Marriage on the Rebound

This was for her. He was experiencing all of this because of her!

But she had a moment’s fear when she felt the physical evidence of his desire for the first time. And, though his entry was gentle, she clutched at his shoulders, fingernails digging into firm muscle, tense, breathless, her body quivering in anxious anticipation of that telling final thrust.

It halted him. He withdrew a little. ‘Shaan?’

No! She shook her head, her eyes pinched tightly shut in denial.

‘Shaan!’

The voice of command. She responded to it, lifting dark lashes to find his expression so achingly sombre that she let out a wretched little whimper of despair.

He knew the truth. He saw the truth. He now knew that Piers hadn’t even wanted her enough to take this from her.

She saw his kiss-softened mouth pull down slightly at one corner in a wry little gesture that brought a wash of tears to her eyes. ‘Please, Rafe,’ she whispered, too terrified that he was going to withdraw altogether to care that she was begging.

If anything, his eyes went blacker, a flash of terrible sadness crossing them, and, wretchedly, she knew that sadness was for her.

‘You fool,’ he muttered. ‘You beautiful fool.’

Then he bent down to kiss her once, very gently. And, with a firming of his features, pushed deeper again, taking what she was offering him in a single, smooth thrust that broke more than the seal of her virginity. It broke for ever her belief that you had to love someone to feel as wonderful as this.

The short, sharp shock of pain was nothing. The blinding shaft of sensual pleasure which followed it was everything. He filled her, and she gloried in the sensation, her thighs widening, drawing him dee

per, legs wrapping round his taut, thrusting frame. And her arms brought him even closer, close enough for her mouth to fix itself onto his.

And, in that hot, tight, all-encompassing joining of body and mouths and minds, she willed the wild rhythm to take them over. The pounding beat of his heart and the gasping rasp of his breath against the bruising crush of her mouth were all-necessary, so necessary to the very substance that was driving her—a need to be wanted like this. A need to know she had the power to drive a man out of his mind like this.

Rafe drove harder, and on a bursting leap of triumphant exultation she felt herself catch hold of the supreme goal. It sang through her blood like the skittering crackle of electric lightning, then burst into a fire-flood of unrestrained rapture.

And, on a sudden blinding, bright flash of insight, she knew that Piers’ rejection had been his own misfortune, not hers!

She had survived it. She was whole. She was a warm and sensual, desirable woman.

Rafe followed her, the tight, pulsing muscles dancing wildly inside her driving him to a deep, hot, throbbing release that convulsed his body and locked the air in his throat as they fused together on that wild, wild leap into ecstasy. It kept them like that throughout the whole dizzy, spiralling downward journey back to sanity. where they lay in a tangle of hot, sweat-slicked, muscle-wasted limbs, his body heavy on her, hers turned to a warm, somnolent liquid as their hearts thundered and their heaving lungs struggled to recover.

Then the silence came, and with it reality.

Rafe eased himself from her. Shaan kept her eyes closed, aware of the tears hovering behind her eyelids, aware that she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She knew that although he might have started it it was she who had damned well finished it, driving him on with excuses that seemed utterly inadequate now the need for them was no longer there.

Suddenly she began to shiver, feeling ice cold as reaction set in. Rafe reached out to tug the tangle of sheet from beneath her and covered them with it. But even as she huddled greedily into it he was pulling her to him, his hand firm as he stayed her struggles, flipped her over, curved her into the possessive hook-of his body and held her there while she shook like a terrified animal.

‘Try not to think,’ he murmured with a husky, low note to his voice. ‘Just lie still and let me hold you.’

Don’t think. She daren’t think. She had been thrust back into a deep state of shock.

Only this was a different kind of shock. The shock of discovering the driven depths of her own sensuality.

She fell asleep like that, lost in the tumbling shock of her own discovery.

* * *

Next time she awoke it was to sunlight pressing at the closed curtains, casting a rosy-pink glow over the whole room, and the familiar tones of a voice sounding harsh and angry.

‘No—just do it!’ It was Rafe, sounding slightly muffled by walls and distance, but it was most definitely his voice, tight with impatience.

Still half-asleep, she responded with instinctive automation to the hard, tough command in his tone, sitting up and sliding her feet to the floor before she was even aware that she’d done it. Then she realised she was naked—remembered why she was naked—and grabbed hold of the sheet, dragged it round her, and then just sat there shuddering while a jumbled mass of fragmented pictures tumbled across her sleep-scrambled mind.

Awful pictures, humiliating pictures, of her virtually offering herself to Rafe—of herself almost begging Rafe!