Reaching up, he threaded his hands through the sides of her hair. "You are exquisite," he whispered. His hands slid down to her breasts, then reluctantly released them and settled on her hips, helping her to start.
She hadn't been lying about her lack of experience, Noah realized a few minutes later as he suppressed a laughing groan. She had no idea how to gauge the tempo for him; she slowed it when he wished she would go faster, changed it when he wanted her to sustain it. He couldn't predict the next moment or depend on her next movement, and because he couldn't, she now had him in a sustained state of excited suspense that was more arousing than it would have been if she had known what she was doing.
Just when he decided that, she began to watch his face and adjust to the pressure of his hips, and Noah's amusement died. The passion he thought he had under control was surging through his loins with enough force to make him grasp her hips to stop her. Pulling her onto his chest, he struggled to stop the rampage, and when he couldn't, he rolled her gently onto her back. He shifted on top of her, his hips pinning her to the bed as he began to thrust deeply inside of her. He dragged his mouth roughly across her cheek, longing to imprint himself on her mind as he was embedding himself in her body. "Open your eyes," he said, his voice reduced to a raw whisper.
Her long russet lashes flickered open. Silently, her eyes begged for release, and silently, he promised it to her. His shoulders and arms rigid with the strain of holding back, he began to increase the force of each stroke.
Sloan felt the pulsing beginning deep inside her. It quaked through until it finally exploded in a burst of extravagant pleasure that tore a low whimper from her throat. Noah drove into her one more time, his body shuddering with the same pleasure he'd given her. His head fell forward, his breathing labored. Wrapping his arm around her hips, he moved onto his side with her.
Sloan lay there, too shaken by what she'd felt to think, glorying in the simple thrill of being held in his arms. As sanity slowly returned, however, it became obvious to her that the man who had just made love to her had perfected the technique, undoubtedly through a great deal of practice with a great many women. On the other hand, she didn't think he'd found her so completely inexperienced that she bored him and he wouldn't want her again. If that were so, surely he wouldn't be holding her so close now, his hand lazily rubbing the curve of her waist. As a precaution, she decided to say something to him. "Noah?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm a very quick learner," she said earnestly.
Noah tipped his head down to see her beautiful face, and his lips quirked in a tender smile. "I noticed that," he whispered.
"What I mean is, I'll get better with practice."
The bed shook with his laughter as he snatched her into his arms, burying his face in her neck. "God help me."
Noah's laughter faded, but his lighthearted mood lingered as he held her against him. Normally an orgasm left him feeling relaxed and then energized; it did not leave him feeling absurdly happy. He could not understand why the woman in his arms had such a profound effect on him in bed and out of it. She could make him hot with a glance, cheer him with a smile, melt him with a touch. She was without greed, vanity, or guile.
She was also without dinner, he realized. He turned his wrist and looked at his watch. He'd wanted her aboard early to see the sunset, and the evening was still delightfully young.
He smoothed her heavy hair off her smooth cheek, and she looked up at him. "The evening's entertainment includes dinner and a tour," he teased.
She gave him a slumberous smile, her long fingers idly spreading on his chest. "Was that included in the price of the ticket, or is it extra?"
"Don't look at me like that or you'll get something besides dinner and the tour."
"Really?" she asked. "What?"
"Dessert."
To avoid further temptation, he reached for the telephone and instructed that dinner be served in a half hour; then he reluctantly got out of bed.
They dined by candlelight in formal attire with music playing softly in the background, but the atmosphere between them was different. Without the distraction of unfulfilled sexual desire, they were able to talk like new friends getting to know one another.
By the time dinner was over, she was so relaxed that she thought nothing of answering his question about Carter and her mother. "My mother won a beauty contest when she was eighteen, and the prize was a trip to Fort Lauderdale and a week in the best hotel," Sloan explained. "A photographer from the Fort Lauderdale newspaper was taking her picture on the beach. A cocktail party was taking place nearby—part of a rehearsal dinner for a wedding that Carter was attending—and he wandered over to see what was happening. He was wearing a white dinner jacket. My mother was dazzled. And that's what happened."
"That can't be all that happened," Noah pointed out as a joke.
"That's nearly all that happened. My mother had been raised by her grandmother, and she was as naïve as she was beautiful. She spent the remaining three days of her trip with him in her hotel suite. She gave him her virginity, and Carter gave her Paris. She went back home, completely convinced they were in love and that he wanted to marry her—as soon as he could win his socially prominent family in San Francisco over to the idea. Naturally, Mom was a little surprised when she never heard from her 'fiancé' again. She was even more surprised when the doctor told her that she wasn't sick with the flu, she was pregnant."
Noah lifted his wineglass, watching the emotions play across her lovely face. She was trying very hard to sound offhand, but her voice softened when she mentioned her mother and it hardened almost imperceptibly when she mentioned Carter. "Then what happened?"
"The usual," she said with a jaunty, sideways smile. "My mother went to the library and located the father of her baby by looking up his family's name in Who's Who." When Noah didn't smile at her attempt at humor, Sloan sobered and said lightly, "She was still so certain that he loved her and that his family must be being unfair to him that she took the rest of her prize money and bought a plane ticket. She arrived on Carter's family's doorstep at night, with her suitcase—also part of her contest prizes—but they told her Carter was out. She explained that she was his fiancée and asked if she could wait for him there. You can imagine the rest."
"Probably," Noah said, "but I'd like to hear it from you."
"You're awfully persistent," Sloan joked. Instead of being dissuaded he cocked a dark brow in inquiry and waited for her to go on. Helpless to ignore his silent command to continue, she sighed and said, "In a very few minutes, they got the whole story out of her, and they were furious." She paused, trying to think of a way to phrase the rest of the story. Carter was his friend and Paris's father, and she didn't want to needlessly tarnish his image. "They naturally felt he had done a wrong thing, and when Carter came home, he accepted responsibility and left with my mother—"