Something carnal and dark tore through him, and it was all he could do to keep it at bay. He’d never felt anything quite as electric as this before, and somewhere deep inside he knew that should have worried him a lot more than he was currently prepared to acknowledge.
And then Birdie surged against him, pressing her body to his as she angled her head to deepen their kiss, her hands reaching up very tentatively to cup his jaw, and he stopped thinking at all...he merely experienced.
He claimed her mouth over and over, learning its feel, its shape, its taste, sending him spiralling, half-delirious. And the fact that it was from a mere kiss only seemed to make it that much more insane.
His breath scythed between them, his body pushing him closer to edge than he could ever have imagined, and then Bridget raised her hands to loop them around his neck and pull him down to her with the most beautifully greedy sound he thought he’d ever heard, her body pressed against his.
Need shot through him. Lifting his hands, Hayden threaded them through the glossy, thick curtain of her hair. Subtle notes of coconut danced in his nostrils as he moved it, making him think of tropical beaches and hot sun, and Bridget’s body naked beneath his.
He let himself explore some more. His hands moved down the long line of her spine, his mouth down the elegant line of her neck. Everything about this woman wound through him, making him hunger for more.
His hands learned the contours of her body, her backside, and then lower, abruptly coming into contact with the smooth, velvety skin of the back of her thigh.
White lights burst in his head. Her bare skin was so soft, and so damned hot. He should stop, he ought to stop, but when his fingers brushed her skin and she arched her body against his, he found he was lost.
Her mouth was still open under his, still inviting him in, still learning how to scrape her tongue against his as though dancing a sensual tango of their own. He pressed his body against hers even harder, needing to feel her heat against the hardest part of him.
Then, fanning his fingers out, he allowed them to slip slightly under the hem of her shimmering dress to that delicious crease where her legs met her peachy derrière. The greedy little sound she made was almost his undoing.
Hayden had never ached so badly in his life. He hadn’t known it was possible to. He’d never felt as though he’d self-combust if he didn’t get a taste of her, there and then. Yet with Bridget that was exactly how he felt. Before he knew what he was doing his hands spanned her thighs, his thumbs just creeping under the dress, the front of which—already short—had ridden up dangerously high, and stroked between her legs. Just once. But brushing right there, against a whisper of lace where she was searing hot, and so sinfully, perfectly wet for him.
Her moan rolled right through his body, and Hayden wasn’t entirely sure how he didn’t embarrass himself on the spot.
‘You asked me how many men...before,’ she managed, on a choppy little breath.
‘Say again?’ he muttered, his brain so fogged up he could barely think straight with wanting her.
‘What if it was none?’ she managed huskily, only the fact that his head was so close to hers allowing him to hear. ‘Would that make a difference?’
Dear lord, she was a virgin, and she was offering herself up to him to be her first. He needed to walk away, but his legs refused to move.
He might have a reputation, but despoiler of virgins wasn’t part of it. He preferred experienced partners who could enjoy a sexual encounter every bit as much as he did. Who knew what they wanted, and what they were prepared to give back—and said so.
Virgins had never been his thing. In fact, he’d always steered well clear of them in the past.
But this was different. Bridget was different. A fact that should set off more alarm bells than it was currently ringing. What was it about her that stirred something so intensely primal and feral within him? That made the idea that she could have lost her virginity to any number of suitors over the years but she’d saved herself to give such a precious gift to him?
He should be walking away.
All of a sudden, the sounds of the nightclub crashed back over him and he blinked as he came back to himself.
How had he lost all sense of where they were? Of who she was? Not just kissing in a public place but what he’d been doing to her had been practically indecent. In his whole life he’d never lost control like this.
He ought to be ashamed.
Instead, all he wanted was to pin her back in that corner and bury himself so deep inside her that neither of them would know where one of them ended and the other began.
It was insane.
‘Take a moment to sort your dress out,’ he told her through his teeth, turning his back to ensure no one had seen them.
Relieved to realise that no one had.
‘I can’t believe...’ Bridget’s voice sounded shakily in his ear once she had readjusted her clothing. ‘I don’t make a habit—’
‘Trust me, neither do I,’ he grated back.
‘I think... It isn’t... Can we just forget it happened? Just leave?’