of his arousal surge against her. It caused an echoing eruption within herself, locking her thighs in an urgent need to maintain that vital contact as a flare of bright, blinding, blistering desire went shooting through her.
Like seasoned lovers, she thought dazedly. You would be forgiven for thinking that we did this with each other all the time! When in actual fact Claire had never felt like this before—ever!
The halter-style bodice to her dress dropped to her waistline, his hands feathered over newly exposed flesh, and she gasped on a tremor of nerve-tingling pleasure as her knees gave out and she toppled dizzily back onto the bed.
He followed her downwards so that they landed in a tangle of limbs that only seemed to intensify their excitement. His breathing was fast, his expression intense, his mouth still moist from their long, hot kiss. But it was the look in his eyes that sent Claire completely still beneath him.
In all her life, she had never seen anything like it before. It was hot and it was ravenous but it was also painfully—painfully vulnerable.
‘I want you,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I can tell that you do.’ But it was said very gently. For some reason that she didn’t understand this big, strong, very arrogant man was hurting enough without her adding to it by taunting him.
Without really having to think about the wiseness of it, she reached up and kissed him—as a lover would kiss a true lover.
Then it was back. The hot, hard, driving passion that had no time or room for gentleness or leisure. He kissed like a man who hadn’t done this for centuries, and she responded with a passion that she’d never known she possessed.
Her dress slid away without her even noticing, then his jacket, his shirt and tie. He kissed and licked and caressed and suckled her until she was so lost in the frenzied storm that she had no idea what she was doing any more.
So when she dared to fold her hand around the length of his burgeoning sex it came as a shock to feel him go utterly motionless beside her. Opening heavy, love-glazed eyes, she lay there watching as he seemed to take an actual pause in life itself. His eyes were closed, his dark face taut, his mouth flattened into a single white-ringed line of unbearable tension.
Yet not sexual tension, but a different tension.
‘Andreas?’ she breathed, unsure what was happening.
When he didn’t respond she went to take her hand away, a hot flush of mortification staining her cheeks. But his hand snaked down to stay her, long fingers trembling slightly as they kept hers tightly wrapped around him.
Then he let the air out of his lungs in a long, slow, measured way, and his eyes fluttered open, revealing those dark, dark irises where that awful, wretched, pained vulnerability was back again.
He didn’t say anything, though, and when he came to lean over her the tempo changed—the man changed, turning from ravaging hunter into devastatingly rich and sensual lover.
Still greedy, he was greedy—but then, so was she. She couldn’t get enough of him, her teeth biting deeply into powerfully bunched muscle, her lips and tongue hungry to taste, to acquaint 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