Her heart was thudding a million miles an hour, blood fizzing and under pressure in her veins like the wine in the bottle when he stopped laughing and put his hands to his lips and tasted and frowned. ‘It needs something,’ he said before he took her face in his hands and sampled her lips, his tongue sweeping their width. ‘Perfect,’ he declared, and pulled her hard against him.
She went willingly. He tasted of the wine and of the liqueur they used to replace the sweetness; he tasted of warm skin and hot breath, and of grape juice, fermented and strong, on his hot lips and his even hotter mouth.
She tasted pressure, hot and hard, and she liked it.
She felt herself pushed up against the bench top and she revelled in it, his chest hard against hers, knowing there was nowhere else to go, nowhere to run, even if she had half a mind to.
She wasn’t running anywhere.
Not while he made her feel this way, tossed and tumbled on a sea of sensation, while his hands were in her hair, on her shoulders and her back and pressing him to her. Pressing her so close she could feel his hot hard length at her belly while his tongue worked magic in her mouth.
It was as shocking as it was compelling and she whimpered into his mouth, grinding her hips against him in spite of a fear borne of the ages, a fear of the unknown, while her actions were purely driven by need, needing to be closer, ever closer, and he obliged by grabbing her behind in his hands as his mouth plundered hers.
And then he used those hands to lift her and sit her on top of the timber slab and pull her legs around him.
His face was level with her breasts, and he cupped their fullness, and all he wanted to do was bury his head in those breasts, without the layers overladen.
‘You’re all wet and sticky,’ he said. ‘We should get you out of these wet clothes.’
He could rip them off now, he thought. He ached to discover the woman he’d suspected had been lurking below all the time, but travelling in a car tomorrow with a woman in shredded clothes or returning her to her grandfather that way was so not a good look.
He put his hands to the hem of her polo top instead, resigned to going the slow way.
He peeled it from her, his lips never leaving hers until the last possible moment when he reefed it over her head.
And then he gazed, his eyes wide open.
He hadn’t really thought about it, but if he had, he would have imagined her underwear to be as dreary as her outerwear. Serviceable. Probably coloured in beige or khaki. No doubt with a Purman Wine logo emblazoned somewhere thereon.
If he had thought along those lines, he would have been wrong.
Very wrong.
Because instead of dreary, his eyes feasted on the extraordinary.
It wasn’t really a bra. Not in the strict engineering sense of the word. Rather it was more of a confection—of creamy satin and black floral lace woven with a pink ribbon and tied in the middle in a little pink bow—and all cradling creamy smooth-skinned mounds of flesh beneath.
‘Oh. My. God,’ he said.
‘Do you like it?’ she asked, her teeth chewing her lip.
He glanced up at her with disbelief. ‘I love it,’ he growled, skimming his hands up the curves of her bare sides until his thumbs grazed the undersides of her breasts. Breath hissed through her teeth and he looked up to her face and saw what looked like ecstasy mixed with fear, but why should she look tense? How could she possibly imagine he wouldn’t like what he saw?
His hands cupped her breasts and she shuddered. He pulled her closer, and pressed his lips to the skin of each mound and she gasped and then he pulled her head down and sucked her into his kiss.
‘Please tell me you’re wearing matching underwear,’ he said when he could bear to tear his mouth away.
‘I always wear matching underwear.’
His hardness twitched. God, and he’d never once suspected.
She was all kinds of surprise package. What other surprises was little Ms Holly Purman hiding?
He could hardly wait to find out.
Though this was hardly the place.
They were both sticky with wine and the timber bench was cold and there wasn’t so much as a sofa, and while the fire was warming it was lacking the obligatory rug of seduction and it wasn’t what he wanted right now.
Because he could do her on that bench top—and, oh, God, how he wanted to do her on that bench top right now—but it would get uncomfortable very fast.
He didn’t want it getting uncomfortable any time soon.
He wanted somewhere entirely more comfortable.
‘Is there a bed anywhere in this place?’ he murmured between kisses, his hands riding up her thighs, thumbs aiming straight for paradise.
‘There’s a guest suite,’ she said, her breath too choppy for one entire sentence, ‘in the house.’ Another breath. ‘I’ve got a key.’