‘What is it…? What’s wrong?’
Alarm and apprehension contracted her muscles, memories of the past and his contempt of her overwhelming the delicious languor with which she had woken.
Dominic reached out to
touch her, his fingertips tracing the outline of her face, following the curve of her mouth, before suddenly he moved away.
She heard the bedclothes rustle and thought that he was leaving her until he said slowly, ‘Nothing…nothing at all. You’re even more than I’d imagined, Kate,’ he added softly. ‘For eight years I’ve carried with me an image of you…of how you looked in my bed…and for most of those eight years I’ve hated you and myself because I wanted you.’ He reached out again and slid his fingers through her hair, tilting her face so that he could look into her eyes.
‘I’ve been so wrong about you,’ he told her rawly, ‘Can you forgive me?’
It wasn’t a declaration of love or adoration, but it held a ring of genuine remorse that made her ache both for him and for herself.
‘I should have realised…seen…’ he went on.
‘How could you have done? I was Ricky’s wife.’
‘But you’re not any more—thank God,’ he interrupted her roughly, his voice taking on a yearning quality as he added thickly, ‘Kate, I want you so much.’
Instinctively, blindly, she raised her face to his, his fingers sliding down to grip the delicate bones of her shoulders, tension hardening his body as he muttered against her ear, ‘I hope you mean this, Kate, because I’m afraid if you don’t, it’s too late for turning back now. Eight years I’ve ached for you…dreamed about you, cursed the day I ever met you. You’ve become almost an obsession to me, Kate, and now…’
‘And now what?’ she asked lightly, suddenly almost afraid of the tension surrounding them both; afraid of placing too much meaning in what he was saying to her.
‘And now I’m almost afraid to touch you,’ he admitted huskily.
Her apprehension dropped away. Slowly she reached up and touched his mouth with her fingers, drawn to do so by a compulsion that had stalked her for days.
‘Don’t be,’ she whispered as she felt the firm flesh burn beneath her touch, and shivered herself in response.
‘Kate!’ He said her name on a hoarse note of need, obliterated as he pressed his mouth to the palm of her hand, his tongue slightly rough and totally erotic as it moved against her skin.
From her palm his lips moved up along her arm, sensitising her skin until she felt as though it burned with a million tiny electric impulses.
It seemed to be a lifetime before he reached her mouth to take her feverishly eager response to him. Her arms wound fiercely round his neck, her fingers shaping the hard bones of his skull beneath the silky thickness of his hair.
When his hand cupped her breast she moaned through his kiss, the sound trapped deep in her throat but obviously recognised by him, and his kiss hardened into dark passion in response to the eager stiffening of her nipple beneath his touch.
When his mouth left hers to move down the slimness of her throat she dragged in lungfuls of air, shuddering violently when she felt it against the hardened peak of her breast.
Her body arched against his mouth in longing and in pleasure, her fingers digging into the bunched muscles of his shoulders.
Against her she could feel his arousal, his desire feeding on and fuelling her own, the heat she could feel moving slowly through her veins echoed by the way his skin burned under her touch.
His mouth found her other breast, tugging gently on her swollen nipple until she felt almost faint with the frenzy of feeling he was arousing inside her.
Her desire was as great as it had been last night, but this time he was not rushing their lovemaking, but drawing out the pleasure of it until it stretched like an almost too fine note of music that ravished almost to the point of pain.
Beneath her hands his skin felt like warm satin, fluid and yet firm. She touched his chest tentatively, stopping suddenly as the past caught up with her and she heard Ricky’s voice, sharp with dislike as he pushed her away from his body, contemptuous of her hesitantly naïve caresses.
‘Kate…’
Her eyes focused anxiously on Dominic’s, trying to hold their steady regard. ‘What is it?’
Her mind jumped, veering sharply away from telling him. She wanted to know the full intimacy of his body, to caress him with her hands and lips, but the past would not release its hold on her. She felt Dominic’s glance drop to where her fingers lay curled mutely against his chest, and felt him sigh and knew he was aware of her reluctance to touch him. But he did not know the reason why. She was frightened…haunted by the lingering poison left by Ricky’s cruelty; and haunted too by the fact that once this man also had rejected her. It was all right as long as he was the one doing the caressing…making the running, but though there was desire between them, there was no trust, she thought sadly.
‘Kate.’
His eyes burned dark gold in the immobility of his face, his chest rising and falling sharply, his skin flushed and hot. His hand cupped her face, his mouth moving gently against her own, and then far less gently as he felt her eager response. This was something she felt safe with.