In Bed with the Boss

Unutterable relief throttled her speech. Nothing was wrong. Not now. In the dim light she could see that Duncan was bare-chested, his broad shoulders gleaming like polished wood, the muscles of his supporting arm bulging in a manner that proclaimed him strong and vigorous and pumping with life. She had never looked at Duncan as a man before and now suddenly there he was—blatantly, inescapably, irrefutably male, a potent symbol of the passion that had been wiped out of her life by a bitter stroke of fate.

‘Can’t you go back to sleep?’ He pushed himself further upright and the sheet slid down his ridged abdomen to pool across his lap.

Kalera mois

tened her lips and shook her head, her hair streaming down her back, her anchoring clutch on the pyjama top falling away as she stepped towards the bed, driven by a compulsion she couldn’t deny. The unbuttoned jacket gaped, displaying a wide strip of pale flesh from the pulsing hollow in her throat to the soft shadow of fluff at the base of her belly.

Duncan’s shoulders went rigid with disbelief, his eyes glinting in the darkness as he wrenched them back up to her face.

‘My God, Kalera—what are you doing?’ His deep voice was hoarse with shock as she shrugged her shoulders and the black garment whispered to the floor in a slither of silk.

Silhouetted against the light from the hall, she looked as slim as a boy, but as she scrambled onto the high bed the tilt and flex of her body revealed the tantalising sway of sweetly rounded breasts tipped with dark, pointed nipples and the feminine curve of her bottom.

‘I’m cold,’ she said truthfully, burrowing under the covers until her body collided with his, the burning heat of her skin making nonsense of her words as she slid her arms around his rigid torso, tugging until he collapsed back onto the white pillows. ‘Hold me…please…I need someone to hold me, to make me warm again…’

She tangled her legs in his and nuzzled her face into his hairy chest, inhaling the aroma of clean, healthy male. She had wondered if he was wearing anything under the bedclothes and now her curiosity was searingly satisfied. His big, nude body was a patchwork of deliciously contrasting textures and tiny thrills of anticipated ecstasy shivered across her skin as she measured herself boldly against his rigid length. Her parted lips brushed one of his flat nipples and he groaned, his hands gripping her upper arms as he tried to hold her squirming body discreetly at bay.

‘For God’s sake, Kalera—’

She arched her back, rolling her pelvis against the broad saddle of his hips, and revelled in the hot thrust of desire he was unable to hide, a glorious reaffirmation of his life-giving potency. An answering response rippled through her empty womb, flooding her with bitter-sweet yearning.

‘Oh, yes…that feels so good, so hot…’ she murmured eagerly, pushing her smooth thigh between his legs, twisting her upper body so that her stiff nipples scraped against his chest and her hip angled across the thickening shaft of flesh stirring against his belly. He uttered another tormented groan.

‘No, we can’t do this—’

But even as he spoke his hands were shifting to cage her ribs, his thumbs angling into the crease under her soft breasts, pushing them up into pouting prominence, his thighs clenching around hers, a sheen of perspiration slicking across his skin.

‘Yes, we can,’ she said huskily, sinking her teeth into his heaving chest and sucking at the tiny wound, the epitome of the sultry temptress.

He growled deep in his throat and slammed her over onto her back. ‘Dammit, Kalera, can’t you see I’m trying to be noble here?’ he said thickly.

He had kicked the bedclothes astray in the flurry of motion and in the strip of light that fell across the bed Kalera could see something far more fascinating than his nobility. The lower half of his body was as hard-packed with muscle as his upper half and the heavy arousal springing from the thick cloud of jet-black hair in his groin was equally splendid. She wanted to absorb the very essence of that strength and splendour into her body, to make it part of herself. The very last thing she required from him tonight was gentlemanly consideration and restraint. He couldn’t reject her, he mustn’t…!

‘Please…’ She reached down between them to capture him in an intimate caress. ‘I need you to make love to me…’

His whole body jerked, the breath hissing between his clenched teeth as he felt her slim fingers wrap themselves around his swollen shaft. ‘It’s not me you really want,’ he gritted in a last-ditch effort to shock her back to sanity. ‘It’s Harry—’

‘But I can’t have Harry,’ she pointed out, her grey eyes stormy with thwarted passion as she met his tortured gaze. ‘So why shouldn’t I have this…?’

Her eyes fell as her thumb stroked across the moist tip of satin-sheathed steel that was the proof of his desire. She watched him pulse helplessly within her snug fist. ‘So full of life,’ she husked enviously, teasing him with another slow caress. ‘I want to taste it, touch it, feel it hot and strong inside me, filling me up until I can’t think, only feel…’

‘Dear God!’ Duncan shuddered, his noble intentions crumbling under the erotic assault. He plunged his hands into her shimmering hair as she would have bent her head to follow her words with her mouth, locking his fingers around the back of her skull and tilting the pale oval of her face up for his savage appraisal. He looked deep into her eyes, seeing past the hectic glaze of desire to the heart of her desperation. ‘All right, damn you! If sex is your drug of choice, then I’ll be your fix. But we do this my way, Kalera—’

‘Call me darling,’ she interrupted feverishly, too exulted by her victory to care about the terms of his surrender. ‘We don’t need names or labels. For tonight, let’s just be a man and a woman…’ Names would make everything too real, would disrupt her lovely fantasy…

An angry spark smouldered in Duncan’s shadow-masked eyes, warning Kalera that he guessed what she was trying to do, but instead of arguing the insult to his ego his mouth kicked into a dangerous curve, his aggressive self-confidence rising flamboyantly to the challenge.

‘Darling…’ he purred obediently, the predatory nature of his smile anything but submissive. He slowly began moving his hips, pushing himself against her soft palm, maintaining the delicious friction as he rolled onto his side and stroked his hands slowly down her throat and over her body from breasts to belly and back to her breasts again, fondling the taut peaks until she begged mindlessly for his mouth.

He complied instantly with her greedy demand, bending his head to rub his face against the soft pillows of milky flesh, the slight sandiness of his smooth-shaven jaw an erotic contrast to the silken glide of his cheek and the warm, wet whip of his tongue as he traced around each velvety areola, drawing them into the cavern of his mouth, nibbling and sucking at her dusky nipples until they were glistening peaks of swollen ripeness, as tight and hard as the exquisite knot of tension that budded in the secret folds between her restless legs.

‘Yes, oh, yes…’ Her voice throbbed with relief as he stroked her there too, insinuating his hand between her silky thighs and dipping his fingers into the damp, creamy heat, parting the moist petals and finding the most sensitive spot on her body with a tantalising skill that made her almost burst with unbearable delight.

‘Do you like that, darling?’ he murmured against her dewy breast, moving his invading fingers deeper into her receptive body. ‘Tell me…tell me everything you want and I’ll give it to you…’

But Kalera could no longer form her thoughts into a coherent pattern of words. Sweet, hot chills shivered over her skin as she threshed against the sheets, her fingernails digging into Duncan’s back, raking across the straining muscles as she plunged into a world of pure sensation unadulterated by fear or shame—a place where there was no evil, no pain, no smothering survivor’s guilt, only a soaring lust for life celebrated in the most elemental human way. The raw sexuality of the sleek and powerful lover she had summoned out of the depths of her loneliness triggered a primitive mating response that swept away her inhibitions, his ruthless dedication to servicing her every sensual whim encouraging her to become more and more reckless in her demands.

But Duncan was in no hurry. He lingered over the bone-melting caresses, feeding her wild craving by offering tiny tastes of the promised fulfilment and inviting her to match him stroke for stroke. Every time that Kalera’s eyes drifted closed in order to concentrate on her turbulent desire he would pause until she opened them again, forcing her to watch what they were doing to each other, to share with him each and every moment of voluptuous pleasure as it registered in her expressive grey eyes. His own eyes glittered with fierce triumph as he controlled her passionate frenzy, channelling and refining it into an exquisite mutual torture. Again and again he drove her close to the pinnacle of release with his hands and mouth, imprinting his identity on her mind and body, bombarding her with sensations so intense that she barely registered his subtle resistance to her efforts to take him into her body.