The shock of the news of Julian’s death coming so hard on the heels of the even greater shock of seeing Hugo again had totally destroyed the protective walls she had built around her feelings, leaving her achingly aware of how much she loved him, how intensely she longed for him. They were so powerfully strong that she couldn’t find the words to express them. All she could do was to try to show him, smothering the hard warmth of his chest with her kisses, stroking the smooth flesh of his back, making small keening noises in her throat as he reciprocated and touched her.
Her body remembered every touch, every stroke, every fingerprint of his hands against her; remembered them and responded to them, her nails digging into his skin in frantic pleasure as he lowered his head and started to kiss the soft flesh of her breasts. Dee trembled from head to foot, unable to understand how she had been able to bear to give up such savagely sweet pleasure, how she had been able to live without it and without him.
The ferocity of her need made her moan in soft frustration as she tried to press her body clos
er to his and felt the thick fabric of his jeans rubbing against the softness of her own bare skin.
‘Hugo... Hugo...’ she protested.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she heard Hugo asking her thickly.
‘This is wrong,’ Dee responded passionately, her fingers plucking at his jeans. ‘I want to feel you. You, Hugo. I want to see you, touch you.’ Her voice started to rise a little as her feelings rioted out of her control. She could see Hugo’s reaction to her need in the way his eyes darkened, a dark red tide of male arousal colouring the taut flesh of his face.
‘You want me...you want this...?’ she heard him demanding thickly as he reached for his belt and started to unfasten it.
Once, long ago, as a young girl, she might have looked modestly away. But she was a woman now, not a girl, and Hugo was a man. Her man.
Her mouth was soft and red, swollen by the passion of their shared kisses, her eyes dark and filled with open longing as she followed the movement of his hands. Deep down inside her own body she knew how much she wanted him. She held her breath, her body tensing as he removed the rest of his clothes. The very maleness of him almost took her breath away. She had seen him like this before, of course, but for some reason the impact of him on her now was a thousandfold more dangerous than she could ever remember it being before.
Unable to stop the long, low sound of female need that escaped from her throat, she put her fingertips to her lips.
‘Don’t do that,’ Hugo warned her hoarsely, and then he was reaching for her hand, carrying her trembling fingers to his own mouth which he brushed softly against the sensitive pads of her fingertips. Dee felt her whole body turn wantonly liquid, and then begin to burn with shocking heat.
Very slowly and deliberately Hugo began to lick her captive fingertips, and then even more slowly to suck them. He was looking straight into her eyes, and even though she knew just what he could see in them, and how impossible it was for her to hide her reaction from him, she wanted him so much that it physically hurt—agonisingly so, so much so that she had to close her eyes against the hot burn of her pain.
‘Dee. Dee...don’t...don’t cry...please don’t cry,’ she heard Hugo begging her hoarsely, dropping her hand to cup her face and reinforce the intensity of his words with suffocatingly tender kisses that inflamed her even more rather than soothed her. Unable to stop herself, she reached out and touched him, her fingers trembling a little at first as they enclosed him. His flesh felt smooth and hot, the shape and texture of him so instantly and vividly remembered that automatically she was already caressing him, stroking him firmly and possessively, knowing just how he liked her to touch him and where. This was her territory, her love, her man.
‘Dee...’
She heard the warning in his voice but she was oblivious to it, totally lost in the fiercely sensual pleasure of caressing him.
‘Dee...’ Hugo warned her thickly again, when she failed to heed his warning. But Dee didn’t want to listen. She could feel Hugo’s hands on her body, hot and heavy, and their movement dictated the fierce pulse Dee could feel thudding against her stroking touch.
She was wearing a pair of tiny silky briefs, the merest wisp of fabric. She could feel Hugo tugging impatiently at them, but even without feeling them slither to the floor she would have known the moment she was free of them from the way Hugo suddenly sucked in his breath and the tension she could feel in his body.
He had once told her, both of them giddy, dizzy with satisfied passion, how much he loved the way the silky triangle of dark hair between her thighs so delicately hid the secret of her sex, and she had responded in kind, her eyes soft with love as she had compared the soft silkiness of her own body hair to the much thicker and more vigorous curls that surrounded his own sex. Now that contrast between them, which as a girl she had simply taken for granted, had an almost primitive effect on her senses. Now it made her feel intensely aware of his maleness, his potency, so much so that her body physically shook with the force of her awareness of him and of it.
‘You’re just the same. You haven’t changed,’ she heard Hugo whispering rawly to her. ‘And I’ve never forgotten—never.’
Unable to stop herself, Dee felt the first of her pent-up emotional tears splash down on the hand he had lifted to touch her.
‘Dee, what is it...? What’s wrong...? Oh, Dee. Dee, don’t, please, my darling. Please don’t cry,’ she heard Hugo begging her as he wrapped her in his arms and picked her up.
‘I’m not crying. I’m not crying,’ Dee denied. ‘I just want you inside me so much that it hurts, Hugo. Please don’t make me wait any longer...please.’
‘Dee. I can’t...I haven’t got—’
‘You can,’ Dee protested fiercely, reaching out to touch him. He was so strong, so ready for her. How could he say otherwise when she could feel how much he wanted her?
She pulled away from him and walked unsteadily towards her bed, climbing onto it and holding out her arms to him.
It seemed to take a lifetime for him to reach her, and another for him to join her, to take her in his arms and kiss her, slowly, almost reluctantly at first, and then with a hunger that was almost elemental, almost savage. But something within her responded to his urgency, something within her wanted it, she recognised, as his hand parted her thighs and his fingers found the moist readiness of her.
‘No, it’s not that I want. It’s you,’ Dee told him thickly. ‘I want you, Hugo, you...’
She cried out as he entered her. It had been so long, and she wanted him so much. Her body was so exquisitely sensitive to him that each thrust of him within it filled her with an almost unbearable surge of pleasure.
She had known him like this so many, many times before, and yet this was different, Dee acknowledged. This went beyond the satisfaction of a mere physical need, beyond the mutual pleasure of reaching a sexual pinnacle.