‘Oh, yes, you do!’ Heather said bitterly. ‘You’re so contemptuous of me that you don’t care whether I’m in this bed or not! You don’t even care whether you’re wearing anything or not! Because as far as you’re concerned I might just as well be a…a…sack of potatoes!’
In the tense silence that greeted this remark Theo reached out and took her hand.
‘Except,’ he whispered roughly, ‘a sack of potatoes wouldn’t have this effect on me!’
Heather felt the hard throb of his erection, and for a few seconds time seemed to stand still. The sexual awareness which had been kept under tabs for so long broke through its flimsy barriers and rushed through her like a tidal wave.
She could hear her own uneven breathing, like someone who has completed a marathon uphill. Every muscle in her body was quivering. He still had his hand covering hers, forcing her to feel for herself the effect of her proximity.
‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘I don’t think what you’re feeling is the result of a man who is contemptuous of you…’
‘You need…need to go and sleep somewhere else…’
‘And then pretend in the morning that none of this happened? Why would I do that?’ He released her hand, but only so that he could smooth his fingers over her waist, then under the small cropped vest to the bountiful curve of her breast.
Theo groaned. Take away the shapeless garments and she was all woman, all voluptuous, curvy woman, with breasts a man could lose himself in.
With one swift movement he angled his body up so that he was looking down at her.
In the half-light he looked devilishly sexy. His arms were strongly muscled and his beautiful mouth…his beautiful mouth was drawing closer.
With a stifled, hungry gasp, Heather closed her eyes and was lost in his urgent, devouring kiss. With a will of their own her arms curved around his neck, pulling him towards her, and her body writhed, pleading to be stilled.
Eventually, Theo drew back from the kiss—but only so that he could transfer his attention to her neck.
Had he wanted this all along? Had he watched her without even realising it himself? Created fantasies around her? He didn’t think so, but if he hadn’t why was it now that his body was acting as though attaining the conquest of some private yearning?
He roughly pushed up her vest and then kneeled back on his haunches, the better to appreciate what he had known all along. She wasn’t built along the lines of those stick insects he went out with. As a connoisseur of women’s bodies, he could say with his hand on his heart that he had never before set eyes on such gloriously abundant breasts. He reached down and felt the weight of them in his hands, and then, very slowly, appreciating every second of the experience, he rubbed the pads of his thumbs over her defined nipples. The tips were hard and he watched, fascinated and unbearably turned on, as she wriggled under his touch, her eyes still firmly closed and her hands balled into fists.
‘You have amazing breasts,’ he breathed shakily, and her eyes flickered open.
‘By that, I take it you mean big?’ She had never, ever associated the word big with anything complimentary, at least not when it came to her body, but the way he was looking at her now was making her feel very sexy, very proud of the breasts she had become accustomed to concealing.
‘Amazing,’ he corrected. He bent down and tenderly began to suckle on one full nipple, licking and drawing the swollen bud into his mouth until she was moaning with pleasure.
Heather feverishly lifted the vest over her head while he continued his assault on her breasts, dividing his attention between the two until she thought she was literally going to pass out from ecstasy. During those long nights when she had wistfully wondered what it would be like to have him make love to her, see her as a woman instead of someone he had grown accustomed to having around, the way you might grow accustomed to having a pot plant around, during those nights she had never dreamed that the reality would be so exquisitely more fulfilling.
With every fibre of her body she responded to his caress.
She reached to touch him, to feel him, and shuddered with a heady sense of power when he groaned in response.
So this was what it felt like to have this beautiful, wonderful, clever man surrender! To see him shed that formidable control! She arched up and he wrenched the shorts off her, hands hot and urgent.
Heather shifted and felt his hands cover her down there, then his fingers were exploring her telling wetness, rubbing and pressing against the pulsating sensitised bud that sent shock waves of pleasure racing through her.
With a feeling of aching, pounding anticipation, she felt his mouth travel over the flat planes of her stomach—the stomach she had always unfavourably compared to her sister’s, the stomach he didn’t seem repulsed by—until he was nuzzling into the soft downy hair that veiled her womanhood.
‘You can’t!’ Heather gasped, and he looked up and met her eyes with an amused smile.
‘Have you never been touched there before?’
‘Not in that way!’
‘What way?’ Her look was a mixture of innocence and excitement, and it slammed straight through him, making his blood boil with desire. For one brief moment Theo wondered where all this suffocating sexual tension was coming from. For a man who prided himself on being an expert lover, a lover who took his time and was a master of finesse, he seemed to have been reduced to a wild animal with only one thought on his mind—possession.
Submitting to primal urges he thought he had mastered a long time ago, Theo breathed in her erotic, musky smell and tenderly flicked his tongue into her.
It took a superhuman feat of will-power not to rise up and thrust into her. Her wetness was driving him crazy, as was her wanton writhing as he explored her with his mouth. Her soft femininity was slippery, and the sweetest thing he had ever tasted. He knew when she was about to tip over the brink, and before she could do that, he quickly and efficiently took the necessary precautions.
By the time he took her, Heather was well on the way to cresting the peak, and just a few deep thrusts sent her hurtling into a sensory experience that was unique for her. Her whole body shuddered as she surrendered to the waves of pleasure that crashed through her, eventually subsiding into a warm glow of pure contentment.
From restless slumber, she was now fully awake. Actually, her body felt charged in a way it never had before. To think that this beautiful man had brought her to such heights, had sated himself in her, filled her with absolute joy.
She turned to him and sighed. ‘That was wonderful.’ A tiny frown creased her forehead. ‘Was it okay for you? I mean,’ she continued anxiously, ‘I’m not very experienced…’
‘You turn me on just the way you are,’ Theo growled, pulling her closer to him and possessively draping one leg over hers.
‘Did you mean for this to happen?’ Heather asked. ‘No, of course you didn’t. So why did you make love to me?’
Faced with this direct question, Theo was lost for an answer.
‘I mean, was it just because I happened to be in your bed? I know you probably think I’m crazy,’ Heather continued, suddenly aware that this might not quite qualify as lazy post coital conversation, ‘but I really need to know, Theo.’
‘Why? Didn’t you enjoy it?’ He stroked her hair away from her face, touched by her anxiety.
‘I thought it was the most wonderful experience I’ve ever had,’ she answered truthfully, and that was enough to send a charge of pure masculine pride soaring through him.
‘The most wonderful…?’ he teased, smiling when she nodded. ‘That puts a lot of pressure on me,’ he said gravely.
In a split second Heather realised the error of her ways. She had succumbed to him without so much as a struggle. A few half-hearted protests, but then she had foolishly yielded—of course he would now be looking at the whole situation with a sense of mounting alarm.
Theo did not like women who clung. Nor, she imagined, would he like women who behaved like inexperienced, infatuated adolescents. He would want them cool and carefully controlled. She wondered how to backtrack and, even more importantly, how she could assume the façade of being cool and controlled when she had never been either.
‘I’m sorry,’ Heather apologised stiffly.
‘Why be sorry? We just shared a mind-blowing experience.’ And out of nowhere, Theo mused. Which just went to prove the point that around every corner a surprise lay in wait. Who would have thought that the woman whose company he had found utterly relaxing and unthreatening could conceal such depths of fire?
‘Which,’ he added lazily, ‘is why I feel under such pressure. I mean, how am I going to top my first performance?’
Heather felt herself go weak with relief. Why would he say that if his intention was to curse himself for his weakness and chuck her out?
Thoughts of moving on with her independent life flew out of her head faster than water pouring down a plughole. She loved this man. They had made love and it had been, in his very own words, a mind-blowing experience. She felt as though she was suddenly walking on the clouds. Giddy with joy, she curled against him.
‘You have a very sexy body,’ Theo murmured, filling his hand with her lush breast. ‘Why do you spend so much time covering it up?’