Holly smiled, shaking her head. “Quirky extras sound interesting. What have you got?”
She joined him, peering into the tiny fridge. At least she was willing to come near him.
“Lindisfarne mead,” she read, pulling out a small bottle. “What is it?”
“Do you have a sweet tooth?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You might like it then. It’s a honey liqueur, originally brewed by monks…”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. Try it.”
He opened the little bottle and poured the golden liquid into a glass. She took a tentative sip. “Oh! That’s delicious.”
He laughed, selecting a whisky for himself. She looked at him curiously and he shook his head. “Too sweet for me.”
“Ah.”
“Come and sit on the window seat. The gardens are lit up at night. It’s worth a look.”
He switched the lights off so that the soft pastel lights in myriad colours glowed in the darkness. It was a beautiful, clear evening. A million stars were twinkling, and the warm breeze was little more than a soft breath. The branches of the nearby oaks, which must have been two hundred years old if they were a day, rippled gently as if stroked by a soft hand.
Holly and Mac sat at either end of the window seat with their drinks and looked out. “Put your legs up,” Mac urged. “Take the weight off your feet.” He looked down at her silver sandals. “Beautiful though these are, would you like to take them off?” he asked.
“Mmm. That sounds good.”
It sounded good to him, too. That she was willing to take her shoes off told him that she wasn’t immediately thinking of bolting on him, which was something.
He slid her shoes off and gently massaged a small, neat foot. She flinched imperceptibly. “You’re very tense, sweetheart,” he said, casually, stroking the soft skin of her sole. She had pretty toes. “You know you don’t have to do this, don’t you?”
She flushed. “Of course. I… I’m just a bit nervous.”
“About what?”
There was a silence.
His mind raced. What the hell could be making her so twitchy?
The answer was obvious. He was an idiot. “Are you worried about precautions? Because I’ll take care of that.”
He always did. It was absolutely his responsibility to make sure they were both safeguarded.
“Oh! Ah, well, that would be good. Thanks.”
But that evidently was not what was bothering her.
“Out with it,” he said, gruffly. “You were like a flame in my arms downstairs, but now that we’re here, you’ve dimmed to candlelight. What’s bothering you?”
She looked away, awkwardly.
“Come on, sexy lady,” he coaxed. “You were damn well brave enough to get up on that stage tonight with hundreds of people watching. I’m sure you can tell me what’s on your mind.”
She pulled her feet away from him and drew her knees up against her chest, wrapping her arms around herself. With visible difficulty, she admitted, “I…had a past relationship. This sort of thing…wasn’t great.”
The whisky in his glass glowed rich and tawny in the ambient light. He swirled it round absently, thinking about all she hadn’t said. Had her previous lover been inconsiderate? Careless? Cruel?
A sudden tide of protectiveness swept over him, surprising him with its intensity. He had always been deeply protective of his family, but that feeling did not normally extend to near strangers. But for all that he’d only known Holly for one evening, she was no stranger to him. He felt, oddly, as if he’d known her for years, as if she were aligned with him, in tune with him in some deep, intimate way.
A prickle of unease made him shift uncomfortably. He liked women, enjoyed their company and their bodies on rare occasions, but he was not interested in getting involved with anyone. For one, he wasn’t idiot enough to make himself vulnerable to a woman by loving her. He’d done that once. Never again. For another, he had more trouble and responsibilities on his plate at present than he could comfortably handle and had no wish to add any further upheaval to his life.
But even so, he could not subdue his instincts. He hated the thought that Holly might have been mistreated. He hated that she was nervous around him. He wanted to give her everything that it appeared she had been denied in the past. He wanted her to feel safe and cared for. He wanted her to know the power of passion and pleasure.
He looked at her with resolve. “I’m sorry it wasn’t good for you. And I want you to know you’ll not come to any harm with me. Your word is law, here. You say ‘no’, and it’s ‘no’…at any point. Do you understand me?”
She looked at him seriously. “I do,” she said. “But I’m not going to say ‘no’.”
Thank goodness.
“And,” he said, reflecting, “there’s one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Tonight is our night. When I danced with you downstairs, I saw a woman who was vivid, beautiful, confident. And when you danced…” He rolled his eyes. “Holly, you were glorious. Absolutely, utterly sensual. And tonight, I want that woman with me. So I’m challenging you. Shake off the nerves, relax and let go. Tonight I want the open, honest, real you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You ask a lot, Sir Mac.”
“Yep. I’m a demanding man, all right,” he said easily.
“You might bite off more than you can chew.”
“I’ll risk it if you will.”
There was a long pause. Then Holly said slowly, “Okay. But be prepared. When I take on a challenge, I do it right. And I’ll only do it on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’re equally open and honest with me. Let’s see who you really are, Mac Sinclair. I dare you.”
She surprised him by rummaging in her purse for her phone. A few seconds later, Unchained Melody was playing in the background.
She stood and held out her hand. “Dance with me,” she said, softly. “You’re right. Tonight is just for us. Just one secret, magical night. So tonight I’m going to be…who I want to be. Who I really am inside.”
He nodded solemnly. “I want that. I want it so much, Holly. Something real. And I promise you that it’ll be the real me. There’ll only be truth between us.”
A wicked, sinfully seductive smile spread across her face, and suddenly, instinctively, he knew he was seeing the real Holly, the one she hid from others. And she was magnificent—confident, powerful, strong, determined and wicked.
“Truth it is,” she murmured, huskily.
His stomach clenched and the deep, dark excitement that had been brewing all evening coalesced into a burning coil of need in the pit of his stomach.
He put his hand into hers and found himself on his feet, in her arms, slow dancing in time with the music.
Oh, it was so wonderful to finally have her warm, lithe, sensuous body against his. With her feminine curves, her softness, against him, his breath hitched. She was a temptress, a witch. He was falling under her spell.
Her scent twined around him. She smelt faintly of roses. He pressed his face against the tender skin of her collar bone, breathed in the faint, delicious musk of her skin. His head spun. He was drowning in his need for her.
Unable to resist, he tasted her—clean, sweet, faintly salty. Lust hit him hard, squirming and writhing. What would it be like to taste her more intimately? Would she let him? To bathe in her scent, to feel her softness against his face, to see the beauty of her body…
As if bewitched, he sought out her mouth, unable to bear another second without a kiss. She opened to him and he stroked her lips with his. He had never done that before, never thought about the sheer, intimate, delicious sensation of mouth against mouth. Her lips were so soft, so smooth… Then she thrust her tongue into his mouth and he nearly came on the spot.
Gasping, breathing in her air, he submitted as she took him into her, her tongue toying with his, dancing and joustin
g. The tiny, soft jabs instantly had him imagining what it would be like to be inside her. Would her body be so hot, so soft, so welcoming?
He groaned, and suddenly she twisted in his arms, so that she was facing away from him. He kept his arms around her but could not resist sliding his hands across the plane of her stomach, the curve of her hips. She laughed softly, and pressed her bottom against him, gyrating against him in time with the music.
“Damn,” he whispered hoarsely as more desire flooded his already-desperate body. Intense heat swept through him. He was on fire, and she was fanning the flames, over and over, rubbing and pressing against him.
He longed to seize her by the waist, bend her over, move aside her silky little panties and slip inside her soft warmth, lose himself in her… And she would groan and moan and push back against him until she tightened around him.
Swallowing hard, he fought for control, but his hazy mind could not resist temptation and he slid his hands to her delicious breasts in their sparkly covering. They filled his palms, two delicious little mounds.
She leaned forward and he stroked them softly, lightly. She gasped and shivered. The soft motion of her hips changed. His light caresses were obviously inflaming her.
She turned, a sultry smile that was pure delight playing on her lips.
Reaching out to the lapel of his jacket, she looked deeply into his eyes. “May I?” she asked, stroking the collar.
He nodded, helplessly, and she slid the jacket from his shoulders. His shirt came next. She unbuttoned it slowly, never dropping his gaze, and took it from him.
Her soft, slender hands slid over his sensitised skin and he shivered.
“Shoes off,” she whispered.
He slipped them off with alacrity.
“Socks.”
He glanced at her curiously then took them off. She wrinkled her nose. “I hate seeing a man wearing socks without trousers,” she said. “It’s not a good look.”
He made a mental note of that for next time, then berated himself. There wasn’t going to be a next time. Suddenly, he found himself hating that thought.
But there was no opportunity to ponder. Her hands at his belt obliterated every logical thought process he had left. She unfastened it efficiently, opened it and carefully slid down his zipper. He groaned as the constriction of his close-fitting dress trousers eased, then her hands were at his waistband and she was sliding both the trousers and his boxer shorts off him.
Gasping as she ran her hands over his bottom, he realised that she was slowly pushing the fabric past his hips. A second later, he sprang free as the trousers slid down his legs. The cool air stroked his heated body.
“Get on the bed,” she whispered.
His eyes widened. He’d never had this before, never had a woman who had so completely taken charge. It was intensely erotic to cede control, to put himself in her hands. Truth, he had promised her, but he had not known this about himself, had not suspected he was capable of submission, even for a short time.
It turned him on like hell.
He stumbled to the bed.
“On your back,” she said.
He lay back, realising that whilst he was stripped, she was fully clothed. The thought made him feel vulnerable.
Maybe she recognised a little of what he was feeling, because she crawled onto the bed beside him and kissed him. He brought his hands up to wrap around her body, but she caught his wrists and held them firm against the pillows until he obeyed and left them where they were. It was very frustrating only to be able to kiss her and not touch anywhere else, but hell, it was surely the best kiss of his life, bar none.
She pressed her lips to his and carried on kissing him until neither of them had breath, and still she kept going, until all was swirling colour and throbbing feeling. Only when his body was straining upwards, seeking touch, did she reach down and lightly stroke across his stomach.
His muscles contracted as he contorted into an arch, trying to manoeuvre the fingers to stroke lower, at his hips, his groin.
But they refused to go, instead stroking his underarm, his sides, his ribs. Once they brushed across a nipple, and he shuddered.
“Please,” he gasped, groaning, and with a wicked little laugh, she reached down and pinched it, hard.
The pleasure-pain would have brought him to his knees if he’d been upright. As it was, it took him to the edge and he panted as those fingers, those wicked, damn, torturous fingers, drifted away once again and swirled around the tops of his legs, millimetres from his balls.
He thrust his hips in frustration. He was so hard and full and tight that he feared he might burst.
“Damn it, Holly,” he ground out, “please!”
But she pressed a pretty pearl-pink polished fingertip to his lips, smiled and murmured, “Sshhh. Be good, now.”
Be good?
It was nearly his undoing. She was driving him crazy. She was killing him…
He twisted and writhed as she stroked all around him, coming so close to touching him. He knew that was all it would take. He was on a knife edge.
“Please, Holly, please…” he begged, desperate for her to take pity on him. “Anything. Please…”
She laughed, laughed. Then slowly, she slid down his body and took him into her mouth.
The shock of it took his breath away. For a frozen second, he fought a pitched battle with his body. She drew him deep inside, and at the sudden sensation of enfolding heat, his control splintered. The impulse to thrust and thrust hard, to take, to find release was overwhelming. But he couldn’t… He didn’t want to.
He twisted away from her, hauled her up against him and kissed her with a fierce passion that left her wild and breathless.
“Why? Why did you stop?” she asked.
For a fleeting second, he thought he saw a shadow of doubt in her eyes. Did she seriously think he hadn’t wanted to?
“I was too close,” he whispered harshly. “You’re a witch, an absolute bloody siren. A man could drown in passion for you…”
She flushed, and there was something new in her eyes, a dawning of new confidence. It filled him with satisfaction. Whoever her useless lover had been, he was a bloody idiot to let this woman go. She was pure, pure dynamite.
“You could have—”
“I want my first time with you to be…in you.”
Her eyes widened, and he rolled over, pressing her down into the soft mattress. He touched the zip at the side of her dress.
“Sexy lady… May I?” he asked.
She laughed softly, nodded and wriggled to help him undo the zip and slide the silky material down.
He felt like he was unwrapping the most amazing present he had ever received.
And when her dress was finally off, he knelt beside her and just looked his fill.
She was, far and away, the most breathtakingly beautiful woman he had ever seen. In the soft light from the garden, she was all shadows and mysteries. He absorbed the vision of her slender neck, delicate collar bones and smooth, creamy alabaster shoulders. His gaze travelled downwards, down towards the promised land of her sweet, smooth, strawberry-tipped breasts, so perfect. He swallowed as he followed the slender plane of her stomach and her softly curved hips to the tiny panties he’d imagined, gorgeous little silky silver ones with an edging of lace. And finally to her legs—her long, long legs and dainty feet. She was so exquisite that he was almost afraid to touch her.
He breathed deeply, fighting to subdue his own needs so he could fulfil hers.
“You’re perfect,” he whispered. “Like a fairy or a fey. Magical.”
She shook her head, met his eyes and looked deep into them. “Just a woman,” she said.
“There’s no ‘just’ about it.”
He lay on his side beside her and reached out to stroke her breast. She tensed. “You don’t like this?” he asked. “You have to tell me, you know. Anything you don’t like…”
Her gaze slid away from his. “It hurts…”
He removed his hand immediately, frowning. “It hurts? When I touch you like that?”
Her colour was high, but she answered him. “Not now. But…later.”
“Later?”
“You know. When things get a bit…wilder.”
What the bloody hell? He bit off a sharp expletive as black fury roared through him. If he ever met this ex-lover, he’d want to kill him. It was obvious that the guy had been rough with her—too damn rough by far if she thought that normal lovemaking meant pain. No wonder she had been nervous.
It occurred to him that she had paid him the most enormous compliment by trusting him enough to come to bed with him.
He swallowed. He would make this good for her. At his hands, she would learn that lovemaking could be wonderful from beginning to end.
“There is no wilder,” he murmured. “No damn wilder and no damn pain. I promise.” He looked into her eyes. “Do you trust me, sweetheart?”
“Yes.”
“Will you let me…try? To touch you there? It won’t hurt, I promise. And if it does, just tell me to stop and I will. At any point. All right?”
There was apprehension in her eyes, but she nodded. “All right.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, he kissed her, and kept on kissing her until the tension eased out of her. And he kept on kissing her as he began to stroke her breasts with a featherlight touch, circling gently, avoiding her beautiful nipples.
He took his time, letting his fingers drift, much as she had on him, until she started to move of her own accord. He smiled inwardly as he felt the first faint arching of her back, a sure sign that her breasts were seeking a firmer touch.
He didn’t give it to her, continuing the slow torture until she started to moan and undulate her hips.
He breathed in deeply as he watched her sensuous movements. He could smell the delicious scent of her, and it made him dizzy. He wanted her so much.
Unable to help himself, he lowered his head to her breast and sucked softly. His stomach clenched at the soft, sweet taste of her skin, the feel of it against his lips. His breath caught as a wave of pleasure rolled over him.
Midsummer Man Page 3