to every inch of her. He was so passionate and she loved that passion, could feel it surging through his lean, powerful body to meet her own.
He laid her back and shaped her breasts with sensuous hands, smoothing, massaging, moulding, before dipping his head to catch a straining pink nipple in his mouth and swirl his tongue round the throbbing peak until her spine arched and a stifled gasp was torn from her. She was much more sensitive there than she had ever realised and little tingling thrills began to dart through her, trickling down into her pelvis to create a hot liquid pool between her thighs.
Her hips arched up of their own volition, her body controlling her responses, and all the time the nagging craving at the heart of her was building to an unbearable level and she was making little impatient sounds she couldn’t quell. When he finally touched her where she most needed to be touched, her body jackknifed and a wild flood of sensation seized hold of her, provoking a cry from her lips. It was her very first climax and the sheer intensity of it took her by surprise.
Raj smiled down at her and kissed her even more hungrily. ‘You are so receptive,’ he husked.
Lying there dazed by the experience, Zoe reached up to explore him, palms spreading across his chest, captivated by the strength and heat of him before sliding lower to encounter a restraining hand.
‘Not now,’ Raj grated out. ‘I’m too aroused and I need to be inside you. Are you protected?’
For a split second she didn’t know what he was talking about and then comprehension sank in and she shook her head in an urgent negative. With a groan, Raj sprang off the bed naked and dug into his luggage, spilling out everything on the floor in wild disarray and then leafing through the tumbled garments to retrieve a wallet and extract a foil packet.
‘I only have a few. I will need to buy more. I have not been with anyone recently and we must be careful.’
Warmed by his admission that he had had no recent lovers, Zoe frowned.
‘Careful?’ she queried.
Surprised by the question, Raj glanced at her. ‘In our situation, a pregnancy would be a disaster...not that it’s very likely. Look how many years it took my father to produce a child!’ he urged wryly. ‘For all I know a low sperm count runs in the royal genes.’
‘But contraception is pretty much foolproof these days...surely?’ Zoe pressed.
‘Nothing’s foolproof in that line. Accidents and surprises still happen,’ Raj pointed out, coming back down on the bed with a smouldering look of hungry urgency silvering his stunning eyes. ‘But it will not happen to us.’
Zoe reddened, disconcerted to find herself in the very act of picturing a little boy or girl with his spectacular dark eyes. Some day in the future, she promised herself, and most definitely she would become a mother with someone she had yet to meet. Raj would just be an experience she recalled with warmth, she told herself; nothing more, nothing less was due to the man who had rescued her from her fears.
She stretched up, winding her arms round his neck to draw him down to her and she kissed him, enjoying that freedom and that new confidence to do as she liked, and it all came from the reassuring, delightful discovery that Raj appeared to want her every bit as much as she wanted him.
He tugged at her lower lip with the edge of his teeth, sent his mouth travelling down the elegant line of her slender neck and that fast conversation was forgotten as another cycle of arousal claimed her. Her temperature rose, a fevered energy gripping her limbs as her heartbeat quickened and her breathing fractured.
Excitement quivered up from her pelvis when she felt him surge between her thighs, sliding into her inch by inch, sending the most exquisitely unexpected sensations sizzling through her.
‘You’re very small and tight,’ Raj ground out breathlessly.
And then with a final shift of his lean hips he forged his passage and her whole body jerked with the pain of it and she cried out.
Raj stilled. ‘What’s wrong?’
Mortified that she had made a fuss, Zoe grimaced. ‘It hurt more than I was expecting. It’s my first time.’
As shock clenched Raj’s lean, darkly handsome features and he began to withdraw from her, Zoe grabbed his shoulders. ‘No, don’t you dare stop now!’ she told him. ‘I’ve been waiting such a long time to experience this.’
The deed was already done, Raj rationalised, but anger was roaring through his taut body and it was only with difficulty that he swallowed it back because he didn’t want to risk hurting her any more...even if she had chosen to have sex with him as though he was an adventurous new experience much like a day out behind the wheel of a supercar, he reflected wrathfully.
‘Raj, please...don’t make a fuss,’ Zoe urged, studying him with huge green eyes that pleaded.
And Raj did what every nerve ending in his body urged him to do and surged deeper into the welcome of her, a low growl of sensual pleasure wrenched from him. And from that point on, no further encouragement was required. A wondrous warmth began to rise low in her pelvis, building on the visceral ache for fulfilment, making her fingernails dig into his long smooth back as excitement seized her and held her fast. The feel of him over her, inside her, all around her sent rippling tremors of joy spiralling through her and when she hit the heights again, it was explosive.
In the aftermath she felt as though she were melting into the bed in a boneless state and the very last thing she needed then was Raj freeing himself from their entangled limbs and springing off the bed to breathe rawly, ‘You’ve got some explaining to do. You lied to me!’
GRABBING THE SHEET to cover herself, Zoe hauled herself up against the tumbled pillows, watching Raj yank on his jeans. Going commando, she noticed, colour flaring in her face. It was as if her mind weren’t her own any more. She couldn’t take her eyes off his lithe bronzed body, couldn’t concentrate.
‘I didn’t lie,’ she reasoned stiffly.
‘You lied,’ Raj repeated wrathfully. ‘You said it was time you tried sex again when clearly you had never had sex before—’
‘Well, I may have blurred the edges of the truth a bit,’ Zoe mumbled defensively.
‘You lied and I detest dishonesty!’ Raj shot back at her fiercely.
‘So what?’ Zoe fired back, her temper sparking in answer to his. ‘It was my decision to make—’
‘And mine. I wouldn’t have touched you had I known I would be the first!’ Raj bit out curtly. ‘But you chose to withhold that knowledge, which was unfair—’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake...’ Zoe thrust the blonde hair falling round her hot face back off her damp brow. ‘It was just sex. Why are you making such a production out of it? We’re consenting adults, neither of us is in another relationship.’
Raj skimmed scorching dark eyes to her. ‘I don’t do relationships.’
‘Well, I’m afraid you’re stuck in this one,’ Zoe told him with unashamed satisfaction. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Raj. If you don’t do relationships, then you should be quite happy to have had no-strings-attached sex.’
Dark colour scoring his superb cheekbones, Raj shot her a blistering look of derision and strode out of the room. She listened to his bare feet thumping down the wooden stairs and then the slam of the front door signifying his exit from the house. Switching out the lights, she got out of bed to walk over to the window and finally picked him out striding down onto the beach. Moonlight glimmered along the hard line of his broad shoulders and danced over his curls.
Mortification gripped Zoe, who was conscious she had said stuff she didn’t actually