herself with this body that was giving her such untold pleasure.
It was as if nothing else in the world existed but each other. The party, the people, the anger—everything had been cast aside for this soul-filling journey into sensuality. He was heavy on top of her but she didn’t care; her long and slender legs were parted while his hips thrust softly against her.
He wasn’t inside her yet—but the experience was magical, the expression on his dark face so deeply intense that her heart swelled in her breast with a joy she could barely cope with.
I do love you so, she wanted to whisper. But just didn’t dare in case she spoiled the magic.
So she did the next best thing and parted her legs that bit wider, smiled provocatively into the dark beauty of his impassioned face, arched her spine towards him—and invited him inside her.
His response was stunning. His dark face grew taut, his eyelids drooping over what she’d glimpsed as a flare of unbelievable emotion. Then, with a shudder that seemed to rip right through him, he buried himself in the deep, dark liquid heat of her body.
The small sting of pain she experienced at his entry barely registered, his short pause when he realised just what he had taken from her an acknowledgement of his prize. Then the passion coiled its hot, needy talons around them again, and the moment was forgotten—for the time being anyway.
No one said that making love had to be an earth-shattering experience. Only the lucky few reached those kind of peaks time after time.
They reached those peaks—surpassed them, rose onwards to another place where reality was suspended and the senses took over. When she began to flip over into that final climactic finish, Andreas wrapped her tightly to him, binding her there with his arms. Then, with each new measured thrust of his body, he watched as she shattered just that little bit more for him, her soft sounds of pleasure growing in strength, in volume, in vigour.
A sob broke from her—not a gasp, but a wild, bright electric sob of surrender that shook her body and kept on shaking it. And on a rasping growl he too surrendered to his own needs with driving thrusts that shattered what was left of both of them.
Coming down to earth again afterwards took a long, long time, Claire discovered as she felt herself drifting gently through layer upon layer of sweet sensual fulfilment.
When she did eventually find the strength to take a small peek at reality, she found Andreas still lying heavy on her with his face pressed up against her throat, and his heart thundering against her breast.
He was still inside her. She could feel the exotic fullness of his manhood pulsing against the walls of her newly sensitised sex. It was wonderful. From hurt to anger to a blistering passion to this, she listed—this exquisite sense of supine contentment.
For the first time in months—maybe even years—she felt true happiness flood through her. ‘I’m in heaven,’ she whispered.
Andreas jerked away from her as if she were a poisonous snake. Taken by surprise by his abrupt withdrawal, her eyes flicked open to watch, in a state of bewildering confusion, him not only withdraw from her body but jackknife to his feet.
But worse than that was the expression on his face as he did it. He looked utterly devastated. Big and strong and godlike as he was in his full naked glory, when his eyes clashed briefly with her startled eyes he actually shuddered, his dark head wrenching to one side as if he couldn’t bear to so much as look at her.
Hurt quivered through her, forcing her to sit up and hug her knees protectively to her chest. ‘What?’ she whispered shakily.
‘No,’ she thought she heard him utter, though even that single word was almost quashed in the way he swallowed thickly. ‘This should not have happened,’ he tagged on hoarsely.
What did he mean—it shouldn’t have happened? Claire wondered painfully. ‘Well, it just did!’ she cried, her blue eyes dark pools of anger and hurt at his cruel insensitivity.
He didn’t even acknowledge she’d spoken—couldn’t even bring himself to look at her again!
Instead he just turned and strode quickly towards his own room, wrenched open the connecting door then disappeared through it—leaving Claire staring after him, white-faced and with her flesh chilling in mind-stunning dismay.
It should not have happened …
Still sitting there long, lost minutes later, huddled over her own bent knees in the middle of a sea of tumbled white bedding, Claire was bitterly agreeing with him.
For if it hadn’t happened, then she would not have had to be sitting here feeling so painfully used then ruthlessly rejected.
Or punished would probably be a better word, she thought dully as she listened to him dressing somewhere in his own bedroom. She had also sat here suffering the sounds of him showering her scent from his flesh, because in his eagerness to get away from her he had forgotten to shut the connecting door and it stood half open, allowing her a blow-by-blow account of his every movement.
She shuddered sickeningly. Hating him, despising herself. Her first love, her first lover, and now this terrible feeling of hurt and rejection.
It should not have happened …
She had a horrible feeling that those words were branded in fire onto her very soul for ever now.
She should have run when her instincts had told her to. How could she have lost control like that and let him do what he had done?
Great to work that out in retrospect, she mused bitterly.
‘I am going back down to our guests,’ a deep voice informed her from the connecting doorway.
Claire didn’t even lift her head up. She felt soiled and tainted, and unbearably humiliated.
‘I suggest you remain here,’ he went on stiffly. ‘I will make your excuses for you, blame your early retirement on your recent accident, or bridal nerves or—something. Are you all right?’ he then tagged on with enough clear reluctance to make her wince.
‘I’m not going to be a bride,’ she mumbled from the confines of the white sheet she had pulled around her. ‘The wedding is off.’
‘Don’t be foolish,’ he sighed.
Why does he always call me foolish when I am at my most sensible? ‘I want to go home to England tomorrow,’ she insisted. ‘And I never want to set eyes on you again.’
A small silence followed that, then another sigh to precede a rasping ‘Look—I’m sorry’ that sounded tense and uncomfortable and just damned bloody irritable.
No grace in that apology, she noted acidly.
‘It was entirely my fault and I am now thoroughly ashamed of myself. Does that make you feel better?’
To know you’re ashamed? ‘No, it does not!’ she cried, lifting flashing blue eyes to find him standing there looking as if he’d never been out of those clothes all evening.
When in actual fact what he had done was simply replace the first lot with the same again from his wardrobe because the ones he’d been wearing earlier were still lying in a crumpled heap on the carpet by her bed where they’d landed after being wrenched off him.
Self-contempt rippled through her as she saw herself eagerly helping him to remove them. She shuddered again, and drew the sheet more closely around her.
‘Just go away, will you?’ she choked, realised the tears weren’t far away, and swallowed angrily down on them. For she wouldn’t cry in front of this man ever again! she vowed fiercely.
He went to say something, but a raucous laugh filtered into the room from the galleried hallway below, and whatever he had been going to say turned into a heavy, ‘I have to go back down there. We don’t have time to deal with this now.’
I don’t want to deal with it at all! Claire thought wretchedly. ‘I bet