What they ate Tara would not afterwards remember. She knew only that it was delicious, and that the conversation flowed between them as effortlessly now as it had been fraught before. Had they really been so...so intemperate towards each other? So antagonistic, so irritated and exasperated by each other? It seemed impossible. Impossible to think of Marc as the man he had been when now his ready smile, his low laugh, his lambent eyes were warm upon her.
What they talked about she would not remember either. She only knew that another conversation was taking place as well—a conversation that, as the meal ended and liqueurs were consumed, the coffee pot drained, he suddenly brought to vivid life as he reached for her hand, drew her to her feet.
The staff were long gone, and they were here alone on the candlelit terrace. He stood in front of her, so dark against the night beyond. She caught his scent, felt herself sway and smile...
He said her name—a caress—and lifted his hand to her hair to draw her closer to him. But there was no need. With a little sigh, closing her eyelids, she let her body fold against his, let it rest, as it wanted so much to do, against the strong column of his. He took her weight against him effortlessly and her hand slid around his waist, resting on the cool leather of his belt, the tips of her fingers feeling the hard heat of his flesh beneath the thin fabric of his shirt.
She gave a soft, almost inaudible sigh in her throat. And then his mouth was silencing her. Moving with the velvet softness that had caused her sleepless nights, and which now sent a drowning bliss through her with every feathering touch.
She gave herself to it. This time... Ah, this time there was no barrier, no regret, no resistance to what was happening between them. She was giving herself utterly to it...
Their kiss was long, unhurried, for they had all the night before them... Then, as her breasts engorged, their peaks cresting against the hard wall of his muscled chest, she heard him growl, felt his mouth releasing hers. His eyes poured down into hers, and she felt with a frisson of arousal that he was responding as strongly as was she.
Was it wickedness that made her loop her hands around his neck and whisper, ‘Shall we slow dance?’
For tonight they could—oh, yes, they could indeed—and with that came the knowledge that now there need be no more play-acting, that they could finally accept and revel in the desire that flamed between them. No more being thwarted, no more pulling away... At last they could give in to what they had wanted from the very first.
The growl came again—a low rasp—and instead of an answer she was suddenly, breathlessly, swept up into his arms.
‘We can do better than that,’ he told her, and the deep husk in his voice was telling her just what that ‘better’ was going to be.
She gave a half-cry, half-laugh, and then he was striding indoors, across the marble hall, up the marble stairs. She clung to him, and she was held fast in his powerful grip as he carried her along the landing, to head inside a room she had never yet stepped into.
It was dark, but he knew the way. Knew the way to the wide bed waiting for them. And as he lowered her to its surface, coming down beside her, he knew there were no more questions to ask, no more answers. Their bodies had asked and answered all that was needed.
Desire—that was the question and the answer. And it flamed between them, powerful and unquenchable. They were to be aroused by all that it could offer, to savour it...to enjoy. In a sharing of slow, caressing pleasure, a banquet of the senses.
He leant over, dark against the dimness of the room, smoothing the tumbled mass of her glorious hair, spearing his fingers through the lush tresses as she gazed up at him, starlight from the undrawn drapes shining in her dilated eyes. Waiting for his possession. For her possession of him.
He kissed her again slowly, tasting, drawing from her every drop of nectar. Again he felt his body fill with desire, with wanting.
For a moment he held back, as if to give himself one last chance to draw away completely, but she caught his mouth again, arching her neck, her spine, putting her hands around his back, drawing him down to her to feel the swell of her breasts, to hear the soft moan of desire in her throat.
He gave a low, husky laugh, cut short as his kiss deepened, his arousal surged. His palm closed over one peak and her soft moan came again as she pressed against his caressing hand, wanting only what he could arouse in her. Heat filled her body—her limbs...the soft vee of her thighs.
Her dress was in the way, and restlessly she sought to free herself. But he was there before her. His hands slipped the material from her, cast it aside even as he cast aside his own clothing, freeing them both to come together now, as their bodies longed to do, with a will they could not stop, nor wanted to.
They wanted only to do as they were doing—to wind themselves around each other, pinioning and clasping. His mouth was gliding down the satin contours of her slender body, an
d again low moans came from her.
Her head twisted helplessly on the pillow as she gave herself to his silken touch. Desire soared within her and she wanted more—oh, she wanted all of him! She felt her thighs slacken, her body’s heat flare, and her fingers clawed over his strong, muscled shoulders.
She drew him into her and he surged in full possession. She cried out, gasping at the power of him, the potency. Her hands clutched him tighter, and more tightly yet, as he moved on her, within her, releasing with every surge more and more of what was rising within her, unstoppable, unquenchable. A glory of sensation, a gasping of delight, of mounting urgency...
And then it broke within her, flooding out into every vein, every portion of her body, racing out from her pulsing core to the furthest extremity, her whole body burning in this furnace of ecstasy.
As she cried out he surged within her again, his body thrashing, fusing with hers like metal melting into metal, white-hot and searing.
And she was everything he desired—everything he wanted. She was fulfilling all her promise, pulsing around his body, her own body afire, until the fire consumed itself and he felt her hands at his shoulders slacken, felt her whole body slacken.
He felt his do so too, heavy now upon her, and he rolled her, with the last of his strength, so that she was beside him and he could fold her to him, feel her shuddering body calm, her racing heartbeat slow, her hectic breathing quieten. He held her as his own slugging heart steadied, his limbs heavy, inert.
Slowly he felt the lassitude of her body’s repletion ease through her as he stroked her hair, murmuring to her he knew not what. He knew only that his soft caressing, his softer murmurs, brought her to stillness in his cradling arms.
He felt his eyelids droop, sleep rushing upon him. He knew he must yield to it—for now. But as consciousness slipped from him, and the warmth and the silken length of her body pressed against his, something told him his sleep would not be long...
Nor hers...