‘I forgot my towel.’
His voice was blurred and hoarse. It seemed to reach her from a great distance, so that she heard the words but could not shake herself free of the paralysis that gripped her, nor avert her eyes from him.
It wasn’t his nakedness that paralysed her, she recognised numbly. It was her own reaction to it; that great tide of shaming, claustrophobic longing and pain which told her with aching clarity just what she was to be deprived of.
Better not to have seen at all than to have to bear the instinctive knowledge that for the rest of her life her flesh would ache weakly for all that it had to be denied, for each touch, each breath, each sensation.
It wasn’t a matter of wanting, needing or lusting for him, she recognised fiercely. What she felt went much, much deeper than that.
‘Livvy…’ She heard him say her name, caught the raw harshness of the word, saw the anger in his expression and turned her back on him, half stumbling in her awkward, anxious attempt to get away.
‘Livvy…stop…wait…’
She made a small, anguished sound and then froze with shock as she felt him catch hold of her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PANIC overwhelmed her. As Richard turned her round to face him, she lashed out at him, small ineffectual blows which landed harmlessly against his chest. Harmless to him, that was. To her…
As her bunched fingers made contact with his skin, hot and sleek, a silken covering for hard muscles, Livvy started to shake violently.
‘Let me go…’
The words threatened to choke her, or was it the tears her pride would not allow her to shed that were blocking her throat?
‘Livvy, stop it…listen… Oh, for God’s sake.’
She tensed as he picked her up, scooping her off her feet in irritated impatience with her refusal to listen to him, holding her against his body as though…as though he had never spoken those warning words to her, never acknowledged and forced her to acknowledge what was going on between them, but he had said those words. Said them and meant them.
It wasn’t just she who was tense now. He was, too. She could feel him looking at her and, even though she knew it was the wrong thing to do, the most dangerous thing she could do, she lifted her head and looked back at him.
‘Livvy…’
His voice was hoarse, rough, a plea and a demand, his eyes dark with arousal.
When she raised her hands she would have sworn it was so that she could lever herself away from him and put some safe distance between them. So how was it then that, instead of doing so, she was actually allowing them to slide tentatively, caressingly almost, up over his shoulders, her lips parting in a tiny breath, a provocative sigh of wanting as she looked at his mouth?
It wasn’t like the other times he had kissed her. This time it was the kiss of a man who already knew he would be her lover, the kiss of a man who desired her and knew that she desired him. It neither forced or cajoled but simply, and far more dangerously, acknowledged and ignited what had already begun between them.
She didn’t remember how they had got into his bedroom or on his bed, she didn’t remember moving…didn’t remember anything at all but the feel of his mouth on hers, the sensation of drowning beneath a kiss so sensual that it stimulated her to a point that was almost unbearable.
She felt him undressing her and even helped him to do it, but it was without any real awareness of what she was doing. All that mattered…all she wanted was for him to continue holding her, touching her, kissing her.
When he broke the contact with her mouth, she whimpered protestingly, nuzzling into his skin, kissing and licking the warm flesh of his throat and then his shoulder, while he groaned in protest and his body arched, his hands holding her briefly away from him.
‘I want to feel you against me,’ she heard him telling her. ‘I want to feel all of you next to me, Livvy…all of you.’
She shuddered mindlessly. That was what she wanted too so why did he…why was he…?
As she felt his hands on her body, she realised he was trying to remove the last of her clothing, the thin cotton all-in-one against which the hard points of her nipples pressed eagerly and wantonly, flaunting their desire for him, so tender that she winced slightly as the soft cotton rasped against them when he removed it.
Instantly his hands were stroking her, soothing her, his lips caressing her swollen, tender flesh, drawing her nipple into his mouth where he bathed it with tender, moist heat.
She started to shiver, wild, fierce spasms of pleasure racking her.
She could hear him talking to her, telling her how much he wanted her, how desirable he found her, how the feel and scent of her body was arousing him, making him want to explore each and every centimetre of her to give her all the pleasure she could ever want.
He wanted her to touch him, he told her; he wanted her to hold and caress him, to feel the need which turned him from a rational human being into something, someone, completely at her mercy and so much in need of her that his senses, his essential being would die of starvation without her to nourish them.