
Now, as she straddled him with the earthy hunger he had always adored, he wondered how he had ever managed without her, without making love to her. Whether their couplings were short and frantic or long and luxurious, they would always end sated and content, locked in each other’s arms.
Finally he broke away for air and razed his teeth down her neck, darting his tongue on the lobe of her ear. She moaned lightly and rubbed her cheek against his, her hands creeping down the plane of his chest and tugging his shirt loose so she could burrow under it.
It suddenly dawned on him that they were making out in the back of a car like a pair of adolescent teenagers.
He shifted slightly, then immediately wished he hadn’t as his straining erection rubbed against the apex of her thighs.
‘Enough,’ he said roughly. He grabbed her hips and manoeuvred her so only her legs lay draped over his lap. It did absolutely nothing to ease the ache in his groin. ‘I am not going to make love to you in the back of a car.’
She looked at him with eyes that were wickedly dazed. ‘Why not?’
A bubble of laughter rose in his throat. Grace had perfected mock innocence into a fine art. ‘Because we’re not teenagers and there are two perfectly good beds waiting for us just minutes away.’
She pouted. ‘Spoilsport.’
‘Have I not taught you anything? Anticipation heightens pleasure.’ He reached over and pulled the straps of her dress back up. ‘You can choose the bed.’
‘You’re letting me choose something?’
‘Don’t start,’ he warned, before deciding it was easier to cut an argument off at the bud rather than let it bloom into something bigger by kissing her again.
‘I thought we weren’t going to make out in the back of a car,’ she murmured between kisses.
‘I make the rules.’ He covered her mouth again in another long, delicious kiss.
Without his being fully aware of it, her hand had burrowed back up his shirt. She pinched a nipple. ‘That’s what you think.’
Before he could respond she had twisted her body to climb back on top of him.
Just as he was starting to think there was something to be said for acting like a lust-driven teenager, the limo came to a stop.
She lifted her head and peered through the window. ‘Oh.... We’re back at the hotel.’
Wrapping an arm around her neck, he pulled her down for one last kiss. ‘What did I tell you about anticipation?’