Lily Archer looked up at him with those big dark blue eyes and made him feel...like a man.
‘I think that’s my job.’ His voice sounded like a croak. His hands felt like a fumbling teenager’s on his first date. He peeled away her top, revealing her slim chest, small, pert breasts and her amazing abs and his breath stalled in his throat. ‘Wow.’
She gave him a sheepish look. ‘They look bigger when I’m wearing a push-up bra. It’s sort of like false advertising.’
Raoul smiled as he laid a hand on the flat plane of her abdomen. ‘Your breasts are beautiful.’
She shuddered under his touch. ‘I like your hands. They’re...gentle.’
‘I like your body.’ He stroked his hand down the length of her cotton-trouser-clad thigh.
Her gaze fell away from his. ‘It’s ugly.’
He pushed her chin up so her eyes met his again. ‘It’s not ugly. It’s who you are now. You can’t change it even if you wanted to.’
She gave him a frustrated, anguished look. ‘I don’t want to be like this. I wish I could get rid of my scars. It’s not who I am now. I want to move on. I hate that I have this mark of who I was back then permanently etched on my body like a tattoo. I’m not that girl any more. I just got lost for a while and I’ve had to pay for it ever since.’
Raoul knew exactly what she was feeling. He wanted to move on, too. He didn’t want to be trapped in his body, in a body that didn’t represent him as a person, as a man. But what other choice did he have? What choice did she have? They were both trapped.
He brushed back her hair from her forehead. ‘Do you think I want to live in my body the way it is? I lie awake at night terrified that this might be as good as it ever gets. You have some scars. I know that’s hard to deal with, but they’re only as permanent as you allow them to be.’
Wasn’t there something in that he should be taking on board?
‘I want to be normal.’
‘You are normal.’ His body registered just how normal by the way it was responding to hers. Hard, urgent, desperate.
She traced a fingertip over his bottom lip. ‘Make me feel normal. Make me forget about anything but what’s here and now.’
What was here and now was how wonderful, how magical her mouth felt beneath his. He gathered her close, delighting in the feel of her moulding herself to him as if she had been looking for him all of her life. There were no awkward shifts or adjustments. She moved into him like a key fitting into a tricky lock.
It felt so good to have her that close. Close enough to feel the contours of her body against his. He felt a sense of rightness that he had never felt before.
He tried to push the thought aside but it kept coming back, niggling at him, jostling him, urging him like an obsessed terrier dropping a tennis ball at its handler’s feet.
He wanted this feeling to last.
* * *
Lily felt his hands moving over her so tenderly, so carefully. He was taking his time, peeling away her clothes piece by piece, kissing each part of her he exposed in warm, soft-as-air caresses that made her spine tingle like bubbles in a glass. He kissed each and every scar on her arms, his mouth and lips spreading a pathway of heat through her body.
He helped her get out of her cotton trousers, his mouth moving down her stomach, his tongue taking a little dip in the tiny pool of her belly button before coming to the top of her knickers.
She stiffened, her stomach churning. Was he thinking how awful the tops of her legs looked compared to his ex-fiancée’s? She bet Clarissa Moncrieff’s gorgeous long cellulite-free legs didn’t have a single blemish on them. She bet his ex had waxed and exfoliated and spray-tanned regularly. Was he thinking how plain and sensible Lily’s chain-store underwear was? Any moment now he would pull back in revulsion, make some excuse that this couldn’t continue. Oh, God! Why had she asked him to make love to her? It was so desperate and gauche of her.
‘Hey, hey, hey.’ His voice was a soft, deep, soothing rumble, his hand gentle and steadying as it came to rest on her stomach. ‘You’re beautiful. I mean it, Lily. So very natural and beautiful.’
Her breath caught in her chest as he began stroking her thighs in long, smooth gentle caresses that made her tense muscles slowly relax. She stopped breathing altogether when he put his mouth to her left thigh, his lips moving over her scarred flesh like the brush of a teasing feather.
He did the same to her right thigh, moving tantalisingly close to the moist, swollen, pulsing heart of her. ‘I want... I want...’ She didn’t know how to ask for the release she craved. She had never felt the need building quite like this before. It was rising to a crescendo in her body, every nerve tensing and twitching in feverish anticipation.
He stroked a lazy finger down the cotton-covered seam of her body. Close but not close enough. She gave a little whimper and arched her spine. ‘I want you.’
He peeled away her knickers and traced her seam again. It made her gasp to feel the thickness of his finger against her moist heat. He brought his mouth to her, gently tasting her essence, teasing her until she was grasping his head like a drowning person with a rescuer. The sensations started as a ripple and then came smashing over her in a series of waves. She cried out in a breathless, gasping sobs, shaken to the core of her being by the out-of-control passion—not someone else’s, but her own.
‘You’re very good at this.’ Did she sound unsophisticated?
He gave her a smouldering smile. ‘So are you.’