She breathed his name, came towards him, came into his arms.
They kissed, their mouths entwining, their arms around each other, and longing quickened within her, making her breathless and amazed. When he drew away from her she felt a loss, a parting she did not want, and reached for him again.
But he smiled down at her, a slanting smile rich with promise, his eyes devouring her. ‘My beautiful Flavia.’
He said her name low and resonant, and she could only gaze at him, her pulse strong and insistent in her veins.
His eyes held hers and slowly, carefully, he reached his arms around her slender back, slipping off the loose, soft jacket, feeling for the zip at the top of her dress, sliding it slowly, oh-so-slowly, down her trembling body.
As the almost bare lines of her figure were revealed by the lowering dress, his breath caught.
She was so beautiful! So slender and so poised and so perfect …
The dark shift pooled at her feet and she stepped out of it. Then, of her own volition, she raised her hands to her spine and slipped the clasp of her bra, letting it fall. She heard the rasp in Leon’s voice and rejoiced in it, sliding her panties to the floor as well. It was right, it was good, it was perfect. It was what she wanted to do and it was a joyous, blessed offering to him. For a moment she just stood there, letting him feast upon her. Then, with a little smile, she lifted her hands once more to the nape of her neck and loosened her hair from its chignon.
It fell in a sensual cloud around her shoulders, and this time Leon was no longer motionless. He caught it with his fists and lowered his head to her, drawing her naked body against his.
His mouth seared hers like a living flame, and her body was a flame in his arms. Desire surged through him, arousing, quickening his flesh. His clothes were an impediment, and with a groan he held her momentarily away from him whilst he divested himself of them. His hands were like wood, his movements clumsy in his haste and urgency, but he didn’t care. He only knew that this was not a time for posed sophistication, for studied seduction. This was about the naked, blazing desire between them, the clean flame burning with the purest fuel.
As he flung his clothes aside on the nearest armchair he clasped her to him again. She gasped, knowing the strength of his desire for her. Her eyes widened in recognition. In shared arousal.
He swept her up into his arms and carried her to the waiting bed, yanking back the coverlet to lay her tenderly upon the pristine sheet. For one endless moment he simply stood and gazed down on her—on her beauteous body, bared and waiting for him, on her lustrous hair spread like a flag across the pillows, on her face, on her eyes gazing up at him with everything in that gaze that he could want.
Her desire for him—her perfect, perfect desire …
He said her name again, emotion working in his face. She lifted her arms to him, welcoming him to her, and he came down on her with all the ardour in the world, clasping her to him.
In the soft light from the low-lit bedside lamp, in the wide expanse of the bed, beneath the silken awning above them, he kissed her. He kissed her mouth and her fluttering eyes, the line of her jaw, the arch of her throat, the hollow at its base. He kissed with softly trailing lips, tender and arousing, possessing the valley between her breasts. He kissed and laved and teased and worshipped the soft ripening mounds and then their cresting coral peaks, questing ever further, down over the silken expanse of her abdomen, his hands shaping the sculpture of her hips to graze with tantalising arousal the line of the dark vee below.
He heard her gasp and felt her hands clutching at his shoulders. He lifted his head and saw hers lifting, too. He slid his strong, empowered body upwards over hers again, so that his thighs pressed down on hers, slid one limb between hers, parting her for him. His mouth sought hers, his hand cupping the nape of her neck, lifting and shaping her head to him.
His arousal was absolute, but her needs must come first. He moved to slip one hand down her breast, her flank, down to the parting of her thighs. But she caught his hand with hers.
‘No—’
She gazed up at him, urgency in her eyes, and with a blaze of understanding Leon knew that she was as ready as he—that she wanted exactly what he wanted now.
‘You’re sure?’
His question hung only for a moment, and it was her eyes, her questing mouth seeking his afresh, that told him the answer.
And her fevered breath.
And his.
He plunged into her, deep and lifting, and she arched to meet him, her spine bowing upwards, thighs quivering beneath his as she took him into her. She cried out and he clasped her to him, his hands around her spine, supporting her. It was glorious—glorious and perfect and wondrously fulfilling as their bodies merged and fused.
He moved within her. He had to move. Could do nothing else. He was overpowered by the burning of his desire, the intensity of his arousal. And as he moved, her face was transfigured.
‘Flavia!’
He saw the ecstasy take her, felt it in her body, felt it around him, pulsing like a beacon, convulsing her body. He clung to her, arms wrapped around her, held her against him as surge after surge swept through her, and he could feel the shaking of her body clasped so tight against his.
And then he could feel his own moment come.
Like a tidal wave, sweeping through his body, powerful and unstoppable. Like nothing he had ever felt before. Nothing like this!