by Julia James
His mouth moved from its passionate onslaught on hers to suckle on her right breast through the silk of her nightgown, which to Hayley seemed all the more erotic than if he had removed the fabric from her body. She looked down at his dark head and felt a shock wave of delight pass through her belly as his mouth drew hard on her nipple, carrying an electric charge right through her body. He moved to her other breast and did the same, and then, just when she thought she could stand it no longer, he pushed the straps of her nightgown down past her shoulders and uncovered her breasts. She felt the scorch of his gaze as he looked down at her creamy shape, the rose-tipped nipples proudly erect.
‘You are so perfect,’ he said, shaping her with his hand, his eyes burning with arousal. ‘So very beautiful.’
She sucked in a breath as he bent his head to each nipple, his tongue rolling over and over each tight point until she was writhing beneath him.
One of his hands moved between their bodies and searched for her heated warmth, his fingers opening her gently as he felt the silky moistness. She gasped with pleasure as he stroked the swollen heart of her with expert precision, her nerves quivering in escalating excitement as the pressure for release built, making her feel as if her body were hovering on the edge of a very steep precipice.
‘You feel so ready for me,’ he groaned against her mouth. ‘So tight and wet.’
She was beyond speech; all she could do was feel what he was doing to her. Her whole body was zinging with spiralling sensations as his mouth left hers to kiss a blazing pathway down her body, dawdling over her breasts, stopping at her belly button just long enough to set it alight, before he went to where every nerve in her body seemed to have gathered in one tiny pearl of pressure that ached and pulsed to be released.
The first hot flicker of his tongue arched her back, her whimpering cry rising high in the air as he did it again and again. She couldn’t hold back the storm of sensation that exploded in her body like a volcano that had waited years to erupt. She felt each earth-shattering tremor and the delicious aftershocks in every part of her body, leaving her weak and spent in his arms.
He reached for a condom in the bedside chest of drawers and she watched with bated breath, her excitement building all over again as she saw him apply it to his length.
He came back over her, his mouth taking hers in a hard, probing kiss as his body surged forward into her honeyed warmth. Hayley flinched as he entered her, her inner muscles untrained at accepting the unfamiliar length and breadth of him.
Jasper stilled his movements and, holding himself up on his bent arms, looked at her in concern. ‘Am I rushing you?’
‘No … no, of course not,’ she said, pressing her spine into the mattress in an effort to relax.
A small frown appeared on his forehead. ‘You have had sex before, haven’t you?’
‘Of course I have.’
‘How many times?’
‘Um … just the once …’
He let out an expletive and began to withdraw.
‘No!’ She clutched at him to keep him inside her. ‘I want this to be special. My first time was a disaster … that’s why I never really got around to repeating it.’
His frown became even heavier. ‘Did he force himself on you?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘We were both young and inexperienced. He didn’t know what he was doing and I certainly wasn’t much help. It was over before it began.’
‘I wish you had told me,’ he said, still frowning. ‘I could have taken things a little slower. Did I hurt you?’
‘Not really …’
He tipped up her chin and made her lock gazes with him. ‘Did I hurt you, Hayley?’
She compressed her lips, the sudden urge to cry taking her completely by surprise. ‘Not much …’ she whispered.
He swore again and began to pull out, but she anticipated it and grasped at his buttocks, digging her fingers in. ‘Please show me what the fuss is all about,’ she said. ‘Please, Jasper. I want to know how it feels to come during sex. I’ve never felt that before. For years I’ve felt like a failure in bed. Make me feel like a woman should feel.’
He hesitated, but Hayley could already feel his body stirring within the tight sheath of hers. She tensed and released her inner muscles and he groaned and sank forward, his control slipping. She felt every thrust, the first ones restrained, cautious and tender until his control finally slipped out of his reach. He began to increase his pace, his breathing rate rising, the tension in his body building as he drove on, each surging movement bringing her closer to the point of no return. It was beyond anything she could have imagined to feel his strength and heat and passion filling her so completely. The musky scent of him, the salty taste of his skin, the rough abrasion of his masculine jaw on the tender softness of her face were so incredibly sensual and exciting.
His mouth became increasingly demanding and his tongue commanding in its subjugation of hers. She returned his fiery kiss with growing urgency, her tongue flicking against his, her hands stroking the sweat-slicked skin of his back as he rocked with escalating need against her. Her body tightened around him, holding him, releasing him, holding him until she heard him suck in a tight breath as he desperately fought for control.
He caressed her intimately, coaxing her back to paradise with ever quickening strokes that sent her beyond thought as her body prepared itself for another free fall of rapture. Every nerve tightened, every sensory outlet jangling with need until she was perched on the edge again, her body straining for the final lift off. As if he sensed she was ready to fly again, she felt his whole body tensing momentarily, before he surged forward again with a series of pumping explosive thrusts that triggered her release, his breath whooshing out on a deep groan of satisfaction in the afterglow of his own.
Hayley’s body felt as if it had been shattered into a thousand tiny pieces and now each one of them was floating back down to the bed to resume its place on her person. Her breathing was still out of order, her belly still quivering with the tremors that had rocked her to the core.
She watched as Jasper rolled away, his strong, muscular body delighting her all over again. She reached out a hand and stroked it down the length of his flank, her eyes meeting his as he turned back to face her.
‘Still want to play, baby girl?’ he asked with a dangerously sexy smile lighting his brown-black gaze.
Hayley was surprised at her own boldness; she had never felt so sensually alive and confident before. She stroked her fingers upwards from his thigh, bending forward to press her mouth against the jut of his hip, her tongue doing little circles, wider and wider until he was flat on his back, his growing arousal so close to her mouth she saw his chest and abdomen pull in sharply in anticipation. It was an intoxicating sense of power to have him lying under her command, his whole body quivering as she came closer and closer with her lips in hot, moist little kisses.
She heard him muffle a rough expletive as her lips brushed against him tentatively, the ridged muscles of his abdomen tensing as she moistened her mouth with her tongue. His hands clenched the sheets either side of his body as she tasted him, a groan coming from deep inside him as she stroked her tongue over him experimentally.
‘Where the hell did you learn to do that?’ he asked on the tail end of another ragged groan.
Hayley smiled a secret smile and bent her head to take him fully in her mouth, her stomach kicking in excitement when she felt his jerk of surprise and delight as her tongue moved in circular movements over him. She drew on him boldly, the sensation of his power and strength against the softness of her mouth totally enthralling.
‘Oh, God, I can’t hold back …’ Jasper gasped and tried to pull away but she splayed her palm on the flat, hard plane of his belly and kept him where she wanted him.
It was the most erotic experience of his life to have her receive him in such an intimate way. He shuddered his way through it, his whole body shivering with the mind-blowing pleasure of her m
outh.
He lay back with his eyes tightly closed, trying to get his breathing under control, wondering when he had ever felt this totally perfect physical connection with another lover. It was almost visceral the way her body responded to his and his to hers. He had never experienced anything like it before, the fine-tuning of their bodies producing such harmonious accord he felt as if every other sexual encounter he’d experienced in the past had somehow robbed him short.
He opened his eyes to see her looking at him, a tentative, almost shy smile playing at her mouth. He reached out his hand and brought her silky head to his chest, the feel of her cloud of dark hair against his naked skin making something constrict almost painfully deep inside him.
‘No one’s ever done that before,’ he said into the silence.
‘What?’ The movement of air from her mouth as she spoke danced over the indentation of his belly button.
‘Without a condom, I mean,’ he said, lacing his fingers through her hair. ‘It’s totally different; amazing, in fact.’
Hayley stroked his thigh with her fingertip, her cheek so close to his heart she could feel it beating, and the pulse of his body ricocheting through hers. She ran her fingers up and down his thigh for a moment before turning away to get off the bed.
‘Where are you going?’ Jasper asked.
‘I’m going to have a shower,’ she said, scooping up her wrap from the floor and covering her nakedness with a modesty he found rather ironic. ‘If we’re going to make that flight in time we should get a move on.’
‘You still want to go?’
‘Do you feel up to it?’ she asked.
‘I’m surprised you even felt the need to ask that,’ he said, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed and getting to his feet. ‘I thought I had rather convincingly assured you that, in spite of last night’s aberration I was once again in the best of health.’
Her gaze fell away from his. ‘I was so worried about you.’
He closed the distance between them with two strides and lifted her chin. ‘I must say I like the way you show your concern,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘It was just sex, Jasper,’ she said crushingly, more to remind herself of their arrangement than anything. ‘Nothing more.’
His hand dropped from her face. ‘Is that all you want from me? Just sex?’
Her blue-green eyes were steady as they held his gaze. ‘That’s all you have to offer, isn’t it, Jasper? Just sex. No commitment, no long term future—just sex.’
‘Are you going to be happy with that?’
Hayley had to fight to control her expression so she didn’t give away her longing for more than he could offer. ‘This thing that’s happening between us will burn out over time. It might not even last the month.’
‘You think so?’
She gave him a world-weary smile. ‘I know so, Jasper. You haven’t had a relationship last longer than a month or two. I’m not your type, for one thing, and then there’s the issue of our separation in a month’s time. I want kids and a house in the suburbs. You want a playboy lifestyle with no attachments.’
‘But we could do this for now,’ Jasper ventured, gauging her reaction closely. ‘Just for the time being, to see how it goes. What do you think?’
‘We could,’ she said, her expression for once giving him no clue. ‘But wouldn’t that be asking for complications when the clock runs out?’
‘We could extend the time,’ he suggested. ‘We don’t have to separate right on the dot at the end of the month.’
‘For what purpose? I want totally different things from life. You’d only be holding me up from what I want in order to continue a relationship that in the end is really going nowhere.’
‘I want you, Hayley,’ he said as she turned for the bathroom. ‘And you want me.’
She turned back to look at him. ‘But for how long?’
‘That’s a hard question to answer. A week, a month, two months. Who knows?’
‘But not for ever,’ she said with a soft little sigh. ‘You’re not a for ever guy.’
‘No one can promise for ever,’ he said heavily. ‘Life is not predictable. Anything can happen; you of all people should know that.’
‘I do know that,’ she answered. ‘But that’s why I want stability in my life now. I crave it.’
‘I can’t promise to give you what you want in the long term, but I can do here and now.’
‘Here and now sounds like a consolation prize,’ she said.
‘Maybe it is,’ he said. ‘But it’s better than being left empty-handed, isn’t it?’
Being left empty-hearted is the thing I’m most concerned about, Hayley thought as she turned on the shower a few moments later. It seemed both her future and her happiness were now in the hands of Jasper Caulfield, the man who had already left one woman in the lurch. Would she be yet another casualty?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HAYLEY LOOKED AT the travel itinerary with a frown when they arrived at the airport. ‘I think someone’s made a mistake,’ she said, looking up at Jasper. ‘This says we’re going to Bedarra Island, but Myles and I were supposed to be going to Green Island for our honeymoon.’
Jasper put their luggage on the conveyor belt before turning back to face her. ‘I took the liberty of changing your booking. I didn’t want you moping about missing him. Bedarra is much more private and exclusive.’
She stood back as their boarding passes were issued, her frown deepening as she thought about the renowned romantic getaway that contained only sixteen private freestanding villas, each one built around the beautiful natural tropical rainforest landscape with spectacular ocean views over neighbouring islands on the Capricorn coast. It was the destination for honeymooners with money to spare and the desire to be totally alone.
A short time later they boarded the flight to Cairns, and Hayley immediately buried her head in a book, but every now and again her gaze slid sideways to where Jasper appeared to be dozing by her side, his face still lacking the colour she was used to seeing there in spite of his assurances he was feeling fine.
The forty-minute connecting flight from Cairns to Dunk Island where they were to meet the launch for the fifteen-minute transfer to Bedarra Island seemed to strip his face of even more colour.
‘Are you feeling OK?’ she asked, touching his hand where it gripped the arm-rest rather tightly as they came in to land.
‘Yep,’ he said, rubbing at his face as he straightened in his seat. ‘How about you?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Not sore?’
She looked away from the concern she could see in his dark eyes, her cheeks feeling hot all of a sudden. ‘No.’
He gave her hand a tiny squeeze. ‘You wouldn’t tell me if you were, now, would you?’
She brought her gaze back to his, her expression rueful. ‘No, probably not.’
He lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a soft kiss to her fingertips, his eyes holding hers. ‘I will be gentle with you, baby girl,’ he said. ‘It takes time to get used to a new lover.’
Hayley was glad of the distraction of landing and then transferring from the flight to the boat that took them to Bedarra Island. Her body was still acutely aware of how Jasper had possessed her. Every time she took a step she felt a fluttery sensation between her thighs as if he were still there, pulsing with heat and passion.
The sun was dappling the water as they were led to their villa, the sweet and moist fragrance of the tropics filling her nostrils as they walked past beautifully landscaped gardens.
Once their attendant had left Jasper lifted the bottle of Bollinger out of the ice bucket and began to pour some into the two glasses. ‘So what do you think?’ he asked, handing her a glass fizzing with exquisite bubbles.
Hayley cradled her drink and looked around the luxurious premium split-level villa with amazement. It offered the ultimate in privacy and overlooked the sparkling ocean, the private balcony complete with spa.
‘
It’s fabulous,’ she said, taking a tentative sip of the delicious champagne. ‘But you really didn’t need to change the booking. It must have cost you an arm and a leg.’
‘What if it did?’ he said. ‘Since I don’t intend to go on another honeymoon in this lifetime I thought I should do this one properly.’
Hayley felt a crushing disappointment in the middle of her chest. It had never been his intention to marry anyone, least of all her, but did he have to keep reminding her of it?
He raised his glass to hers. ‘So let’s drink to being together for a month.’
Hayley chinked her glass against his. ‘To a month of madness,’ she said.
His mouth twisted as he returned the toast. ‘Is that what you think it will be?’
‘What else can it be?’ she asked. ‘The last person in the world you want to be married to is me, even short term.’
Jasper frowned at the hint of despondency in her tone. ‘Listen, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Don’t go taking it personally. Marriage has never been my thing. I told you that.’
She looked up at him with eyes the colour of the ocean outside. ‘Don’t you want more out of life, Jasper?’ she asked in a breathy whisper. ‘You know … someone to come home to each day, someone to talk to about your life, the ups and downs, sharing in the intimacy of companionship.’
He put his drink down with a hard little crack on the nearest surface. ‘Stop it, Hayley,’ he said. ‘Stop this nonsense right now. You know the deal. This is not permanent.’
‘You can’t live the rest of your life alone,’ she said. ‘Everyone needs someone some time.’