‘Mmm...and mine is getting very swollen,’ he told her emphatically, although he scarcely needed to make any verbal emphasis of what was now patently obvious to her.
Beneath her fingertips the reality of his body, his maleness, his arousal, made her own flesh quiver excitedly. She wanted him...so much...wanted him...needed him...had to have him...
‘Soon...soon...’ Alex whispered to her, as though he recognised just what she was feeling.
He kissed her mouth, and then her breasts, gently releasing himself from her hands as he eased her down on the cushions beside the fire. Arching over her naked body in the firelight, he seemed to Beth to be the embodiment of male sexuality, of man himself. He kissed her belly and her muscles quivered, her body quickening as his hands swept downwards, parting her thighs.
Beth had a small mole high up on the inside of one thigh. She saw Alex looking at it, her body tensing as he bent his head and slowly kissed it. Deep inside, the secret female heart of her turned liquid with longing. Very gently Alex reached out to the soft flesh that protected her sex. Beth felt the breath leak painfully from her lungs. Carefully at first, and then more strongly, Alex began to touch her. Excitement exploded through Beth’s body as it began to respond rhythmically to Alex’s erotic caresses. When his lips and then his tongue started to follow the same path as his fingers Beth moaned a femininely protective protest, but her body’s hunger was far, far stronger than any social conditioning or preconceived ideas of female modesty. Nature had already preordained, preprogrammed her body’s reaction to what Alex was doing to it.
Beth gasped under the weight of the feelings gathering and coalescing inside her. It was like the climb up towards the highest, most savagely exciting, most dangerous ride she had ever gone on in her whole life. Inexorably she was being pushed towards the top, the summit, her mind and her body tight in panic at the thought of the terrifying freefall into eternity that would come once that summit was crested, even whilst she knew there was nothing she could do to stop it, nothing she should do to stop it, urged on as she was by something stronger by far than any mere act of mental will on her part.
Somewhere, someone was moaning: a frantic, keening sound of need that was almost primitive in its intensity. But Beth didn’t realise that she was listening to herself until she heard Alex talking to her, soothing her, promising her in between the hot kisses he was pressing all over her naked body that soon he would satisfy her, soon he would fill her, soon he would give them both what they so desperately yearned for.
As he reached her breasts she could feel his hardness pressing down against her body. Her hips writhed hungrily against him, her whole body quickening as he sucked and then bit softly at her nipples. Beth cried out, but not in pain—unless her longing for him could be classed as such. Her whole body trembled, her hips lifting, her legs wrapping possessively around him as Alex stroked her body into eager acceptance of his.
He felt so good, so strong...so right, with her muscles clinging lovingly to him, drawing him deeper and deeper into the soft, welcoming heat of her body.
She heard him groan and cry out a protest that he couldn’t wait any longer, that she was too sweet, too hot, too responsive for him to hold back, and then his carefully slow thrusts became an urgent fast-paced rhythm that took him deeper and deeper inside her, carrying them both to the edge of the vortex and then spectacularly carrying Beth right over and beyond it, to a place where the whole world, the whole universe dissolved in a physical and emotional display of pyrotechnics that she felt could have rivalled the birth of the world itself.
Now Beth felt she knew what drove and inspired the world’s greatest artists; now she discovered, quite simply, she just knew.
Alex was holding her in his arms, his heart thudding wildly against hers; her breath was just beginning to slow down, and she wept a little with emotion as his body slid smoothly from her and he held her tightly and kissed her.
‘Now do you understand just why I love you so much?’ he demanded thickly as he kissed her again, more slowly and lingeringly.
‘This really is the most wonderful fairy-tale place,’ Beth told Alex dreamily. ‘It has such a...a special atmosphere...’
‘Mmm...it certainly has,’ Alex agreed, with such a meaningful look at her that Beth could feel her face starting to burn a little.
‘The antiques alone...’ She started to babble a little self-consciously, all too well aware that Alex’s prime focus of interest right now was not the castle or its wonderful furniture, but her...
‘Well, if it’s antiques you like I shall have to take you to see my aunt’s apartment in Prague. It’s the family’s main home and I’d like to take you there, Beth, introduce you to my family. And besides, there’s something—’
He stopped. Something in his voice made Beth look a little uncertainly at him, some sense of foreboding, of a shadow about to be cast over her blissful haze of happiness.
‘My aunt has some of the most wonderful examples of antique crystal in the apartment, and I’m sure she’d be only too pleased to arrange for you to visit the factory and—’
‘No!’
Beth froze, suddenly wary, suspicion and anger replacing the sensual languor that had had her relaxing into Alex’s arms. Now she pulled away from him, all her doubts about him surging back. Julian, too, had used her vulnerability after the kisses they had shared to his own advantage, but Julian had at least stopped at mere kisses. Alex...
‘No?’
Alex, too, had withdrawn slightly, and was now frowning. ‘But the glass you said you liked in the gift shop is—’
‘Impossibly expensive,’ Beth snapped sharply at him. ‘And besides, I’ve sourced my own supply at my own price and—’
‘You mean the gypsies?’ Alex challenged her, his voice now just as sharply critical as her own had been. ‘I thought we’d agreed that you weren’t going to pursue that...’
Beth tightened her lips in silence and looked away from him, busying herself re-dressing.
‘Beth,’ Alex said warningly.
‘No,’ she told him shortly. ‘I agreed nothing. You said...’
‘So you still intend...’ He drew in a swift breath. ‘Beth, it’s far too dangerous...far too...’ He shook his head. ‘Believe me, they’re leading you on, deceiving you. This factory they’ve told you about, this mythical source of wonderful glass, is just that. It has to be.
‘Look,’ he told her softly, leaning toward