by Penny Jordan
A dull colour ran up under his tan. ‘I wasn’t thinking. I’d be using you!’
Thinking wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If he hadn’t started now we’d be…It brought a hectic flush to her cheeks to think about where they’d be if she’d had her wanton way.
‘Maybe I want to be used!’
‘You don’t mean that, Tess.’
‘I hate it when you tell me what I mean!’
‘I was being selfish, and right now,’ he announced explosively, ‘at this precise second I have an overwhelming urge to be extremely selfish.’ The hunger in his restless glance was immensely soothing to Tess’s bruised self-esteem—and injurious to her pulse-rate.
That extremely sounded very promising and there was no mistaking the sincerity in his loaded announcement. Relief washed over her. It was slightly less humiliating if the person you’d thrown yourself at found you moderately attractive.
‘You do…?’ The line between her shapely eyebrows deepened suspiciously.
‘Give a man a break, Tess. I’m trying to do the decent thing here, and…’ his impressive chest heaved deeply ‘…if you must know, it’s painful!’
‘Good!’ She meant it, and it showed.
A sliver of amusement slid across his sternly handsome face. ‘I’m really glad my agony gives you pleasure. Seriously, Tess…’
‘I never stopped being serious.’
‘Sex is no cure-all when life stinks.’
She choked quietly on her disbelief. Talk about moving the goalposts! ‘You’ve changed your tune.’ For that matter, so have I!
‘We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you. You’re not the type that goes in for casual sex,’ he announced firmly.
He thought he would have noticed if Tess had had a string of lovers. Of course, there must have been some, but she’d been pretty discreet. The thought of these anonymous individuals didn’t improve his humour.
Does he think I don’t already know that? Knowing it hadn’t stopped her throwing herself at him like some sex-starved bimbo.
‘But you are?’
‘No, of course not,’ he denied with irritated impatience.
‘I’m strictly into monogamy.’
‘Serial monogamy.’
‘If you like,’ he conceded testily. ‘I’m trying to explain that I can separate my emotions from—’
‘Sex!’ she supplied shrilly. ‘Neat trick, Rafe,’ she admired.
The nerve in his clenched jaw started jumping again. ‘You only think you want to go to bed with me.’
‘Now the man knows what I’m thinking! Is there no end to his talents?’ she marvelled.
‘I’m not going to be responsible for—’
‘For what, exactly?’ she interrupted hotly. ‘This is sex we’re talking here, not a lifelong commitment. You think you’d spoil me for other men? You think sleeping with you would be so great I’d fall instantly and inconveniently in love with you? My God, but you really do rate yourself highly these days.’
His sternly reproachful look silenced her scornful laughter. It made her feel mean and petty. What he said next intensified the feeling.
‘We’re mates…?’
Tess found herself nodding mutely in reply to the probing look in his dark eyes.
‘I wouldn’t want anything to spoil that, Tess. Not my libido or your loneliness…’
‘How do you know I’m lonely?’ Lonely had such a pathetic, loserish ring to it. Such an accurate ring to it, she acknowledged reluctantly. Without Ben her life was empty. She found herself wondering uncomfortably whether there wasn’t some element missing even with Ben. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m celibate out of choice, not necessity!’
Rafe thought he probably hid his surprise at this unsolicited piece of information quite well; he didn’t have as much success keeping a lid on his raging curiosity.
‘How long…?’ The pink tinge of her skin became a deeper red as she glared back at him. He held up a pacifying hand. ‘None of my business.’
‘Too right it isn’t,’ she growled belligerently.
‘I know Chloe’s decision has turned your life upside down until you don’t know day from night…’
Thoughtfully Tess nodded her head.
‘Or friend from lover.’
He was talking sense, of course, but that didn’t stop her stomach doing a double flip when she looked at his mouth. It was totally irrational, but she’d never craved anything in her life as much as she craved the touch of Rafe’s lips against hers, the touch of his hands on her overheated skin. Hell-fire, girl, it’s your overheated imagination you need to worry about!
‘And Claudine has done much the same thing to me.’
Tess pushed aside the embarrassing problem of her sensual preoccupation. ‘Claudine is the one…?’
His nostrils flared. ‘Yes, she’s the one.’
A sharp, sobering stab of jealousy lanced through her.
‘I’m sorry, Rafe.’ Her small hand closed over his forearm. Some friend I am. The warmth in her voice was to compensate for her shameful gut response. Tess’s indignation rose. What a bitch this woman must be! Just because Rafe came across as pretty invulnerable, there was no need to play fast and loose with his emotions.
‘I thought you prescribed a dose of humility.’ He looked from the sincerity of her upturned face to the small hand on his sleeve.
‘I’m a sanctimonious cow sometimes.’
Amused affection deepened the creases around his eyes.
‘I don’t think there’s anything remotely bovine about you, Tess. Possibly something slightly feline,’ he suggested, his mind flickering back to the way she’d wound herself around him as he’d carried her upstairs the previous night. She certainly had the suppleness of a cat and the green eyes. The smile faded from his own eyes.
Tess had always thought it a cruel twist of fate that a man could have ludicrously long, luscious eyelashes she would have given her eye-teeth for. Now she found herself wondering why she’d never noticed before how expressive those lash-shielded eyes were.
‘You can tell me about it if you like,’ she offered bravely. Wasn’t that what friends were for…listening? It was just tough that the subject happened to make her skin crawl.
‘Who needs sex when you have good old-fashioned friendship?’ Rafe wondered harshly. The skin was stretched tightly over the sharp planes and intriguing angles of his strong face. Tess watched dry-mouthed as his breathing perceptively quickened.
‘Exactly. We won’t even mention sex again,’ she agreed miserably.
Her sensible smile faded and died as his hooded eyes continued to rest unblinkingly on her pale face. ‘Forbidden subject…?’
Tess nodded. She couldn’t take her eyes from the erratic pulse that beat beside his mouth. The silence stretched on and on almost to breaking-point.
‘Tess…?’ A fine sheen of moisture glistened on the bronzed skin of his face.
She could hardly make out the faraway sound of his curiously strained voice over the slow but thunderous pounding of her own heart.
‘Yes, Rafe?’
‘It’s not important.’ His eyes closed and his head went back, displaying the strong line of his throat. After a long tension-soaked moment he lifted it; his eyes were blazing with reckless purpose.
‘Yes!’ he yelled. ‘Yes, it damn well is important! For pity’s sake, woman! Kiss me!’ he groaned thickly, lunging towards her.
With a small cry of relief Tess closed her arms tightly about his neck as he swung her up off the ground. She could feel the febrile tremors that ran through his lean body.
‘Tess…Tess…Tess…’ He interspersed the fevered kisses he rained over her face with husky repetitions of her name.
‘I know this is slightly crazy, but, God help me,’ he breathed against her ear, ‘I’ve got to do this or I’ll…’
She didn’t want his apologies, she wanted his kisses. ‘Me too,’ she confessed ecstatically.
To th
e casual observer, the inarticulate but encouraging noises that emerged from her aching throat might have sounded like whimpers, but Rafe didn’t seem to have any trouble interpreting them. He tightened his grip on Tess’s pliant frame, drawing it closer to his body, which betrayed even more overtly than his lips did the driving urgency that held him in its grip.
The flurry of shock at discovering just how urgent Rafe was feeling dissipated as a flood of wild, sensual need washed over her. Tess’s lips moved inexpertly but with boundless enthusiasm over the hard, clean-cut contours of his olive-skinned face, taking delight in the faintly salty taste of his flesh until their lips finally collided. The collision came not a moment too soon for her needs.
His teeth tugged at the soft, tender skin of her pink parted lips before, with a deep groan, his tongue plunged inside, plundering the moist, receptive warmth of her mouth. The shock of the contact slid so swiftly through her body, the fallout hit her toes even before she started kissing him back with a hunger and urgency that matched his.
Lips still attached to hers, Rafe cleared the table with a single sweeping gesture just before he sat her down on the hard surface.
‘We’ll still be friends…’
Tess curled her legs around his slim hips and continued to press her lips to the smooth, strong column of his neck while nodding her enthusiastic agreement to his defiant observation.
‘That goes without saying.’ She lifted her head and found his eyes had a hot, unfocused expression. On seeing that dark, dangerous look she felt a delicious shiver of anticipation join the tiny rivulets of sweat running down her quivering spine.
She let out an ecstatic cry and her body arched when his hand brushed against the engorged peak of one aching breast.
‘Hush,’ he soothed thickly as she bit her lip. ‘You’re so wonderfully sensitive,’ he marvelled, his eyes on the point where her nipples protruded through the cotton covering of her dark top. As her lips began to move Rafe bent his head to catch her faint words.
‘If we were strangers I couldn’t want you to do this.’
She insinuated her hand through the gap where two buttons on his shirt had parted company. Tess felt his powerful stomach muscles contract helplessly as she spread her fingers wide over his amazingly satiny skin. Rafe held her eyes as he hooked a finger under the top button of his shirt and pulled it down impatiently. Several buttons flung across the room as the fabric gaped open.
The breath caught in Tess’s throat as her hot, slumberous gaze moved hungrily over his incredibly hard body. His skin glistened under its fine covering of sweat. There wasn’t an ounce of surplus flesh to conceal the perfect muscle definition of his broad chest with its light sprinkling of dark hair and washboard-flat belly. Intermittent quivers ran visibly through his body, making the muscles just below the surface ripple. He was quite, quite perfect, she thought gloatingly.
‘You’re right, we don’t need the dinner dates and the awkward pauses. We don’t need to waste time on all those tedious preliminaries.’ If she didn’t agree he was in deep trouble! ‘We already know everything there is to know about each other,’ he panted, tugging her black tee shirt free of the waistband of her jeans and pushing his hands under the thin cotton. Her warm skin felt unbelievably smooth under his hands.
Tess’s heavy eyelids lifted to reveal a sultry stare. ‘Not quite everything, but hopefully we will before much longer.’ Her wicked throaty chuckle delighted him before it was lost inside the warmth of his mouth.
The big, strong hand that touched the side of her face wasn’t quite steady. ‘It’s a natural progression.’
Was he trying to convince himself? She didn’t waste more than a second on that thought because she was just as eager as he was to skip the preliminaries and satisfy the primal urgency that seemed to have taken her over. She obligingly lifted her bottom to enable him to slide her jeans over her hips and down her legs. The truth be told, at that moment Tess would have agreed if he’d announced he were actually the true King of England.
‘It feels natural,’ she confided throatily as he stopped kissing her long enough to pull her top over her head.
Rafe was struck by the truth in her pleasing observation, but he was in too much of a hurry to slow down and tell her so. He didn’t bother unclipping her bra, just pushed down the lacy fabric that concealed her breasts from his hungry view.
A greedy, guttural sound emerged from low in his throat as her engorged breasts sprang free from their confinement. The feral sound made all the fine hairs over her body stand on end. Her quivering thighs opened to accommodate the knee he placed on the edge of the table. The friction as his knee nudged the highly sensitised area between her legs made her gasp; it was a raw, fractured sound.
Either the faint noise had been abnormally amplified or his senses were highly attuned to her because Tess found his eyes immediately sought hers.
‘Sorry, I was clumsy.’ He made a minor adjustment that relieved the pressure.
‘You’re anything but clumsy,’ she breathed appreciatively. ‘And that’s not flattery,’ she added forcefully, ‘it’s fact!’ she explained with fervour.
‘I stand corrected.’ He reached down and his fingers slowly slid under the lacy edge of her pants to touch the ultra-sensitive skin of her inner thigh. ‘Did I hurt you here…?’ He pushed the fabric aside and let his fingers touch the sweet, damp heat. His delicate, teasing touch pushed Tess to the very limit of pleasure and beyond; every muscle in her abdomen contracted in unison, she simply melted.
‘So slick, so hot…You want this…you want me…?’
‘That has to be the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever asked me!’ she told him hoarsely.
He responded with a look so primitive and predatory that a low keening cry was wrenched from deep inside her.
‘I…you, please, Rafe!’ she panted.
Rafe didn’t seem to have any trouble deciphering her inarticulate plea. For a moment he watched her pale body writhe sinuously beneath him. Then, with one foot still on the floor, his body curved fully over hers and he pushed her slowly backwards until she lay there with her hair spread out around her delicately flushed face.
His eyes moved hungrily over the slender contours of her almost naked body. Perversely the tiny scraps of lace stretched across her lower body and beneath her breasts made her appear more naked, more his.
He fought with the last dregs of his control to subdue the primitive desire to possess that stretched every nerve and sinew in his body to breaking-point. Slow and gentle had its place, but that place wasn’t here and now. On the other hand he didn’t want to spoil things by rushing her.
He watched with covetous, burning eyes the rise and fall of her deliciously rounded pink-tipped breasts. Slowly he touched the side of one quivering mound before his mouth moved hungrily to the rosy swollen peak.
The sight of his dark head against the pale skin of her breasts was the most erotic thing Tess had ever seen. She cried out as his tongue lashed and his lips expertly teased.
She lay there in a delicious sensual haze until the pleasure centres of her brain finally overloaded. She simply couldn’t take any more of this! Frantically she clutched awkwardly at the smooth golden skin that covered his broad back. Her nails left raised red grooves as they slid down the powerful curve before coming to rest on the taut firmness of his behind.
‘If you don’t do something I’ll die!’ She genuinely believed what she said and it showed.
‘You won’t be alone,’ he rumbled.
Tess was vaguely conscious of him adjusting his clothing before he slid his hands under her buttocks. She heard the sound of tearing fabric an instant before he settled between her legs; she felt the hard tip of his arousal against her belly. The stark reality of what she was about to do hit her then; what surprised her most was that it didn’t scare her.
Fingernails inscribing small half-moons in the delicate flesh of her palms, she lifted her arms up over her head. ‘I want to see…’ There
was stark appeal in the feverish eyes she lifted to his face. Intent on increasing the intimate contact, she shifted and rotated her hips restlessly beneath his.
Rafe covered her hands with his and pinioned them either side of her head. ‘You want to see what…?’
‘You.’
It was the most incredible thing to see him slide slowly into her, until to all intents and appearances they were one. It was even more incredible, not to mention indescribably pleasurable, that her body could accommodate him. She was sobbing from the wonder of it when she raised her eyes to his. If it never got any better than this, it was still the most marvellous she’d ever felt in her life.
‘Is this the sort of something you had in mind?’
She shook her head—the words hadn’t been invented that could accurately describe anything this mind-blowingly erotic! Besides, she didn’t trust herself to open her mouth because she was experiencing an almost incapacitating desire to say she loved him.
‘And this sort of something…?’
He began to move. Tess closed her eyes tightly as things began to get very much better indeed! She was never quite sure, but she thought she might have screamed something to that effect just before his slow thrusts—it seemed impossible that such a big man could move with such incredible controlled precision—became more vigorous. Much more vigorous.
Then there were no thoughts at all, just the fierce, primitive rhythm that swept her along until a shattering climax ripped through her. Barely seconds later she heard Rafe cry out and felt his release pulse deep within.
Now she was here she could understand why they’d both been in such a hurry to reach the journey’s end.
CHAPTER SIX
‘WHAT are you doing?’ Tess protested as Rafe bundled her and as many stray items of clothing as came within his grasp up into his arms.
She’d been quite content—well, a bit more than content, actually—to lie there beneath his heavy, sweat-slick body and enjoy the extraordinary intimacy of the quiet following the storm.
And what a storm! Tess had never imagined she would find herself in a situation, or with a man, who could make her forget her natural inhibitions and behave with such wonderful, wanton abandon.