As his tongue stroked into her mouth his hands spread across her scalp, his fingers flexing in the same deeply rhythmical motion as his tongue, his whole body, she recognised as she instinctively matched the fierce rotation of his hips, pressing herself closer to him, offering him the subtly complementary rhythm of her own desire, hot darts of sensation thrilling through her body when it welcomed his arousal, his need, his passion.
‘If this doesn’t stop right now, it won’t stop until I’ve taken you to bed, and spent all night making love to you.’
The husky words were whispered against her ear, as Ben dragged his mouth from hers. She could feel the hard rapid thud of his heart as though it were trying to break out of his body and invade her own. She could see the slickness of sweat dampening his skin, feel the fine tremble that shook his straining muscles.
She shivered wildly, her body aching in response to the images conjured up by her mind, images of the two of them together, in the warm darkness of his bed, of their bodies joyously entwined. She could even hear the harsh labour of their breathing, knew how his flesh would taste; how his body would feel beneath her hands, within her own.
His mouth caressed the soft arch of her throat. If she didn’t want this to continue, now was the time to tell him so… now was the time to let sanity take hold and direct her.
She could feel the control he was striving to exercise, sense the withdrawal he was about to make. She pressed closer to him, sliding her hands inside his robe and over his shoulders, her nails digging into his flesh as she begged, ‘No… don’t stop. Not now.’
She could feel his tension. He raised his head and looked at her, and when she would have avoided meeting his eyes he cupped her face, forcing her to confront him.
‘Do you really know what you’re saying?’ he demanded almost roughly. ‘This isn’t a game, and I’m not a boy, Miranda. Once—’
‘I think you’re probably right,’ she interrupted him huskily. ‘Maybe the only way to stop these dreams is—’
‘Is that why you want me—to put an end to your dreams?’
He almost sounded angry, bitter. He had moved slightly away from her and her body which had been so warm, so overheated, now felt chilled… abandoned… rejected almost. She ached to press closer to him, to close the unwanted gap between them, but she didn’t have that kind of self-confidence, that degree of sureness about her own sensuality.
‘Answer me,’ he demanded brusquely.
She shook her head, honesty compelling her to admit the truth. ‘No. No, it isn’t. I want you. I want you because you make me ache so much that…’
She broke off, shaking her head, unable to go on, unable to articulate her feelings… her needs without embarrassment, unable to trust herself to admit how much she wanted him physically without admitting also how much she loved him.
As it was, she was afraid she had said too much… betrayed too much. It was all very well for a man to articulate his needs… his desires, but for a woman to do the same…
She needn’t have been afraid. The hand cupping her face softened, his thumb stroking her skin gently as though reassuring her, his eyes dark with need and responsiveness to her as he told her, ‘You make me ache as well.’
When he bent his head and kissed her, it was an almost passionless kiss, a gentle reassurance, a sealing of some unspoken pact almost, his mouth warm and reassuring, her own vulnerable, clinging softly to his as he released her and then turned her, his arm around her as he guided her towards the door, and then through it and up the stairs.
His bedroom door was open. She could see through it into the darkened room beyond, where only the moonlight showed the vague shadowy outline of his bed, large and old-fashioned with a headboard and footboard.
She stepped forward hesitantly, knowing that when she crossed the threshold into his room she crossed the threshold into a totally new world, a world of which she was still a little afraid, a world which was ultimately going to give her great pain.
But she had already made her decision and it was too late to change her mind now even if she had wanted to, which she did not. Her body yearned for him too much, ached for him too much, hungered for him too much for her to deny its needs now, no matter how much her mind might warn her against what she was doing.
However, as she made to step forward, Ben stopped her, his arm across the doorway barring her progress.
She gave him a startled, nervous look, wondering bleakly if he had changed his mind, if that perception of his had somehow or other warned him that what she felt for him wasn’t merely a physical need. Instinct told her that he was the kind of man who would never knowingly allow a woman to believe he cared for her more than he did; that he would never use the word ‘love’ when he meant the word ‘lust’; that, if he knew how she really felt about him he would not make love to her; but it seemed she was wrong and that her secret was safe, because he simply said a little roughly, ‘Forgive me if this is old-fashioned of me and unnecessarily macho. It isn’t intended to be; it’s just that this is something I’ve been fantasising about doing ever since we… ever since I started dreaming about you.’
His slight hesitation, his pause before correcting himself and finishing what he was saying barely impinged upon her as she watched him and waited.
He removed the barrier of his arm and bent towards her, drawing her up against him, touching her mouth with his, lightly at first as though savouring a much longed-for delicacy, and then more deeply, more slowly, more compellingly, so that when he actually lifted her off her feet and into his arms she could only stare at him with bemused eyes and her lips still moist, still trembling slightly from their contact with his.
When he actually carried her across to the bed, she could scarcely believe it. It was so opposed to everything she had ever gleaned about modern sexual manners, so unexpected, so… so… so tender and protective, so cherishing and caring.
That one simple gesture, so ridiculed and considered unnecessary in modern-day sexuality, caught her so unawares, made her feel so… so soft… so female… so precious somehow, that she almost choked on the unfamiliar mixture of pain and sweetness that clogged her throat.
Here was a man, a modern man, who knew and accepted a woman’s right to define her own life, to be independent, to have a right and a need to succeed and be judged as an equal in the outer male-orientated world of commerce, and yet who at the same time knew instinctively that there was a time when that same woman wanted all the cherishing, all the tenderness, all the caring that highlighted and underlined the superiority of his male strength and the vulnerability of her feminine weakness, without in any way exploiting them, without using them threateningly or punishingly.
And neither had there been anything theatrical about what he had done.
Logic and reality told her that in this day and age a woman made her own decision to have sex with a man; that she was perfectly capable of walking to his bed unaided and once there, equally capable of removing her own clothes; and yet as Ben held her close to him, smoothing the hair back off her face, kissing her skin, her closed eyelids, her cheekbone, her mouth, before gently removing her clothes, she admitted that there was a special sweetly erotic seduction in the act, a special feeling of tenderness, of being desired, that made her tremble a little in anticipation of the physical loving they would share, and her fear that because it was ‘just sex’, merely physical, it would somehow be degrading and leave an ashen, sour taste in her mouth vanished.
If he couldn’t, didn’t love her, then at least he had respect for her and for himself; at least she knew now that his would be no greedy, empty coming together, that they would share something that would be very special.
‘Look at me.’
She opened her eyes in obedience to his command. He had slipped off his robe, and the moonlight showed her the satin width of his shoulders, the breadth and strength of his chest before it tapered to his waist, to the hard flatness of his belly and the thick dark arrowing of
hair that marked it.
It showed her also the hard muscles of his thighs, the open extent of his arousal.
‘It’s still not too late,’ he told her softly, ‘if you want to change your mind…’
She shook her head quickly, and then shivered as her body reacted compulsively to the sight of his, her muscles tightening, her nipples peaking and hardening at the same time as her breasts seemed to swell and lift, warm and sweetly curved soft-fleshed fruits, designed by nature surely not just for the purpose of motherhood, but also to fit so sweetly into a man’s hands, to invite by their very softness, their very round smooth-fleshedness the exploration of his mouth and the sharply passionate bite of his teeth.
She shivered again at what she was thinking, leaning yearningly towards him, wanting him now with an intensity, a completeness that made her feel more sure, more strong than she had ever felt in her whole life.
When he held her, kissed her, lifted her on to the bed, following her there, to hold her fast against him, she gave a small ecstatic sigh of delight.
This was what her body had been made for; this was why she had been given soft flesh and smooth curves, skin so silken that it invited the hungry glide of a man’s hands, curves so tender that it made him shake just to know them.