She could feel his fingers trembling oh, so slightly as he splayed them across her breast, almost as though he wanted to cover her, protect her modesty, and then they tensed and curled and his thumb-tip rubbed across her tightly erect nipple, once, twice, a third time, each time lingering just a breath of time longer against the erect peak.
And then, agonisingly slowly, he very carefully peeled the fine fabric away from her breast completely.
Deep down in her throat Beth made a long, keening sound of female yearning.
In the mirror she could see the robe trailing on the floor behind her as Alex slowly released her and then very unsteadily took a step back from her.
Blindly Beth followed him.
Her body ached with need and heat, and yet the distance that Alex had put between them made her shiver with cold and loss. Instinctively she sought the warmth of his body against her, instinctively she tried to recapture it, moving closer to him, a small half-cry of protest locking her throat as her feet became caught up in the heavy folds of her robe.
As Alex reached out to help her she straightened her arms impatiently, thrusting at the cumbersome folds of the robe. Alex dropped to his knees in front of her, almost as though he intended to stop her or restrain her, but it was already too late. Already the robe had fallen back from her body.
Because her room wasn’t overlooked Beth didn’t fully close the drapes at night, and now the bright sunshine flooding through the gauzy nets revealed her body in all its exquisitely feminine detail. She could see herself in the mirror, and she could see Alex as well.
The hands he had put out to hold her dropped to her waist, shaping its narrow slenderness, his concentration on his exploration of her so intense that Beth scarcely dared to breathe in case she broke it.
His hands moved lower, cradling her hips. Alex leaned forward and very gently kissed her softly rounded belly, the caress of his lips the merest whisper of pleasure and promise but still more than enough to create a reaction that shuddered right through Beth’s body.
Alex’s head was moving upwards, his tongue-tip trailing hot darts of fire over her waist and then her ribcage. Alex’s hands left her hips and his fingers encircled her towelling-clad wrists, then moved upwards to grip the sleeves of her robe as though he intended to pull it back onto her body. Instinctively Beth stiffened in rejection of what she thought he was going to do, resisting his rejection—of her. Alex lifted his head and looked into her eyes. Turbulently Beth looked back at him, a ragged breath tearing at her lungs.
She heard Alex groan, and then shockingly, excitingly, he was wrenching the robe completely free of her body and wrapping his arms possessively around her, his fingers trembling as he tugged at the fastening of her bra, his lips, his mouth, fastening eagerly over the crest of one of her breasts and tugging sensuously on it.
Beth felt faint with liquid, dizzyingly dazzling, wanton pleasure. Her hands reached out to clasp Alex’s head and hold him against her body, her fingers sliding into the thick richness of his hair, tugging at it, kneading his scalp, small purring noises escaping from her throat as she moved as sensuously against him as a cat being stroked, every movement of her body against his sinuous and hypnotic.
Through half-closed eyes she saw their combined images in the mirror, images that once would have shocked and distressed her but which now merely added even greater fuel to the fire that burned through her. The sight of Alex’s head against her breast, the creaminess of her skin against the darkness of his hair, the dark rigidity of her nipple demanding that it be given parity with its twin, the colour that burned Alex’s face, the moist sheen she could see on her breast as he transferred his attentions from one nipple to the other—all of them combined to add to the intensity of the visual image of her own sensuality.
There was something so pagan about the whole image, about her virtual nakedness, only the sheer flimsiness of her very brief briefs a teasing barrier to Alex’s hands and touch, her head thrown back in pure sensual enjoyment, her breasts full and passion-tipped, and Alex on his knees in front of her, at once both her supplicant and her master, her feminine power momentarily controlling his much stronger masculine strength. Her desire controlling his, controlling him.
She was the raw material of the beauty they could create together; he was the one who would mould it, shape it, the one who would mould and shape her. Her feelings, her thoughts, her emotions were so elemental, so intense, so powerful that Beth was held totally in thrall to them.
For the first time in her life she was tasting the full power of her womanhood, and she—Abruptly she tensed as she heard someone rattling her bedroom door warningly.
Immediately she froze, looking wildly for her robe, but Alex was already on his feet, wrapping it round her, allowing her to flee to the sanctuary of her bathroom.
* * *
‘Beth...it’s all right, he’s gone...you can come out now.’
Beth gnawed at her bottom lip.
In the five minutes or so it had taken the waiter to clear awa
y their uneaten breakfast she had come back down to earth with a savage, spine-jarring, emotion-lurching and generally guilt-racked thud.
What on earth had she been doing—and why? All right, so sexually she was attracted to Alex, but that didn’t mean that she had to act like a hormone-driven teenager, for heaven’s sake. A hormone-driven teenager or a frustrated, sexually unsatisfied twenty-four-year-old woman.
Beth wasn’t sure which image of herself she liked the least. Which image... Her face burned as she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror and her thoughts strayed betrayingly to those other images she had recently seen of herself.
‘Beth,’ Alex was repeating. ‘It’s okay, he’s gone...’
She would have to go out sooner or later. She couldn’t stay here all day, and anyway, why should she be the one to feel conscience-stricken and uncomfortable? she asked herself sturdily. After all, Alex had been just as carried away as she had herself, just as driven by desire and lust... But to be driven by lust was perfectly acceptable for a man, whereas...
These days it was just as acceptable for a woman, Beth told herself firmly. These days a woman no longer had to be fettered by the old shibboleths that had denied them their own sexuality and the right to express it. These days a woman did not have to convince herself that she loved a man just in order to enjoy her physical desire for his body and her own satisfaction. No, indeed... So why was she cowering here in the bathroom as though...as though she had done something to feel ashamed of? She wasn’t...she hadn’t...she told herself fiercely as she tugged open the bathroom door.
Determinedly she gave a businesslike glance at her watch as she told Alex crisply, with only just a hint of a tremor in her voice, ‘I really think you ought to leave. I’ve got rather a lot I want to do today...’
Alex was frowning at her.