by Anna Cleary
As if he didn’t know. Her heart bumped into double time.
This conversation was heading in a certain direction, but it was undeniably thrilling. It had been ages since she’d felt on the verge of something truly dangerous and fantastic. All right, so he was an operator of the worst kind. She could be too, if she had to be. She hadn’t taken a celibacy vow yet, had she? Why else was she wearing a push-up bra?
Right on cue Amber’s avatar sashayed into centre stage and met his gaze through Amber’s lashes. ‘I’m already pretty soft, Guy,’ she breathed through Amber’s lips. ‘There are times I prefer to go direct to the kiss.’
His eyes lit with a piercingly sensual gleam. He studied her, eyelids half lowered, reminding her even more of that sleek, smiling wolf.
The summer evening tensed. A shivery excitement prickled along her veins.
With his grey eyes shimmering, in dreamy slow motion he raised a bronzed hand to push a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. In the spot where his fingers connected her skin sprang into tingling life. Softly he trailed one finger over her cheek, down her throat to the hollow at its base.
Sensation rippled through her every nerve cell. Her lips parted as he stroked the delicate skin of her throat. Her skin fell into an enchantment. She saw his eyes drop to her mouth and darken and her heart gave a great bound.
She tilted her head, for a moment teetering on a magical edge of anticipation, then swiftly she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. His sexy mouth felt, firm and so electrically alive, and tasted of wine. She moved her lips against his and a delicious fire sprang to life and danced along them.
His smooth hands slid up to cradle her head, and she leaned into him to gain a more comfortable position. He seized the initiative from her, intensifying the kiss to a searing, sensual charge. She felt something like a deep gasp whoosh through her, and her body shot into electric response as the tip of his tongue slid through to tangle with hers and tantalise the delicate tissues just inside her mouth.
Then, just when she thought desire was a pleasant hunger, his mouth took her tongue captive and sucked.
Oh, baby. Desire was no gentle longing. It was a raging furnace. She gave herself up to the mindless sensation. His beard rasping her skin, his vibrant chest firm and solid under her restless palms.
Liquid quivers shuddered through the top of her head, roused her through her breasts and thighs, down the backs of her knees to the tips of her curled up toes. His hands travelled caressingly up her arms, slid to her swelling breasts, while hers flexed on his biceps. Fire flamed in her blood, stirred all her secret, private places with yearning.
His breath mingled with hers and the masculine flavour of him went to her head like wine. He pulled her closer and she felt the friction of his hard chest pressing her nipples.
The blood boomed in her ears and lust swept her like a flame—wild, searing and erotic.
In the grip of the inferno, she thirsted to be closer. Struggling not to in any way diminish the connection, she kept glued to his lips while she squirmed her way onto his thighs. Straddling that impressive lap, she felt her appreciation of the kiss escalate to a whole new dimension.
As though divining her hunger, he tightened his arms around her and rocked her on the hard ridge of his erection with electrifying results. Pleasure roiled through her in waves.
And her body gasped for more. Much, much more. Until in one impassioned, over-enthusiastic plunge she rocked him right off the piano seat and onto the floor.
Thwack. She landed on top of him in a graceless tangle of arms and legs. Half groaning in a laughing complaint about her roughness, he adjusted his position beneath her. She laughed as well, while every inch of her was aware of the raw, virile flesh separated from hers by a couple of thin layers of material.
There was a moment when their laughter faded and they both stilled. His arms tightened around her again. She could feel his heart thumping against her chest while his masculine scent invaded her head. Or maybe that was her heart pounding in her ears like a jungle drum.
Anything could happen—but just like that? With a stranger? In Jean’s flat?
She scrambled up, her head whirling. Adjusted her top. Smoothed her skirt. She might be a little drunk with that kiss, but parts of her brain were still connected.
Her host pulled himself up and adjusted his jeans. They almost managed to avoid one another’s glances. The air sizzled with incompletion. It tugged at her breasts and feminine loins. Made her feel like doing something dangerous.
Guy felt every part of his body tingle to the imprint of her soft, firm flesh. Was she about to slip through his fingers? Instinct told him not. Not if he played it easy.
He let his glance fall to where glimpses of her breasts tantalised at the edge of her shirt. Arousal had him in its grip. His erection was protesting the confinement of his underwear. Surely she must feel it too? Desire crackled in the air like electricity—a promise propelling them to an inevitable conclusion.
She must feel it.
Amber’s gaze collided accidentally with his and she felt singed. She smoothed her hair. Maybe she should go home before his eyes carried her away. Home to her dark flat, with the sitting room furniture all jammed into the hall. The single lamp she read by. No company.
‘I know what you’re thinking.’ he said softly. ‘But you shouldn’t go. Not yet.’
That piqued her pride. ‘You don’t know what I’m thinking.’
His eyes shimmered. ‘Then show me. Let me in.’
As if she wasn’t already intoxicated, she picked up her glass and drank more of the wicked, wicked wine. Glass in hand, she leaned on the piano and smiled. ‘All right, tempter. Go on, then. Play for me.’
He frowned a little at first. She guessed he was disappointed. He’d had other entertainment in view. But he gave in with a gracious shrug and sat down at the piano.
He rested his hands loosely on the keys, then started into a song—some rare, long-forgotten tune that sidled into her heart with a haunting familiarity. He played it against the beat, like a true jazz man, drawing out its sexy sound.
Suddenly a door opened in her memory and a scene came rushing back.
Her mother and father, laughing and dancing in each other’s arms in the kitchen of their old house. When they were still together. When they still loved each other.
Now she knew the song. It was ‘Ruby’, an old number from a Ray Charles album her mother had loved. Lise had continued to play it long after Amber’s father had left her. Left them.
It didn’t even matter now that the lyrics weren’t being sung. From down the decades Ray’s beautiful dark golden voice was still in Amber’s head, recorded there forever in high fidelity, the bittersweet pain of his song as fresh as ever.
Blame the wine or the song, but the music plucked unbearably at her heartstrings. Twisted her most vulnerable emotions and swamped her with nostalgia and regret.
Guy looked up and touched her with his gleaming glance. Something arced between them. Some mutual understanding.
Quickly she lowered her lashes, though she knew he’d seen her tears. But still he continued to play, wringing every last poignant drop from the song as if her response was only natural. Maybe it was then she confused the music with the man.
Fighting tears, she gazed at his lean, strong hands dancing on the keys, on her heart, and her desire bloomed into an intense hunger.
Devouring him with her eyes, she was shaken by a fierce wanton need to bite his mouth, lick his strong neck, feel his warm skin under her fingertips. All at once being near him was both anguish and ecstasy. Yearning for him while at the mercy of the song, she pressed her fingers hard to the piano. Caressed the silky wood, stroked the elegant lines, urgent in her longing to be touched and held.
Guy could hardly keep his eyes from her. Attuned to the quickening sexual current, he switched into one of his own songs. Sexed up the tempo in time with his accelerating desire.
At the change
of melody Amber felt both sorry and relieved. At least without the song’s weakening associations her defences managed to firm themselves up again. Good grief, she’d come close to an emotional meltdown. She was conscious of having allowed Guy, a stranger, to see too much, and everything in her scurried to cover up.
For goodness’ sake, this was hardly the time or place for tears. This was the bewitching hour.
Slipping off her shoes, she crawled up onto the piano lid.
Clunk. The music hit a bump. Cool, casual Guy Wilder must be startled. Amber giggled with delight when she saw his stunned face. He was staring at her, his eyes gleaming with an amused and intensely sensual light.
He gave a deep sexy laugh. ‘You bad, bad girl,’ he said softly. ‘What are you up to?’
Encouraged, she slithered across the lid to him, making herself as sinuous as a serpent. A voluptuous serpent, with a longing to feel the contact of hard, muscled man against her skin.
Her ravenous, tingling skin.
He stared at her, eyes ablaze, his hands suspended over the keys.
She rested her chin on her hands and smiled. ‘Did you know I can do the splits?’
The piercing hot gleam in his eyes could have set her aflame. ‘I’d really like to see that.’
The challenge in his husky voice revealed such a depth of wolfish excitement a laugh of pure exhilaration bubbled out of her. Amber O’Neill was flying high, as energised as if she’d just pirouetted right across the stage on points.
Loving her power to galvanise such warm admiration—very warm, judging by the bulge in Guy’s jeans—she ordered him to keep playing.
Guy was happy to accommodate. Eager, one might say. He did his best to comply, continuing to thump the keys while staring, mesmerised. At first she sat up, straight-backed, and tucked up her skirt into her pants’ elastic.
Then, before his hypnotised gaze, she folded her supple self into the lotus position. Each time his fingers faltered on the keys she nodded at him to play on. He started into something—though who knew what? His hands were on an erratic auto-pilot, since every other part of him, from his fascinated gaze to his painful, throbbing erection, was riveted on her.
His brows lifted in disbelief as she smoothly stretched first her right leg, way out to ninety degrees at one side, then her left to the other. All the impossible way. Until both gorgeous legs made a perfect one-eighty. His gaze was riveted to the tender, crucial little bridge touching the piano lid in the middle. His jeans tightened unbearably.
She gazed down upon him like some oriental goddess, her eyes shadowed and mysterious. ‘We call this the straddle position.’
Inside his constricting jeans, the skin of his engorged penis felt ready to burst.
Then, before his lustful gaze, she stretched her right arm over her head and with graceful ease laid her head down on her leg while she touched her left foot with her fingers, the long switch of her hair falling away from her neck.
Then she straightened her taut back and did the reverse, her left arm over her head, fingers touching her right foot. The graceful line of her body, the agonising beauty of her lithe form, her vulnerable neck, dragged at his heart.
It was too much for a guy two years on the sexual wagon.
He sprang up and seized her. With fire thundering in his blood, he lifted her off the piano and set her down on the floor.
Like a wild man, he took her sweet mouth in possession while somehow stripping off his clothes and fumbling with hers.
‘Hurry, hurry,’ she was trying to say through his frenzied kisses, as though he wasn’t rushing as fast as any painfully aroused guy was humanly able.
When she stood naked before him, the beauty of her nude body made his insides tremble. Her breasts small and so achingly perfect. The areolae around the rosy, pouting nipples flushed with arousal. Her waist so slender his hands could have spanned it. The smooth curve of her hips and the pretty triangle of curls sent what was left of his sanity flying out of the window.
Free at last, his rampant erection reached the zenith of rock-hard demand. He stooped gingerly for his jeans and dug for the condom in his wallet, grateful to have one on hand.
For a moment she stood facing him, her eyes as hot as he knew his must be. Then she moved forward and put her arms around his neck, kissing his mouth and jaw, touching him, pressing herself to his chest and nuzzling his neck in the sort of confiding, feminine way that could weaken a man.
‘You’re beautiful,’ she whispered, huskiness in her sweet voice. ‘Such a strong, beautiful man.’
It tore at him in some way to reject her sweetness, but he couldn’t encourage the softer expressions. Gently but firmly he put her away from him. He didn’t require any further stimulation. And satisfaction could best be obtained for all concerned without too much of the demanding intimate stuff.
He pushed her onto the sofa. Deliciously willing, she lay there panting, scrutinising him, her lovely eyes dark and stormy with arousal. When he joined her, she met his passion with equal fervour.
He tried not to be rough or too greedy. While his lust raged over her fragile beauty with hands, lips and tongue, he drew on all his experience to please her. And she reciprocated, stroking and caressing him, playful and languid as a cat, while at the same time hungry. So primitively, devastatingly female.
When her moment was ripe, her sex as plump and juicy as a peach, he thrust his straining shaft into her gloriously tight aperture, unable to hold back a groan. It had been so long for him. The silky grip of her hot inner sheath felt like the closest he’d ever come to heaven.
Fearful of splitting her in two with his straining bulk, he took care with her at first, moving gently inside her to give her time to accustom to his size, watching the play of shadows on her face, feasting on her beauty.
Their eyes met. Locked. Something in her expression sent a rush of silly things to his tongue. Affectionate words, passionate phrases to express his appreciation, the sheer trembling pleasure in his heart. But some divine prudence held him back.
Best to avoid the lyrics.
Anyway, she arched her supple body under him then, locking her gorgeous legs around him to take him further in. He required no urging, and any random moment of tenderness that might have happened passed.
With the fiercest imaginable pleasure he plunged, thrusting his aching penis deep into her sweet, yielding flesh with rhythmic, ferocious vigour.
And she strove with him, tendons straining in her neck just as in his. In some ways—maybe it was her awesome gymnastic ability—he thought of her as his equal and his opposite. The supple muscles working under the skin of her slim abdomen thrilled and delighted him. Catapulted him towards his climax.
But he was still a gentleman where it counted.
With his urgent need for release straining at the very leash, he used all the control at his command to hold himself back. Concentrated on other things. Her sighs. The little cries issuing from deep in her throat. Her swollen mouth. And at last he was rewarded. Her orgasm blossomed. He saw it written in the flush of her skin, in the sort of ecstatic absorption that came over her face. Tears … were they tears? … spilled on her cheeks.
Then, blessedly, he felt her inside walls grip his grateful length with that bliss-making, rhythmic pull.
Ohh. Oh, Amber O’Neill.
With a groan he allowed himself to spill, surrendering to his own ecstasy.
It was cramped on Jean’s sofa. After a few thundering heartbeats Guy hauled himself up and off her. Amber grimaced at the ridiculous blur in her eyes and gave them a hasty wipe with the back of her hand.
Smiling, she reached to touch Guy. Dragging his fingers through his hair, without any further eye contact he stumbled away in the direction of the bedrooms.
She heard taps go on and turned on her side, relaxed now that her heart had slowed its pounding, her skin feeling pleasant against the sofa fabric. She closed her eyes and snuggled into the cushions, grinning to herself.
H
ow the world could change in a few short hours. Amber O’Neill had snagged herself a gorgeous playmate with no trouble whatsoever. A lovely, lovely man. Sexy. Musical. Hot. She really should knock on people’s doors more often.
She waited so long she must have drifted into a little doze. After a while she woke to the chill on her cooling skin. There was no sign of Guy. She started to feel naked, and not in a good way.
She got up and started to dress, intending to go and investigate.
With her clothes on and the man missing, her amazing mood deflated. Taking stock of the scene, she hastened to plump up the sofa cushions, shuddering to imagine what Jean would have thought of her shenanigans.
Her shoes were under the piano. Jean’s piano. How would she ever look Jean in the face again? She crawled under it to retrieve her shoes, and was slipping them on when Guy strolled in.
‘Oh, Amber,’ he said. ‘Okay?’ He smiled, but his glance slid off her before it could gain any foothold. He strolled to the coffee table and bent to switch on his laptop.
He was in fresh clothes, his hair gleaming wet. It looked as if he’d showered.
Questions flashed through her mind like quicksilver. Could he have been standing in the shower all that time? Why? Had he forgotten about her? It seemed as if he was avoiding looking at her.
She felt all at sea. Miguel had been cool, especially when he’d had something to hide, but this was über-cool.
She smiled, searching his face. ‘Where’d you get to?’
He blinked rapidly. ‘Well, I just … er … had something I needed to do. Look here, that was … that was really something, Amber. You’re a beautiful woman. A very lovely woman. So, so sexy.’ He took her arms and planted a little kiss on the corner of her mouth. ‘Thing is,’ he said, moving away, eyes screened by his lashes, ‘I have an early start in the morning. Sorry if this seems a bit—abrupt, but I have things I need to prepare for work tomorrow.’