She slid her arms around his taut neck, her fingers linking tightly across his strong nape, supporting herself while at the same time attempting to pull him down. ‘All right, you can kiss me,’ she ordered flatly, and was shocked to find him suddenly resisting. ‘What’s the matter?’ she husked, rotating the bony jut of her hip against the hard resilience between his spread thighs. ‘Changed your mind?’
‘Lost it, more like,’ was the ragged answer, half under his breath. His head dipped closer at her urging. ‘Why am I letting you do this to me?’
Her eyes glowed with cat-like satisfaction at his whisper of helpless fascination. He was admitting that he was hers, to do with as she pleased...
‘Don’t tell me I have to teach you how to kiss as well as how to flirt?’ she murmured invitingly.
He was breathing harshly, his black eyes riveted on her pouting mouth as he struggled with his self-control. ‘What’s to teach? A kiss is just a kiss...’
She laughed—a sound of pure feminine provocation. ‘Oh, Luke, do you have a lot to learn...’
Her condescending mockery was smothered by his urgent mouth. It was hot and hard and surprisingly tart. His lips slanted across hers, his tongue smoothing inside the velvety interior of her mouth, sucking at the sweetness he found there.
Rosalind’s eyes fluttered shut, unable to cope with the sensual overload. She was in a dark world of heat and tumultuous sensation which intensified when she felt his hands drifting up and down her satiny sides under the thin vest-top, his thumbs shaping the tender outer swell of her breasts exposed by her skimpy bra.
His teeth grazed her lips, his hardness lodged tightly in the hollow of her groin, and his fingertips slid under her lacy straps on their next casual journey, curling around the narrow ribbons and peeling the stretchy fabric down, leaving her breasts peaking against the soft abrasion of her top.
Rosalind’s hands slid up into his hair, gripping him hard and deepening the kiss as she waited in exquisite agony for the explorative touch to steal back up to the flesh he had daringly exposed, but his hands stayed inexplicably at her waist, fingers kneading the soft indentation with an almost painful thoroughness. She twisted restlessly. She couldn’t bear him to turn tentative and shy on her, not now... She clutched at his wrists, dragging his hands up under her top and moulding them around her naked breasts.
Fireworks went off in her head. A convulsion of indescribable pleasure rolled over her, enveloping every millimetre of her skin from the top of her tingling scalp to the tips of her reflexively curled-up toes. The heated darkness came rushing up at her like a physical force, sweeping away any semblance of thought or will, sucking her into a black hole of pure, concentrated sensation. Time warped and stretched, turning fluid and meaningless. The universe shrank at an accelerating rate until it was composed of nothing but a warm body and a violently beating heart...one man at the centre of eternity.
It was Luke who broke the blindingly erotic spell, Luke who dragged his mouth away from hers, his hands still moving compulsively on her breasts, violent tremors shaking his body as he fought the gravitational pull of their mutual desire.
‘God, what am I doing?’ he muttered harshly, dragging his hands from her bare flesh but unable to prevent his fingers trailing a final, reluctant farewell across her stiffened nipples as he did so, his eyes burning at the sight of her instinctive little shudder of response.
Rosalind stared up at him in dazed confusion until the tortured self-contempt in his expression brought reality crashing back down on her. She too was trembling, only the palm tree behind her hips preventing her from sinking bonelessly to her knees in front of the man who had kidnapped her senses and held them so ravishingly to ransom.
She hadn’t wanted to be rescued, she realised helplessly. She hadn’t cared what they were doing, or where, or why. One minute she had been a playful temptress confident of her control, the next she had been a maelstrom of chaotic emotions, utterly at the mercy of her feelings for this one man. Luke James.
His thin mouth twisted at her wide-eyed stare, mistaking it for challenge. ‘Well, teacher, I guess you made your point,’ he said, stepping back.
‘Did I?’ It was Rosalind who had learned a lesson, and she was still grappling with the terrifying implications.
‘I’m sorry if I hurt you.’
‘What?’ She had pulled her bra back over her breasts and now her hands flattened defensively over their aching tenderness, protecting her lingering arousal from his mockery.
To her shock he touched her throbbing mouth with his thumb, his face grave. ‘I didn’t realise I was being so rough...you have a little cut...’
‘It doesn’t hurt,’ she said hastily, turning aside, so that his touch slid to the outer point of her jaw, a brief streak of fire across her soft cheek.
He straightened, putting his bands behind his back, and Rosalind didn’t doubt that his fists were clenched as he said tightly, ‘I suppose I should thank all your previous lovers for providing my teacher with her expertise.’
Previous lovers? That implied that she had a current one. A jealous lover who had the right to delve into all the secrets of her soul, who would seduce her from her emotional independence with the promise of something infinitely more rewarding, something she yearned for beyond the expression of words. Panic rose in Rosalind’s throat and she resorted to her protective cloak of flippancy.
‘Oh, not all of them,’ she drawled. ‘Out of the legion of men I’ve had in my bed there were one or two who were totally uninspiring.’
‘Has there really been a legion?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing at the defiant glitter in hers.
‘At least!’
‘Do you know how much a legion is, according to the dictionary definition?’
She shrugged airily. ‘A lot.’
‘Three to six thousand.’
Rosalind’s jaw dropped and so did Luke’s eyelids.