Rejection burned into need; need—that was all, Jay told himself fiercely. The feeling growing within him that she had some kind of unique magnetic pull on his senses was just his imagination.
Ignoring the warnings his brain was trying to give him, he reached for Keira, demanding softly, ‘What is it? What do you want? Tell me.’
The ragged catch in her breath quickened his own arousal. He could feel her trembling, smell the scent of her skin, hear the ache in her low moan of longing.
‘Is it this?’
He had drawn her to him with one strong, sinuous movement that brought her up tightly against his body.
‘Tell me,’ he repeated. ‘Tell me that you want me.’
This was madness—a madness she would regret. Yet somehow she no longer cared.
‘I want you,’ Keira whispered. And as though the admission had released her from all constraint, she could feel the wild, wanton rush of her own hot desire as it stormed through her body, overpowering everything that stood in its way. ‘I want you,’ she repeated unsteadily, but more loudly. ‘I want you…’
‘How? How do you want me? Tell me. Show me. Show me your desire. Show me the way you want me to please you. Talk to me in words and tell me your pleasure.’
What he was asking of her was impossible, but that didn’t stop his words from exciting her almost unbearably.
Their bodies gave off a mutual heat of need through the wet fabric of their clothes. She could smell it, feel it, and breathing it in was like breathing in something headily intoxicating.
Thunder roared overhead, and lightning spat and forked—and Keira’s heartbeat went into overdrive.
She registered the rise and fall of Jay’s chest with a small shuddering breath. In the dim light his eyes shone molten like mercury, his gaze quicksilver, loaded with promise and danger.
The hot, almost feral scent of Jay’s arousal mingling with that of his skin charged a feeling within her so sharp it was almost a pain, and longing leached from her blood into her flesh.
She should not be feeling like this, but it was too late to tell herself that now.
She was torn between her longing for him and her fear because she did so; torn between arousal and animosity, between the intensity of her need to drive him over the edge that would result in him possessing her and the equal intensity of her need to escape from that darkness within herself.
Almost as though he sensed the battle taking place inside her, Jay tightened his hold on her, warning her without words that it was too late now for her to try to escape.
Keira shivered and made a small sound of protest against her own arousal, whispering, ‘No…’
‘Yes.’ Jay overruled her. ‘Yes.’
His mouth was explosively demanding on her own, but Keira didn’t care. His passion was overwhelming her half-hearted attempt at dutiful resistance, and she was more than glad to let it. She had to respond to him. There was no other choice, and nor did she wish for one. This was what she had been yearning and aching for. This was what she had been born for.
The storm had engulfed them both, and Keira was swamped by it. In the warm darkness of the room the sounds of their increasingly aroused breathing, of hands against flesh, shaping, touching, caressing, of mouth against mouth, of tongues twining and seeking, were an erotic counterpoint to the uneven thud of their heartbeats.
Layer upon layer the passion built between them, with each breath, each unsteady pulse-beat taking her higher, Keira recognised. And Jay’s touch fed its heat as his hands shaped her body and his mouth commanded her response.
Outside the storm still raged ignored—until a fiercely bright bolt of lightning flashed outside, briefly filling the room with a brilliant white light.
Keira tensed, dragging her mouth away from Jay’s to look uncertainly towards the window. Jay’s gaze fastened on the rise and fall of Keira’s breasts. The rapid movement of her chest dragged the wet fabric of her blouse against her skin, so that he could see her flesh beneath it. Keira wasn’t looking at the window now. She was looking at him, her nipples dark and hard and straining as tightly against the wet silk of her bra as his erection was straining against his trousers.
The brilliance of the lightning faded, but the accuracy with which Jay found the place where the aureole of her nipple met the curve of her breast caused Keira to gasp out loud, her nipple hardening under the erotic touch of his thumb and forefinger.