The Ultimate Surrender

‘Polly,’ Marcus repeated fiercely as his fingers curled imprisoningly round her upper arm.

He had only meant to hand the robe back to her. That was all. But somehow, once he felt the soft warmth of her skin, that intention was lost, flattened beneath the fierce onslaught of his own desire, and instead of covering her with the robe he was still holding he let it drop to the floor, covering her instead with his own body.

Frantically Polly tried to fend him off, but it was too late. When she had denied any need or desire for Phil Bernstein she had been speaking the truth, but when it came to Marcus himself then she was everything he had accused her of being she acknowledged defencelessly. Then she wanted him…needed him…ached for him so much that—

Deep in her throat she gave a small whimper of pain and self-recrimination, but her body, her emotions, her love, didn’t want to listen.

This was Marcus who was holding her, touching her, wanting her…

No, not here. She tried to warn herself. To him she was just a woman…just a substitute for the woman he must really want…She had no idea why he had returned to the hotel without Suzi. The other girl had been making it plain enough earlier that she wanted him and Marcus must have felt that as strongly as Polly had herself. No wonder he was now so fiercely and angrily aroused. No wonder he was touching her, kissing her with so much starving hunger, she acknowledged as her head fell back under the onslaught of the savage, burning kisses he was pressing against her throat.

From beneath her semi-closed eyelids she could see their entwined reflections in the bathroom mirror. Marcus’s arms were wrapped around her, holding and supporting her. The pale fairness of her skin looked femininely fragile in contrast to the darker, more bronzed masculinity of his, just as the raw, male definition of the muscles beneath his skin highlighted the soft, female roundness of her own body. Male to female, female to male—how perfect they looked together.

A sharp shudder went through her and she moaned under her breath, her eyes closing completely as Marcus’s hand cupped her breast. Small, intensely violent shudders of pleasure burned through her, almost too intense to be borne.

She was thirty-seven years old and nothing she had experienced, either with Richard or since, in the celibate years of her widowhood, had prepared her for what she was feeling now.

Shockingly, she was suddenly hungry for everything that Marcus could give her, every last drop of sensation and pleasure—all of it. All of him.

Her own hands reached out to smooth the taut muscles of his arms, his skin. He felt male and alive, the movement of his muscles somehow so different from her own. Behind her closed eyelids she could picture him mentally as she touched him, but soon mentally visualising him wasn’t enough—she wanted to see him in reality. Her eyes flickered open as she spread her hands as wide as she could over his back, which was strong, alien, exciting. His skin felt so hard, and hot. Richard, while tall, had been more angular than Marcus, less heavily muscled, more of a boy still than a man.

‘Polly.’

She could hear the raw urgency in his voice and at some deep level her senses recognised the sharp need wrapped in the rough velvet huskiness, and she responded to it, sensually, triumphantly, pleased that she could so affect him. Her hand lifted to his face; her fingertips stroked exploratively along his jaw, which was excitingly rough where his beard was growing in a betraying dark shadow. A frisson of sensation ripped through her sensitive body, as intense and betraying as though he had actually bent his head and rubbed that faint raspiness against the most sensitive parts of her.

Slowly she traced the shape of his mouth, her eyes luminous with emotion and expectation. Her lips had parted, her breathing quick and unsteady.

Mesmerised, she returned the intensity of his concentrated fixation on her, gaze to gaze, neither of them moving, and yet somehow she felt as though they were moving together in some secret, intimate dance, following a tune that only they could hear. Her fingers stilled against his mouth and Marcus started to caress them, delicately, with little licks and nibbles, until she was moaning out loud—a soft, keening sound; the sound of a woman.

A woman…Yes, that was what she was now—a woman, not a girl, and Marcus was her man!

Unable to stop herself, she glanced sideways into the mirror again. He still had the towel he had picked up when she’d walked into the bathroom draped round his hips.

‘Take it off,’ she told him thickly, touching it with her free hand. ‘I want to see all of you, please.’

Silently Marcus did as she commanded whilst Polly drew in her breath, held it and then let it out again on a slow, shuddering sigh. Automatically she reached out to touch him, her fingertips sketching the shape of his shoulders and arms, registering the faint tremor of his muscles as she stroked delicately along his forearm, and then the far stronger tremor that shook him when she touched his waist, his hip, the hard flat planes of his buttocks…