‘On the floor.’ It was a gruff command that thrilled her as much as it surprised her. But she obeyed as meekly as a submissive to a master.
He deftly dealt with the application of a condom before he came down to join her. But he didn’t rush to penetrate her. Instead he gently eased her thighs apart and brought his mouth to her intimately in a gentle caress that made her back arch in delight.
Aiesha had been pleasured that way before but she had never been able to let herself fully relax enough to orgasm. Her previous partners had performed the act in a perfunctory manner, as if they had realised it was what was expected but they didn’t take the time to ask her what she liked, or what worked and what didn’t. It had annoyed her that they thought they knew her body better than she knew it herself so she had cut it short by pretending to orgasm like a porn star, while privately she’d mocked them for their ignorance and arrogance.
But this was different.
James stroked her with his tongue, but then stopped to ask if it was too strong or too light. ‘Tell me what you like best. Hard or soft? Fast or slow?’
Aiesha could barely speak for the sensations that were coursing through her. ‘Just like that...slow and gradually building up... Oh, God...ohhhhhh.’
Her body gave a convulsing spasm, every nerve quivering and then exploding like fireworks. The rippling waves gradually died away, her body feeling as limp and pliable as melted wax.
She felt strangely unguarded, unexpectedly vulnerable. He had unlocked her senses in a way no one else had. Sex was supposed to be just sex. He had taken it to another level...one she had never visited before.
He came over her, one thigh draped over one of hers, his hand brushing her hair out of her face. ‘You OK?’
Aiesha snapped out of her daze. ‘Sure, why wouldn’t I be?’
He studied her for a moment. ‘We don’t have to do this if you’re having second thoughts.’
Second thoughts? Was he kidding? But how considerate of him not to assume he had the right to continue. It made another layer of her armour peel away. She put a hand to his face, stroking it over the dark, sexy stubble, her core contracting with another wave of longing. ‘We can’t let that condom go to waste, now can we?’
He took her hand in his and brought it up to his mouth, kissing each of her fingertips as his eyes held hers. ‘I don’t know about you, but I hate unnecessary waste.’
She put her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down. ‘Me, too.’
His mouth fused with hers in a smoking-hot kiss that made her belly quake all over again. His tongue got busy with hers, teasing and stroking and tangoing until she was making soft little whimpering sounds at the back of her throat.
He put a hand below her bottom and raised her to receive him, entering her in a long, slow, smooth glide that made her shiver all over in delight. Her body gripped him tightly, the friction of his first slow thrusts making her senses go crazy. He rocked gently at first, taking his time as he let her catch his rhythm, letting her get used to the breadth and length of him. Then he gradually picked up his pace, bringing her along with him, the excitement building all over again in her body. The tightening of her core, the swelling and throbbing ache of her clitoris, aching and pulsing for his touch.
He rolled her over so she was on top of him, his hand firm on her bottom as he kept his thrusts going. How did he know this was the only way she could orgasm without direct stimulation? She felt the first wave of pleasure like an explosion in her body. She arched her back and rode him in a desperate, wanton manner, her hair flying about her shoulders as she followed the tantalising lure of a mind-blowing orgasm.
And then she was there. Flying off into the stratosphere with a panting cry as the pleasure rocked through her like a powerful earthquake. She shook and shuddered, she whimpered and cried. She clung on as the last waves washed over her, leaving her floating in a place where no thought could spoil the glow of ultimate pleasure.
James rolled her back over to her back, still thickly, powerfully encased in her body, his eyes glittering with the build-up of passion. ‘Good for you?’
Aiesha moved her body against him, wanting him to finally let go so she could feel the vibrations of his release. ‘You know it was.’
The dark blue in his eyes darkened to a shade short of black. ‘You could be pretending. It’s hard for most men to tell the difference.’
She cocked her head at him. ‘But I suppose you can?’
He brushed his lips against hers. ‘Let’s put it this way. I don’t stop until I’m absolutely sure.’
Aiesha shivered again as he began to thrust deeply and rhythmically. His pace went from slow, almost lazily so, but then he gradually upped the speed until he was rocking against her, sending shockwaves of pleasure through her like thrashing waves against a cliff face.
She gripped the taut curve of his buttocks, holding him to her, urging him on, delighting in the weight of him, the way he filled her, stretched her, tantalised her with the friction of male desire against female flesh. She was climbing towards the summit again, all of her nerves tight as a tripwire, all the sensations gathering again in the tightly swollen bud of her clitoris.
She wanted to come so badly but wondered if she should tell him what she needed to get there. But then he repositioned himself, shifting slightly so he could bring his hand down to her, stroking her with just the right pressure and speed.
It was impossible not to come. She threw her head back and succumbed to it, letting it rip through her like a speeding train. It shook and rattled her from head to foot until she was gasping and just shy of sobbing.
And still he hadn’t taken his own pleasure.
Aiesha marvelled at his self-control but another part of her felt a tiny bit irritated by it. Did he find her so easy to resist? Wasn’t he the least bit overcome by his passion for her by now? In her experience, men got her orgasm out of the way, often times in a token fashion, and went for their own with a single-minded and often selfish determination. They shifted her to the position they wanted and pumped away, not checking to see if she was too tender or uncomfortable.
But James waited until she was breathing normally again. He even stroked her hair back off her face, watching her with those ink-dark eyes. ‘Ready for round three?’
‘I only ever orgasm a couple of times, if that.’ Sometimes not at all.
The corners of his mouth lifted. ‘First time for everything.’
Aiesha’s belly quivered at the smouldering look in his eyes. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m getting to that.’
She stifled a gasp as he started those slow but deliciously rhythmic thrusts. ‘Are you counting backwards or thinking of your mother doing it or something?’
He stroked a lazy hand over the curve of her breast. ‘What’s the rush?’
She gave him an arch look. ‘What’s the hold-up?’
A slight frown pulled at his brow. ‘Are you uncomfortable?’
‘No, it’s just I’m not used to a guy taking so long to get the job done. I’m used to “wham, bam, did you come? Thank you, ma’am.”’
He studied her expression for a long beat or two. ‘You don’t always enjoy sex?’
Aiesha wished she hadn’t been so transparent. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You implied it.’
She concentrated her gaze at the V-shaped dish at the top of his sternum. Why did he persist in trying to know her? She didn’t want to be known. She wanted to be separate. Unknowable. Unreachable. Didn’t she? ‘Sex is sex.’
He tipped up her chin with a fingertip, locking his gaze with hers. ‘Sex can be so much more than that.’
Aiesha was conscious of the length of him still buried deep inside her. He had stilled his movements, but he was there. Waiting. Wanting. She tried to disguise a
swallow but she saw his eyes follow the up and down motion of her throat. She sent the point of her tongue out in a quick brush over her lips, but he followed that, too. Then he traced the outline of her mouth with the tip of his index finger in an achingly slow motion, every millimetre of her flesh tingling at the contact. Nerves she didn’t know she possessed hummed and buzzed. Her body trembled, the need building to a level she hadn’t encountered before. Was this how it was supposed to feel? Wanting someone so much it physically hurt? Needing their touch so much it was as important and as necessary as the air she breathed? How could she have sold herself short for all this time?
His eyes came back to mesh with hers. ‘Sex is all about the destination.’ He began to move, deep and slow, each movement triggering another wave of thrilling pleasure through her body. ‘Making love is about the journey, as well.’ He kissed her mouth lightly, once, twice, but the third time was deep and lingering.
Aiesha lifted her hips, rolled her pelvis, teasing him with the slippery friction of her body. He increased his pace but he was still in control. She stroked his buttocks, and then dipped her fingers between them to the supersensitive skin of his perineum. He stifled a groan against her mouth and drove harder. She rode with him, urging him on with little gasps and whimpers as the need rose to a crescendo in her body. She could feel the tension in his muscles as he poised in that pivotal moment before the primal force took over. He gave another raw groan, his skin peppering with goose bumps beneath her fingertips like fine gravel as he shuddered and then flowed.
Aiesha held him in the quiet aftermath, which was another new thing for her. She was normally the first to disengage, to disentangle, to gather her clothes and move on.
But she didn’t want to sever the connection between them. Couldn’t sever it. Not yet. Her body felt...at peace. Satiated. Floating in a sea of contentment, she had never felt quite like this before. Something about his lovemaking spoke to her deep inside her soul. Touched her. Moved her. His respect, his consideration and concern for her pleasure made her feel valued, treasured. Safe. His breath was warm against the side of her neck, his chest rising and falling with hers, his legs in a sexy tangle with hers. She absently moved her hands over his back and shoulders, exploring each contour of muscle and bone, each knob of his vertebrae, the dish in his lower spine, and back up again to play with the closely cropped hair on his head.
‘How’s that carpet burn?’ he said.
Aiesha smiled as she met his teasing gaze. ‘Either the carpet is too good a quality or you weren’t going hard enough.’
The glint in his eyes intensified. ‘I can fix that,’ he said, and swooped down and covered her mouth with his.
CHAPTER NINE
IN THE EARLY hours of the morning, James rolled over sleepily to reach for Aiesha beside him in his bed but instead his hand found a cool, empty space. He looked for a long moment at the indentation on her pillow where her head had lain beside his. The faint trace of her perfume lingered in the air, the same delicate but deliciously intoxicating fragrance he could smell on his skin.
He sat upright, listening for sounds of her moving about in the en-suite bathroom, but there was nothing but silence.
Empty silence.
He frowned as he pushed back the covers. He hadn’t heard her leave. He hadn’t expected her to leave. It made him feel like a gigolo who had served his purpose—a cheap hook-up that meant nothing to her. He didn’t like the sense of being used. He had brought her upstairs because—all jokes aside—carpet burn wasn’t his style, and he had a feeling it wasn’t hers, either.
But then he remembered she’d told him she never spent the whole night with anyone. But surely he was different? He wasn’t some nameless one-night stand she would never see again. He had taken the time to listen to her, to try and get to know her, to understand what put those shadows in her eyes.
He had made love to her.
He had taken the time to get to know her body as intimately as he could. She had responded to him with captivating fervour. Surely what they had shared meant more to her than a quick satiation of physical need?
He glanced at the bedside-table clock. It was 4:00 a.m. He shrugged on his bathrobe, telling himself he was only checking on her to see if she was all right.
Her bedroom was empty.
The bed had been slept in, or at least she had been in there because the sheets were all tangled and thrown back, the feather pillows crushed and misshapen. But whether she had slept or not was open to question.
How long had this restless bed-hopping been going on? When had it started? Why wouldn’t she talk to him about it? If only he had realised at the outset how complex and traumatised she was he might have been able to get her to confide in him without all the game playing she went on with all the time. He still cringed at the way he had confronted her in the kitchen, accusing her of stealing. He had pushed her into a meltdown and in doing so he had lost his chance to earn her trust. How long would it take to win it back? Or was he fighting an unwinnable battle?
When he turned on the light in the kitchen Bonnie raised her head and blinked at him but didn’t move from her cushioned bed near the cooker. She put her head back down on her paws and closed her eyes as she gave a deep doggy sigh.
James scanned the kitchen with his gaze. The kettle was stone-cold and there were no crumbs or used plates or discarded apple cores or milk cartons. He turned off the light and went further along the passage to the ballroom. The door was open enough for the moonlight to spill along the floor in a long silver beam.
The piano was a dark hulk in front of the windows, and beside it stood Aiesha with her back to the room, dressed in a silky ivory-coloured wrap that gave her the appearance of a ghost.
Knowing all too well the danger of sneaking up on her, James rapped his knuckles lightly against the door. ‘Aiesha?’
She must have known he was there even before he knocked for there was nothing hurried or startled about her movements as she turned to look at him. It was difficult to read her expression, but with the moonlight silhouetting her slim body from behind he could see she was completely naked beneath the wrap.
‘What are you doing down here all by yourself?’ he said.
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
‘Why didn’t you wake me?’
She stepped out of the shadows, her eyebrows drawn together and her voice sharp with an edge of irritation to it. ‘To do what? Make me a milky drink? Tell me a bedtime story?’ She curled her lip and added in a mutter, ‘Like that’s ever happened before.’
James frowned. ‘Sweetheart, what’s going on?’
Her brows shot up mockingly. ‘Sweetheart? Isn’t that taking this crazy charade a little too far?’
He came over to where she was standing so stiffly, so guardedly. ‘What’s the matter?’
A mask slipped down over her features. ‘Nothing.’
‘OK...so help me out here,’ he said. ‘Last time I looked, you were curled up in my arms and drifting off to sleep. Now it looks like you want to punch my lights out. Can you fill in the bits I’ve missed?’
Her eyes had that hard, streetwise sheen to them. ‘Look, I don’t mind sleeping with you, but I’m not sleeping with you, OK?’
‘Want to run that by me one more time?’
‘I’m not sharing a bed with you. It’s too...intimate.’
James gave a wry laugh. ‘And what we did a couple of hours ago wasn’t?’
Two spots of colour rose high on her cheekbones. ‘It was just sex.’
‘What is it about being intimate that you find so terrifying?’
A frown of irritation puckered her forehead as she glared at him again. ‘Why are you asking me these stupid questions?’
‘I want to understand you.’
‘And here I was thinking you only wanted me for my body
.’
‘I imagine most men do, but I like to think I’m a little less shallow than that.’
Her chin came up. Her eyes glinted. Challenging him. ‘Well, guess what, sweetheart? My body is all that’s on offer. Take it or leave it.’
James wanted to call her bluff. His mind told him to walk away. But his body craved her. Ached for her. Throbbed with a bone-deep longing that had not been assuaged by sleeping with her. Instead it fed his craving of her like an addict taking a hit. Desire was something he controlled, channelled.
But not with her.
He couldn’t control it. He couldn’t redirect it or tame it. It roared in his blood with the force of a tornado. ‘Come here.’
Her chin went higher, those smoky grey eyes glittering with sensual heat. ‘Why don’t you come here?’
His groin pulsed with anticipation. ‘I asked first.’
She tossed her hair back over her shoulders, the movement loosening her wrap so it revealed half of her left breast. ‘You didn’t ask,’ she said. ‘You commanded.’
‘So?’
‘So ask nicely.’
James was so hard he seriously wondered if he could even take a step. ‘You want me to beg?’
Her lips curved upwards in a sexy half smile as she sauntered over to him, her wrap falling away from her to land in a puddle of silk on the floor. ‘Would you?’
‘I think you know me better than that.’
He sucked in a breath as she trailed a fingertip down the open V of his bathrobe. She got to his navel, circling it ever so slowly, her eyes locked on his. ‘Want me to go lower?’ she asked.
‘How low are you prepared to go?’
Her naughty-girl smile made his insides quake with lust. Her touch was like a spreading fire. His heart pounded with excitement as she slithered down his body to drop to her knees in front of him. ‘This low enough for you?’ Her warm breath danced over his rigid flesh. Teasing him. Torturing him with the promise of her erotic possession.
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