Did she know that? Yes, she did, she discovered as her muscles turned to jelly and her flesh to fire.
Her eyes slid away from his. ‘I can’t go back to my own room now…I’d never sleep.’ She shivered, her voice little more than a whisper before it broke completely as she begged huskily, ‘Hold me, Dominic…please hold me…’
She couldn’t bear to look at him, her body tensing completely as she realised what she had said. Eight years ago she had come to this man and begged him to make love to her. Had she forgotten what had happened then?
She made a movement towards the opposite side of the bed to where Dominic was standing, but it was swiftly arrested as his fingers closed on her arm, and then he was bending over her, his hands framing and imprisoning her face as he looked down at her.
‘Kate, what have I done to make you so afraid of me?’
You’ve made me love you, she screamed silently inside. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’ Her lips framed the words almost before her mind thought them. ‘You rejected me once, Dominic,’ she reminded him huskily. ‘You refused to make love to me…’
‘But I’m not refusing this time.’
She felt his breath against her skin, his mouth touching hers lightly, coaxing her lips apart. This was what she wanted…this was what she had been born for. Nothing else mattered. She sighed softly into his mouth, shivering in voluptuous pleasure as his hands drifted down her body removing her cotton nightdress. She knew that he looked at her, she could feel the warm path of his eyes as they caressed her body.
Beneath his regard she grew supine, drifting on a soft swell of pleasure.
She opened her eyes and saw him looking at her. His skin was flushed like that of a man deep in the grip of a fever, his eyes glittering febrilely over her skin.
‘Kate!’
The raw need in his voice splintered her indolence, desire, hot and urgent, leaping through her. She reached up to him instinctively, her hands curling inside his robe as she pulled him down towards her.
Their mouths met and fused in explosive passion. His hands touched her breasts, finding their tight peaks and stimulating them to the point where they ached for the hot possession of his mouth. Her fingers curled into his hair as she tugged him down to her arching body, tiny whimpers of need exploding in her throat.
‘Kate… Kate…’
Her name was a chant he muttered into her skin as he responded to her need, his mouth fastening over her nipple and tugging delicately on it.
His robe had slipped off his shoulders and in a frenzy of pleasure she bent her bead to run her tongue over the hardness of his skin, feeling his body clench and his control splinter, and the pressure of his mouth against her breast became deliciously savage.
Dominic moved, rolling on to his back and taking her with him, his hands savouring the fullness of her breasts as his lips caressed the fragile bones of her shoulders.
‘Kate, I want you to touch me. Touch me, Kate.’ He groaned the words into her throat, making her shudder and ache deep down in the pit of her stomach. The belt of his robe had come loose and she reached to free it completely, holding her breath as the towelling slid free of his body, quickly averting her head from his nudity.
He reached up, cupping her face with his hands and turning her head back.
‘Look at me, Kate,’ he instructed softly. ‘I want you to look at me.’
Inside she was a mass of quivering sensations, her eyes dark and solemn as she followed the muscled line of his legs, hard and firm, up to his thighs, and then stopped.
‘Kate.’ His voice was gentle, coaxing almost. ‘Do you really find me so repulsive that you can’t look at me?’
Her eyes flew to his, and what she saw in them reminded her that when they
had made love before his body had been partially covered, and that she had not touched him below the waist. Her reticence sprang from the fact that Ricky had never allowed her to see him completely naked, had hated her touching him.
‘Well?’
He was smiling at her, looking perfectly relaxed and at ease, but at the back of his eyes she could see a tiny trace of apprehension and her love for him immediately overwhelmed her fears.
‘I don’t find you repulsive,’ she told him shakily.
‘Then look at me,’ he insisted softly. ‘I want you to see what you do to me.’
She took a deep breath and let her eyes drift slowly down his body, following the line of black hair that narrowed over his belly and then flared wider. Her breath caught and held, her attention mesmerised by the sheer physical perfection of him. Idiotically she felt tears sting her eyes. He was so…so beautiful. She wanted to reach out and touch him. To trace that dark arrowing of hair and…
She moved like someone in a dream and then froze as she bent towards him, shocked by what she had been going to do. His hand gripped hers and guided it down to the flat hardness of his stomach.