by Penny Jordan
The softness of her mouth, the slight quiver of her body, the sweetness of her taste as his tongue drove possessively between her parted lips, sent desire leaping along his nerve endings, to every cell of his body.
He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anyone or anything… He wanted her…to taste her, hold her, possess her, lay his own mark upon her for the whole of eternity.
Thoughts, feelings…needs ran through him like quicksilver, and he was powerless to stop them, powerless to do anything other than respond to the driving need that possessed him. The driving need for him to possess her.
Katrina tried to stop what was happening, and to break free of the almost bruising pressure of his kiss and pull away from him, but her lips were clinging eagerly to his, parting hotly for the hard thrust of his tongue.
Sanity, logic, her normally alert sense of self-preservation had all somehow become subservient to the thrill of longing and excitement surging through her. Under her fingertips she could feel the crispness of his thick hair, the corded muscles of his neck and the warmth of his skin. He felt so male, and so dangerous. So why wasn't she pushing him away instead of burying her fingers in his hair and holding him closer whilst white-hot pleasure licked through her?
The bruising pressure of his kiss should have made her recoil from him but instead it was kicking up inside her hot flurries of urgent need.
As she twined her tongue against his she felt the immediate shudder that wrenched his body, and then he was pushing her backwards and down onto the soft nest of silk cushions that covered the divan. Her only and immediate response was to wind her arms possessively around him, holding him to her.
Fire licked along her veins, igniting the longing she had been fighting to resist. In her dreams she had known of a man like this, a man of fierce, raw passions, untameable and elemental, a man whose merest touch would arouse her senses in a thousand and one ways, just as Xander was arousing hers now. And in that one shockingly intimate dream she had felt the full power of her response to him. Just as she was doing now!
The hands that had gripped her arms had somehow slid beneath her as she fell onto the divan, supporting and protecting her.
He shouldn't be doing this, Xander knew that. But her refusal to believe him ignited emotions he could not control. Just how bitter pride and raging anger had fused together to produce the hot, male hunger he was feeling, he had no idea at all! But what he did know was that he was being driven by an elemental need to possess her as no other man had ever possessed her, to drive from her body's memory every image it possessed of any other man but him.
He lifted his free hand to cup her face, so that he could look down into her eyes and see there only his own image.
'Look at me!'
The harsh command compelled Katrina to look up into Xander's face. A quiver of totally female awareness of him ran sensually through her as he lifted lean fingers to brush her tumbled hair off her face.
If it had not been for the dark thread of anger she had heard running through his harsh words, she could almost have believed that there was something tender in the way he was touching her.
But the hard, demanding mouth claiming her own wasn't tender, yet her lips were responding to the sensation with a wanton eagerness. He parted their softness with the fierce drive of his tongue, whilst his weight pressed her deeper into the softness of the cushions.
The argument that had brought them to this place, and to this intimacy, had faded into insignificance. His actions were no longer dominated and driven by the fierce urgings of his pride and need to punish her, Xander recognised, but it was a brief fleeting recognition, swamped by the intensity of his body's need for her.
Katrina felt his hands on her body, removing the protective modesty of her clothes, but instead of trying to stop him she was twisting and turning eagerly, wanting to accommodate and assist his rapid despatch of the barriers to the touch of his hands on her flesh.
Only a thin mist of sunlight could penetrate the thick protective walls of the tent, but it was enough to gild her naked body, as though it had been brushed with gold dust. She saw Xander suddenly go very still as he stared down at her nakedness, and a small quiver of shyness and uncertainty ran through her. He was the first man who had ever seen her naked. The only man she had ever wanted to see her naked.
Uncertainly she looked up at him. There was a look in his eyes that sent a reaction jolting over her, which tightened her nipples and sent a fierce thrill of sensation coiling through the most intimate part of her. He hadn't even touched her and yet from the way her whole body was reacting he might just as well have run his fingertip around her jutting nipples and then moved lower to part the sensually swollen fleshy lips of her sex to find the eager, waiting need of her pulsing clitoris.
She wanted him, ached for him, hungered and longed for him, right now, right here… She made a soft, small sound of liquid arousal, and immediately dark colour ran up under the taut flesh of Xander's jaw. He pulled off his own clothes, scarcely giving her time for more than a blurred glimpse of honey-gold skin over powerful male muscles, and a dizzyingly tempting covering of silky dark hair that fanned out over his chest, arrowing downwards over his taut belly, before he reached for her.
The feel of Katrina in his arms was doing something to him he had never imagined any woman could do, much less this one, Xander acknowledged as he gave into the urgency of his need to fill his waiting senses with the scent, and feel, and taste of her.
The silk cushions heaped on the divan felt decadently sensuous against her naked skin, but more dangerously erotic and sensual by far was the feel of Xander's naked body against her own, Katrina recognised breathlessly. The feel of his skin against hers was surely the closest she was ever likely to get to heaven, she decided headily as she gave in to the pleasure of running her hands possessively over his shoulders, stroking his flesh as she did so, closing her eyes, in order to savour and relish the feel of him.
If she never touched him like this again she would remember for the rest of her life how he had felt, how she had touched him; she was creating a precious visual image of him on which she could imprint everything her senses were relating to her. His scent, his arousal overwhelming the cool cologne he always wore so that she was acutely aware of the raw, musky, pheromone-drenched maleness of him, and of how his skin felt hot and sleek, the powerful definition of his muscles beneath it giving her a small, sharp female thrill of recognition of his strength, and of his arousal. She hadn't touched him intimately yet, but she could feel the hot, swollen length of his penis pressing against her own flesh, and that thrilled her in some nameless female way that still had the power to shock her and to challenge her own beliefs about herself.
What bemused her even more was that she wanted desperately to touch him there, to explore and know him. To feel him grow even harder and more urgent beneath her touch, and that alone should have been enough to shock her, because she had certainly never experienced such a feeling before.
But analysing her thoughts and feelings was way beyond her now. Xander had taken possession of her mouth, his tongue thrusting hotly past her lips as he demanded entrance. His hands cupped her breasts, holding them as though he was savouring the feel of the rounded globes of flesh, but then his tongue drove deeper within her mouth and his fingers kneaded her breasts, plucking sensuously at the stiff peaks of her nipples.
Unable to help herself, Katrina writhed hotly against him, her skin suffused with the flush of her own desire.
Looking down at her as she arched into his hands, her eyes closed as she moaned her desire, Xander realised that the feeling taking possession of him was a fierce need to ensure that the only man her body would ever recognise or remember as its lover was him! He wanted, no, needed to put his own personal imprint on her in such a way that she would never, ever forget him.
He bent his head to her breast, flicking his tongue tip against her hard nipple. Immediately Katrina cried out to him. She was oblivious to the
fact that her nails were digging into the smooth flesh of his shoulders, and that she was lifting her hips to press her lower body even closer to the hard length of his erection, frantically rubbing herself rhythmically against him as she sought an easing of the pulsing ache possessing her own body.
Her wantonness was destroying him, Xander recognised on a surge of mingled arousal and anger. Every sensual movement of her experienced, eager body was inciting a matching response within his own.
'Xander, I want you so badly.'
The choked words were whispered against his ear, the same ear that her hot, pointed tongue was hungrily exploring.
His self-control wasn't slipping away from him, it was exploding in a frenzy of white-hot lust.
'You're going to have me,' he answered her thickly. 'All of me. And I'm going to have you. I'm going to have you and fill you, and make you feel as no other man has ever done or will ever do… Is that what you want?'
'Yes. Oh, yes,' Katrina moaned. She who would have said anything, done anything he asked, she wanted him so much.
His hand was parting her thighs, stroking her soft, silky skin and making her quiver with the intensity of her longing.
He cupped her sex, parting her swollen outer lips, and rubbing one tormenting fingertip over her eager wetness. She heard the thick sound of satisfaction he made when he stroked the hard, erect flesh of her clitoris, his fingertip moving erotically over it, and arousing her to such a fever pitch of desire that she could hardly endure the intensity of her own pleasure.
Xander could hear the small quiet voice inside himself telling him what he was doing was wrong, but its warning was drowned out by the small excited sounds Katrina was making and his own intense desire.
He had never wanted a woman as he wanted this one, nor had he ever known he could feel such an overwhelming and passionate need. He could feel it driving, burning through him, possessing him as he ached to possess Katrina.
He positioned himself between her already open, welcoming thighs. Katrina shuddered. She could see Xander poised over her, and her heart hammered frantically against her ribs. This was it. The moment of intimacy she had wondered about, dreamed about with a virginal mixture of eager curiosity and slight trepidation.
She could feel Xander's muscles bunching. Almost pleadingly she lifted her hand to his face, whispering chokily, 'Kiss me…'
Swiftly Xander bent his head, his mouth taking hers in a long, slow kiss of scorching intimacy whilst he thrust fiercely past the swollen outer lips of her sex, and into the tight embrace of the most intimate part of her.
And she did feel tight, the close grip of her muscles almost unendurably erotic.
Foolishly, perhaps, she hadn't expected pain, Katrina acknowledged as her body clenched in shock, but her longing for him was stronger than both her shock and her pain. She clung to him, offering herself up to him, so that he thrust deeper and faster.
He felt the barrier of her virginity and heard her indrawn gasp of pain with a shock wave of stunned disbelief.
Katrina shuddered as his body stilled within hers; the pain had gone but the small, telling contractions pulsing deep inside her had not. They were intensifying, making her move rhythmically and urgently against Xander, compelling him to move with her.
She heard him groan, her own teeth nipping frantically at his shoulder as the urgency of her arousal seized her and she cried out to him in agonised pleasure. The deep, driving surge of his body within her own was all pleasure now and she gave herself up to it and to him, lost in what she was experiencing, the release of her orgasm making her tremble from head to foot. But it was the hot spill of Xander's completion within her that made her eyes burn with emotional tears.
On a small sigh of soft pleasure she turned her face into the curve of Xander's shoulder and curled up against him.
'How is it possible that you were a virgin?'
The harsh, angry words confused her.
'So far as I know there is only one way I could have been,' she responded flippantly.
What did it matter what she had been when right now she was gloriously, deliciously, totally fulfilled and by him?
'It isn't exactly, unknown for women to buy themselves virginity via a skilled surgeon and a small operation,' Xander told her curtly.
'Maybe it isn't, but I certainly didn't,' Katrina told him.
Xander knew that she had done no such thing, but he was still fighting to overcome his own shock. Discovering that she had been a virgin and he her first and only lover changed everything. His upbringing meant that he felt a moral responsibility towards her. 'You should have told me.'
He sounded cold and angry, and to her own chagrin Katrina discovered that, instead of feeling blissfully happy, suddenly she felt totally miserable and dangerously close to tears.
'I did tell you that Richard wasn't my lover,' she reminded him.
'You could have asked me to stop.' He paused, an expression crossing his face that Katrina couldn't analyse. 'By the time I recognised that I needed to stop, it was far too late,' he added curtly.
He was criticising her for what had happened. Blaming her? Despite her immediate indignation and anger, Katrina knew that he had a valid point. She could have told him, but she had deliberately chosen not to do so! Why? Because she had intuitively known that he would not continue to make love to her? Because she had wanted him to do so, so desperately? Even so! Beneath the anger she was beginning to feel a very much deeper and more painful current of emotional misery that was slowly flooding her: a combination of rejection, despair, and the bleak realisation that her own emotional input into their sexual intimacy had not been reciprocated. A small shiver shook her still-naked body.
'Here, put this on.'
Katrina tensed as he wrapped his own discarded robe around her. He was frowning as she did so, his actions brisk and businesslike, and surely devoid of any kind of softening tenderness, even if his touch was surprisingly gentle.
'You realise, of course, that this changes everything between us! Had I known of your virginity I would never—'
Katrina fought back the tears burning the backs of her eyes. 'Do you realise just how despicable you are?' she demanded hotly. 'You believed that…when you assumed that I had…that I was not…' She was so overwrought that she could hardly get the words out. Taking a deep breath, she started again. 'When you assumed I was Richard's lover, you obviously thought that it was perfectly acceptable for you to… to do what you did, but now that you've discovered that I was a virgin, things are different. Well, you may feel differently about me, but I do not feel differently about you!' she told him furiously. 'In fact, if anything I despise you now even more than I did before! The kind of man I could respect is a man who values me as a person, not just my virginity! You are despicable and loathsome!'
She could see the dark tide of angry colour seeping up under his skin, and the murderous flash of savage pride in his eyes, but she refused to be daunted. She had as much right to say what she thought as he did! She felt sick inside with shame and self-contempt at having been foolish enough to believe he was someone special. She had deluded herself, and now she had paid the price for that self-delusion—not with her virginity, but with her heart and her emotions.
At least now she would be able to destroy that burgeoning love by reminding herself of what had happened today and his cruelty towards her.
Her angry words caught Xander unprepared, just as his desire for her had done. They touched an exposed nerve and threw back to him an image of himself that hurt his pride.
He had lied to her when he had claimed that he had only made love to her because he had believed she was experienced. The truth was that he had made love to her because he had not been able to stop himself, but he had been too proud to admit that to her, and now it was too late to tell her that truth. It was also too late to admonish himself now for the fact that he had not taken any kind of precautions.
Healthwise he had no concerns. Despite what other peopl
e might choose to think about his sexual past, he was not littered with a stream of different partners, but there were other dangers, other risks, and he had not held himself back in any way at all!
He looked at Katrina. Her small heart-shaped face looked pale, her eyes huge.
Although the garment was wrapped around her, she was still shivering slightly.
Abruptly he stood up and then, grimly and without saying a word to her, he scooped Katrina up into his arms, fabric and all.
'What are you doing? Put me down!' Katrina commanded uselessly as he carried her through to the inner quarters of the tent.
Panic filled her. What was he going to do? But instead of turning into the sleeping area, he turned instead into the small bathroom. He pushed open the shower door with his shoulder and stepped into it, still holding her.
As he put her down he removed the cloth that was wrapped around her and dropped it on the floor outside the shower, firmly closing the door.
'What do you think you are doing?' Her question was lost as he turned on the shower and she sputtered helplessly under the admittedly delicious warmth of the water.
'You're cold and possibly even slightly in shock,' he told her grimly. It was true that she did feel rather shaky, Katrina acknowledged, but she knew that that had more to do with Xander's angry comments to her than the intimacy they had shared.
She risked a small upward look at him. Xander might be soaping her wet skin with a look on his face that said there was nothing remotely sexual or pleasurable for him about what he was doing, but unfortunately her body was not capable of being so detached, Katrina recognised guiltily.
And of course it didn't help that he was as naked as she was herself. Unable to stop herself, she glanced down at his body, and then tensed as she saw that his penis was not small and flaccid as she had assumed naively it would be, but instead impressively thick and firm-looking.