‘You do it. Touch me.’ He bent his head to take one nipple in his mouth, sucking gently. The sensation lanced through her.
She struggled with the fastenings at the waistband, then, with those free, ventured down to the buttons of the straining placket. Distracted by Chance’s tormenting attentions to first one, then the other breast, the whisper of apprehension she had felt vanished like mist on a hot day. She just wanted to touch him, to explore to…Oh! So hot, so hard and yet the skin is so soft. So big.
Chance gave a groan that was half-prayer, half-pain, and stood up to tug his trousers off. The sight of his naked body had been haunting her dreams ever since the beach. Now, in the half-shadows and cool dimness of the hut, he seemed both more real and strangely unfamiliar. ‘Chance,’ she whispered, holding out her arms to him for reassurance.
Then their bodies were twining together, skin to skin, and she looked up into his face, awed by the strength and the tenderness and the sheer heat of desire that flowed from him. She shifted beneath him, finding the position that felt right, raising her knees as he settled between her thighs and she felt the pressure at the core of her, gentle but inexorable. She swallowed, but raised her hips a little and felt him enter her.
‘Sweetheart?’
‘Yes. Oh, yes, Chance, love me.’ She had expected pain, but there was none, just an incredible sensation of possession, of joining, of fullness as he thrust into her. And then they were locked, she felt his hip bones against hers and drew in a deep, shuddering breath of fulfilment.
‘Did I hurt you?’ She realised he was not moving, although she could feel the incredible sensation of his body within her as her own muscles caressed him without conscious direction.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Should it have hurt?’
‘I believe so.’ He laughed softly, dipping his head to kiss her. ‘All that riding and walking and physical effort had a benefit.’ She tried experimentally controlling those mysterious inner muscles she had just discovered, and he broke off with a gasp. ‘Witch!’
‘Aren’t I supposed to move?’ If she tilted her pelvis just so…‘Oh!’
‘We both are,’he said with a chuckle that sounded breathless. ‘And I don’t think I can wait any longer.’
The long, slow rhythm of thrust, withdrawal and thrust took her by surprise, then she began to move with him, tentatively at first, then using what she had learnt to tease and torment in her turn. And the wonderful sensations he had conjured up with his mouth in the cabin of the Ghost were building again, the same but different, more intense, more widespread, and she stopped thinking, stopped consciously trying to follow his moves and let her head thrash on the pillow as the relentless thrusting possession drove her up, over, down into a crashing release.
But it did not stop. As she regained her senses Chance was still with her, still holding her, still surging into the very core of her. Hazily Alessa opened her eyes and saw his brow was dewed with sweat, his eyes dark with a passion that was so intense she gasped, reaching up to pull his head down so she could close her mouth with his.
Wonderfully, her body was still responding to his, the powerful, demanding ache was building again, even as his strokes became harder, less controlled, more urgent. She let go of his hair and dug her fingers into the hard muscled shoulders as though clinging to a spar in a shipwreck.
‘Come with me,’ he urged hoarsely against her throat, ‘Alessa…now…’
And as his entire body tensed in one massive thrust she felt her own respond again, tightening around him, as the spasms carried them both into lightning-shot darkness. She heard a cry, did not know whose throat it came from, and then slipped into the velvet blackness with a sigh.
‘Alessa?’
‘Mmm?’ She kept her eyes shut, letting all her other senses explore. There was a hot weight over her body, the touch of skin against skin, the tingling friction of male hair against her breasts, her thighs. She felt damp and sticky in embarrassingly intimate places and found she did not care. His hand was stroking her hair and her cheek and from the touch of his breath against her lips she knew, when she opened her eyes, she would be looking into his.
She smiled, anticipating the moment, and let her lids flutter up. ‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’ There was just the hint of anxiety in the deep, masculine voice. He is worried in case I am not satisfied, she realised with a little shock of power. All that wonderful masculinity, all that strength and confidence and tender skill and he is uncertain.
‘Chance. That was beyond words.’ There, the flicker of relief, of triumph, of male confidence fully restored. ‘I do love you.’ But was I all right for him? The sudden lance of unease caught her by surprise. She had been so swept up in him, so focused on following his lead, she had not thought of how she should please him best. ‘Was I…did I please you?’
‘I had no idea it could be like that,’ he said, levering himself up on his elbows and rolling over on to his back with a sigh of deep satisfaction. ‘Because it was you, because of your love, I will never be the same again. There will never be another first time.’ He turned his head on the pillow and smiled at her.
‘But we will rediscover each other, over and over again, and it will be different and deeper and better in so many ways. Yet it will never be this first time again. I know now I am not going to break simply because I love you so intensely and you return that with all your strength and your trust and your sweetness. There is a future and it is full of loving you.’
‘How did you know how I felt?’ Alessa rolled on to her side and wrapped her arms around Chance’s torso. ‘I could not put it into words, but that is how it is for me.’
They were silent for a while, listening to each other breathe, letting their fingertips trace and explore over damp skin, into hidden curves. ‘Chance,’ Alessa said after a while.
‘Yes? Have you any idea how soft your skin is behind your ear?’
‘Chance, when we go back, until we are married, we are going to have to…to behave, aren’t we? We must if we are going to have this big society wedding and quash all the rumours.’
‘No, we are not.’He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, then standing up and stretching. Alessa watched him, wondering if she was ever going to get used to seeing his masculine beauty, so openly displayed, just for her eyes. ‘We will conduct a secret affair. We will go to masked balls and slip away in a gondola, returning at midnight for the unmasking. We will hire a gondola to take us to a deserted island in the lagoon. I will climb the vines to your balcony at one in the morning. And everyone will wonder why your skin glows and your eyes shine and why I am intolerably smug.’
‘That sounds wonderful. Do we have to get married at all?’ she teased. ‘Can’t we just continue having a wildly romantic affair?’
‘I think we will just have to pretend,’he said, turning with a smile to look down at her. ‘I could promise to climb the ivy to your room at least once a week when we are at Freshwater—our country estate. And you can sneak out at night wearing a domino and loo mask and meet a mysterious masked stranger at masquerades when we are in London. But I really think we should get married.’ He sat down and ran the palm of his hand lightly over the curve of her belly.