If she had ever been kissed like this before, hungered, ached, needed like this before, she didn’t remember it, Philippa acknowledged dizzily; this fierce, eager union of lips, of mouths and tongues, this devouring, aching intensity was something new and unfamiliar; and yet it was also somehow something that a part of her had always known… a dim echo of all those hours, those nights spent fantasising about a lover who would make her feel like this, who would be the spark that would set fire to the dry virgin territory of her sexuality, making it burn until both of them were caught up in its conflagration.
This, she recognised, was the force, the power within herself that a part of her had always feared and stepped back from—this knowledge of what her sexuality really was.
‘I want you… I need you… Oh, please don’t make me wait.’
The words surrounded her, fevered verbal acknowledgements of her physical arousal echoing the other sounds of their intimacy: the scratch and rustle of fabric against her skin as Joel removed their clothes, his own far less gently than hers, cursing as he tried to remove his jeans with one hand, unwilling to let go of her completely, to stop caressing and kissing her; the soft, silken brush of skin against skin, body warming body in the cool air of the room; the slightly rougher sound of his hands touching her, stroking her, shaping the curves of her body while he marvelled at its femininity, told her with his hands and eyes and mouth how much all of her delighted and aroused him; the sound of mouth meeting mouth; of accelerated charged breathing, quick gasps; the soft, satisfied suckle of Joel’s mouth against her breast, drawing her nipple deep into his mouth until she felt he could almost draw the aching hunger of need out of her flesh like someone sucking poison from a wound.
There was something intensely erotic about the feel and taste of a woman’s breast, Joel acknowledged, and yet at the same time something almost forbidden in the awareness that his adult male pleasure had its roots in the innocent infant suckling of a child at its mother’s breast.
Sally had not liked him to caress her breasts like this after she had had the children. She said it was because feeding them and then going on the Pill had made them too sensitive.
Angrily he pushed the thought of Sally out of his mind. She didn’t want him, wouldn’t care what he was doing. Not like Philippa, who was whispering feverishly to him that the feel of his mouth against her breast was making her ache to have him inside her, who was touching, stroking his body with urgent, helpless little gestures of pleading need.
Philippa gave a sharp high moan of pleasure as Joel’s hand slipped between her legs and touched her, stroked her, made her shudder in uncontrollable response to his caress.
This was, she recognised distantly, her sexuality laid bare, stripped of civilisation and pretence, of custom and upbringing to reveal its pure, basic core; and there was a purity to her need… to their need… as though its very urgency and intensity had burned away the emotions of shame and guilt.
‘Now. Now… now…’ she demanded huskily, pressing herself fiercely against Joel.
‘Oh, God. Yes… Yes…’
She could hear the exultation, the male triumph in his voice as Joel lifted her up, holding her as she balanced herself against him and wrapped her legs round him. Her body felt slippery with sweat, her breast laved with the moist suckle of his mouth.
Her desire for him was so intense that the sensation of him entering her made her shudder in exquisite relief. He felt bigger, harder than she could ever remember Andrew feeling, her awareness of the sensation of him within her intensely acute; the intensity of her orgasm, the urgency and swiftness with which it overwhelmed her were as unfamiliar as the extent of her desire.
She heard herself cry out and Joel make an answering guttural response, driving through her orgasm and carrying her with him, prolonging it until he reached his own peak.
Afterwards Joel held her tightly, str
oking her damp hair back off her face, kissing her forehead, and then her mouth, gently, and then a second time, questioningly, before silently taking her hand and leading her upstairs.
This time their need was just as great, but their pace slower, so that she had time to marvel at the way the sunlight through the window played on his skin, highlighting the formation of the muscles that lay beneath it. She traced them, wandering with fingertips and then her mouth, kissing his throat and his chest, savouring the taste of him on her tongue, her senses excited by the maleness of him.
It had never occurred to her during her marriage to Andrew that a man’s body could be something to admire, his arousal something to gloat secretly over in deep-seated female triumph. With Andrew the rare sight of his naked body had caused her to feel uncomfortable and faintly embarrassed for him as well as for herself. Now, without realising it, as she touched Joel she was making soft purring sounds of feminine approval and admiration, touching him, looking at him, Joel recognised as he watched her, as though his body was her greatest delight, giving him visually and verbally the approval and acceptance that every man’s ego secretly yearned for.
There could be no greater delight than this… no deeper, richer pleasure than to lie next to a woman you had just made love to knowing you had pleased and satisfied her, hearing her making those soft cooing sounds of pleasure.
His throat tightening with emotion, Joel reached for her, drawing her back down against his body, holding her, Philippa recognised shakily, with the kind of tenderness that transformed what had happened between them from something purely physical to something far, far more dangerous.
Slowly Joel traced the bones of her face, his face shadowed and sombre. She felt so frail in his arms, so soft and vulnerable. He had felt her need in the way she’d clung to him and responded to him; the way her flesh had welcomed him. He felt his heart lurch against his breastbone. This was how it should be between a man and a woman… how…
‘Philippa, I…’
Shakily Philippa reached out and placed her fingertips against his lips. ‘No… please… don’t say anything,’ she begged him huskily. ‘I don’t want us to lie to one another, to make promises we can’t keep.’
She watched as Joel closed his eyes against his emotions and then reached out and took hold of her wrist, kissing the fingertips she had placed against his mouth and then her wrist, the soft, vulnerable place inside her elbow.
Joel heard her moan as his mouth touched her throat and then her breasts. He teased her nipples gently, aware of his own desire to know and caress each and every part of her. Loving her was like a banquet, a feast of such unimaginable delicacy that he had to fight not to gorge himself but to savour and enjoy instead every individual sensation and flavour.
Philippa shivered as his mouth caressed her stomach, her skin tensing tightly against her muscles. Joel’s tongue circled her navel and her quiver became an open shudder. His hands slid beneath her, holding her, lifting her.
‘No,’ she told him protestingly, shivering with the awareness of what he intended to do, torn between her physical longing for the intimacy of such a caress and her emotional fear of what the giving and taking of it could mean.
But either Joel hadn’t heard her or didn’t want to hear her, because his mouth was already moving delicately against her inner thigh and the sight of his dark head bent over her body made her heart turn over inside her chest in physical and emotional arousal.
Tears burned behind her closed eyelids as she recognised his tenderness and care, mingled with the hotter, more urgent thread of his desire, forming a skein of emotion and sensation that aroused her so intensely that it was impossible for her to control her body’s response to him. It flooded through her, unstoppable, uncontrollable, charging through her body in fierce spurts of delight, as Joel’s mouth caressed her until the final pulse of her pleasure had died away.
Later they made love again, and not just because she wanted to repay him the pleasure he had shown her, Philippa acknowledged drowsily as, to her own surprise and against her own expectations, she felt her body quicken against the slow, erotic thrust of his until she was urging him to move deeper and deeper within her, her hands reaching round him, holding him to her, her need for him a dam which, once breached, could not be restrained.