She knew he was looking at her, waiting for her response, but she couldn’t say anything. Her throat aching with tension, she acknowledged that she wanted to feel his skin against her own and that she was certainly old enough, mature enough to be able to say freely and openly what she wanted, but for some reason she felt as shy and tongue-tied as though she were still a young girl, wanting to be shown how to appreciate her own sexuality, rather than a woman who already knew and understood it.
Tensely she reached for the top button of the shirt, willing herself to take responsibility for her own actions as an adult should, but her fingers were trembling so much that she couldn’t even unfasten it.
Her eyes filled with unwanted angry tears, which she tried to blink away.
‘What is it?’ Marsh asked her softly. ‘Have I got it wrong, Debra? Don’t you want me?’
As she looked away from him Debra saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Beneath his shirt the tautness of her erect nipples was clearly discernible.
‘You know it isn’t that,’ she told him huskily, flushing a little at her own too abrupt and clumsy delivery of the words.
He too was looking at her breasts now. He reached out and circled one taut nipple with the tip of his fingers, a surge of colour suddenly darkening his skin as he withdrew his hand from her and asked unevenly, ‘What is it, then? Is my timing wrong—is that it?’
She ought to have been able to say yes, but knew that it would be a lie. Against all logic she wanted him now more than she had ever done; the sweet taste of pleasure to wipe out the acid taste of fear?
‘I just feel so... You shouldn’t have to undress me,’ she told him with fierce self-anger. ‘You aren’t coercing me... I—’
‘Would it make any difference if I said that I wanted to do it?’ he asked her and, although he was smiling, she could see that he meant it.
Her heart missed a beat and then doubled.
Unlike hers, his fingers were deft as he gently unfastened the buttons, but once he had them unfastened, instead of removing the shirt he slid his hands inside it, pulling her against him, holding her with one hand while the other cupped her face, his fingers burrowing into her hair as he bent his head to kiss her. Slowly at first, as though he wanted to take his time and savour her, and then abruptly, with a sudden sharp hunger that stopped the breath in her lungs and made her press herself up against him as she returned the pressure of his kiss, eagerly opening her mouth, touching his tongue with her own, stroking and caressing it while her heart thumped frantically at the sharp acceleration of her need.
Now she could feel Marsh’s hands on her skin, pushing aside the shirt, as he buried his mouth in the curve of her shoulder and groaned that he couldn’t wait any longer to feel all of her against him; that he couldn’t wait to stroke and touch her skin, to know its warmth and curves, to taste its silky sweetness.
His words were only an echo of her own earlier desire, and she tensed and trembled, remembering it.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her, lifting his head to look at her. ‘Have I upset you? Shocked you?’
She shook her head.
‘What is it, then?’
He was holding her slightly away from him and as he moved, brushing the hair off her face, his body just touched her breasts.
The sensation that pierced her, darting through her like fire, made her draw in her breath, and suddenly she knew that no matter what happened, no matter what price she might later have to pay, she could not, she would not deny herself this time with him.
Even if for him it was merely desire... merely sex? She banished the thought quickly before she could dwell on it, silencing the last of her doubts, drowning them out with the sound of her own voice as she told him truthfully and quickly, ‘Before. ..I wanted to look at you. To touch you,’ she said helplessly. ‘I wanted...’ She swallowed, unable to continue.
‘Come here.’
He looked at her, watching the delicate colour flood her skin, and then said softly, ‘Give me your hand.’
Shakily she did so, tensing as he placed it on his towel and then covered it with his own, tugging firmly so that the towel fell away.
‘Now you can look and touch just as much as you like,’ he told her huskily, ‘providing you don’t mind me wanting to do the same to you,’ and then she was in his arms and he was kissing her with the kind of hunger and urgency she had imagined was something only dreamed up by the over-active imaginations of fiction writers and, what was more, she was responding to him just as passionately.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘ALL RIGHT.’
Dazedly Debra opened her eyes. She was wrapped in Marsh’s arms, her head tucked into his shoulder, his hand resting on her waist as they lay together in his bed.
She was still breathing a little unsteadily, still caught up in the awe and wonder of the physical pleasure she had experienced, and still a little afraid of it.
She had thought she had known everything there was to know about her own body, about its reactions and desires, but the intensity of the orgasm she had just experienced was way, way outside her experience.
And even more alien to her awareness of herself had been the pleas she had whispered, the needs she had expressed; the things she had said as Marsh had made love to her verbally as well as physically.