The Engagement Party

by Barbara Boswell

  For a moment, his eyes feasted on her. Her breasts were full and round, the nipples a dusky rose, beaded and prominent. The sight sent sharp stabs of pure male hunger vibrating through him.

  Hannah whimpered as his fingers found her sensitive nipples, his touch deft and whisper soft. It was as if there were an invisible wire attached from the tip of her nipple to the inner depth of her womb, and shock waves of pleasure ricocheted through her. She arched upward as his mouth closed over her breast and he began to suck seductively, rhythmically, until she was writhing and moaning and clinging to him, almost sobbing with pleasure. Then he took the other rosy peak between his lips and treated it to the same sensual ministrations.

  “It feels so good,” Hannah groaned in a breathless, sexy voice she hardly recognized as her own. She slipped her hands under his shirt and smoothed them over the muscled strength of his back. “You feel so good, Matthew,” she added throatily, giving herself free reign to touch him, luxuriating in the sensuous exploration.

  A deep, low growl rumbled from Matthew’s throat. “You’re so responsive, so passionate,” he breathed. “My sweet, sexy, beautiful angel.” Her fiery arousal heightened his own excitement. Had any woman ever wanted him with such pure feminine need?

  His body pounded with desire as the fierce and fiery pressure built and throbbed within him. He felt as if his mind was rioting. The terrible pain and grief, the anger and the doubts of the past six months were displaced by this profound and elemental need. For Hannah and Hannah alone. Gone was the numbness and detachment that had enveloped and darkened his life. With Hannah, he felt vibrant and virile, filled with the wonder and pleasure and healing powers of love.

  “Oh, Matthew.” Hannah sighed his name. Just saying it filled her with tenderness. “I love you,” she whispered, her voice so low she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her or not.

  She decided that it didn’t matter if he had. She reveled in the words, the ones she’d been wanting to say to a man all her life. Just last night she had watched Ben and Abby and wondered wistfully how it would feel to love someone enough to want to give him everything, to hold nothing back and forge a future together.

  Now she knew. Who would have dreamed that it would happen to her so fast, so unexpectedly? But Hannah did not question this marvelous twist of fate. She was in love at last, and her man was here, wanting her as much as she wanted him. He might not have yet uttered the words but she felt the force of his love pulsing through his body as he lifted her higher and harder against him.

  Impulsively, Hannah wrapped her arms around Matthew and held him tight. The soft cloth of his shirt rubbed her naked breasts as their lips met once again. Her nipples were damp and excruciatingly sensitive, and the cloth was an irritant. She tugged his shirt from inside his waistband and pulled it up, baring his chest. She knew instinctively that the sweet, sensuous pain would be soothed by the wiry mat of male hair on his chest, and it was.

  They continued their ardent play, kissing lightly, their lips teasing and nibbling each other’s until neither could endure the sweet torture for another second. They simultaneously moaned their pleasure and relief when their mouths mated in the deeply intimate kiss they both craved.

  It was wild and hot; it was exhilarating. And grew even more frantic and unrestrained. Kissing madly, they fumbled with their clothing, separating only momentarily to unbuckle his belt or pull off his shirt, unwilling for their lips to be apart for more than a breathless second or two.

  Matthew slid his hands under the skirt of her dress, gliding along the smooth length of her thighs to cup the rounded curve of her derriere. Hannah gasped. When he put his hand between her legs and cupped her intimately, she arched her back, uttering a small sharp cry of need.

  He was pleased by her uninhibited response to his touch. “Yes, sweetheart, I’ll give you what you want.” He caressed her, rubbing and stroking her through the violet silk of her panties.

  Hannah shivered helplessly under his fingers as a shockingly pleasurable spiral of tension grew tighter and tighter inside her. Clutching at him, she slid her hands beneath the waistband of his dark cotton boxer shorts and tugged at them.

  Matthew helped her divest himself of them and groaned with sheer pleasure as her slim fingers fastened around his smooth hard shaft.

  Hannah was fascinated by its size and shape, by its pulsing strength, and by Matthew’s reaction as she held him in her hand. Her feminine sensuality was as irresistible to him as his own masculine virility was to her. Theirs was a union, not a competition, between male and female.

  Gently, Matthew drew her fingers away, chaining her wrists above her head with one strong hand. “Take it easy, baby.” His voice was deep and low. “Let’s make it last all night.”

  “But I want to touch you,” Hannah breathed.

  Her sexy, wide-eyed plea was almost enough to drive him over the edge. “There’ll be time for that later, honey,” he said raspily. “Right now, I want to enjoy you. Just close your eyes and let me please you.”

  Hannah moved sinuously under his hands. Her breath caught as he slipped his hand inside her panties. When he combed his fingers through the luxuriant thicket of dark curls, she whimpered his name. He swallowed the small cry as he kissed her again, wildly, ardently.

  It was a relief when he pulled off her panties. Hannah lay before him, nude and aching, a slow blush suffusing her skin. Matthew gazed at her, his black eyes glowing with male admiration and desire. She felt wanton and shameless. She felt feminine and sensual and free.

  With a slow, seductive smile, he opened her legs with his hand and put it where she most wanted him to.

  Hannah closed her eyes and moaned. She wanted him to touch her, needed him there in a way she had never imagined. He caressed her with gentle pressure, exquisitely probing the secrets of her swollen, wet heat. Hannah felt delirious with pleasure. Shuddering with urgency, she twisted and turned under his masterful hand.

  “I can’t wait anymore, sweetie.” Matthew growled sexily against her ear. “I need you...I want you so much.”

  He knelt up on the bed and reached for the small paper bag he’d brought from the drugstore. Moments later, he had sheathed himself while Hannah watched him with wide gray eyes.

  “You—you bought that tonight?” She paused and took a deep breath. “Did you know that you—that we—”

  Matthew smiled, his onyx eyes glowing in the soft lamplight. “Let’s just say I was hoping. Really, really hoping. But ultimately I knew it would be your decision.”

  “And that you would abide by it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “My decision is still yes, Matthew,” she said, her voice soft with passion and yearning.

  His dark gaze locked with hers as he moved between her legs, his muscled thighs spreading hers open wide.

  Hannah squeezed her eyes shut as he penetrated the satiny sheath of her womanhood. She was small and tight, and her body tensed, resisting him. She bit her lower lip hard to keep from crying out, yet she welcomed the intimacy despite the pain. His possession of her body bonded them in a primitive and natural and elemental way. She had been waiting for this joining, waiting for him.

  “Relax, sweetheart,” Matthew soothed. He was unable to hold back a moan of pleasure. “Hannah, love, we’re perfect together.”

  His impassioned declaration thrilled her. And as her body slowly accommodated itself to him, the burning sharpness dissolved into a melting, liquid warmth.

  A heartbeat later, he was deep inside her, hard and full. He began to move, slowly at first, then with increasing power and speed. When her body began to instinctively move in counterpoint to his rhythm, his control seemed to snap. This would be no virtuoso performance in which he calculated his every move, observing with satisfaction his partner’s surrender, his power and control were never wavering.

  Sheathed deep inside her, Matthew was consumed by the rapture that raged through his body like wildfire. It was too intense, too immense to be contained.
The searing pleasure exploded into a shattering release, and he gave himself up to it.

  And echoing in his head during those climactic moments were Hannah’s soft, fervent words of love.

  Seven

  For several long moments afterward, Matthew lay on top of her, exhausted and spent, his body blissfully drained. The urge to fall into a satiated sleep seemed a natural ending to the explosive passion that had consumed them.

  But he did not succumb to it. His mind, which had ceded control to the hungry urgency of his body, was slowly reclaiming command.

  Lying beneath him, Hannah rubbed her cheek against the hollow of his shoulder, pressing her lips to his skin and tasting the salty sheen. Mindlessly traced random patterns on the smooth expanse of his back with her fingernails. Though Matthew was still inside her, her body was not relaxed and replete like his. She felt restless and edgy. An erotic ache of unsatisfied arousal throbbed deep in her abdomen, and her breasts felt swollen, the nipples ultrasensitive.

  She squirmed under his weight, seeking something she could not identify. Wriggling against him seemed to help ease those sensually bedeviling symptoms. So did clenching her inner feminine muscles that were holding him within. She did it again. And again.

  “Hannah, don’t!” Matthew moaned. “I—I’ll get hard again.”

  “And that’s bad?” she asked huskily, running her hand through his dark hair.

  “Not for me. But for you...” He fought against the taut heat rising again in his loins. “You’re too tender to...take again. You’re going to be sore...” The thought of inflicting pain upon her soft body instantly tamped the desire sparking within him.

  And as self-awareness took precedence over the driving force of sexual need, he was shaken irrevocably out of his orgasmic bliss. He had been unable to stop, unable to control himself with her, even after he’d realized she was a virgin. The realization blindsided him.

  Matthew gazed down at her. Her hair was tousled, her mouth moist and swollen from their kisses. He had been the first man to possess her; she had cried out that she loved him as he took her from virgin to lover. The possessive male pride that filled him was astonishing and appalling, too. He’d always considered himself a thoroughly modern male. Who would have guessed that this primitive machismo lurked within him?

  Even more daunting was the memory of his performance. Oh, it had been fantastic for him. But what about her? Had he been too rough? He knew he’d been too fast. She hadn’t climaxed; he’d been aware of that and berated himself for not satisfying her. But he’d been unable to wait, and believing her to be sexually experienced, he had thrust into her, expecting her to find ultimate ecstasy in the act.

  A cave-dwelling Neanderthal had probably been a more sensitive lover than he’d been!

  “Matthew, are you okay?” murmured Hannah, lightly brushing her lips along the firm line of his jaw.

  “I should be the one asking you that question,” he grated through his teeth. If he’d been in a hot sweat during their tumultuous mating, he was in a cold sweat now. “Are you...all right?”

  He began to slowly, steadily withdraw his body from hers.

  “Don’t leave me,” Hannah whispered and tightened her arms around him. She wanted to be held, to be cuddled, to share the wonder of this momentous event.

  “Answer me, Hannah. Are you—” he gulped “—in any pain?”

  What if she said yes? Should he offer to drive her to a hospital? He was completely unnerved. He’d never made love to a virgin before—not even when he’d been one himself. An older, more experienced college girl had initiated him into the pleasures of the flesh the summer after his senior year in high school. And she’d done a helluva better job with him than he had with Hannah, Matthew conceded grimly.

  “I’m fine,” Hannah said. It was true; physically she was fine. But his response to her, which was fast bordering on outright rejection after the most intimate act she’d ever shared with any man, was emotionally devastating.

  Ashen-faced, Matthew completed his withdrawal and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Hannah felt a thrill of sensation as their bodies separated, then an intolerable emptiness. Anxiety surged through her as she stared at Matthew, who seemed to be taking great care not to look at her.

  “I know I’m new to this, but I’m fairly certain that it’s not supposed to end like this,” she said, attempting to sound breezy and flip.

  Matthew wasn’t fooled. He worried that she was perilously close to tears. Remorse and regret flooded him, for what he had done and for what he wasn’t going to allow himself to do again.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this was your first time?” he asked gruffly.

  Hannah raised herself to a sitting position. “You didn’t ask.”

  “That’s not a question a man would think to ask a woman your age, especially one with your—” He broke off abruptly.

  “With my what?”

  “Hannah, for heaven’s sake, you were engaged three times!” His voice rose.

  “So?” Her voice rose to match his. “What’s your point?”

  “I should think it’s obvious. Those three men agreed to marry you without ever sleeping with you?”

  “I told them I wanted to wait until I was married to make love.” Hannah was defensive. “They respected my wishes. Is that so inconceivable to you?”

  “Frankly, yes.”

  “So you ascribe to the test-drive principle? The one that goes—you wouldn’t buy a car without test-driving it first, so therefore you wouldn’t marry a woman unless you’ve slept with her?” She heaved a disgusted sigh. “My grandmother told me that old spiel was around in her day, when cars weren’t all that common!”

  Matthew said nothing, but his expression was grim.

  Hannah watched him gather up his clothes and pull them on with ridiculous haste, assiduously avoiding any eye contact with her. “Are you afraid I’ll attack you if you’re not fully dressed?” she asked caustically as he buttoned his shirt all the way to the top and zipped up his jeans.

  She resisted the overwhelming urge to grab the bedspread and pull it around her, covering her own nakedness. Instead, boldly and complete nude, she leaned back on her elbows, her legs crossed daintily at the ankles, and watched him gather up her own clothes. Her temper, already aflame, grew hotter with every passing second.

  “You don’t have to worry. I’m not burning with lust for your incomparable body,” Hannah snapped.

  “No?” Matthew dropped her violet sundress and the matching bra and panties onto the bed. He was furious with himself, but Hannah’s lack of guilt-induced weepiness was making him angry with her, too. She was not acting like the wounded little bird he’d wronged. He was prepared to make his humblest apologies to that pitiful young maiden, but Hannah was not following the script. Instead, she was deliberately antagonizing him.

  “No!” Hannah assured him.

  Her absolute confirmation riled him further. “You certainly were a few minutes ago.”

  “That was before we had sex,” Hannah said nastily. “As far as I can tell, the experience isn’t worth repeating.”

  For a spit second, she wondered if she’d pushed him too far. His eyes glittered menacingly and the expression on his face was unmistakably savage. A shiver of fear ricocheted through her, and with it, tingles of excitement. She wanted him to retaliate, she realized. She’d intended to provoke him so he would lie down on the bed with her and prove her brash insult wrong.

  But Matthew exerted his normal steely self-control. He hadn’t forgiven himself for losing control with her tonight; he was not about to compound his sin and do it again. “Get dressed,” he said tightly.

  He walked to the window and looked outside, giving her privacy to dress.

  Hannah resented both his control and the privacy he afforded her. She wanted him to be driven wild with desire, to be unable to drag his eyes away from her—the way he’d been earlier tonight. She quickly slipped on her clothes, choking back
the lump that had lodged in her throat. She must have been the world’s worst lover if he couldn’t even stand to look at her afterward.

  Hot tears filled her eyes as she compared his current icy demeanor with his impassioned urgency such a short time ago. Obviously, he had wanted one thing from her, and one thing only. Now that he had gotten what he wanted—and hadn’t been particularly pleased with her while getting it—he was eager to be rid of her.

  And she was just as eager to get away from him! Stepping into her sandals, Hannah grabbed her purse and headed for the door.

  “Why did you do it, Hannah?”

  Matthew’s voice stopped her in her tracks. She turned around and stared at him. He was still standing by the window but he was watching her. His face was closed, his dark eyes hooded.

  “Why did I do it? Why did I go to bed with you?” Pride came to her rescue, displacing the hurt with a fierce, sustaining rage. “That’s a good question, Matthew. I’ve been wondering why myself. If and when I come up with an answer, I’ll let you know. Right now I’m chalking it up to an unfortunate episode of temporary insanity.”

  She turned the doorknob, partially opening the door.

  “You said you loved me.”

  Matthew’s words hit her like the proverbial ton of bricks. Actually, being walloped by bricks might be preferable, Hannah decided miserably. It wouldn’t be as humiliating.

  “I hope you didn’t believe me,” she countered coolly. ”It’s what I tell every man I’m tempted to go to bed with.” She stepped into the hall and slammed the door behind her, so hard that the whole boardinghouse seemed to reverberate.

  When she heard Matthew open the door, she took off at a run. Along the hall, down the stairs and out the door, she ran. She didn’t turn to see if he was following her, but when she heard footsteps behind her, she quickened her speed.

  Matthew caught up with her on the sidewalk before she reached the corner. He caught her by the arm, swinging her around to face him. “Don’t ever try to outrun me, honey. I was on the track team in high school and in college and I still run to keep in shape.”