Then her hand glided tentatively over his stomach, and he jolted into life like a man shot, startling her as he reared upwards and over her, his hand whipping down to imprison hers as his husky growl revealed the extent of his arousal before he was kissing her hungrily again, stopping her from thinking again, taking control again, slowing things down, drawing it out until she really believed that she was going to die if he didn’t do something to ease the unbearable pressure building deep down inside her.
Her hand jerked to his hair, fingers curling, tightening, tugging with unknown violence, dragging the thin ribbon free so that the black satiny mass slid like a curtain all around her. She sighed against his mouth, restlessly urgent. Someone was groaning and whimpering, and she knew that someone was herself. Her senses were in ferment, rushing in a panicked stampede through her body in an effort to crowd where the tension grew.
He must have understood because he moved then, sliding between her thighs where his fingers still played their magic, keeping up that sensual rhythm until the very moment when he joined them in a single mind-blowing thrust.
Annie arched like a bow, arms flying out and upwards in total abandonment. He arched too, like a giant wolf about to howl its mournful song, his long back, his dark head in a taut arch of pleasure, and for a space out of time neither were of this earth, neither aware of the other as sensation washed their brains of all else.
Then she felt the tug of her own muscles, felt them draw him in deeper, felt him grow and throb and fill her; then desperate fingers were reaching for him even as he came down towards her.
* * *
Afterwards she lay wrapped tightly in his arms, his body curled round her as though she were in need of protection and he was determined to give it. They didn’t speak, hadn’t found the words to cover what had just taken place. All Annie knew was that in the moment when he’d entered her César had become her; she’d felt that right down to the very roots of her being. Whether he’d experienced the same thing she didn’t know, but by the way he’d held her and kept on holding her, even long after he had fallen into a deep sleep, she had to believe that he had.
He woke her once more before morning, bringing her swimming up from sleep to the pleasure of his suckling lazily on one of her breasts. His caresses were already wreaking their magic on her body, filling her with a sweet, moist heat that made her stretch sensuously then sink on a shivery sigh into the rapture he was creating.
It was slow and it was relaxed and it was sleepy, and it seemed to draw a much deeper response from both of them which left them clinging to each other in a lead-weighted aftermath filled with nothing but a silent awe.
* * *
The next morning she awoke to find him still sleeping beside her, the sheet pushed down low over his thighs. He was lying on his side and facing her, an arm thrown heavily across her waist, his hair flowing over one satiny bronze shoulder, lying almost lovingly in that warm, moist hollow that formed the muscular ridge of his neck.
He looked different in sleep—more relaxed, more attractive while those sharp green eyes were hidden from view. His mouth still had that fatally sensual shape to it, but then, she acknowledged, it always did—whether he was tense or angry or just behaving normally. It was his mouth that had first ignited her senses and it had been wreaking its devastation ever since.
Feeling the stirring of excitement take root inside her at this near voyeuristic pleasure she was taking in just looking at him, she blushed and looked away.
Moving carefully so that she would not waken him, she slid out from beneath his arm and moved stealthily up and off the bed. Her body was stiff and aching, and she smiled wryly to herself as she made her way to the bathroom. They said sex was the best exercise for toning the body. She believed it. She felt as though she’d spent last night tied to a toning bed, except—a shiver of something incredibly sexy quivered through her—no toning bed left your senses feeling like this!
The shower was warm and refreshing, and she stood beneath it with her head tilted back, eyes closed while the water gushed over breasts still full and aching. Her nipples were tight and sharply sensitive, and seemed to have forgotten how to retract. She released a soft sigh as the water began to soothe them, though the ache between her thighs remained a dull, pulsing throb.
Was it always like this after a long night of loving? she wondered. This acute awareness of her own femininity? And was this strange yet pleasant feeling that she had been totally invaded all part of the allure that kept the desire to experience it again and again so strong?
‘Good morning. You started without me, I see.’
The sound of that deep, pleasant voice accompanied a pair of long-fingered hands sliding around her wet ribcage.
She let out a startled gasp, her eyes flicking open as a warm mouth bent to nuzzle that susceptible point between her shoulder and throat. Her hands snapped up to cover his where they rested just beneath the heavy swell of her breasts. And she couldn’t control the expressive way that her shoulder lifted, her throat arching to the erotic suck of his mouth.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured, drawing her backward against his warm body. ‘You taste of clean water and that delicious flavour called Annie. I am addicted,’ he confessed. ‘I shall now require the taste of her several times a day.’
She quivered at his provocatively teasing banter, but had no equally provocative answer ready to offer him. This kind of situation was so new to her that she was quite frankly at a loss as to what to do or say.
Then his hands shifted upwards, and she arched convulsively on a sharp, indrawn rasp of air. ‘Don’t touch!’ she gasped.
He went still for a moment, then turned her to face him, water gushing over her shoulders to splash onto the whorls of dark hair on his chest as he searched her anxious eyes, then her blushing cheeks, then finally the way her bent arms braced against his chest in an effort to keep his body away from her wet, silky breasts. ‘Ah,’ he said, then surprised her with the smuggest, most sensually triumphant grin that she had ever seen.
‘It isn’t funny!’ she flashed out indignantly. ‘They hurt!’
‘Poor Annie,’ he murmured in sympathy, but his grin widened, the man in him annoyingly proud that his loving could have such a lingering effect.
Then he swooped, taking one engorged nipple into his mouth and sucking so ruthlessly that she cried out, then gasped, then quivered as pain became a piercing pleasure.
If she’d worried about how she was going to face him this morning then that worry became swallowed up by what happened next.
It was as erotic as it was unconventional to her untutored soul. What with the warm water gushing, ignored, over both of them and his hands sliding down her supple spine to gather her against the rhythmic probing thrust of his hips, he ignited her desire for him so quickly that the night before might not have taken place.
His mouth lifted to capture her own, and, hungry, searching, they strained against each other while his loose hair received the full flood of warm water, plastering the satin pelt to both their faces, water running in rivulets down their noses and circling their joined mouths.
He broke the contact to drag in a harsh breath, his big chest lifting and falling in a tortured rasp. Then he was taking hold of her arms and urging them around his neck before he clasped her just below her buttocks, forcing her legs apart and around his tight waist as he lifted her up against him. His smooth, slick entry literally took her breath away.