by Lucy King
Flushing with a different kind of heat and feeling like an utter fool, Kate jerked away but she didn’t get far because a split second later Theo had yanked her tight against him and crushed his mouth back to hers, kissing her with such heat and intensity that if he hadn’t been holding her in his arms she’d have collapsed into a heap on the floor.
After what felt like hours, he broke the kiss, his breathing as ragged as hers, his eyes dark and his face tight with barely suppressed need. ‘Enough,’ he said roughly.
‘Not nearly,’ she breathed, staring at his mouth, longing to feel it back on hers.
‘We’re making a scene.’
‘Isn’t that the point?’
He tensed and when her gaze flew to his she thought she saw a rare flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. ‘Is it?’
And she could lie and say yes, but she didn’t want to and, besides, hadn’t they gone beyond that? ‘No.’
A muscle hammered in his jaw. ‘Tell me what you want, Kate,’ he said, and she instantly thought that the only answer to that was ‘more’ because she wanted another night. Possibly two. It wasn’t as if she believed things would continue beyond that. She knew perfectly well that once this weekend was over, once the deal was signed, that would be that. But she didn’t want to think about what lay ahead for her when she was home—unemployment, single parenthood, reality. She didn’t want to think about what Theo had told her and how it made her feel about him. She wanted to lose herself in the heat and the passion that he unleashed in her and just for once live in the moment. ‘I want us to go back to the villa,’ she said, her heart thundering with anticipation and excitement. ‘Together. Now.’
Flames leapt in his dark eyes and his hold on her tightened. ‘You do know what will happen if we do, don’t you?’
‘Well, I know what I’m hoping will happen.’
‘Then let’s go.’
* * *
It took two minutes to say their thank-yous and goodbyes. Five to get to the guest villa. One to shove open the front door, hustle Kate in, close it and push her up against it.
For a moment Theo just stared at her, the moonlight flooding in through the window casting pale shadows across her face, losing himself in the depths of her eyes and not caring that she was able to see straight into his, into the empty black hole where his soul should be. With any luck she wouldn’t see that. Instead she’d simply see the strength of his need for her and the relief that incredibly she was on the same page.
She was breathing hard. Her eyes were shining and she was shaking with what he hoped to God was excitement, and then she lifted her chin and arched an eyebrow as if asking what he was waiting for, and that was it.
As his control snapped he slammed his mouth down on hers and kissed her as if it had been months instead of minutes. Beneath the onslaught she moaned and opened her mouth and when his tongue met hers, desire instantly flared like a flame to touchpaper. She whipped her arms around his neck and tilted her pelvis to his and it was all the encouragement he needed.
He pulled her closer, devouring her mouth, her jaw, her neck. She pushed her hands beneath the lapels of his jacket, and, without breaking the kiss, he shrugged out of it. She clawed at his shirt, yanking it free while he found the zip of her dress and slid it down. He lifted the hem and she wiggled her hips, and a second later he’d peeled it up over her head and tossed it on the floor.
And then he put his hands to her waist and his mouth to her breast, and when she whimpered, he drew her hard pink nipple between his lips and she whimpered some more.
But it wasn’t enough. It had been driving him mad not knowing what she tasted like, so he sank to his knees, and when she gasped and instinctively clamped her legs together, he slid a hand between her knees and eased it up. And when he reached the curls at the juncture of her thighs, he touched her there and stroked her lightly and she gave a soft sigh of surrender as her legs fell apart.
Unable to wait a moment longer, Theo tugged her knickers down and then off. He clamped his hands to her hips and put his mouth on her and then he knew exactly how she tasted. Sweet. Delicious. Irresistible. As he licked and sucked he felt her tremble and he held her more firmly, the desire rocketing through him almost unbearable.
Above him, there came a faint, ‘Oh, God,’ followed by the gentle thud of her head against the door, and he increased the pressure, the tempo, while she sobbed and gasped, and then her hands were clutching at his head while she pushed against him and then, with a soft hoarse cry, she shattered.
Tight with the need for release, he kissed his way back up her trembling body until he was upright again. Her eyes were glazed. Her cheeks were pink and he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so beautiful, or anyone so desperate, and something shifted in his chest, something that might have concerned him if the way she was grappling with the button and zip of his trousers hadn’t concerned him more.
‘Stop,’ he grated, summoning up every drop of his control to still her hand.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t have a condom,’ he said tautly, every muscle of his body screaming in denial.
Devastation flitted across her face. ‘What?’ she said dazedly. ‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s too late. You can’t get me more pregnant. And I trust you, Theo. On this. On everything.’
His chest tightened. ‘You shouldn’t. Not on everything.’
‘I know. But I do.’
Then she was a fool. But she had a point about it being too late. He was granite hard and the need to be inside her was burning through him like wildfire. There was no going back from this. Wild horses wouldn’t drag him away from her now. So he crushed his mouth to hers, lifted her leg to open her up to him and thrust into her tight wet heat and it was heaven.
He gave her a moment to accommodate him but he couldn’t hold still for long. Beneath his ravenous kisses she moaned and clung onto his shoulders. He began to move, knowing it wasn’t going to take much when she matched his every thrust with hot, increasingly frantic demands of her own.
And it didn’t. Within moments she was clenching around him again, gasping his name and sobbing and digging her fingers into his shoulders, and that was it. He felt his orgasm building in strength and momentum, and then it was barrelling through him as, with a roar, he thrust fast and hard, burying himself as deep as he could before fiercely and never-endingly spilling into her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BY THE TIME Kate had recovered from the shuddering effects of two spectacular orgasms, she noticed that, encouragingly, Theo had got himself naked.
‘Bedroom,’ he muttered, grabbing her hand, his eyes so dark with the promise of more to come that incredibly she wanted him all over again. ‘Now.’
But the only thing holding her up was the door, and she had the helpless feeling that if she moved, she might well crumple to the floor. ‘I can’t,’ she said huskily, finally able to run her gaze over him, which only weakened her limbs further. ‘Legs. Like noodles.’
So he scooped her up and carried her, all six foot one of her, as if she weighed nothing, and strode up the stairs and into the bedroom. And while he was doing so, it suddenly struck her that she didn’t feel self-conscious at all. Moments ago, she’d been upright, bare, and totally exposed to him, and after her initial reservation, she’d loved it. Now her bits were jiggling and she was all squashed up against him, which wasn’t exactly flattering, and she didn’t even care. In fact, she felt incredible. As if she could do anything. Dance without falling over. Wear heels without towering above the man beside her. Take on the world.
And suddenly she wanted to find out not only how far she’d come but how far she could go. So when Theo took her into the softly lit bedroom and set her down beside the enormous bed, she planted one hand on his chest and pushed.
He landed in the middle of it, and
stared at her first in shock and then with a slow smile that robbed her of breath. He lifted himself up onto his elbows and arched an eyebrow, as if daring her to go through with whatever she was planning, and while she didn’t have a plan she was more than up for accepting the challenge.
‘Where should I start?’ she asked, uncertainty nevertheless making her hesitate.
‘Wherever you want.’
‘What if you don’t like it?’
His eyes gleamed. ‘I suspect there is nothing you can do that I won’t like, Kate.’
Okay, then.
Gathering her courage, she joined him on the bed and let her gaze roam all over him. There was so much of him to explore, so she straddled him, the hard length of him pressing into her in the most delicious way, and ran her hands over his shoulders and then down his arms, feathering her fingertips over the dips and contours of his muscles and delighting in the way they tensed beneath her touch.
And now she wanted to taste him, so, remembering the pleasure she felt when he held her breast and teased her nipple, she bent down and touched her tongue to his and licked. He shuddered and hissed out a breath, so she did it again, the salty tang of his skin making her taste buds dance and sing, and suddenly she wanted to touch him and taste him everywhere. Thoroughly. The way she’d been too afraid to try all those weeks ago.
And though she’d never done anything remotely like it before, and though she was bound to be clumsy and inept, she’d never know if she didn’t try. If he laughed she could always make him pay. Somehow.
Shifting herself lower, she ran a hand down his body, over the ridges of his muscled abdomen and the faint trace of a scar, and feeling him shudder. Tentatively she touched the head of his erection and then stroked her fingers along his rock-hard length. His skin there was surprisingly soft and velvety and she was gripped by the need to feel it properly, so she wrapped her hand round him and slid it gently up from base to tip and then down again.
Theo growled and thrust into her hand, which was intriguing. As was the bead of liquid gathered at the tip. She rubbed her thumb over it and his hips jerked. She bent her head and licked, and was about to do it again when he put a hand at the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair, and pulled her away.
‘You need to stop,’ he said, his breathing sketchy and harsh.
Her heart skipped a beat as her stomach plummeted. Oh. Had she been doing it wrong? ‘Really?’
‘If you don’t, this will be over embarrassingly quickly.’
Phew. She hadn’t been doing it wrong. And she didn’t mind that he’d stopped her, because his rampant need for her and the tight desperation she could hear in his voice were sending shockwaves of desire pulsing through her and if she didn’t get him inside her just as soon as she could she might well combust.
She kissed him because it had been too long since her lips had been on his, shifted again and pressed her pelvis into his. Acting on the need drumming away inside her she rubbed herself against him and it sent such sparks of pleasure through her that she did it again and again, until her head was spinning and she couldn’t carry on kissing him because she couldn’t breathe. She tore her mouth from his, her breath coming in short sharp pants, and all she could think about was racing towards a finishing line that was simultaneously rushing towards her.
‘Kate,’ he growled and she opened her eyes to see his brows drawn in concentration and his jaw clenched.
‘Yes?’
‘I know I said you could do what you want but there’s a limit to how much of this I can take.’
That went for her as well. She was so close to the edge, one more rub and she’d have been flying apart around him. But she wanted to come with him inside her again and she wanted it desperately, so she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed herself up. She lifted her hips, her pulse thundering, took him in her hand and angled him so that he was poised at her entrance. Then she lowered herself onto him, slowly, feeling every inch of him, hearing his low groan and shivering when he put his hands on her waist.
‘I think I might start moving,’ she said hoarsely.
‘Don’t let me stop you.’
Nothing could stop her. She was being driven by a force that she still didn’t fully understand but was all up for going with. She rolled her hips experimentally and Theo moaned, so she did it again a bit harder and this time she moaned. He felt so good. He seemed to be touching her everywhere.
She leaned forwards to kiss him and gasped as the shift in angle meant he hit a spot deep within her and set off a whole new set of explosions. She felt his hands move to her hips, guiding her, moving her, while her breasts rubbed against his hair-roughened chest, the friction rocking her world.
As the delicious pressure inside her grew and everything began to tighten she found herself moving with increasing urgency and less coordination. Her control was history. The desire and need pounding through her was relentless. Unable to help herself, she whimpered against his mouth, she might even have begged. She didn’t know. All she knew was that Theo suddenly tilted his hips up and buried himself deep as she ground down, and that was it. White-hot pleasure burst inside her like a firework and lights flashed behind her eyelids and her entire world turned upside down.
* * *
Explosive. That was what that had been, thought Theo with the one brain cell capable of functioning. He’d never experienced anything like it. He’d never ceded control in bed. He’d never even considered it. But perhaps that had been a mistake because he’d just done exactly that and his mind had been blown.
The lack of self-consciousness with which Kate had explored him and the abandoned confidence with which she’d taken what she wanted was breathtaking. She was breathtaking. She was also lying naked beside him, uncovered and unashamed, stretching and practically purring with satisfaction, and incredibly he wanted her again.
But giving up control once was more than enough and her allure wasn’t that irresistible. To prove it he would make himself wait. He would use conversation as a distraction. He might even try and get the answer to a question that had been bugging him for weeks.
Rolling onto his side, Theo propped himself up on one elbow. ‘So what exactly is this?’ he asked, trailing the fingers of his other hand over the tattoo at Kate’s hip and feeling her shiver beneath his touch.
‘It’s an upside-down swallow,’ she said with a breathlessness that made him briefly wonder why he’d thought it a good idea to wait.
‘Why an upside-down swallow?’
‘It represents me flipping the bird at the entire male sex. I was twenty and fed up with still not being able to get a date. I wanted to make a point.’
‘It’s pretty.’
‘It’s actually pretty pointless.’
‘Why?’
‘Because looking down on it from up here, it’s the right way up, which does rather defeat the object of the exercise. I didn’t think of that when I was all fired up and pissed off.’
Unexpectedly, Theo felt a faint smile curve his mouth. ‘No, well, who would?’
‘Ideally the tattoo artist would have had an inkling,’ she said dryly. ‘He supposedly had twenty years’ experience. But it’s fine. I’m used to it. And now it seems rather irrelevant anyway.’
His smile faded and a ribbon of concern wound through him because he hoped she wasn’t referring to them. They weren’t dating and they never would. This was a one, maybe two, night thing at most. Which was all it ever could be. And that was fine. The thing stabbing away at him wasn’t regret. It was guilt. Because now he came to think about it he’d been remiss earlier and it had been playing on his mind.
‘You looked spectacular this evening,’ he said, remembering how speechless he’d been when he’d turned and seen her standing there on the balcony.
‘Did I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you. I w
asn’t sure.’
‘The mirror doesn’t lie.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t much like looking at myself in a mirror,’ she said, frowning and biting on her lower lip, which gave him all kinds of ideas he intended to put into action later. ‘Not a full-length one anyway. There’s just so much of me. I went to a hall of mirrors once at a funfair when I was six and was traumatised for weeks.’
‘Yet you’re now wearing heels.’
‘I know,’ she said, flashing him a quick grin that did something strange to his chest. ‘For the first time in years. Isn’t that great?’
Was it? He wasn’t so sure. While he was gratified by the improvement in her self-esteem and confidence, he didn’t like to think what she might see if she looked him straight in the eye. He liked even less the memory of how as they’d walked to the party, their strides in synch, it had briefly, unacceptably, occurred to him that they somehow matched.
‘So come on,’ she said, rolling onto her side so that she faced him and fixing him with exactly the sort of disconcertingly probing look he feared. ‘Your turn.’
‘About what?’
‘Tell me something about you that no one else knows.’
He tensed and frowned. ‘I’ve already told you something no one else knows.’ Many things, actually.
‘Something else.’
‘My childhood wasn’t enough?’
‘It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It could be tiny. Humour me.’ She shot him a wicked smile and for a second he marvelled at how quickly she’d gone from virgin to temptress. ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’
‘All right,’ he said, his body hardening all over again at the mere thought of just how she might go about doing that. ‘I get headaches when I’m stressed. I didn’t learn to read until I was sixteen. And I have a mild allergy to celery, which makes my tongue go numb.’
‘There,’ she said, her eyes shimmering with emotions he didn’t want to even try and identify. ‘You see? That wasn’t so bad, was it?’