‘So am I,’ she said briskly.
She didn’t want to sound like a lunatic. She didn’t want to admit that his thirty-minute absence and the two phone calls to the room – wrong numbers most likely – had made her paranoid and suspicious, and had trawled up every single feeling of inadequacy she had inside her.
‘Ros, talk to me, please,’ he said pulling her closer until she sat beside him on the mattress.
She felt unwelcome tears spring to her eyes.
‘This is hard for me,’ she said finally.
‘What’s hard?’
‘Being here, in Paris, in this room. Alone with you. I know what that means. I know it means the next step, and I’m scared of that.’
‘It’s not meant to be scary,’ he said, stroking her hand.
She took a breath to summon her courage and the words that had been trapped inside her since they had first kissed.
‘Dom, I think you know me by now. You should know that when I care for something, I really care and I give my heart and soul to it. That something used to be politics, the cause. It still is. But now I care you for too. I care for you so much, more than anything, and it terrifies me that I’m going to get hurt. That you’re going to walk off for a packet of cigarettes one day and realise that you’ve just been wasting your time with the shouty girl with frizzy hair who brings you nothing but trouble.’
‘You’re not the shouty girl,’ he said quietly.
‘Then who am I?’
‘The beautiful, brilliant woman I have fallen in love with.’
The power of his words stunned her into silence.
His hand brushed her shoulder and pushed back the thin cotton of her gown, exposing a pale scoop of flesh. He bent down and kissed it and she shivered at his touch.
She got up slowly and stood between his legs, knowing, but not caring, that she was about to cross a line.
The space between them seemed to take on an electrical charge. Dominic looked up at her, seeking her approval, then gently untied her gown. The flaps fell open, exposing her naked body.
He pulled her closer, and as he kissed her belly, she pressed her hands against the back of his head.
When they pulled apart, she slipped off the gown and it rustled to the floor.
Dominic stood up and she undid his belt, his shirt buttons, stroking her fingers across his downy chest hair.
When he was naked, he kissed her again, this time on the lips, his hands running through her hair.
They fell back on the bed and he positioned himself on top of her. She gasped at his closeness, nerves melding with the excited sensation of skin against skin. She closed her eyes and tried to feel every inch of him: coarse pubic hair, the roughness of his stubble, the softness of the lips that brushed against her breast. She kept her eyes closed, wanting to feel the surprise of where his mouth would go next.
His tongue connected with her nipple and she felt it harden in his mouth.
She tipped her head back in abandon, desperate to heighten every sensation, the pleasure and wantonness, the feeling of being desired.
She had always known that Dominic would be a good lover, but his touch was instinctive, knowing all her sweet spots without her needing to guide him.
A line of soft kisses traced down her abdomen. She knew where his mouth was going and it thrilled and terrified her. She had never been so intimate with another person before, but as his hands parted her thighs and he kissed her, right there in her most secret place, his tongue pushing itself inside her, she groaned in delight.
His sweet strokes sent a pleasure pulse around her body. She didn’t want it to stop, and when he pulled away to put on a condom, she felt maddeningly bereft.
Needing him back inside her, she pushed her knees further apart, and he entered her. She felt her body resist him at first; a short stab of pain that reminded her how closed off her body had been from all touch. But as she relaxed, feeling him sink deeper and deeper into her core, she gripped herself around him until they felt exquisitely bonded.
They moved in rhythm, bodies and breath, until she felt the pressure build in her core, every nerve ending alive. She felt as if she was climbing, higher and higher, her breath getting faster and more desperate, every ounce of passion and emotion she had ever felt compressing into a wild, sweet abandon that ripped through her body like a tidal wave.
His own pleasure was etched on his face and he collapsed on top of her, groaning with release.