Because, God help her, she loved him.
She loved a man who could never love or trust again.
The words trembled on her lips but she lacked the courage to say them. Their relationship had taken a huge U-turn tonight and she didn’t know where it was going to go from here—nowhere, she suspected—but it certainly wasn’t the time to declare her love.
Especially to a man who had just told her he wasn’t going there again.
Maybe it had even been a warning.
So she did the only thing she could think of—she rolled up on top of him, straddled his hips and kissed him. Long and deep and slow. He groaned as she pushed her tongue inside his mouth and she moaned back when he grabbed her naked butt and held her firm against his burgeoning erection.
Her pulse sped up, her breathing roughened.
So did his.
Then she kissed his face and his neck and his chest. She swirled her tongue around his nipp**les before drifting it down to his abs and then his belly button. His hardness pressed into her brea**sts and she rubbed them against him as she swirled her tongue lower.
The gasp he gasped when she fitted her mouth around him went straight to the hot tingle between her legs. He was as big and thick in her mouth as he had felt inside her and she took as much of him as she could.
‘Claude!’ he cried out as he buried his hands in her hair.
She let her tongue move all over him, up and down, round and round, finding his sensitive spots and then torturing them ruthlessly with the kind of tongue lashing he’d given her brea**sts earlier.
He groaned again, his hands leaving her hair to fist in the sheets. ‘If you keep doing that,’ he panted, ‘it’s going to end real soon.’
Claudia could feel the tension in his thighs, his buttocks, see the whites of his knuckles. A sense of power washed through her as the tingling between her legs intensified to an excruciating level and she knew there was only one way to relieve it.
Her mouth released him and he groaned. Whether it was in protest or relief she wasn’t sure. She just knew she had to feel all that wonderful hardness deep inside her, to the hilt, right up where that damn tingle had a stranglehold.
She dragged her way back up his body, grabbing handfuls of his flesh to assist her. When she reached her destination she straddled him again then leaned over, reaching for a condom from the bedside table. He tried to curl up, take a nipple into his mouth but she swatted him back down.
‘No,’ she said, because she knew how that went and before she knew it she’d be a drooling, boneless starfish all over again when what she needed was to dominate.
Not be passive.
Relieve the unbearable tension and show him with her body, if not with her words, that she was his.
‘Keep your hands exactly where they are, mister.’
‘Ooh, bossy.’ He grinned, planting his hands firmly on her hips.
Claudia didn’t bother to answer, she just tore the foil wrapper with her teeth, reached for him and rolled it on as if she’d worked in a condom factory all her life. And then she was positioning herself over him and then, slowly, sinking down.
‘Oh, God.’ Luke’s groan matched her own as his fingers dug into her hips.
Claudia shut her eyes and threw her head back as she seated herself on him, completely impaled, the tingles obliterated. She was right—it did hurt so damned good.
When she opened her eyes again he was watching her, his hands still firmly planted on her hips. ‘What now?’ he murmured.
‘This,’ she said, circling her hips, once, twice, three times, panting with the stretch and fullness of it. ‘And this,’ she said, leaning forward, placing her hands on his shoulders and slowly, very slowly easing herself off him all the way then sinking back down again.
Luke groaned as his groin leapt and his mouth watered. Her brea**sts were glorious, pert and swaying enticingly before him. ‘Again,’ he said, their gazes locking.
She did it again. And again. And again. He groaned all three times but his eyes didn’t leave her face.
‘You know,’ she said as she lifted off all the way for the fourth time, ‘not all women are like...’ she pushed back onto him again, sinking to the hilt again ‘...her.’
Claudia almost said her name but she didn’t want the ugliness of what she’d done to intrude on this moment.
She didn’t want Philippa in their moment.
Luke nodded. ‘I know,’ he panted as his body fought to contain the gathering storm seething in his groin.
‘Do you?’ she whispered as she slid up again, fighting to keep her eyes from rolling back in her head. To keep them open. To keep them on him.
‘Yes,’ he hissed as he thrust up hard to meet her this time, holding her hips tight. The violent jiggle of her brea**sts and her gasp, deeply satisfying.