moved the hand he’d curled around her head, touching her sensitised lips, tracing them with his fingers. Her daze cleared enough for her to see the glitter of triumphant satisfaction in his eyes as he spoke.
“It feels right, doesn’t it, Leigh? The time has come for us.”
Control, she thought. He wants to control this to suit him. Just as Lawrence Durant would. Never again would she submit to that. Never! The sweet, warm chaos he’d wrought inside her welded into a savage bolt of rebellion.
He’d run everything his way, following her out here, feeding her information, capitalizing on the chemistry between them. Well, she wouldn’t let him control this. He wasn’t going to mastermind when and how she got to satisfy herself about him.
All these years of spying on her, knowing where she was but not coming to her, waiting for her to come to him, thinking he could manipulate what he wanted of her, pressing buttons he had the power to press…oh, no! It was her turn to press the button!
“If it feels so right to you, Richard, what’s wrong with now?” she challenged.
“You want now?”
The flare of raw desire in his eyes shot a turbulent mix of fear and elation through Leigh. What was she inviting, goading from him? The challenge had been a vengeful impulse. She hadn’t stopped to think of the ultimate end of what she was laying on him, and he didn’t wait for a reply.
He scooped her with him as he stepped to the door of the summer-house, opened it, and whirled her inside. By the time Leigh’s feet steadied on the floor, the door was closed and she was pressed against it, and his mouth was delivering another rush of warm pleasure that felt very right, so right she held his head to hers, wanting his kissing to continue, kissing him back in a fierce need to fill herself with the warmth he generated, to keep the cold out.
Tautly muscled thighs lent supportive strength to hers as his hands roamed over her body, their touch hot and excitingly lustful as they felt her curves, reaching around the width of her hips to stroke the round slopes of her bottom, clutching them to press her closer to the source of his heat, the hard thrust of it liquefying her stomach, and he kissed her with all the raw intent of what he wanted, promising it would be all she wanted.
But would it? This had never happened to her before. She didn’t know the end, had no experience of it. Maybe it was wrong, but she was caught in a force of her own making and she didn’t want to break out of it.
Let him show her. Let him be the one. And if the promise wasn’t fulfilled, she’d know then, wouldn’t she? So she kissed him back with all the fire he’d lit in taking her this far.
Hands sliding to her waist, spanning it possessively, moving to unbutton her suit coat, parting it, and she was glad she hadn’t worn a bra, only the silk teddy softly cupping her breasts, allowing firm palms and fingers to cup them so much more satisfyingly, making them feel lush and incredibly sensual and deliciously desirable.
Fingers sliding under the silk, kneading, caressing, exciting, lifting…then his mouth tore from hers, head swooping down, and she felt the bare peak of her breast hotly enveloped and this was a different kissing, hard suction pumping the most piercing pleasure through her, and her own fingers buried themselves in his hair, tugging and pressing, driving the action on, wanting the exquisite arc of sensation to keep vibrating through her.
She’d never felt anything like this before. Was it him? Was it the raw vulnerability of the day making it more than it would normally be? Was it her…giving up the fight she’d been fighting all her life, letting sheer recklessness take over? She didn’t know and didn’t care…savagely didn’t care.
She was barely aware of her skirt being pushed up, but she felt his hand moving between her legs, making a space, moving past where her stockings ended to the bare skin above, to the hot moist apex of her thighs, his thumb hooking apart the studs that held her teddy in place.
Then the barrier of silk was gone and his touch made the arc complete, a touch that echoed the same pulsing rhythm of his mouth, so that everything inside her quivered with the need for more and more of this unbelievable feeling.
She was melting. She threw her head back against the door in a blind seeking for something solid. It knocked her into opening her eyes, a last snatch at some outside reality. It was dark in the summer-house, the shutters closed against the winter wind, making it a secret, private place. No one could see what was happening to her. She didn’t want to see herself, only to feel.
She shut her eyes tight, welcoming the darkness, giving free rein to the darkness inside her, a wild, whirling chaos that revelled in the sheer wantonness of savouring all that Richard was doing to her. Time for us, he’d said, but it was really time for her…the first…and maybe the only time.
And she wanted it. Her whole body was screaming for absolute fulfilment. A wild, guttural protest burst from her throat when his mouth released her breast, but then his lips were covering hers again and his tongue promised the invasion she craved, and suddenly it wasn’t his hand between her thighs. Something else was sliding down the intimate folds of her flesh, something hard and strong and purposeful, and every nerve end zinged with a sharp, intense awareness of it.
An arm around her waist, lifting her, swinging her. She clutched his back. Then soft cushioning underneath her and the hot spearing of his flesh, stretching a place that had never been stretched, her hands raking his back, urging him on, a hesitation from him and a hoarse command from her, “Do it!” She didn’t want control from him. No control. This was her doing, not his. Her decision, not his.
And he did as she demanded, the brief pain of a barrier broken swallowed up by the fullness of a plunge that reached to the epicentre of need and pinned her to a new explosion of sensation, shock waves of it unfurling, overwhelming all that had gone before, then tide after tide of sweet pleasure with the rush of him filling her, withdrawing, and coming again and again, an ebb and flow that engaged her whole body in the rhythm of a different life where she was not alone, not empty, not set at a distance from everyone else, because he was with her, inside her, and she could feel the melding with him in every cell of her body.
And finally, he spilled his strength into her and he could do no more. There was a brief sense of ecstatic harmony before he lifted himself away from her, slowly, carefully, and for some reason she didn’t mind the parting, still entranced with the feelings swimming through her, more languorously now, yet warm and lovely and infinitely comforting, because this could never be taken away from her. She had it in her keeping no matter what the future brought.
Her first time…amazingly with a man she’d never believed she’d be intimate with…yet it had felt right…with his knowing and understanding so much, the sharing of a past that coloured everything. Richard… Richard Seymour…showing her how it was. Or how it could be between them.
She lifted her lashes enough to see what he was doing. While she still lay in listless abandonment on one of the cane sofas, he’d fixed up his clothes, all very much together again as though nothing untoward had taken place. He opened the camphor chest that served as a table surface beside one of the armchairs, picked out a packet of paper serviettes, broke them open and came back to her, gently padding the tissues and cleaning up the aftermath of her torn virginity.
“Are you hurting, Leigh?” he asked softly.
“No,” she answered, struggling to control her inner recoil from what he was doing…so matter-of-fact, almost clinical…bringing her down to earth with a shocking thump. The wild emotional chaos that had led her to this…this messiness…had also robbed her of dignity.
Best to let him get it over with, she argued to herself, fiercely wishing she had lost her virginity in other circumstances. But to whom? Only Richard had made her feel as though it was right. Except now, he was in control again, more in control than ever because she had given him these liberties with her. Somehow she had to stop him from taking a whole lot more because it might not be right at all.
His mouth curved into a self-mocking little smile. “Not quite the way I would have taken my bride, had