His lips felt cool, the pressure of his hands on her shoulders forcing her backwards against the pillows. She could feel him sliding the thin straps of the camisole top over her skin and tensed immediately. His mouth left hers, his eyes searching her face as he lifted his head.
‘Stop it!’ he warned her. ‘It isn’t necessary, and if you insist on playing silly games you’ll force me to hurt you. You know what I want, Genista,’ he muttered thickly, desire burning hotly in his eyes. ‘And I’ll make you want it too.’
His hand was on her breast, stroking the flesh gently over the thin silk. Genista was trembling from head to foot. Her mouth had gone dry. The drugging kisses Luke was pressing against her throat and shoulders were triggering off emotions that made her feel a stranger to herself. When his fingers completely released the camisole too, laying bare the pale flesh beneath, she shuddered deeply, trying to pull away, but he flung a leg across her thighs, pinning her to the bed with his superior weight.
‘Kiss me, Genista,’ he muttered hoarsely against her throat. ‘Touch me!’ The command was a muttered groan. His forehead was beaded with sweat, his eyes almost black behind their thick fringe of lashes. Genista felt fear pound through her mingled with the first stirrings of an emotion that turned her bones to water. ‘Stop tormenting me. You know what I want!’
Her hands were drawn against her will to the hard wall of his chest. Beneath the silk shirt she could feel the crispness of the thick dark hair. Luke moaned and jerked heatedly against her, moving her fingers against the constraining buttons, until the shirt was completely unfastened. Genista trembled violently as he shrugged the shirt off. His skin was faintly flushed, beaded with sweat, and his skin felt hot beneath her fingers. His body clenched as she touched him, and her eyes flew in startled dismay to his face. Dusk was shadowing the room, and in the soft half light she could see quite clearly the structure of the bones lying beneath his skin. She was too bemused by the discovery that the flesh of his shoulders felt like raw silk beneath her fingers to be aware of the fact that he had unzipped her skirt and removed it, until it was too late to stop him.
Embarrassment flooded over her on a hot wave as he held her away from him studying her body, now clad only in her almost transparent briefs.
‘You’re even more beautiful than I imagined,’ he said slowly, and then almost reverendly lowered his head, touching his lips first to one tender rose-tipped breast and then the other. A sensation not unlike a sudden shaft of pain spread hotly through her, followed by a tumultuous clamor of excitement, so strong that it swept away her self-consciousness. Sensations she had never dreamed existed carried her along in their fast-flowing flood. She gasped as she felt Luke’s mouth against her breast a second time, shuddering mindlessly as her nipple hardened betrayingly beneath the expert stimulus of his tongue. Pleasure mingled with pain in a feeling so intense that it blotted out everything but the need to place her arms round Luke’s neck and hold his head captive against her body.
When he eventually lifted his head they were both breathing hard. His fingers cupped her breasts and fierce longing stirred deep inside her. So this was desire, she thought hazily, scarcely believing the sensations he was awakening within her body. Her mind seemed unable to control her wanton flesh. It clung and pleaded, mutely enticing Luke’s touch, until she was sighing softly with the pleasure he could evoke. Only when he started to remove his trousers did reality reassert itself. Shocked by the abandon with which she had responded to him, Genista
took advantage of his momentary withdrawal to stumble off the bed.
‘Genista?’
‘I wanted to take a shower.’ It was the first excuse that came into her head. Anything to get away from him and have a few minutes to herself in which to come to terms with this sensual side of her nature she had never dreamed she possessed. It was as though Luke’s touch had unlocked all the doors behind which she had hidden away all her natural urges. In his arms she became primitive woman, and the knowledge shocked her profoundly.
Luke’s fingers curled round her wrist. He was watching her with a hungry intensity that brought fresh colour to her skin. The expression in his eyes was so explicit that it set off a traitorous response deep within her own nerve centres. Her stomach went weak with longing.
‘Later,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll take one together, but right now, I’ve got other things on my mind.’ His tug on her wrist caught her off guard and she half fell on top of him, her small protest lost beneath the fierce pressure of his mouth as it closed over hers, banishing for ever any doubts she might have had about the intensity of his desire for her.
‘Touch me, Genista,’ he said thickly. ‘Make love to me the way you made love to Bob.’
Her hands were placed against the hard wall of his chest, the dark hair which arrowed down towards his navel, slightly rough against her palms. She could feel the fierce pulsating tide of his desire, his thigh muscles bunched with tension as he forced her back against the bed. His thumb stroking roughly over her throbbing nipples, increasing her overwhelming need for complete fulfilment. She had never known that sexual desire could be like this; rising on a spiralling tide of excitement strong enough to sweep aside everything that stood in its path until there was nothing but sensation, her body so perfectly attuned to Luke’s that she responded to him without conscious volition.
It was like riding an Atlantic roller, headily exciting and frighteningly dangerous, but Genista didn’t heed the fear; her fingers, seemingly of their own free will, were making urgent forays against the male flesh beneath them, Luke’s harshly indrawn breath inciting her to stroke shy fingers over the flat plane of his stomach; and have her mouth possessed until she could no longer breathe, as a punishment for her temerity. All conscious thought was suspended; there was only the urgent clamourings of her own body; the desire to know Luke’s complete possession driving her to the point where her thighs parted willingly beneath him, her breath sobbing in her throat as she felt the first powerful thrust of his body against her. His mouth closed over hers, teasing her lips apart and sliding moistly against the soft inner flesh abandoned to him.
Small, animal cries died unuttered under the pressure of his kiss, her arms winding tightly round his neck as she arched instinctively beneath him. Almost unable to bear the fiercely rising crescendo of longing he was arousing, she dug her nails mindlessly into the smooth muscles of his back, and then just when she thought she must surely die from the sheer agony of wanting him, pain tore through her, obliterating the mists of desire which had clouded her mind, and forcing her to accept that not only had she responded, but that she had actually incited Luke to possess her.
The frantic cry of pain she was unable to suppress stilled him instantly. Through the darkness she could feel him watching her. Every muscle of the body which only seconds before had melted against him in mute invitation was now tensed against his intrusion. The arms she had wrapped around him, holding him to her, lay stiffly at her side, her face turned away so that he would not see the betraying sparkle of her tears. The only sound to break the silence was their own breathing, tortured and laborious, and she was filled with a searing sense of shame. How could she have responded so freely; so—so wantonly? She shuddered deeply and heard Luke swear, his hand sliding along her throat to cup her face and turn it towards him.
He seemed about to say something, and Genista stared helplessly back at him. Her heart was thudding so loudly she felt sure he must hear it. Her mouth had gone dry, and she felt sick with the knowledge of how she had betrayed her ideals.
‘Oh God!’ She caught the smothered words as Luke’s arms tightened round her, her protests lost beneath his mouth as the last barriers of innocence were torn away, and pain gave way to a renewal of her earlier urgency. Above her she could hear Luke breathing harshly, his muttered, ‘Relax…God knows I don’t want to hurt you,’ impinging somewhere on her outer consciousness before the same mindless pleasure she had known before engulfed her, and she was responding to Luke’s possession with fevered moans.
‘Love me, Luke…please love me…’ She heard the words with shocking clarity, but they hardly seemed to matter any longer. Luke was teaching her the true meaning of the word pleasure, and her whole body was coming truly alive for the first time. The world spun dizzily round her, filled with exploding stars and vivid waves of pleasure so intense that they blotted out everything else completely.
It was only later, when pleasure had given way to exhaustion, that those moaned words returned to torment her. Luke was lying on his side next to her, one arm curved possessively round her waist, his breathing faintly ragged. She turned away, bewildered and shocked by the way he had aroused her, tremblingly aware that while her mind detested him her body had welcomed him as though he were the lover it had always dreamed of.
‘Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me the truth?’
She tried to turn away, but he wouldn’t let her. He raised himself on one a elbow, winding his fingers into her hair so that she was forced to look at him.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
It was a stupid thing to say, and she regretted it instantly. His eyes flared bitterly. She had seen him angry before, but never as angry as this.
‘Liar! You know damned well what I mean. Why did you let me think you were Bob’s mistress, when all the time…’ He broke off, and Genista was appalled to see how white he was, the bones of his face standing out beneath the tanned skin.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin; that you’d never known a man? Surely to God you must have known…’
‘Known what?’ Genista asked tonelessly. ‘All I knew was that you were threatening me.’
‘And so you abandoned yourself to me? Why? Were you hoping to punish me? To make me feel guilt?’