‘Nowhere near as much as I want you,’ she heard Jake telling her forcefully as he swung her up into his arms, but, to her astonishment, instead of carrying her upstairs, Jake was heading for the front door.
‘Jake,’ she protested, suddenly apprehensive and afraid that after allowing her to believe he wanted her he was simply going to walk away from her, to abandon her as he had done the last time…The last time…‘Where are you going?’ she demanded huskily.
‘I’m taking you home,’ Jake responded fiercely. ‘To my home, to my bed, and once I’ve got you there I’m…’
As she saw the look in his eyes, Lucianna started to tremble, but not from fear…
Later she would have no clear recollection of the short drive to Jake’s house—only of her awareness that it was just as well it was a private lane since all Jake was still wearing was the towel. Jake’s home and even Jake’s bedroom were already familiar to her, but as he carried her from the front door towards the stairs the sensations, the emotions filling
her totally obliterated the fact that Jake’s home was a familiar part of her own childhood. Instead…
At the bottom of the stairs Jake set her on her feet and slowly, cupping her face, started to kiss her, gently at first and then with increasing passion until she was writhing frantically against him, calling his name with small sobbing cries of need as she pressed herself closer and closer to him.
Was it Jake or was it her own hands that dragged the buttons of her jacket from the buttonholes? She didn’t know, but she knew well enough that it was Jake’s hands that caressed her naked breasts, stroking and kneading them as she pushed them eagerly into his caressing palms, and Jake’s lips, Jake’s mouth that took her to even greater transports of sensual pleasure when they stopped halfway up the stairs and Jake knelt down in front of her. For slowly he started to suckle on first one and then the other taut nipple before very deliberately tracing a line of hot, thrilling kisses down to the waistband of her silk trousers and then below it as he unfastened and let them fall to the floor. His tonguetip circled her belly button, causing her to cling helplessly to his shoulders, torn between wanting to beg him to stop and aching to urge him to go on.
But, even so, despite knowing how much she wanted him and how much she loved him and how aroused he was himself, it was still a shock to hear him tell her gratingly, ‘If we don’t make it to my bedroom soon, I’m going to have to have you right here and now where we are…’
‘On the stairs?’ Lucianna blurted out, betraying her innocence as she added, ‘But we can’t…’
‘Oh, yes, we can,’ Jake assured her, his teeth gleaming in an almost boyish smile as he flushed and then looked enquiringly at her. ‘No, don’t ask me to explain, not right now…The way I want you…need you right now is on a bed…on my bed…where we can take our time and I can show you…’
He stopped, frowning as Lucianna gave a small sharp cry, her eyes suddenly going very dark, and his expression was very male as he realised the cause of her audible moan of pleasure was the sight of his naked body.
As Lucianna looked a little self-consciously from him to the towel which lay on the stairs beside him, she asked him, ‘When did you…?’
‘I didn’t…you did,’ he told her softly, adding when she shook her head, ‘Yes, you did; it was just now when I kissed you right here.’ He touched one fingertip to the place just above the line of her briefs where his mouth had only seconds before been caressing her sensitive skin and sending frantic pulses of pleasure darting through her.
‘Jake…’ Lucianna started to say, and then stopped as she closed her eyes. What she wanted to say, what she ought to be saying, was that they shouldn’t be doing this, that she shouldn’t be here with him like this, not when…But as she raised her hand she inadvertently brushed her fingertips against his thigh and as she felt the hard, warm sensation of his skin, followed by the flooding sweetness of her own longing for him, she knew those words would never be spoken. Instead she looked up into his eyes and then down at his body, and then, with a low moan, opened her arms to him.
They might not have made love on the stairs as Jake had threatened but it was a pretty close thing. By the time they reached the bed both of them were naked and as he lowered her onto it bending over to kiss first her mouth and then one breast and then her mouth again and then the other, before sliding his hands over her body, cupping her hips and then stroking her thighs and gently easing them apart, Lucianna knew that she didn’t want to wait any longer for him.
The book on flirtation hadn’t had any helpful hints on how one might best deal with such a situation but in truth Lucianna didn’t need any, and if Jake’s reaction to the way she touched him and the soft, encouraging sounds of need she made were anything to go by she was managing very well without them.
This time, perhaps because her body already knew the pleasure his would give it, the sensation of having him within her was so overwhelming, so explosive that the shudders of pleasure and completion started to pulse through her right from Jake’s first thrust, the intensity and swiftness of her climax leaving her shuddering in his arms. She was so sensitive to him that she could actually feel the hot, thick pulse of his own release within her body, could feel it and, unbelievably, react to it with a softer, gentler echo of her own earlier orgasm, a quick, delicate throb of her body as though it wanted to draw him even closer and deeper within it as she took from him that final, life-giving male pulse of desire.
‘John…’ Lucianna began sleepily as she cuddled up in Jake’s arms, her body and emotions totally exhausted after the events of the evening but still wanting to explain to Jake that she hadn’t really been upset to realise that John didn’t love her. But her eyes were already closing, her breathing slowing, and suddenly, as sleep claimed her, it was too much of an effort to say anything.
Jake, on the other hand, was suddenly very much awake.
John. She had called him John! As he lay there in the darkness with Lucianna’s body nestled so trustingly and lovingly in his arms, he knew with bleak certainty that there was no pain worse than hearing the woman you had just loved calling you by another man’s name. The man she really wanted.
Lucianna woke up abruptly, confused at first by her surroundings. And then she remembered. Shivering, she tried to blink back her tears as she realised that once again Jake had left her alone in bed. His bed, though, this time, not hers. Pushing back the bedclothes, she slid her feet to the floor and started to walk towards the half-open bedroom door.
There was a light on downstairs and instinctively she made her way down, frowning as she reached the hallway and heard the sound of someone using a computer in Jake’s office…Pushing open the door, she walked in, oblivious to the fact that she was completely naked.
Jake was seated at his desk, dressed in a shirt and jeans.
Still frowning, she studied the screen in front of him.
‘Jake, what are you doing down here?’ she asked him tremulously.
‘Working!’
‘Working!’
All the emotions she had been fighting to suppress welled up inside her.
‘What is it with me…what is it that’s wrong with me?’ she demanded furiously. ‘What is it about me that makes it impossible for a man to love me…? First John and now you…Oh, I don’t care about John. I realise now I never loved him really at all…in fact I’m actually glad that he doesn’t want me…but you…’ Tears rolled down her face and she shook them away impatiently. ‘I love you, Jake, but I know you don’t love me.