* * *
Jess stared at him and thought about how much she wanted to let herself have him – have this – and how she needed to start taking risks in her life if she was ever going to start really living.
‘Tonight doesn’t have to mean anything, Jess. Just think of it as a blip in the timeline. A chance to step out of yourself for a few hours. You can button yourself right back up again afterwards if you want.’ He shot her a playful grin. ‘Give me the chance to prove to you that sex can be more fun than you think.’
Her blood pulsed hard through her veins, the crazy adrenaline rush making her head spin. There was a good chance she’d go loopy if she didn’t let this happen. The regret would stay with her till her dying day.
After all, she’d come here determined to get some new experiences out of the trip and he was offering her something incredible – a no strings night and his heavenly body on a plate.
Her deeply ingrained insecurities waged war with her libido.
She wanted to, but the thought of him seeing her naked terrified her.
‘You can’t take all my clothes off and it has to be dark,’ she stated, wondering if she was pushing things a bit too far. Surely, he’d get fed up with it all soon and get up and leave. That’s what most men would do.
But Xander wasn’t most men.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re determined to throw every single obstacle in my way, aren’t you?’ Lifting a hand, he trapped a curl of her hair between his fingers and gave it a gentle tug before wrapping it around her ear. ‘It’s a good job I relish a challenge.’
He leant across and turned off the lamp next to the bed, plunging the room into darkness.
He wasn’t giving her any time to back out.
She felt him shift his position on the bed next to her and wished for a second she hadn’t insisted on turning off the light. Suddenly a layer of control had gone. If she couldn’t see him, she couldn’t pre-empt what he was going to do and stop him.
Man, she was strung out. There was no way he was getting an orgasm out of her tonight. The thought made her even more tense. A vicious circle.
He obviously sensed her growing panic because he laid a hand gently on her foot. ‘Jess. Relax. It’s going to be okay.’ Xander’s words twisted through her head and she clung on to the sound of his voice to steady herself.
Pushing herself up onto her elbows, she tried to locate him in the gloom. She could make out the general shape of him, but no details. ‘I apologise in advance if it takes me a while to… you know,’ she said quickly, before the insecurity won and muted her.
‘Don’t worry, we have all night.’ Her whole body responded to his seductive tone with an intense shiver from her ears right down to her toes. ‘Trust me, okay? Just trust me. This is about you tonight. I don’t want you to worry about me. I want to do this for you. I’m going to enjoy it.’
Oh. My. God.
‘Lie back,’ he said, skating his hands gently, oh so gently, up her shins.
It would be so much easier if she just got up and left right now, but she couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to. Wouldn’t let herself. Not this time.
He had her pinned there with the sheer force of his magnetism.
Moving his hands slowly under her skirt to the apex of her thighs, testing her reaction inch by inch, he eventually encountered her knickers.
Biting down on her lip to stop herself from asking him to stop, Jess allowed him to slide his thumbs inside the leg-holes, close, so close to where her body throbbed and buzzed with the heat he’d continually triggered in her ever since she’d arrived here.
Closing her eyes, she raised her hips and let him slide her knickers down her legs, feeling the pads of his fingers trail from the top of her thighs, right down to her ankles, his touch leaving a burning trail along her skin.
Sucking in a breath she waited – the anticipation of his next move making her blood pulse hot and fast through her body.
‘Tell me what you like, Jess. Where you want to be touched.’ His voice rumbled through her.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I like,’ she whispered, so glad he couldn’t see how hard she was blushing. She was amazed he hadn’t commented on how hot it was in the room – how she seemed to be giving off more heat than the national grid.
‘Okay, let’s experiment. You tell me when I’m hitting the right spots.’
Before she had chance to process what he’d said, she felt a movement of air on her legs and the bed dipped underneath her. A second later, his breath tickled the now hyper-sensitive skin of her inner thigh before he dropped his mouth to kiss her there, right below the juncture of her thighs.
She jumped in shock at the intimacy of it, struggling for a second with the realisation of exactly what he was about to do. He didn’t comment on her reaction, just moved his kisses lower, down towards her knees, as if he realised he’d gone in a bit too hot and heavy. He was reading her body like a pro, shifting his position and the intensity of his kisses depending on how she reacted. He spent a while working his way from the tips of her toes right back to the top of her thighs, his slow exploration ratcheting up her need to be touched in a way she had no words to describe. They wouldn’t come, refusing to allow her to ask for the pleasure she craved.