He didn’t need to wait for a reply. Julia arched towards him and his arms went around her, binding her firmly to his broad chest, burying her body against his. His kiss was as devastating as ever and Julia responded greedily to its lure, kicking off her shoes and leaning into him as she felt his tongue seek out the rough-smooth, hard-soft interiors of her mouth.
‘You’re so tiny in my arms,’ he groaned thickly against her lips. ‘Like a baby, so fresh and sweet.’
‘I don’t feel in the least babyish,’ she muttered feverishly, denying the self-reproach implicit in his words. She couldn’t bear it if he drew back now, if he used his damnable logic to talk himself out of satisfying them both.
‘Show me how grown up you are, then,’ he ordered, the large hands dealing with the buttons of her blouse with extraordinary delicacy as he kissed her mouth, her eyes, her ears, her neck, the warm pulse in her collarbone as it throbbed her excitement.
‘Oh no, most definitely not a baby.’ His soft words sent the blood rushing to her head as he cupped the fullness of her unfettered breasts, aroused by their round ripeness and the way they nestled warmly in his palms. ‘But still, I think it’s time you were in bed.’
She felt the smooth slide of a muscular arm at the back of her knees and the swift shift of his body that tilted her off-balance to be hoisted high against his chest. This time he let her down, not on a hard, wet table, but in the feathery nest of warmth that was his bed. He came down too, engulfing her with his heated flesh, pressing her further into the softness. ‘
‘As Richard pointed out on one memorable occasion, I’m a little too old for love-making on the floor,’ he apologised with a dry humour that made Julia blink sensuously at him, and tease:
‘What does Richard know? I think you’re in fantastic condition. Maybe later we can go back and I can show you how wrong you are…’
‘My God, if anyone could, you could,’ he growled, pulling off her blouse and fumbling for the zip of her skirt.
‘Well, you know what they say about younger women … we renew a man’s virility,’ Julia gurgled, full to the brim with love and laughter, relishing her first experience of teasing foreplay, both physical and verbal. ‘Here, let me do that.’
With a lithe and natural sensuality she slipped out of her skirt and peeled off her pantyhose and tiny bikini briefs. She was shivering with anticipation, eager to touch and be touched, and her eagerness banished virginal reticence and further aroused the man who watched her prepare herself to receive his body.
He kissed her, long and hard, as if he couldn’t help it, then drew back to study her nakedness with his customary eye for detail: the white skin, even whiter across her breasts and hips—the luscious rise of the twin peaks and their hard, rosy crests, the rounded kissing-curve of her belly with its faintest suggestion of baby down, the tender blonde vee between the soft rise of her thighs. He touched her, experimentally, and felt her tauten, heard her aching sigh. A slight flush mounted his cheekbones and the tips of his ears and Julia reached up to stroke them, rejoicing in her freedom to do so.
No man had ever looked on her thus and Julia gloried that Hugh should be the first, that she could bring such an expression of passionate desire to the normally shuttered grey eyes. She wasn’t afraid of what was to come, she wanted it so; she didn’t feel like a virgin, she felt all woman, limbs heavy, languid, and she had no intention of breaking the spell of sexual urgency by revealing the truth of her inexperience. She would tell him later, if he did not realise it for himself. Men always knew, didn’t they, or was that a myth about to be exploded?
His hand moved to tilt her head to the side. ‘Let’s make love,’ he whispered softly and his eyes closed as he kissed her very, very gently. Only their mouths touched as they savoured the taste of mutual arousal, until Julia, able to bear it no longer, rolled on to her side and pressed her body against his, the tips of her breasts flowering against the silky tease of his chest and her thighs trembling as she felt the thrust of his long legs. His kiss changed from gentle to very adult, his tongue forcing her lips wider as his hands slid around her hips, fingers sinking into the dimpled globes of her buttocks, lifting her against him, fitting her tightly to the contours of his body.
She groaned at the excess of pleasure, head falling back against the mounded pillows as his mouth played with her ear-lobes, nipped softly at her throat. So this was love, this twisting, wrenching inner tension, this driving force that compelled her to writhe against the hard masculinity beside her. She felt the large hands move to her waist, holding her down on her back again as his mouth sought further and Julia cried out as his lips described lazy circles around her breasts. She caught the short, grey hair between her clutching fingers, holding his head as she arched herself against him.
‘Please, Hugh …’ s
he pleaded quiveringly, her brain losing its tenuous links with the world outside his arms.
‘I intend to please both of us, little one,’ he vowed huskily, his hands tightening as he controlled her eagerness even as he encouraged it. ‘Watch me, Julia. Tell me how I please you.’
Julia’s eyes fluttered as she obeyed, reaching a pitch of desire as she saw his head dip to her breast, his lips part as he slowly, sensuously curled his moist tongue around an erect nipple, drawing it up into his open mouth. One hand moved up to cup the weight of her breast, lifting its fullness so that he could absorb more of the puckered pink into the scalding interior of his mouth. He was making soft sounds of enjoyment against her flesh and Julia closed her eyes again, dizzied by the image of his grey head moving against her body. Wave after wave of pure, unadulterated sensation hit her; the musky scent of him filled her nostrils, the slither of skin and soft rustle of the bed beneath them stole into her ears. Her legs moved involuntarily and he threw one of his across them, pinning her down while his hands made tiny, stroking motions across her stomach. He was touching her as if she was a tiny, precious, breakable object to be minutely explored.
In turn Julia explored him, her fingers delighting in what they found. His smooth, taut skin was faintly damp and alive with tension. Julia could feel the drawing in of his muscles as her hands stroked down to his hips where they lingered helplessly, wanting to seek his nakedness but hampered by inexperience.
His mouth left her breasts and trailed down to her stomach, then rimmed the bowl of her hips. Gasping, Julia pulled his head away, her fingers clenched in his hair, staring at him with a breathless intermingling of shock and excitement.
He met her wide-eyed gaze with puzzlement, then looked down at himself, misinterpreting her shyness.
‘You’re right. I’m over-dressed.’ He sounded as if he had just succeeded in lifting a personal best… his voice harshened by adrenalin surging through his body, muscles responding fluidly as he swung off the bed and quickly stripped off the rest of his clothing.
‘Better?’ he murmured and Julia felt the sag of the bed as he re-joined her. She had not dared look but she gave a choking cry as he pulled her hands against him and she felt his hard nakedness. His sigh of satisfaction, the sudden shudder of his body changed the moment of fearful discovery into one of wonderment. It felt so searingly sweet, so meltingly, achingly, good to hold him like this. The very essence of his manhood was held in her small, trembling hands. It was she who made him like this; she whom he wanted so much that he had abandoned his protective persona.
‘You’re so big,’ she murmured faintly, the pulse points of her body throbbing with congestion as he gently straddled her, careful not to lean his full weight on her, careful that she should feel all pleasure and no pain.
‘You’re always saying that to me,’ he muttered thickly, with the remnant of their earlier teasing, ‘but this time I’m flattered.’ Aroused as he was, he was still sufficiently in control to reassure the age-old woman’s fear: ‘I won’t hurt you, Julia. I’ll wait until you’re ready. Your smallness will make it good for both of us.’
She couldn’t speak, everything roughly shouldered aside by the growing urgency of her passion, the gentle skill of his fingers, the conviction that this was the one man who had the right to take her virginity, to accept her love.
She felt him ease one powerful, thickly-haired thigh between hers to nudge them apart, felt his chest skim hers as he supported himself on tautly strained arms on either side of her head. His body, that magnificent structure of sensuous pleasure, seemed to crush all sensation into one place, everything focused on the hardness settling between her legs. Involuntarily, the words came:
‘Oh, Hugh, I love you … love me, please.’ She repeated the litany mindlessly, consumed with anticipation.
‘You mean, you want me,’ he corrected her absently as he sought her softness.