‘But there’s more than livestock out here, isn’t there?’ Theo prodded.
‘Not much,’ Becky confessed. She grimaced and then looked away, down to the wine glass which appeared to be empty. He had brought the bottle to the table and now he reached across to top her up. ‘I say that I’m not on call-out twenty-four seven,’ she laughed. ‘Let’s hope I don’t get an emergency call tonight because I might just end up with my car in a ditch.’
‘Surely no one would expect you to go out in weather like this?’ Theo looked at her, startled, and she laughed again.
She had a lovely laugh, soft, ever so slightly self-conscious, the sort of laugh that automatically made you want to smile.
‘No. Although I have had emergencies in snow before where I’ve had no choice but to get into my car, head out and hope for the best. Sheep. They sometimes have poor timing when it comes to lambing. They don’t usually care whether it’s snowing or whether it’s three in the morning.’
‘So just the demanding sheep to get your attention...’ He considered that, in the absence of a significant other, she would be as free as a bird should she find herself having to leave the house at short notice.
To somewhere—he mentally justified the inevitable—where there might be more for a girl of her age than sheep and livestock.
‘I don’t suppose someone like you ever feels...like you’re not too sure where you’re going or what the next step might be.’
The question caught him by surprise because it wasn’t often anyone ignored his ‘no trespass’ signs to ask anything as outrageously personal, and for a few seconds he contemplated not answering. But, then again, why not? Like she had so aptly said, they were ships passing in the night.
And besides, he liked that shy, tentative look on her face. It was so different from the feisty little minx who had first greeted him at the front door. He liked the fact that she was opening up to him. Normally uninterested in most women’s predictable back stories—which were always spun as a prelude to someone trying to get to him—he had to admit that he was keen to hear hers.
She wanted nothing from him and that was liberating. He thought that it allowed him actually to be himself.
Of course, within certain limits, considering he had chosen to keep her in the dark about his real reasons for descending on her like a bolt from the blue, but there was no such thing as absolute truth between people, was there?
‘No,’ he drawled. ‘I make it my business to always know where I’m going and I certainly have never been wrong-footed when it comes to the future.’
‘Never?’ Becky laughed uncertainly. He was so overwhelming, so blindingly self-assured. Those were character traits that should have left her cold but in him they were sexy, seductive, almost endearing. ‘Nothing has ever happened in your life that you haven’t been able to control?’
Theo frowned. Outside, through the kitchen window, he could see the driving fall of white, as fine and fierce as a dust storm, lit up and dazzling in the little patch outside the window where a light had been switched on.
Inside was warm and mellow. He hadn’t felt so unstressed in a while and he recalled why he had been stressed for the past several months. Nothing to do with work. The stress of work was something he enjoyed, something he needed to survive, the way a plant needs rain or sun. He had been stressed out by his mother. This was the first time he could think about her without his gut tightening up.
‘My mother has been ill,’ he heard himself say abruptly. ‘A stroke. Out of the blue. No one saw it coming, least of all me. So, yes, that could be categorised as something that has happened that has been out of my control.’
Becky wanted to reach across and squeeze his hand because he looked awkward with the confession. She wasn’t accustomed to pouring her heart out to anyone and, clearly, neither was he. Not that she wouldn’t have been able to see that for herself after five minutes in his company.
‘I’m sorry. How is she now? How is your father dealing with it? And the rest of your family? Sometimes, it’s almost harder for the family members.’
Theo wondered how he had managed to end up here, with a virtual stranger leaning towards him, face wreathed with sympathy.
‘There’s just me,’ he said shortly. ‘My father died...a long time ago and I’m an only child.’
‘That’s tough.’ Becky thought of her own family arrangements.
‘Do you feel sorry for me?’ he prompted with silky smoothness. He smiled slowly, very slowly, and watched as the blood crept up to her hairline. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t, and that gave him a heady kick because the oldest game in the book was being played now and he liked that.
He liked it a lot more than spilling his guts like one of those emotional, touchy-feely types he had never had time for.
This was safe ground and known territory. When it came to sex, Theo was at home, and this was about sex. Why bother to beat about the bush? She wanted him and the feeling was mutual. He didn’t understand why he found her so appealing, because she was not his type, but he did, and he wondered whether that had to do with the fact that for once there was no pressure. He wasn’t even certain that she would take his hand if he offered it and allow herself to be led up to that bedroom of hers.
The uncertainty just lent another layer to the thrill of a chase he hadn’t yet decided to embark upon.
Though she was so unknowingly sexy...
He wondered what she would look like without clothes on. He had to guess at a figure she was hell-bent on concealing and he was desperate to see what was there. He flexed his fingers and shifted.
‘Of course I feel sorry for you,’ Becky was saying with heartfelt sincerity. ‘I’d be devastated if anything happened to one of my family.’ She watched as he slowly eased his big body out of the chair. Her heart began to beat fast and it was beating even faster when he leaned over her to support himself on either side of her chair, caging her in.
She wanted to touch him. She wanted him to touch her. In no way did she feel in the slightest threatened by this tall, lean, powerful man physically dominating her with his presence.
She felt...feminine.
It was an unfamiliar feeling because femininity was something she had always presumed herself lacking. It went with good looks and both of those were the domain of her sister.
‘How sorry?’ Theo murmured huskily. Her excitement was contagious. He could feel it roaring through his veins, making him act in this unexpected way, because the caveman approach was just not his thing. He didn’t sling women over his shoulder or rip their clothes off. That would have been on a par with beating his chest and swinging from tree to tree on a vine. But he wanted to sling this one over his shoulder, especially when she sat there, staring at him with those incredible eyes, chewing on her lower lip, refusing flippantly to give in to the massive charge of attraction between them.
‘I...’ Becky offered weakly. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Sorry?’ Theo wondered whether he had misheard.
‘I’m not sure I understand what’s going on...’
‘What do you think is going on? We’re two adults and we’re attracted to one another and what’s going on is me making a pass at you...’
‘Why?’
Theo straightened. He shot her a crooked smile and then perched on the edge of the table. ‘This is a first for me.’
‘What is?’ Startled, Becky stared at him. She was so turned on that she could barely speak and she couldn’t quite believe that this was happening. Not to her. Stuff like this never happened to her. She had always been the bookworm who attracted fellow bookworms. Face it, even Freddy had been a bookworm just like her. Guys like Theo didn’t go for girls like her. They went for hot blondes in tight dresses who batted their eyelashes and knew what to do when it came to sex.
What did she know about sex? Nerves gripped her but the promise of that ride, with its speed, its thrills and its unbearable excitement, was much, much greater th
an any attack of nerves.
She wanted this.
‘Never mind,’ she said softly, eyes dipped. Her innate seriousness wanted to be reassured, wanted to be told that this was more than just sex, but of course it wasn’t. It was purely about sex and that was part of its dragging appeal. This went against everything inside her and yet she couldn’t resist its ferocious tug on all her senses.
‘Look at me, Becky.’
She obeyed and waited with halted breath for him to say what he had to say.
‘If you have any doubts at all, then say so right now and we both walk away from this.’
She shook her head and smiled, and Theo nodded. ‘And Becky...’ He leaned over her once again, his dark, lean face utterly serious. ‘There’s something I should tell you from the outset, just so that there are no misunderstandings. Don’t invest in me and don’t think that this is going to be the start of something big. It won’t. I don’t do relationships and, even if I did, we’re from different worlds.’
He didn’t do relationships and, even if he did, they were from different worlds...
He was giving her an out and he wasn’t beating about the bush. This would be a one-night stand. She was going to hand her virginity over to someone who had made it clear that there was nothing between them bar physical attraction The one thing on which she had never placed any emphasis. Yet this was more than longing on her part. Her virginity felt like an albatross around her neck and she wanted to set herself free from it more than anything in the world.
‘Message received and understood,’ Becky murmured and blushed as he delivered her a slashing smile. ‘You’re not from my world either and, although I do do relationships, it would never, ever be with someone like you. So we’re on the same page.’ The dynamics of what happened next was making her perspire. Should she tell him that she was a virgin? No. Chances were he would never guess anyway...and she didn’t want him to take fright and pull back.
‘I’ve wanted you the minute I saw you,’ Theo confessed unsteadily, fingers hooking under the waistband of the jogging bottoms he had borrowed.
‘Even though I’m from a different world?’ She tilted her chin up and stared at him.
‘You’ve admitted the same about me’ was his gruff response.
‘I don’t know why I find you attractive at all,’ she muttered to herself and Theo laughed.
‘Don’t spare my ego, whatever you do.’
Their eyes tangled and she felt an affinity with him, this inappropriate stranger, that was so powerful it took her breath away. It was as if they were on exactly the same page, united, thinking as one, mixed up with one another as though they belonged.
Shaken, she stared at him.
Turned on beyond belief, Theo stayed her as she made to stand. ‘Not yet,’ he murmured. He stood in front of her and then he knelt and parted her legs, big hands on her inner thighs. Becky held her breath and then released it in a series of little gasps and sighs. She wanted to squirm. She wasn’t naked but the way he was holding her, his position between her legs, made her feel exposed and daringly, recklessly wanton.
She flung back her head and half-closed her eyes. She felt his fingers dip under the waistband of her jeans and then the soft pop of the button being released, followed by the sound of the zipper being pulled down.
Everything was heightened.
She could hear the hammering of her heart against her rib cage, the raspy sound of her jerky breathing, the soft fluttering of her eyelids. She wriggled as he began to pull down her jeans.
This was surreal. The girl who had always thought that sex would be with someone she had given her heart to was desperate for a man who was just passing through. The girl who had quietly assumed that she’d know when love struck was being floored by something she had never anticipated—unbridled, hot, heady, sweat-inducing lust.
Cool air hit her legs. She half-opened her eyes and groaned softly, reaching out to curl her fingers in Theo’s hair. He looked up and their eyes met.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ he asked in a wickedly soft voice and Becky nodded.
‘Then why don’t you get vocal and tell me?’
‘I can’t!’
‘Of course you can. And you can tell me what you want me to do as well...’ Her panties were still on. He could breathe in her musky scent through them and see the dampness of her desire, a patch of moisture against the pale pink cotton. He didn’t pull them down. Instead, he gently peeled them to one side, exposing her, and blew softly against the mound.
‘What should I do next?’ he enquired.
‘Theo...’ Becky gasped in a strangled voice. She’d slipped a little down the chair.
‘Tell me,’ he ordered softly. ‘Want me to lick you down there? Want to feel my tongue sliding in and teasing you?’
‘Yes,’ Becky whispered.
‘Then give me some orders...’ He was so hot for her, turned on by her shyness, which was so different from what he was accustomed to.
He had to shed his clothes. Urgently. The top, then the jogging bottoms, taking his boxer shorts with them. She was looking at him, eyes wide.
‘Lick me...’ Just saying that made her whole body burn. ‘I’m so wet for you...’ He was so beautiful that he took her breath away. Her mind had always drawn a convenient line at the bedroom door. In her head, the act of making love stopped with kissing, fumbling and whispering of sweet nothings.
She had never pictured the reality of the naked male, not really. This surpassed all her fantasies and she knew, somewhere deep down inside, that the benchmark he had set would never be reached by any other man. He was so gloriously masculine, his body so lean and exquisitely perfect, the burnished gold of his colouring so impossibly sexy.
Theo pulled off the panties, wanting to take his time, and knowing that it would require super-human control to do that, because he was so hard he was hurting. She was wonderfully wet and she shuddered as he slid his questing tongue against her, seeking out the little throbbing bud and then teasing it, feeling it swell and tighten.
Becky was on fire, burning up. Two of his fingers joined his tongue in its devastating assault on her senses. She pushed his head harder against her. She felt so ready to take him into her. ‘Come in me,’ she begged.
‘All in good time.’ Theo barely recognised his voice. Having boasted about his formidable talent for exercising control all the time in all areas of his life, he was finding out what it felt like to lose it. He was free-falling, his body doing its own thing, refusing to listen to his head...
Head buried between her legs, he sucked hard and felt her come against his mouth, her body arching up, stiffening, her breath sucked in as her orgasm ripped through her, long and shuddering.
He rose up, watching her brightly flushed face and her feverish twisting as her orgasm subsided.
His good intentions to hang onto his self-control had disappeared faster than water being sucked down a plug hole.
‘Hold me,’ he commanded, legs straddled over her.
Dazed, Becky took him in her hand. Nothing had ever felt so good. Every inhibition she had ever had when she had thought about making love to a man for the first time disappeared the minute he touched her.
It felt so right.
He made her feel special, made it feel natural for her to open herself up to him in the most intimate way imaginable.
Touching him now, she was no longer apprehensive, even though her mind skittered away from the physical dynamics of having someone as big as he was inside her. She was so wet and so giddy for him that it wasn’t going to be a problem...
She delicately traced her tongue along his rigid shaft then took him into her mouth and felt a surge of heady power as he groaned and arched back.
Instinct came naturally. She even knew when he was nearing his orgasm...and she sensed that this was not how he had planned things to go.
Looking down at her, Theo could scarcely believe that his control had slipped so completely that he couldn’t
contain the orgasm he knew was a whisper away. Her mouth circling him was mind-blowingly erotic, as was the focused expression on her face and the slight trembling of her fingers cupping him.
Intent on not coming like this, he pulled away, and for a second he thought that he had succeeded, thought that he could hold himself in check for the length of time it would take them both to get upstairs. He was mistaken. He could no more control the inexorable orgasm that had been building from the moment she had looked at him with those turquoise eyes...the moment he had known that they would end up in bed together, whether it made sense or not, whether it was a good idea or not...than he could have controlled a fast approaching tsunami.
For Becky, still transported to another planet, this was inexplicably satisfying because it was proof positive that he was as out of control as she was.
Watching him come over her had rendered her almost faint with excitement. Her heated gaze met his and his mouth quirked crookedly.
‘Would you believe me if I told you that this has never happened in my life before?’ Theo was still breathing thickly and still shocked at his body’s unexpected rebellion. ‘I’m taking you upstairs before it happens again.’ He lifted her up in one easy movement and took the stairs quickly. She could have been as light as a feather. Her hair was all over the place, her cheeks were bright with hectic colour and her eyes drowsy with desire.
The curtains hadn’t been drawn and weak moonlight seeped into her bedroom. It was still snowing, a steady, silent fall of white that somehow enhanced the peculiar dream-like feel to what was going on.
Theo took a few seconds to look at her on the bed. Her dark hair was spread across the pillows and her pale, rounded body was a work of art. Her breasts were big, bigger than a generous handful, her nipples cherry-pink discs.
He was going to take his time.
He’d acted the horny teenager once and it wasn’t going to happen again. He still couldn’t compute how it had happened in the first place.
He joined her on the bed, pinned her hands to her side and straddled her.
Snowbound With His Innocent Temptation Page 5