by Anne Mather
‘Better now?’
‘Dry, at least.’ Shrugging, she moved uncertainly towards him, her glance wary as she hitched up the sweat pants that were too big even with the tie pulled as tight as she could make it. The cloth pooled around her ankles, and Kyle couldn’t suppress the purely male appreciative grin that was tugging at the corners of his mouth.
‘Sexy, too.’
‘I wasn’t trying…to look sexy.’ Her lower lip quivered a little as she barely got out the words on a gravelly whisper, her attention hijacked by the hungry longing in Kyle’s magnetic hazel eyes. In response, the blood thickened in her veins. Suddenly the question of whether she should spend the night with him or not was immaterial. You might as well have asked her if she needed to take her next breath. Unequivocally yes.
‘Sweetheart…You don’t have to try to be sexy—you just are.’
Kyle reached her before she got to him, hauling her hard up against him so that her breasts were crushed against the wall of his chest, her senses invaded by his heat and his hardness, by the sheer physicality of skin against skin, by the undoubted animal magnetism he exuded like cologne.
Oh, God, I need this…She melted as his hands slipped easily around her waist, then slid lower to trace the delectable curve of her behind. With a softly muttered oath his mouth found hers, almost instantaneously commanding her response. As his heat invaded her every sense in Megan’s body capitulated to his demand as urgently as one magnet attracted another. It was as if their two bodies suddenly fused and melded into each other, so that there was no distinction between where he began and she ended.
His kiss was flooding the delicately soft recesses of her mouth with desire and want and the deliciously erotic flavours of the man himself. Her breasts peaked and hardened, a hot desperate longing flooding her limbs with an ache so deep that Megan gasped hungrily into his mouth. Her soft secret spaces absorbed the erotic little dance of his tongue with another helpless groan as she arched her body into his, exhilarated but scared when she felt the rigid pressure of his arousal pressing urgently into her abdomen.
Dragging his mouth away from hers with a harsh guttural sound that made Megan’s heart thud almost to a stop, Kyle cupped her face between his hands, his gaze burning her with a fire that was all but running out of control. In the side of his perfectly sculpted cheek—intriguingly shadowed by a day’s growth of beard—a muscle worked tellingly, the last vestiges of self-restraint hanging on by a mere thread…
‘I have to be sure…this is what you want.’ His heart racing, Kyle gazed into her fathomless velvet brown eyes and knew himself to be irrevocably lost.
Right then, every feature on her lovely sensuous face became the focus of his whole world. The beautifully rich dark lashes that swept down to the tip of her porcelain cheek, the straight, exquisitely formed little nose, the beguilingly sexy mouth, wet and swollen from his kisses…He was transfixed. Just as if he had been bewitched. As if he had inadvertently wandered into the realms of magic, where reality as he understood it was invitingly suspended, his destiny to be trapped there for at least a hundred years or more.
The thought made him shiver…then it made him smile—because God knew he was a willing captive. Already his lips were missing the taste of hers, desire rolling through him like a rapid that couldn’t be stopped—pulling him over the edge as easily as a leaf borne on the wind. He could love her and never stop, and the realisation was a tidal wave hitting him hard.
He stared as her lips moved, need ripping through him as the moist, sultry mouth that he defied any man to look at and not think the most lascivious erotic thoughts—formed words that made every nerve-ending in his body snap to with hungry anticipation.
‘I’m sure,’ she whispered.
Needing no more reassurance than that, Kyle swept her up into his arms and bore her urgently into his bedroom.
Megan was tremulously aware of being laid carefully down on his big brass bed; the sight of it sent a wave of pure eroticism rippling through her that made her catch her breath. Then she was aware of the slight give of the mattress beneath the darkly masculine navy blue silk counterpane, of Kyle leaving her momentarily to twitch down blinds the colour of café latte.
Her eyes followed him with a kind of wild hunger that she hadn’t known herself capable of, devouring him as he languidly returned to join her on the bed, almost deliberately stringing out the tension between them like a bow.
Stripping off his shirt, then discarding it in one easy fluid movement while her gaze thirstily drank in the sight of all that gorgeous bronzed hard-muscled flesh, he was sure, confident, and most of all totally in command. His dark tousled hair grazed his shoulders as he carefully straddled her legs, then reached down to lay his hands on her breasts.
It was like a lightning strike. Megan bit down heavily on her lip as need and passion dovetailed, ripping through her like a thousand volts of electricity—lighting her up from the inside out. Her pelvis arched towards him as she shut her eyes on a deeply languorous groan. Then his thumbs started to work their magic back and forth across the tender aroused flesh of her nipples beneath the soft material of his shirt, and her eyes flew open again to find him watching her with an intensely erotic, almost primeval passion etched on his face.
‘Take off your clothes.’ The polite veneer was gone. In its place was a need so raw and so primitive that it rocked Megan’s world straight off its axis—never to be the same again. All she knew was that there was a wild honeyed heat running through her blood like the onset of a fever.
With shaking fingers she started to comply with his command, struggling as she tried to hike up his too-big T-shirt. Conscious of his powerful muscular thighs placed either side of hers, the lean taut-muscled plane of his stomach, the swirl of coarser dark hair that dipped down from his navel to disappear provocatively behind the waistband of his faded denim jeans, she found it almost impossible to make her fingers do what she wanted them to.
‘Let me help you.’ In less than a second he had the shirt up and over her head. He jettisoned it carelessly onto the floor as his bold, hungry gaze feasted on the sight of her full, softly rounded breasts with their sensuously dark nipples, her glorious ebony hair falling over her shoulders like some exotically dark waterfall. She was even more lovely than he had imagined, her body supple and curvaceous at the same time—and he ached to possess her with every fibre of his being.
He groaned his appreciation out loud, then pushed her gently back down on the bed. In the next instant, as her hair splayed out like skeins of black silk on the dark blue counterpane, Kyle dipped his head to take carnal possession of her breast, drawing it deeply into his mouth, sucking and laving while his hand greedily caressed its twin.
Biting back a cry, Megan bucked her hips beneath him, and a kind of ragged whisper spelt out her desire.
‘Please…’
He lifted his head, placed his hands on her waist and jerked down the sweatpants that were far too big, exposing the black silky triangle of material that—despite being fairly conservative in design—barely covered her hips and drew immediate attention to the flat sexy plane of her stomach and creamy smooth thighs.
Then, before Megan had time to even register his intention, he parted her thighs, pulled the flimsy barrier of underwear aside and drove his finger deep into the hot moist centre of her femininity. Her pupils dilated with shock, her muscles clenching tightly round the sudden erotic invasion and her hands grabbing on to his sleek hard biceps as though clinging on for her very life.
‘Kyle!’
At the urgent gasp of his name Kyle sat up, shucked off his jeans and his underwear, then wrenched down the rest of Megan’s clothing. At the startled look on her face, he positioned the hot satin length of his sex at her entrance and thrust in deeply.
They both stilled at the urgency and depth of Kyle’s possession, Megan experiencing an ache and a yearning so deep that her eyes brimmed over with unexpected tears, long-suppressed emotion unravelling her
to the very core. Then Kyle—his expression one of fierce hunger and concentration—started to move inside her, thrusting deeper and harder, until Megan groped desperately for his shoulders and pulled his head down for her kiss.
She was drowning in the erotic taste and flavour of his mouth, issuing desperate little sounds of need and want that she’d never uttered in her life before—carried away on a crest of passion and desire—when the moment of starburst came. It took her like a wave, carrying her away from the safety of the shore, crashing in on her like a torrent, demanding her complete and utter capitulation until she was left shaking and crying in its aftermath—the force of her emotion and surrender almost tearing her apart.
Above her, Kyle’s hard-muscled body stilled, the deep musky scents of their bodies mingling as Megan sensed the effort and control it cost him to momentarily curtail his desire.
‘I’m all right,’ she whispered, tears sliding into her mouth, dark eyes glazed. ‘Don’t stop.’
‘Sweetheart,’ he said, gravel-voiced, ‘I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.’
On the last word he thrust into her deeply, to the hilt, the force of his possession making Megan’s hips buck, her eyes closing tight as she felt his liquid heat spill into her with destroying heat, then heard the warrior-like cry that burst spontaneously from his lips as his passion reached its zenith. Then, shuddering deeply, he eased himself down onto her body—his weight and strength pressing her into the bed, his long hirsute limbs tangling with hers, his breath warm and ragged against her cheek.
Megan kept her eyes momentarily shut, needing those precious few moments to understand the depth and magnitude of what she’d just experienced. To wonder at the recklessness that had suddenly robbed her of every last ounce of common sense and made her give herself to a man who would probably look on their sexual liaison as nothing more than a one-night stand. He would certainly not expect her to regard it as anything more than that, she was sure. After all, she was a modern girl, wasn’t she? It went without saying that Kyle would expect a modern attitude.
It didn’t matter that her heart said different; it didn’t matter that she longed for something far more lasting and permanent…
‘Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you? I didn’t mean for the first time to be over so quickly.’ He grinned wryly in the semi-darkness, as if his ego could stand a little humour even at such a critical time. In response, Megan felt her own mouth twitch upwards in a tentative smile.
‘I’m fine. It was—it was nice.’
‘Nice?’ Kyle shook his dark tousled head with a fierce growl. In the dim light filtering through the rolled down blinds his golden eyes burned with a molten glare of disbelief and desire. ‘Sweetheart, in all my years as a sexually active male I don’t think my performance has ever been accused of being “nice”. I’m afraid you’re going to have to pay for such a patently unwarranted remark.’
‘Pay? How?’
Frowning, Megan let out a surprised yelp as Kyle suddenly grabbed her by the waist and rolled her on top of him. She found herself staring helplessly down into his teasing sexy smile, her long hair brushing against the dark coarser hairs on his chest while the blood in her veins heated and slowed like molasses. Her beleaguered heart raced madly at the prospect of what her supposed ‘punishment’ was going to be.
‘Lady, I seriously hope your stamina can match mine, because the effect you’re having on me right now might well mean I just have to keep going all night.’
‘Is that…possible?’
‘Is that a challenge?’
The look on his face suddenly serious, his hands came to settle round the soft malleable flesh on her hips, easing her carefully yet urgently down onto the smooth satin length of his arousal as if the two of them had been meant for nothing else. Caught up in the spell, his gaze roved hungrily across the slightly stunned, undoubtedly aroused expression on her face with a savage almost primeval male satisfaction—totally consumed with the idea of loving her in every way possible throughout the rest of the night.
He’d been right about the passion in her. The first time he’d taken her hard and fast, but she’d matched him in more ways than one. There was a wildness in her that found a natural home in his own ferocious need to love and possess her.
Megan let out a whimper as Kyle plunged upwards, his rigid shaft filling her so completely she thought she would die from the sheer wanton pleasure of it. If this was making love, she thought dazedly, then whatever it was she had reluctantly shared with Nick all those grimly difficult years was nothing but a pale, sorry imitation.
As Kyle guided her passionately to more demanding, dizzying heights of pleasure with his hands, with his hard warm body, with his wicked, skilful mouth, Megan knew with sudden certainty that all those hurtful accusations her ex-husband had levelled at her were nothing more than a bunch of cruel, resentful lies. Welcoming Kyle’s fiercely voracious possession of her body with equal hunger and need, she knew without doubt there was nothing in her that was remotely frigid. All this time she’d just been waiting for the right man to come along and match the insatiable passion she was naturally capable of…Kyle.
Suddenly tilting her head wonderingly to the side, Megan stared down at her lover with wide, glistening brown eyes. ‘What is your last name?’ she rasped as his hands cupped her breasts and sensuously moulded them.
‘What the hell does it matter?’ he growled and, shifting position, pulled her round so that she lay flat on her back beneath him. Encasing her hips with his strong powerful thighs, he lifted her arms high above her head, imprisoning her wrists on the silk pillow behind her so that his gaze could look its fill on her supple naked loveliness. ‘I’m not hurting you?’ he demanded hoarsely, his jaw clenched tight.
‘My leg, you mean?’ Megan moved her thigh experimentally, mentally blocking the twinge of pain that throbbed inside it as she did so. ‘No,’ she replied, her lip quivering.
Whatever pleasure he had in mind, she didn’t want to dissuade him from it. It would override whatever hurt she was suffering physically from her leg, and besides, she felt as though she’d been waiting all her life for this particular sensual journey—she wasn’t going to call a halt to it now.
‘I’m fine. Don’t I look fine?’ she added boldly, a teasing dimple appearing at the side of her lush moist mouth. In answer, a muscle leapt in Kyle’s handsome bronzed cheek, his tawny eyes turning lasciviously dark.
‘Sweetheart, you dazzle me. A man would have to go a long way to gaze upon anything as lovely as you.’ And without further preamble he thrust deep inside her, magically erasing every coherent thought she had in her head irretrievably away.
Chapter Eight
KYLE burrowed deeper into the cool silk of the pillow beneath his head, determined to linger in the hazy half-world between dreaming and wakefulness a little while longer. Languorously, rather like a sleek cat making optimum use of his God-given ability to just laze, he stretched out his hand beside him.
As soon as it came into contact with empty space his eyes flew open and he jerked upright, his senses immediately alert to the fact that something was amiss. All lingering thoughts of further sleep were swiftly and rudely banished.
There was no sign of Megan. The dove-grey shirt and black sweats he had lent her, which had been so urgently and carelessly discarded in the throes of their lovemaking, were folded ominously on the little Chinese cabinet at her side of the bed. Disappointment and, yes, anger clenched the hard, toned muscles of his stomach. Where the hell was she? She wouldn’t have just left without telling him she was going, would she? His stomach felt curiously hollow. No woman had ever walked out on him like that—not when she’d spent the night in his arms. In the past, that particular little trick had been Kyle’s, and he wasn’t proud of it.
Cursing beneath his breath, he made an irritated grab for his silk boxers and hurriedly stood to pull them on. He yanked up the blinds and blinked as daylight assaulted his gaze, his hazel eyes squinting into the
morning sun, dark brows knit in momentary confusion, his senses assailed sharply and irrevocably by the sweet musky scent of his lover’s body that made him long for her anew.
Sweeping the room with a cursory glance, he spied his jeans at the foot of the bed, then, tricky as the manoeuvre was, managed to ease into them at the same time as heading for the door. In the kitchen, the chopped-up peppers he’d been preparing the afternoon before, which he’d left on the well-used chopping board, had been meticulously scraped into a little ceramic dish and covered with cling-film.
The woman had cleared up for him before she’d left but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him she was going! They’d spent the entire evening and all night together in bed and she’d left as easily as though they’d been strangers who’d exchanged nothing but a few polite words instead of a passion so profound that Kyle was still reeling from the aftermath.
Frustration and fury gnawed at his gut. Raking an impatient hand through his unruly dark hair, he glared at the coffee pot, momentarily debating whether to make himself a fortifying cup before presenting himself to Megan and demanding to know what was going on.
They’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, for God’s sake! Didn’t that count for anything? Sated and sleepy in the aftermath of their lovemaking, Kyle had wound his arms round her waist, then fallen asleep with the scent of her coconut shampoo drifting beneath his nose, the soft, pliant curves of her body a seductive combination of satin and velvet beneath his fingers…At no point had she given him any indication that she was leaving early. If she had, he would have done his damnedest to persuade her to stay.
Even now, standing alone and frustrated in his immaculate kitchen, he felt like some godforsaken ship without an anchor. He longed for her in every way it was possible to long for somebody…with his heart, his soul, his mind—not to mention his body. Just the thought of her could make him ache, and right now was no exception. He groaned out loud at the sweet and heavy rush of blood to his groin. He’d never had a more sexy or willing partner. She’d been like wild honey in his hands and he couldn’t imagine paradise being any sweeter.