He rubbed his lips across hers. She opened slightly so he drew in her breath. He inhaled, instinctively parting to taste her moisture. She gave another choked sound. Of distress or pleasure, he couldn’t tell.
She pushed herself so violently against him that they reeled onto the couch. As her delicious weight landed on top of him, the kiss broke. Her nightdress rode up and one of his hands brushed the curve of her buttock. Her bare buttock.
The feel of her naked skin nearly shattered him. He surged up in a frenzied search for relief. She surrounded him, all hot flesh and seeking hands. She touched him with hectic, clinging strokes as if afraid he’d disappear.
Something was wrong. His dreams couldn’t be so mistaken. This wasn’t how he’d imagined their embraces.
In a thousand secret fantasies, he’d held her close, he’d kissed and caressed her, he’d thrust inside her. She’d been soft and yielding. She’d relished his possession.
The woman in his arms was stiff with tension and she shook as though in the grip of fever.
He rose on his elbows to kiss her again, then paused. His misgivings roared. He couldn’t ignore them any longer. He fell back to lie beneath her and his hands dropped to his sides.
“Grace, why are you here?” he asked sharply, clenching his fists so he didn’t snatch what she offered and let consequences be damned.
She scattered kisses across his bare chest. Desperate kisses. Just as her hands were desperate. Her fingers hooked into his biceps like talons and she fumbled to bring his arms around her again.
“Don’t talk,” she gasped. She raised her head and he felt her eyes burn him through the darkness. “Kiss me. Kiss me properly.”
She plastered herself across him as if force alone kept him with her, as if she expected him to fight her off. She smashed her open mouth against his, hard enough to bruise. He tasted blood and fear. He lifted an unsteady hand to her cheek to calm her wildness.
Her face was drenched with tears.
“Jesus!”
He shoved at her and jerked into a sitting position at the far end of the sofa. She tumbled away with a cry then crawled after him until she straddled his legs. He would have read eagerness in her touch, if not for those betraying tears against his fingers.
Christ, this turned his sensual visions into distorted nightmare. In those visions, she’d panted with desire, not cried as if her heart broke. He struggled to rein in the lust rampaging through his veins. He wanted her more than life. But not like this. Never like this.
“Stop,” he grated.
“I will make you take me,” she said breathlessly. She rested back on her heels so she bumped the arm of the sofa behind her. With ungainly movements so different from her usual fluid grace, she tugged the nightdress over her head and threw it to the floor.
“Jesus…” he said again on a low hiss and closed his eyes.
Too late. Even through the darkness, the image of her seared his brain like fire. The glimmer of white flesh, the full high breasts with their darker nipples, the pool of shadow where her legs met.
“Stop it, Grace,” he said while the devil inside him shrieked to take her, take her.
Her pale thighs braced his legs as she slid toward him. Her position was excruciatingly suggestive. She paused at a point where if she moved the slightest inch, he’d be inside her. He clenched his jaw so hard it hurt.
“I have to do this.”
He heard the despair in her voice. Her shaking hand grazed his erection. Christ, she’d kill him before she finished. Through the fireworks shooting through his head, he heard her shocked inhalation.
She snatched her hand away. “You want me,” she whispered as if even with unmistakable physical evidence, she still didn’t believe it.
Matthew’s control shredded. With a roughness he couldn’t help, he thrust her aside so she bounced against the upholstery. He scrambled to his feet.
“Of course I bloody want you,” he growled. “God, where the hell did you put your damned clothes?”
He scrabbled for her nightdress but when his hand alighted on a garment, it was his shirt. It would have to do.
“Here, put this on.” He thrust the garment at her, then grabbed his trousers and tugged them up. Without looking at her—if he looked at her, his fragile resolution would crumble—he stalked to the desk and lit a candle with hands he could barely control.
Only then did he face her. And wished to God he’d marched out of the room instead. She was in such a state that even so simple a matter as pulling his
shirt over her head took far too long. As the loose folds of linen tumbled over her smooth white flesh, his cock strained painfully against his trousers.