by Penny Jordan
‘You’re trembling.’ Adam reached out, his fingertips touching the smooth skin of her face, tracing along her cheek bone and down to her jaw before he lightly caressed the mobile outline of her mouth.
‘Don’t be afraid.’
‘I’m not.’ Her voice trembled too, but not from fear; no, her tremors came from love; from desire and need, and a fiercely exultant excitement, Brooke thought achingly, closing her eyes and allowing her other senses to feast themselves on Adam’s nearness.
She felt his hands on her shoulders, caressing the narrow bones, smoothing the silk of her top over them and quivers of pulsing excitement darted over her skin. She reached for him, automatically sliding her palms beneath the thickness of his jacket and round his back, feeling the tension gripping his muscles as she touched him.
‘Brooke.’ He kissed her lightly, muttering her name in an oddly thick voice, and then kissed her again, one hand cupping her jaw while the fingers of the other tangled in her hair, his control abandoned as he felt her passionate response. This was what she wanted; this fierce, hungry passion that overwhelmed every other more rational emotion; this aching need to be part of another human being; this blazing, exultant pleasure in knowing that Adam wanted her with the same intensity. Her hands left his back to clasp the back of his head, her fingers weaving insistently in the thick darkness of his hair. While he was kissing her Adam had unfastened the three buttons securing her top and now he moved her lightly away from him so that he could ease her out of it completely. His fingers were deft on the zip of her skirt, his movements economical and yet subtly caressing so that she felt no embarrassment or reserve, merely an eager desire to be rid of the trappings of civilisation, to have as her only covering the hard warmth of his body.
‘This is delicious,’ he murmured against her skin, touching his mouth lightly to the valley between her breasts as he eased the straps of her camisole down over her arms, ‘but it doesn’t feel as silkily enticing as your skin. Undress me Brooke,’ he commanded thickly, lifting his head to watch her through narrowed eyelids. How could she ever have thought his eyes cold? Now they glowed like molten metal, blazing with the same need she could feel twisting and turning in her own body. ‘You can’t know how much I’ve burned to feel your hands against my skin … ached for it,’ he muttered unsteadily as her fingers moved tentatively to the buttons on his shirt.
To help her he shed his jacket, shrugging it on to the floor, his lips teasing light kisses along the side of her throat and down on to her shoulder.
‘You’re trembling,’ he told her softly as she struggled with the second button.
‘How can you expect me to concentrate on what I’m doing,’ Brooke protested in response, ‘when you keep on kissing me like that?’
She felt the warmth of his laughter graze her skin, and instead of feeling gauche she felt a spurt of warm pleasure, knowing that his laughter had been indulgent rather than mocking.
‘I can see I’m going to have to teach you how to do more than one thing at once.’ He lifted his head, and looked at her lazily, as her nervous fingers stilled.
‘There’s nothing to stop you kissing me back,’ he told her softly, the heat of his gaze belying the mildness of his voice, and the fingers he spread against the back of her head propelled her gently towards him, until her lips touched the pulse thudding in his throat.
His skin tasted warm, faintly salty and in some indefinable way intensely male. The feel of it beneath her mouth made Brooke grow bolder, and to her amazement the buttons that had proved so irksome suddenly seemed to free themselves from their holes. Dazed by the unexpectedness of the sheer sensual pleasure touching Adam gave her, Brooke lifted her head to find him smiling down at her, the reason for the ease with which the buttons had slid free explained as she saw his fingers entwined with hers.
‘Practice makes perfect—in all things,’ he told her, gently mocking her, and then as though he understood the pain that rose inside her as she remembered how many women he must have gained his practice with, he added huskily, ‘but perfection isn’t everything—far from it, it can be a cold, empty thing, without the reality of emotion to warm it.’
Emotion? What was he saying? That he cared for her? No, if that was the case Adam would have come right out and said so. Could he have guessed how she felt about him? For a moment Brooke felt almost dizzy with shock and despair, but then she conquered her feelings, telling herself fiercely that nothing mattered except that Adam was here and that he had flown to France especially to be with her. Could the way she felt about him, the need she felt to express that love in all the ways she could, cancel out her lack of physical experience? She would make it, she decided fiercely; she would make memories tonight that would stay not just with her for all her life but with him as well.
That decision once made dissolved her last few remaining inhibitions. Her fingertips investigated the narrow opening of tanned skin, roughened by fine dark hairs, exposed by the open shirt buttons, her lips once again tasting the smooth skin of Adam’s throat. His muscles tensed and hardened beneath her touch, the low groan her explorative touch brought ripping from his taut throat inciting her to tease his warm skin with the tip of her tongue, trailing it along the strong column of his throat as he arched it in hungry supplication of her touch, muttering her name hoarsely as he cupped the warm firmness of her breasts with hands that trembled faintly as they touched her skin.
When his thumbs teased the swollen crests of her breasts Brooke felt her blood heat to molten wildness, her soft cry of pleasure smothered against his skin. His teeth nipped delicately at her earlobe, his tongue stroking quivering paths of fire along its delicate convolutions.
Almost without her being aware of it Brooke grasped his shoulders, curling her fingers into his skin as she mutely begged for an appeasement of the need his stroking caresses were arousing, arching her body against his, fiercely pleased by his hoarse sound of frustration, as his hands slid to her hips, pressing her against the straining muscles of his thighs.
‘I want to make love to you slowly and lingeringly,’ he muttered rawly into her skin, ‘but if you go on tormenting me like this, we won’t even make it as far as the bed.’
His thickly rasped words heated her skin, making it ache for the close contact he spoke of. Tentatively Brooke touched his belt, and felt him tense. ‘Yes, yes, Brooke, touch me.’ The fiercely groaned demand stopped her from withdrawing, giving her the confidence to unfasten the buckle and reach hesitantly for his zip.
The shudder that ripped through him beneath her light touch inflamed her own responses.
Suddenly she felt as provocative and irresistible as the most experienced seductress. Her body thrilled to the knowledge that she could make him feel like this; that she could make him ache and hunger for her in the same way that she ached and hungered for him.
‘Stop.’
His harshly whispered command shattered her self-confidence, scattering it in a million tiny fragments. Tense and shivering she stared up at him, not knowing what she had done wrong, or why his face should look so tense and strained.
‘Dear God Brooke, don’t look at me like that.’ His voice was a thread of sound, huskily punctuating the heavy silence of his bedroom. His hands framed her face, his thumbs stroking soothingly over her heated skin.
‘I want you so badly, you’re making me shake like an adolescent. If only you weren’t so damned innocent.’ She barely heard his last comment, because his face was buried against her skin, but she could feel the tension emanating from him; the perspiration beading his forehead, just as she could sense the relentless urgency building up inside him. For a moment she felt vulnerable and bitterly angry that she could not meet him on his own terms; that she lacked the experience that he seemed to wish she had, but then her love for him surged through her, overpowering every negative reaction. Somehow, despite her lack of experience, she would make him forget his reservations.
‘Once you told me you liked it,’ she remi
nded him bravely.
‘Once I believed I had the self-control to cope with it,’ he responded dryly, ‘but then I wasn’t holding you in my arms with my hunger for you threatening to get way, way out of control.’ There was a hint of bitter savagery beneath the self-mockery in his voice that both thrilled and scared her.
‘I want you Adam,’ she said at last, overcoming her nervous qualms, and looking straight at him. ‘I’m sorry if my lack of experience puts you off….’
‘Puts me off!’ He groaned huskily, obviously torn between laughter and impatience. ‘Oh Brooke, you don’t even begin to understand….’
‘I understand that my body aches for yours,’ she told him softly, holding his gaze. ‘I understand that I want you to touch me, to caress me, and that I want to do the same to you.’ She moved slightly and the light from the uncurtained window fell across her body, outlining the curved purity of her breasts. Adam made a sound deep in his throat so primaeval that she shivered as she heard it, watching in a dream as he wrenched off the remainder of his clothes, watching her all the time with a fierce intensity that seemed to hold her in thrall.
His body was every bit as magnificent as she had imagined. Her breath caught faintly in her throat as she stared wide-eyed at him, and then his hands were on her waist, lifting her and carrying her towards the bed.
It dipped under their combined weight and as Brooke’s hands came in contact with Adam’s chest, she could feel the heat coming off his body. The control and tension she had sensed warring in him both exploded and disintegrated as his hands shaped the outline of her body, and she felt the fierce almost savage surge of need thrust through him, communicated to her by the ferocious urgency of his hands.
It seemed to kindle something deep inside her, something elemental and deep-rooted, so that she became completely malleable and responsive to his touch, almost as though she had been formed with this one purpose in mind.
Freed of the restrictions of habit and self-consciousness Brooke explored Adam’s body with a pleasure she had never envisioned herself experiencing. His skin felt hot beneath her touch, his muscles firm against the long bones, his body hardened and toughened so that it felt alien to her fingertips, different from her own familiar softly curving femininity. Suddenly despite Adam’s comments she was glad that she had waited for this first time with him; glad that there were no memories or prejudices left over from other lovers to mar the purity of what she was experiencing now. Nothing blurred the intense joy she felt in knowing him, her lips worshipping where her fingers explored, her concentration broken only when she felt Adam shudder and rasp her name thickly, his hands cupping her breasts as they had done earlier, his thumbs rhythmically caressing their hard crests. When his tongue touched them, lightly at first, painting delicate circles round the tender skin, a wild skein of pleasure seemed to tighten convulsively inside her. Her body tensed and then arched, her head thrown back as her hands held the back of his head. Her response seemed to unleash something elemental in Adam, his mouth possessively demanding as it fastened round first one nipple and then the other.
Starbursts of pleasure exploded inside her as Brooke abandoned herself completely to the erotic demands of his mouth. Shivers of pleasure rippled down her spine as she felt the fine grate of his teeth against her tender skin. Her own lips found the column of his throat and the strong curve of his shoulder, her fingers leaving his head to spread possessively against his back.
Adam’s hands curled on to her hips, stroking the slender bones, before exploring the rounded shape of her bottom, holding her against the heat of his body.
His mouth left the aching tenderness of her breasts to taste the smooth skin of her throat, upwards along her jaw line, the rough rasp of his body hair against the pleasurably tender flesh of her nipples making her arch and move convulsively against him.
His fingers tightened round her buttocks, and Brooke caught her breath in fierce pleasure as she felt the heated, rhythmic response of his body.
Stroking fingers slid up her spine and tangled in her hair, pulling her head backwards, her small instinctive protest lost beneath the fierce onslaught of a kiss that made her ache and tremble with need.
‘Not yet … not yet,’ Adam muttered unsteadily against her swollen mouth as he felt her instinctive and untutored attempt to satisfy her need. His hands moved a little less fiercely over her body as he pushed her slightly away from him, his fingers fanning out possessively across the slight swell of her stomach.
An aching coil of tension twisted deep inside her, and she reached out blindly, pressing her lips to the flat hardness of Adam’s nipple, running trembling fingers along the dark line of hair that arrowed down over his flat stomach.
His fiercely convulsive movement betrayed his response, one hand trapping her fingers, the other grasping her chin and tilting it upwards until his tongue could trace the moist warmth of her lips, teasing them until they parted in a soundless moan of pleasure, leaving his tongue free to explore the sweetness of her mouth in a kiss that made her mindless with aching pleasure while his fingers urged hers against his skin, inciting her to an intimate exploration of his male body that brought a throaty purr of satisfaction to his lips and quivers of shivering excitement to her body.
It seemed ridiculous that she had reached the grand old age of twenty-six without knowing the intimacy of a man’s body before but now she knew Adam’s, and hesitancy gave way to desire and love as she pulled her mouth from his and caressed the moist warmth of his skin with a delicate precision that absorbed her so absolutely that it took Adam’s fingers manacled to her wrists to pull her back into his arms.
‘Have you any idea what you do to me when you touch me like that?’ He muttered the words thickly into her ear, the sound of them interspersed with the heavy, erratic thud of his heart.
‘A little,’ Brooke responded demurely, self-satisfaction giving way to tumultuous desire as Adam’s fingers stroked tantalisingly along her thighs and then between them. He watched the dawn of startled realisation darken her eyes to gold and then give way to an almost unbearable pleasure as she ceased trying to push him away and instead, cried out his name in aching surprise, overwhelmed by the sensations he was arousing.
‘That’s what you do to me when you touch and kiss me the way you were doing,’ he told her rawly. ‘You make me ache Brooke, way, way down into my bones and guts.’
‘You make me ache too,’ Brooke responded huskily far beyond any attempt at dissimulation, and as though her tremulous admission broke down the last barriers of his self-control Adam bent his head, touching his lips to the delicate satiny skin of her waist, the pressure of his mouth growing more and more compulsive as he absorbed the taste and texture of her.
Helplessly out of control Brooke responded feverishly to every command of his mouth and lips, the long awaited weight of his body as it lay between the cradle of her thighs momentarily soothing the deep-seated ache that hungered inside her.
His fingertips stroking up over her skin Adam kissed her closed eyelids. Where it had been feverishly heated his touch was now tender and restrained, but Brooke sensed that it was a finely held restraint, ready to shatter explosively at any second and held on to only for her sake.
Her heart cried out impatiently that it didn’t want his restraint and she moved eagerly, urgently, beneath him twining her arms round his neck and lifting her body enticingly to meet his. ‘I want you Adam.’ She said the words fiercely against his skin, parting her lips hungrily for his kiss, glorying in the first fierce thrust of his body against hers, and welcoming its invasion of her femininity with an impatience that seemed to overwhelm Adam’s restraint.
The pain was nothing like what she had expected; brief and lost beneath an overpowering surge of pleasure, her body instinctively matching the urgent rhythm of Adam’s, her every sense lost in it until it seemed to time the beat of her heart and the rate of her pulse.
It was a rhythm as elemental as the sea against the shore; as time it
self, Brooke thought hazily; something that her body had always secretly known and now exulted in.
Pleasure gave way to aching urgency, her nails raking the hard muscles of Adam’s back, her fiercely feminine sounds of pleasure lost beneath his mouth as their shared compulsive need mounted, exploding in dizzying waves of pleasure that crashed down over Brooke almost at the same time as she felt Adam tense, and call out her name, long shudders of release wracking his lean body, as he held her possessively against him, the sound of their shared ragged breathing puncturing the silence of the room.
Minutes later, when Brooke tried to pull away, telling herself that in the aftermath of their lovemaking she must not betray the love she had managed to keep silent about during it, Adam’s arms tightened round her, refusing to let her go, his body embracing hers, as though they were lovers mentally as well as physically. It made Brooke want to cry, weak tears filling her eyes and sliding down her face. One dropped on to Adam’s skin and he tensed, his tongue touching the salty dampness of her face. Almost before her tears had dried she was falling asleep, her body pleasantly lethargic, her mind too exhausted to cope with the turmoil she knew awaited her in the morning.
CHAPTER NINE
SOMETHING was different. Brooke knew it even without opening her eyes or admitting returning consciousness; at first just an awareness that had been with her as she lay somewhere between sleeping and waking, her eyes closed, her body relaxed, now it was a certainty.
Adam … her mind probed the pleasure even thinking his name brought and awareness flooded through her body. There was no regret, only pleasure mingled with sorrow because by embarking on an affair with Adam, Brooke knew she had set in motion a chain of events which would culminate in her losing him.