Fine? Just fine? Oh, well. He had done this before. It was only momentous for her. Nevertheless, she sighed deeply and he grimaced.
‘Don’t move,’ he said roughly.
‘Why not?’
‘Because if you do this will be over before it’s begun.’
Oh. ‘It was just a sigh.’
‘That’s all it’ll take.’
He really wanted her that much? Perhaps he did. She could feel him pulsating deep within her. She could see the tension in his face and straining of his muscles. He looked as though it was taking every drop of his control to hold back, and it wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t what she needed.
‘What if I can’t help it?’ she said, the ache spreading through her body demanding release with an insistence that was impossible to ignore.
‘Try.’
‘Impossible. Sorry.’ It was too much. The need gnawing away inside her was too strong to control. Her hips shifted of their own accord, and Theo groaned.
‘Heaven help me,’ he said through gritted teeth before lowering his head and kissing her fiercely as he slowly withdrew, dragging along all her nerve endings, sending new thrills of desire coursing through her, and then plunged back into her.
The rhythmic pull and push of his movements stoked the flames inside her, melting her bones and boiling her blood. Her hands somehow found their way to his shoulders and she could feel his muscles shift beneath her palms with every strong powerful thrust of his body.
He was blowing her mind, and within minutes her breath was coming in short sharp pants, her heart was thundering so hard it could well escape and all she could think about was racing towards a finishing line that was simultaneously rushing towards her.
Stifling a sob of desperation, Kate wrapped her arms round Theo’s neck and her legs round his waist, and it must have been the right thing to do because suddenly he was moving faster and harder, pounding into her over and over again, pushing her higher and higher, until the unbearable tension within her snapped and, with a cry, she shattered.
White-hot pulses of pleasure, stronger and more powerful than anything she’d ever experienced, barrelled through her body. Stars exploded behind her eyelids and lit up her nerve-endings. She felt as if she were falling apart, and it was so intensely incredible that she barely registered Theo letting out a tortured groan, thrusting one last time and then bu
rying himself deep and pumping into her over and over again.
As he collapsed on top of her and they lay there for a moment, all ragged breath, pounding hearts and long sweaty tangled limbs, Kate reeled with the intensity and magnificence of it all.
She’d done it, she thought, feeling weak, limp and completely wrung out. She’d actually done it. She wasn’t frigid. She wasn’t undesirable. All those years of disappointment and rejection, wiped right out. All those horrible mean comments, wrong.
The enormity of everything that had happened this evening suddenly struck and emotion welled up inside her, a swirling mix of relief and triumph, inexplicably tinged with guilt and sorrow, so massive, so overwhelming that she felt a tear escape and trickle down her temple.
But this really wasn’t the time or the place to dissolve into a puddle, she told herself, choking off a sob and blinking frantically as Theo carefully levered himself off her and rolled onto his back. She’d save that for the privacy of home. Right now she needed to act as if everything was fine. Deep breaths and composure. That was what was called for here.
‘So that exceeded my expectations,’ she said huskily, with a nonchalance that sounded almost genuine.
‘Good.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
She thought she detected a note of aloofness in his voice that was at odds with the gruff impatience that had dominated his tone for the last half an hour, and glanced over. He was staring at the ceiling, and gone was the raw passion and the fevered tension, she saw. His expression didn’t bear even the hint of a reaction to what had just happened. He certainly wasn’t about to collapse into a quivering heap as she was. He was back in control, and this whole mad little interlude was over.
‘So...ah... I should probably, really, go now,’ she said, keen to leave before the situation could get any more awkward but unsure of the etiquette.
‘You should,’ he said, pushing himself up off the bed and, with barely a backwards glance, heading in the direction of what she presumed was the bathroom. ‘Get dressed and I’ll call you a cab.’
* * *
Kate spent much of the following forty-eight hours either breathlessly reliving the earth-shattering encounter with Theo in his office in gloriously vivid Technicolor or being battered by the emotions she’d managed to stave off when lying there in his bed.
At home, there was no one to witness the moments she drifted off into a sizzling daydream from which she generally emerged hot, flushed and trembling. Or the occasions when muscles she never knew she had twanged and she suddenly felt so vulnerable, so raw, it brought a lump to her throat and tears to her eyes. Alone, safely cocooned within her own four walls, she had no need for defences, which was just as well because any she might have mounted would have been crushed within seconds. The enormity of what had happened—not to mention the speed and unexpectedness of it—was simply too overwhelming.