circling her wrist to his big hand, brown against her skin. She swallowed and looked back up into the burning blue of his eyes and she felt her resistance slipping away like sand through her fingers.
She managed a sensible smile, hard when he was close, so impossibly male. ‘Sebastian, this is not a good—’
His grin sizzled away her sensible thoughts.
‘To hell with good!’ he growled throatily, then, still holding her gaze, he let go of her hand and took hold of the hem of her slip, which he pulled over her head in one slick motion.
She didn’t move.
The sexual tension had reached screaming point in one slam of a heartbeat.
His hands followed the path of his eyes as they slid down her neck, over her shoulders then down to her quivering breasts. His fingers splaying to cup them, as his thumbs teased the hot, aching peaks.
Her eyes squeezed tight shut as she stood, head back, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists as she focused on the incredible sensations coursing through her body, opening only when he spread his hands under her ribcage around her waist.
He bent his head and covered her mouth, the kiss slow and sensual. She could see the sensuous glitter in his eyes through the screen of his long lashes. When he pulled back, desire, hot and fierce, roared inside her.
He rubbed his nose up against hers, blowing wisps of hair from her eyes before he moved in again. This time the kisses were not slow, they were hard and hungry.
Still kissing her on her lips, her neck, her eyes...everywhere, he picked her up and carried her over to the bed. Lying there, she watched as he stripped, holding her eyes as he fought his way out of his clothes, revealing a lean and muscled body, his golden skin dusted with strategic drifts of dusky hair.
And he was really, really aroused.
The image of primitive male beauty sent a fresh surge of breathless excitement through Sabrina’s body. One hand on the mattress beside her, he bent forward. Greedy, she looped her arms around his neck and dragged him down onto the bed beside her.
The first skin-to-skin contact drew a shocked cry of pleasure from her throat. His skin was like silk, his body hard, the lean strength of it different and intensely thrilling.
His hands moved in long sweeping movements down her sides, her quivering thighs, before moving to her bottom. He kneaded the tight flesh with his fingers, dragging her in hard against his body as she pushed up and into him, opening her mouth to the invasion of his tongue. Wanting to open herself to him so much at one level it scared her, but the fear was lost in the need; the deep, driving, relentless throb of need that had invaded every cell of her body.
‘Hell, Sabrina!’ he breathed against her mouth.
‘Hell, back,’ she teased, kissing the scar on his face, letting her tongue run down the length of it before framing his face between her small hands and saying fiercely, ‘I hated you hurting.’
He groaned. He was hurting now!
Was it always like this, or was this hot make-up sex? he wondered as he slid down her body. His thought processes stopped as he fitted his mouth hungrily to one perfect tight nipple and felt her moan and arch under him.
He tipped her over, sliding up her body until they were lying side by side. Her skin was hot to the touch and felt like silk...he couldn’t believe how soft.
‘Incredible,’ he murmured as he slid a hand down behind her knee and hooked her leg across his hip. She bent her head and pressed her face into his chest, kissing the hair-roughened skin.
He slid his fingers into her hair and dragged her face up to his, then he slid a hand between her legs, his fingers moving through the light curls into her body.
Sabrina ached for his touch. There was nothing outside the ache; it consumed her totally, hit everywhere she moved against his hand, her breath coming in a series of uneven, shallow little gasps as his fingers slid along her delicate folds and deep into her.
Quite suddenly he rolled away and lay on his back, gasping like a man coming up for air. He turned his head and looked at her. ‘I can’t take much more of this.’
She gave a slow, slumberous smile, the primal need pounding through her making her bold, as she placed her hand in the middle of his chest, watching his face as she moved her hand lower.
She watched him gasp as her fingers tightened slowly around him.
He withstood the torture for a few seconds until his control broke. With a low growl that rose up from some place deep inside him, he tipped her onto her back and parted her legs and positioned himself between them. He watched her face as he thrust slowly, deeply into her.
Then deeper, as he begged her to take him all and she wrapped her long legs around him and closed her eyes, whispering his name over and over like a litany as they moved together, breath mingled, touching everywhere, heartbeats in sync, as close as two people could be.
She felt it coming, she pushed towards it, every muscle in her body tensed and waiting, and when the white-hot rush came it was so strong it pushed her to the edge of consciousness.
* * *
When she fought her way back from the blissful place he had taken her to Sebastian was still lying across her, breathing hard, then with a groan he levered himself off her.
‘I was rough... Should I say sorry?’
She touched a finger to his lips.
He looked into her lovely face and felt a swell of possessive tenderness.
‘It was perfect, you were...’ She caught his hand, her eyes flickering down his lean, muscled form, before lifting it to her lips. ‘I suppose practice really does make perfect.’
It wasn’t until Sabrina spoke that he realised tonight was not something he had ever practised for; what they had shared had been nothing like anything he had ever experienced before. He could not compare like with like because there was no like.
‘Stay?’ she slurred sleepily, her eyelids flickering but not opening. It was fine by him. Sebastian could barely keep his eyes open anyway.
He slid down and drew her into his body. She settled there with the trust of a kitten and gave a gentle sigh.
THE DAWN CHORUS was singing when he opened his eyes and Sabrina was still in his arms, her soft body warm, face pressed against his chest. Her hair, lying in a honeyed stream down her slender back, was tangled.
The corners of his mouth lifted in a smile as he experienced a swelling surge of possessiveness that was outside his experience and a million miles from his objectivity. His smile flattened and then reasserted itself as she gave a little sigh and burrowed deeper into his chest. He didn’t want to recognise the tenderness that tightened in his chest as he thought about last night; the sex had been mind-blowing. His eyes darkened as he remembered the moment she had taken the initiative, tentative at first as she’d begun to explore his body with her hands and mouth, and then with more confidence as she’d learned to drive him to the brink and bring him back. Her instincts were incredible, her lack of inhibitions a delight.
It was just sex. So why, asked the voice in his head, had it felt like no sex he had ever known? Did a marriage licence really make such a difference? He had never been a woman’s first before—maybe that was part of it. The fact that everything was new and fresh for her and her delight and wonder...her hunger made it new and fresh for him.
He lifted a strand of hair from her face and leaned in, breathing in the scent of her warm skin until the ringing phone in the other room reminded him that this respite had been temporary.
He eased his arm slowly from under her shoulders, and, pulling the sheet up over her naked body, he slipped from the bed. On his way to the