Page 120 of Christmas at Sturcombe Bay
She gave it to him, surrendering herself to the passion rising between them. Her tongue tangled with his, her breath sighing against his cheek as she met him stroke for stroke. Her hands clutched his shoulders, holding on tightly as she moaned with pleasure.
That soft sound was enough to push him dangerously close to the edge. He tore his mouth from hers, looking down at her through eyes glazed with need. “If we don’t move right now, we’re not going to make it to the bedroom.”
She laughed, a low, throaty sound. “Would you care?”
“The bed’s comfortable, but it’s up a whole flight of stairs.”
Her eyes danced in wicked amusement. “Race you!”
“Right . . .”
She dodged past him, laughing provocatively as he chased her across the hall. They made it halfway up the stairs before he caught her, and they both collapsed, laughing helplessly. His body was hard and aching — he could hardly draw breath without fanning the flames licking at his insides.
“You’ve got too many clothes on,” she protested, fumbling at the buttons of his shirt.
“So have you.”
Rolling around on the stairs, they tore at each other’s clothes, tossing aside coats and sweaters until they were both down to their underwear. Wriggling out from beneath him, her laughter challenging him, she scrambled a little further up the stairs, but he caught her ankle, clambering over her to claim her mouth again.
Her taste was intoxicating, her kiss sizzling his brain. Everything in him urged him to hurry, to ease the need surging inside him.
But the urge to linger over every second was just as strong. His tongue entwined with hers once more, and he stroked onehand down over her body, relishing the smooth, soft curves beneath his palm.
He had dreamed of this moment, painted every detail in his imagination. Somehow, she reached him in a way no other woman had, and although that thought bothered him, it wasn’t enough to keep him from taking what she was offering.
* * *
She had dreamed of this moment, but this was no dream. It was far too real. Those hard muscles, those strong, sensitive hands, those sizzling kisses . . . She moaned and writhed beneath him as his hot mouth traced a scalding path down her throat, dragging her to the edge of reason.
His hands laced in her hair as she grasped his shoulders. She wanted him, wanted to feel his smooth muscles move under her hands, wanted to taste every inch of his skin.
With a deft movement, he unhooked her lacy bra and tossed it aside, then his hands were on her breasts, caressing and crushing them beneath his palms, tormenting the ripe peaks with tiny tugs and pinches that sent sparks of electricity zinging through her tautly strung nerve fibres.
Laughing and taunting him some more, she wriggled out from beneath him again and crawled up a few more steps. He caught her, but she twisted free and made it to the landing.
Stumbling over each other’s feet, they crashed through the bedroom door and finally managed to tumble onto the bed.
“See? We made it.”
She could hardly breathe for laughing, for the urgent desire roiling in the pit of her stomach. She reached for him, dragging him down to her, revelling in the contact of hot, naked flesh, of hard male muscles taut and strong under her hands, of that smattering of rough, curling hair across his wide chest.
“Now, let’s see how many points I can earn for this,” he growled, bending his head to take one taut pink nipple into his mouth. She gasped and arched against him as he suckled deeply, using his teeth and tongue to torture her with pleasure, making her squirm and gasp for breath.
“A hundred . . . A thousand . . . A million . . .”
She felt the laughter rumble in his chest as she clung to him. Making love had never been like this — fun, playful, crazy. Wild. They rolled on the bed, her hair tangling around them and getting in his mouth; him crushing her beneath his weight to hold her down; her wriggling and twisting to land on top of him.
Somehow her lace knickers had disappeared, and she felt the stroke of his hand up the smooth inner flank of her thighs, his clever fingers exploring the soft velvet folds between, and finding the tiny sensitive seed-pearl that was the focus of all her arousal.
Pressing her lips to his throat, she tasted the dark male flavour of his skin. All her senses were bound up in what his mouth and hands were doing to her. Weak with desire, she could do no more than breathe his name as the ripples of pleasure flooded her veins.
He leaned over to the bedside table and she heard the rip of foil, sensed him smooth the gossamer sheath over his hard length, and she moaned softly as she took him into her, deep and slow, moving together in a dance as old as Eve. Her arms were wrapped around him, clinging to him as the only thing that was real in this wild storm of sensation.
There was no past, no future, only this moment and this man. Higher and higher she rose, spinning dizzily in a vortex of fire, until with a last aching cry, she felt as if she was exploding into a trillion stars, collapsing onto the bed, tangled up in his arms.
* * *
Paul drifted for a long time between sleeping and waking. Jess lay in the crook of his arm, her slow, even breathing warm against his shoulder. She seemed to fit there as if they had both been designed that way. Her glorious autumn hair was spread across the pillow, just as he’d always imagined.
