by Penny Jordan
Ricardo had gone to speak to the ground staff brought in to take care of the helicopters lined up away from the helipad. She could feel her stomach muscles clench as he walked back to her.
'I was watching you earlier on today,' he told her softly. 'Imagining just what it would be like to have those long legs of yours wrapped tightly around me whilst I took you. How do you like it best? Tell me!'
Shocked pleasure rushed through her, hot, sweet and intoxicating. A dizzying, breathtaking sensation of open and responsive arousal.
Ricardo watched her, acknowledging that the look of dazzled, dazed anticipation in her eyes was doing more to arouse him than he would have thought possible.
'Time to go,' he said, nodding in the direction of the waiting helicopter.
'You've been very quiet. Second thoughts?' Ricardo challenged Carly as he piloted them towards the landing pad of his New York building.
'About what? Telling you that I want you? Or the fact that I do want you?'
Did she realize how the musical sound of her voice could play on a man's desire, heightening it and arousing him? Ricardo wondered as he looked directly at her.
'Either.'
Carly shook her head. She had spent most of the flight surreptitiously sneaking glances at Ricardo and then imagining herself touching him, learning him, al lowing the fantasy that she hoped would soon become a reality to guide and slightly shock her thoughts. She'd touch first with her fingertips, tracing the bones that shaped him, and then with her hands as she absorbed the strength of his muscles and the taut smoothness of his flesh. And then finally with her lips and her tongue, as she explored every delicate hollow and plane of him.
The heat that constantly beat through her body was roaring now, pulse-points of urgency throbbing not just between her legs and in her breasts but everywhere— her fingertips, her toes, her lips—everywhere...
'I've said more than I should,' she admitted huskily.
'Yes,' Ricardo acknowledged coolly. 'You have.
Haven't the other men in your life preferred to do their own hunting and their own propositioning?'
There was a small jolt as the helicopter hit the ground.
She waited silently for Ricardo to climb out and then come round to help her. Above them, stars glittered in the darkness of the night sky, but it was impossible for them to compete with the brilliance and color of the New York skyline.
His hands on her body felt hard but remote. Rejecting? Had she got it wrong? Had she misunderstood? Had he merely been pretending before that he wanted her?
He had set her free, and she had no option other than to walk ahead of him to the lift foyer door.
Ricardo followed her and activated the lift. Within seconds they were stepping out of it into his own private entrance foyer, and within seconds of that he was opening the door to his apartment.
'Dolores and Rafael are away for a family event,' he told her.
Carly nodded her head. Disappointment was a cold, sick, leaden lump weighing down her body. It struck her how ironic it was. Had someone previously suggested to her that she would find herself in this kind of situation, the feelings she would have expected would have been shame and humiliation, rather than the gut-wrenching sense of disappointment she actually did have.
All those years of silently, determinedly telling her self she had a right to her pride had obviously not made as big an impression on her psyche as she had believed.
They were in the large square hallway. It was nearly eleven o'clock. She turned away from Ricardo, intending to make her way to her suite and the sleepless night she suspected lay ahead of her. 'This way.'
His fingers closed round her bare forearm and immediately her flesh reacted in a burst of over-sensitivity and raised goose bumps.
This corridor was unfamiliar, its walls hung with what she suspected must be priceless pieces of modern art. At the end of it was a pair of double doors. Ricardo opened one of them without releasing her.
Silently she walked through it into the darkness that lay beyond. Ricardo let her go, and she heard the quiet snap of the door closing.
She could feel him standing behind her, and waited for him to switch on the lights, but instead he turned her round, his hands gripping her upper arms.
CHAPTER TEN
'Now. Now you can tell me that you want me.'
His voice was a raw sound of out-of-control male need.
A thrill of shocked delight exploded inside her. She could feel herself shaking with excitement as he pulled her into his own body and took her mouth with explicit sexual hunger.
Her response to him rolled over her like an eighty-foot wave, swamping her, picking her up and taking her bodily. She had no defense against it, nor did she want one.
His tongue, seeking and demanding, thrust hotly between her lips without any preliminaries. Her small sob of pleasure was submerged beneath his own sounds of overriding need. His hands were on her body, tugging down her top, pushing aside her bra.
Carly moaned as his hands grazed her nipples, and then moaned again more sharply when he took one between his thumb and forefinger and began to tease it into hard, tight, aching need. Without knowing she was doing it Carly ground her hips against him, mimicking the hard thrust of his tongue between her lips.
'Don't,' he cautioned her thickly. 'Do you want me to completely lose control and take you here?'
Getting her back here without touching her had strained his self control to its limits. And now...
'Yes,' Carly told him quickly, feeling the words catch against her throat. 'I want you to take me, wherever and whenever you want—but most of all I want you to do it now. Now! Ricardo, now!'
Did she realize that she had just destroyed the last shreds of his control, what her hungry, half-moaned words were doing to him?
'Now?' he repeated.
His eyes, accustomed to the darkness, showed him the pale glimmer of her breasts. He stroked his forefinger round one nipple and watched her whole body surge with pleasure. He could feel the muscles locking in his throat. He bent his head and took the tight sexual lowering of her desire for him into his mouth, savoring the sensation of the smooth swell of her breast before running his tongue over her nipple, all the time trying to hold onto his sanity, to stop himself from pushing her up against the wall and tearing the clothes off her so that he could have the pleasure of sinking as deep inside her as he could get.
Carly could hear someone start to moan, but it took her several seconds to recognize that she was the one making the noise. She felt as though she were on a long slide, unable to stop herself from plunging into her own pleasure. Not wanting to stop herself.
Reluctantly Ricardo released her nipple, his fingers immediately returning to enjoy its arousal.
'How do you want it?' he demanded softly. 'Do you have a favorite position? Do you want to take care of the condom issue or shall I?'
Carly looked at him and took a deep breath. 'I think this is when I should tell that I don't have very much previous experience,' she announced carefully.
'What?'
She couldn't tell whether the harshness in his voice came from anger or disbelief.
'What does that mean?'
Carly swallowed, and then said in a small voice, 'Actually, I'm afraid it means that I haven't... There hasn't... I'm still a virgin.' 'What? You're joking, right? Carly shook her head.
He released her abruptly and stood back from her, looking at her for what felt like forever.
'I can't think of one single reason why the hell you would be a virgin.'
'Actually, there are several,' Carly responded with dignity. 'For one thing... Well, I don't suppose the opportunity has been there at the right time or with the right man,' she hedged.
Her revelation was the last thing Ricardo had expected. If she had kept to her virgin purity until now why was she, to put it crudely, offering it to him on a plate? Did she think he would feel some sort of moral responsibility towards her? Was that it?
Was she setting some sort of trap for him? Would she try to use emotional blackmail to turn mere physical intimacy into something more?
If he had any sense he would send her back to her own room, right now, but somehow, in some way, a part of him was actually responding to what she had told him with a primitive surge of male possessiveness. It actively liked the thought of the sexual exclusivity of being her first lover, of knowing that the sensuality he would imprint on her would remain with her throughout her life, that if the experience he gave her was truly pleasurable then she would treasure it all her life. And she would not be comparing him to anyone else. Was he really that vain? That insecure? Ricardo grimaced to himself, knowing that he wasn't.
'You damn sure don't act like a virgin,' he told her grimly.
Probably because when she was around him she didn't think that she was. Mentally, in the privacy of her own thoughts, the intimacy she had with him had gone well beyond the bounds of virginity.
'Perhaps I shouldn't have told you?' Carly offered.
Ricardo looked at her with incredulity.
'Don't you think it would have been obvious? Especially given the kind of intimacy I'd planned to—'
He saw the excitement begin to burn in her eyes and he cursed himself for the way his body immediately responded to it.
'Are you sure this is what you want? An affair that—?'
Carly stopped him. 'I don't want an affair. I just want to have sex with you.'
'Just sex?' Ricardo questioned, not sure that he believed her.
'Yes. But of course if you'd rather not...' she added lightly.
No one gave that kind of challenge to Ricardo.
'You'll cry ''enough'' before I do,' he told her against her mouth.
He was barely brushing her lips with his own, a feather-light touch that, as Carly quickly discovered, made her hunger for more. Her own lips clung to his, willing him to part them with his tongue as he had done before, and a shudder of visible pleasure gripped her body when finally he did so, thrusting the seeking point of his tongue deep and hard within the warm softness of her mouth.
His hand cupped the back of her head and his tongue plunged deeper, twining with her own. She could feel the heavy slam of her heart as it banged against her ribs—or was it his?
He was holding her right up against him, so close that she could feel his erection. And she wanted to feel it. And not just to feel it—she wanted to see it, touch it...experience it deep inside her.
She felt weak and dizzy with arousal, her whole body shuddering with pleasure when Ricardo cupped her breast and then slowly circled his fingertip around her nipple. Lazy delicate circles that were driving her in sane. She sucked in a deep breath and felt the corresponding tightening low down in her body. Unable to stop herself, she reached out and touched the hard ridge of male flesh, mimicking Ricardo's caress as she circled the head of it with her fingertip and then traced its whole shape through the fabric of his clothes. It felt thick and strong. Her fingers trembled and so did her body.
To her shock Ricardo immediately released her. She stared up at him through the darkness.
'I need a shower,' he told her thickly, 'and you are going to share it with me.'
He had taken hold of her hand. She could break free of him if she wanted to, but she knew that she didn't.
He guided her through the darkness past the shape of a huge bed and then into a dressing room, switching on the light as he did so.
'It's a wet room,' he told her. 'So we undress in here.'
Undress. Her mouth went dry. But Ricardo had turned away from her and was already stripping off his clothes.
Mesmerized, Carly watched him, her curiosity followed by an awe that darkened her eyes so that when
Ricardo looked at her he could see arousal shimmering in them, just as she could see his arousal, straining tautly from its thick mat of dark springy curls.
Her legs had suddenly gone weak.
Her fingers trembling, she started to tug off her own clothes, hesitating only when she got down to the silky sheer thong that barely concealed her sex.
Ricardo had turned away from her and was walking towards the door to the wet room. Carly took a deep breath and then followed him.
Ricardo touched a button, and immediately lusciously warm water sprang from hidden jets, soaking her.
'Do you really need this?' Ricardo was standing in front of her, hooking one lean finger under the narrow strap of her thong whilst the pad of his thumb stroked sensuously against her bare skin. Thrills of pleasure skittered over her.
He leaned forward and stroked his tongue-tip over her lips. Carly exhaled in a voluptuous sigh and closed her eyes, moving closer to him. The soft stroking touch of his fingertip traced the edge of her thong very slowly, and then traced it again.
'Mmm... '
She could feel the heat building up between her legs.
Ricardo's fingertip was tracing down the side of her thong. She could feel herself starting to shudder.
His hand moved back, easing her thong down...out of his way. Her legs had gone so weak she could barely stand to step out of it.
Half dazed, she started to soap herself, tensing when Ricardo took hold of her hands and told her softly, 'That's my job—and my pleasure.'
The silky suds made his hands glide sensuously over her flesh: her breasts, exquisitely sensitive now to his touch, her belly, where the spread of his fingers caused the heat inside her to turn her liquid with longing, her behind, which he soaped with a long slow movement that left one hand resting on the back of her thigh whilst the fingers of the other stroked between her legs, and then right up along the wet cleft between the swollen lips of her sex.
Helplessly Carly leaned into his caress, her body clenching on shudders of arousal. Driven by age-old instinct, she reached out and enclosed him with her hand, eagerly caressing the full length of him, and then released him again so that she could explore the swollen head of his erection. Now he was the one doing the shuddering, then subjecting them both to a sudden swift pounding of more water jets to rinse their bodies free of suds.
She had always believed that she was far too tall and heavy for any man to ever be able to pick her up bodily, but now, for a second time, Ricardo was proving her wrong, Carly thought, as Ricardo finished toweling her dry and then lifted her into his arms.
The bedroom was now bathed in soft lamplight, and the bed linen was cool beneath her skin as Ricardo laid her on the bed and then bent his head towards her own.
'Still want this?' he whispered against her lips.
'Yes,' Carly whispered back. 'Do you?'
For the first time since she had known him she saw genuine humor in his eyes.
'My arousal and desire are quite plainly evident.'
'So are mine—to me,' Carly told him huskily.
His hand cupped her breast. 'You mean this—here?' he murmured, his thumb stroking lightly against her nipple. 'Or this—here?' His knowing stroke the full length of her sex made her moan with pleasure. Her arousal-swollen flesh housed a million nerve endings that were pleasure points, and it seemed to Carly that Ricardo's caress lingered over each one of them. And then he stroked her clitoris, rhythmically and deliberately.
Immediately her body arched in supplication, her gaze fixed on his. How could she ever have thought his eyes were cold? They burned now with dark ire.
His hand moved away. He kissed the side of her throat and then her collarbone, sliding his free hand into her hair and cradling the back of her head. Already she was anticipating—longing for the feel of his mouth against her.
Her throat tightened, shudders of pleasure running through her as his tongue-tip traced a lazy line down to her breasts and circled each nipple. A soft breath of longing bubbled in her throat. His lips closed over one nipple, his tongue working it. She gasped breathlessly, reaching out to hold his head against her body, her fingers locking into his hair as she arched up against him, unable to stop herself from wanting th
e wild surges of pleasure his mouth and fingers were creating inside her.
Of their own volition her legs fell open, her muscles contracting as she felt the warmth of Ricardo's hand skimming her body and then coming to rest against the small curls covering her sex.
Heat ran through her to gather beneath his hand. A pulse of need was beating where he touched her.
She had believed that she knew desire, but all she had known was its shadow. This, its reality, was over powering, overwhelming her.
She felt Ricardo's thumb probing the cleft below the soft curls. A pleading, mewling sound broke from her lips and she lifted her body towards him.
The dark ire in his eyes burned even more hotly. But not as hot as the ire burning inside her.
Wild tremors seized her and she whimpered in help less arousal as he parted the outer lips of her sex and then started to caress her.
The white heat of ravening need filled her, her head falling back against the pillows. Her hips writhed frantically against the movement of his fingertip as he rubbed it the full length of her, lingering deliberately on the hard swell of her clitoris.
No woman had ever abandoned herself, given herself to him and his pleasuring of her like this, Ricardo acknowledged. He didn't know how much longer he could keep his own arousal under control.
She felt hot and wet, the swollen lips beneath his fingers opening to him of their own volition to offer him the gift of her sex.
A wild surge of longing engulfed him. It wasn't enough that he could feel her; he wanted to see her as well.
Carly cried out in protest as she felt Ricardo move, but his hand was still resting reassuringly on the mound of her sex and his body was still openly aroused. Her eyes, though, still asked an anxious question, and as he sat up Ricardo answered it for her, telling her rawly, 'I want to see you. I want to watch your sex lush with pleasure and lie open and eager for my touch.'
Wild thoughts of urging him, begging him not to, led, as she felt him caressing her again. But this time... This time, as her head dropped back and her body was gripped by intense surges of pleasure, she could feel him caressing her lips apart, exposing her swollen, glistening secret inner flesh to his gaze and his touch. Just the pressure of his fingertip against her clitoris made her cry out in frantic arousal. He bent his head and his tongue stroked along her silken folds. All the way along them, Carly recognized on a shudder of fierce delight, as the hard-pointed tip of his tongue probed and stroked into life sensations she had never imagined existing.