He wasn’t interested in explanations. ‘So you have no son?’ He gave her a little shake to prise an immediate answer loose. ‘No Russian lover?’
She shook her head to both, wondering apprehensively where he was leading as his grip eased and her toes brushed the floor.
‘No husband?’
‘No!’
‘No daughter?’
‘No!’ She clutched at his thick forearms, wobbling slightly as he let her legs take her full weight and she discovered that her knees were unusually weak.
‘Just making sure,’ he said grimly, shifting a splayed hand to her back, applying just enough pressure to bring the tips of her breasts against his denim shirt. ‘In your case it pays to be explicit. So there are no other skeletons likely to shamble out of your closet?’
She began to struggle, detecting a menacing new element in his quiet interrogation. ‘No! Dammit, Hunter, stop trying to frighten me. I know you’re not going to hurt me. Let me go.’
The heat of his body was producing a musky aroma that prompted a pulse of startled recognition along her senses. She faltered, briefly tempted, then pride came to her rescue and she renewed her struggles. But her supple strength was no match for his resolute toughness and he controlled her with irritating ease, the brazen pressure of his thighs confirming her sizzling suspicions. She could feel herself getting hot and flustered as she twisted and turned, unable to escape the knowledge that her efforts were achieving the opposite to what she intended. Her temper rose in direct proportion to her helplessness. ‘I said—let—me—go!’
‘Why?’ he murmured tauntingly down into her flushed, antagonistic face. ‘There’s no one waiting for you—you’ve been deserted by your nearest and dearest, remember? You’re quite, quite alone—except for me, of course…’
The hand on her right shoulder moved clumsily, snagging in her soft collar and dragging the open neck of her flowing blouse diagonally down across her shoulder until the top button popped.
‘Now look what you’ve done! You’ve pulled the button off,’ she accused, grabbing at the opportunity to make him feel guilty for a change. His eyelids drooped and she realised with a thrill of consternation that his clumsiness hadn’t been accidental.
‘How dare you?’ she said weakly, trying to disguise her delicious ambivalence.
His smile was slow, predatory, prematurely triumphant. ‘Good cliché, bad defence, darling. What’s next? You could claim it’s feeding time, but no, that excuse won’t work any more for you, will it? There’s no one left here for you to feed…unless it’s me…’
With stunning arrogance his hand moved down, cupping her breasts, fondling them through the soft, well-washed cotton as he murmured with a sexual frankness calculated to shock, ‘I thought these were swollen with milk for your baby…I’m delighted to find out that they’re always this large and luscious—like lovely, warm, ripe fruit just begging to be plucked and tasted…’
And on that insolent note his finger ran lightly down into her cleavage to hook under the next button. Anne gave a gasping cry as with a casual downward flick of his powerful wrist he ripped the rest of her blouse open from collarbone to waist.
Buttons scattered, along with most of Anne’s remaining resistance. If he was deliberately trying to shame her she wasn’t going to co-operate by fighting him, and if it was violent seduction he had in mind then she was a more than willing victim. Her love was stronger than her pride and because of that she could give him the plea that she sensed his own pride demanded. She placed her hands on his shoulders, tacitly opening herself to his touch.
‘Hunter, please…’
‘That’s what you said last time, and I did please you, didn’t I?’ He peeled back the edges of her blouse, displaying her soft, filmy bra, and bent his head to nip at the dark, rosy centres pressed flat against the creamy net. ‘Now it’s your turn to please me…’
He opened his mouth against her and she went utterly weak, not even noticing the rough hand glide smoothly under her hanging blouse and unclip the plastic fastening at her back. As her breasts tumbled free he made a rough sound of greedy satisfaction and sank back down with her on to the firmly sprung couch, holding her across his lap and nuzzling the flimsy fabric aside with his mouth before lapping at the soft, shyly trembling peaks with long, lazy strokes, gliding them with his clever tongue until they were rigid and glistening. He admired his erotic creations with little crowns of biting kisses, then cupped her again in his strong fingers, guiding each stiff nipple in turn into the scalding moistness of his mouth, drawing them deeper as he suckled hotly, with a fierce, lusty enjoyment that drove her into a frenzy of delight.
Fiery needles lanced through Anne’s flesh, concentrating their piercing sensations on the pleasure centres of her body as Hunter shifted sideways and rolled deftly over, pushing her full-length on to the soft, polished-cotton cushions and coming down heavily on top of her, using his hips to wedge her thighs open and accept him as intimately as their clothing would allow.
Anne was lost in a world of languid bliss, unaware of the passage of time as Hunter teased her skirt slowly up her legs, deliberately taking his time in order to savour her uninhibitedly sensual response to each fleeting caress, his warm fingers stroking, delving, sliding, enticing, his mouth always moving, tasting, exploring her with a thoroughness that would have shocked her had she not been blinded by the shattering glory of her first physical experience of love.
She wasn’t aware of the skilful disrobing that accompanied his wildly erotic explorations until she opened her pleasure-dazed eyes and suddenly found herself nude in her lover’s arms, unbearably excited by the feel of his rough clothing against her singing skin, the slide of smooth cotton against her bare back as he shifted her to accommodate his needs. He had released her hair from its faded hoop of elastic and fanned it out to frame the lush, pearly curves of her body, winding his hands in its gleaming luxuriance, teasing it over her gloriously sen- sitised breasts, tantalising her with its feathery friction.
When she teased him throatily about his fetish and protested at the inequity of their dress, Hunter laughed smokily and touched her where she was most vulnerable, stroking her with excruciating delicacy until she melted with a drenching cry, praising her for the splendour of her response.
‘So soft, and hot and silky wet…Don’t lose the rhythm, darling, stay with me…that’s right…a little harder…a little faster…No, darling, don’t fight it…’
Each time she tried to do so, out of fear or innate modesty, he punished her with a new, even more irresistible form of ravishment. With exquisite finesse he drew her deeper and deeper into unknown territory, closer and closer to the secret source of the molten river of hedonistic pleasure, yet never quite allowing her to achieve enlightenment, tantalising her with the certain knowledge that she would only find it with him…
And when she couldn’t bear to wait any longer, and tore impatiently at the cloth which veiled the ultimate mystery from her, he was too fiercely in the grip of his own pulsing arousal to continue the bewitching game, stripping to the skin with shaking hands and guiding her fingers as he prepared himself to take her, fumbling like an inexperienced boy with the tiny packet and groaning as she tentatively stroked the length of his satiny hardness, his big body arching and shuddering with the same rippling tension that she could feel building inside her, his taut buttocks and powerful flanks flexing with an inexorable rhythm as he pushed himself helplessly against her soft palm.
He caught her wrist and dragged it urgently away. ‘Stop it, or I’ll…’
He moaned, shivering convulsively as she enclosed him with her free hand, bolder now, unable to resist her new fascination with his smooth shape and daunting size, the way he pulsed heavily against her fingers.
‘Or you’ll what?’ she dared to tease.