She couldn’t remember discarding either her shirt or her briefs, only the mind-destroying pleasure of Daniel’s mouth as it touched her skin, her throat, her breasts, the soft, smooth skin of her waist and stomach and then moving lower.
She shuddered violently as she looked downwards and saw his dark head pressed against her body, her fingers reaching out to tighten convulsively in his dark hair as his fingers gently parted the soft protective folds of her womanhood. She could feel the warmth of his breath against the most intimate part of her body as he touched her gently with his tongue, and her whole body started to shake.
Never, never in her whole life had she experienced such an intensity of sensation, such an awareness of being loved and desired.
She could hear Daniel whispering to her between caresses that the taste of her was the sweetest thing he had ever known, that it was the ambrosia and nectar and the elixir of life itself all rolled into one, and that for the rest of his life he would be so helplessly addicted to the taste of her that there would be no life for him without her.
When he finally gave in to her husky imploring and lifted her up to carry her over to the fire, where he laid her down in the impromptu nest of cushions he had made for her, she could taste her own body in his kiss.
‘Daniel, I want you so much,’ she told him. ‘I want you.’ Her back arched, her soft cry of pleasure as she felt him entering her lost beneath the fierce pressure of a kiss that mimicked the slow thrust of his body within her own.
There had never been any pleasure like this, could never be any pleasure like this, she thought deliriously as her body closed possessively around him, so sensitive to him that each and every movement he made sent a fresh paroxysm of pleasure spinning through her.
The sensation which had begun with the moist pressure of his mouth against her breasts, which had grown and flowered with the intimate caress of his tongue against the most sensitive part of her womanhood, now began again, flowering into a vast explosion of exquisite pleasure, so intense that, as she cried out Daniel’s name, her eyes filled with emotional tears.
‘Look at me,’ Daniel had commanded as he’d entered her, and the intimacy of their shared deep eye-contact had, in its way, been even more intimate than the physical joining of their bodies.
As he reached out and touched her tear-damp face, Daniel’s eyes were dark with awe and emotion.
‘I knew it was going to be good between us,’ he told her rawly. ‘But this…you…You made me feel that I was almost immortal.’ He smoothed the damp hair back off her face and bent his head to kiss her gently and then far more lingeringly.
‘Daniel,’ Christa told him shakily. ‘Tonight I want to be with you…to sleep with you…’ Her eyes searched his face, looking for some sign of hesitation, of rejection, but there was none.
‘Do you honestly think there’s any chance of my letting you do anything else?’ Daniel demanded roughly as he took hold of her hand and raised it, palm upwards, to his lips. ‘If you think I’m going to be happy letting you get more than an arm’s length away from me from now on—’
He let go of her and ran his fingertips gently up her arm, causing her to shiver in soft pleasure.
‘There is one problem, though,’ he told her frowningly. Uncertainly Christa looked at him. What was he going to tell her…? That he didn’t want her permanently in his life? That when he said he loved her he didn’t mean that he would love her forever…? That…?
‘Yes…what…?’ she demanded, dry-mouthed with anxious tension.
‘That safe sex we discussed practising,’ Daniel told her sombrely. ‘Well, we didn’t, did we?’
It took several seconds for his meaning to sink in and, when it had, Christa flushed guiltily. ‘That was my fault. I…I wanted you too much to…to wait or—’
‘No, it wasn’t your fault,’ Daniel corrected her. ‘The responsibility was mine and I should have, but once I’d tasted the sweetness of you and felt your body’s responsiveness to me…the last thing I wanted was anything, anything at all, coming between me and that sweet sensitivity.
‘But, if there should be consequences—’
‘Consequences,’ Christa interrupted him uncertainly.
‘Yes,’ Daniel confirmed, his hand hovering over her soft, femininely rounded belly. ‘If you should have conceived my child, Christa, it will mean marriage. Both you and I know how important security is to a child, how much they need and crave the security of knowing that their parents, both their parents, will always be there for them.’
‘M-marriage?’ Christa stammered, staring at him. ‘But…’
‘Perhaps we should take the precaution of going ahead and getting married anyway…’ Daniel continued.
‘You’d do that? Marry me…just in case I were pregnant…?’
‘I’d marry you tomorrow,’ Daniel told her hoarsely, ‘given half the chance, and whether we’d been practising safe sex or not, that’s the way I feel about you, Christa…the way I want you…totally and permanently. But I know it’s too soon for you to make that kind of commitment. Two days ago you didn’t even believe you could trust me to be honest with you…’
She had hurt him with her refusal to be
lieve in him, Christa acknowledged as she wrapped her arms tightly around him and held him.
But she would never hurt him again—never!
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ARE you awake?’
‘No,’ Christa fibbed, snuggling closer to Daniel’s warm naked body and nuzzling her face into the curve of his shoulder, smiling as he groaned and protested.
‘If you keep wriggling up against me like that you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?’
‘No,’ she denied mock innocently. ‘Why don’t you show me?’
But the teasing laughter died out of her eyes as Daniel took her at her word and started oh, so slowly and erotically caressing her body while he whispered in her ear exactly what he was going to do to her and what she was already doing to him.
‘Daniel, no,’ she protested huskily as her body started to respond to his arousal. ‘You said you wanted an early start this morning, remember?’
‘Yes, but that was before,’ he told her, his voice muffled by the soft weight of her breast as he gently closed his lips around her already taut nipple.
‘Before what?’ Christa demanded, her own voice equally husky.
‘Before I remembered that there are far, far more important things in life than work,’ Daniel responded. ‘Far, far more important.’
Sighing voluptuously, Christa stopped arguing with him. After all, there was nothing she would rather do than lie here in Daniel’s arms.
This fortnight or more had passed with frightening speed, she acknowledged as she ran her fingers down Daniel’s spine, closing her eyes in silent pleasure at the sensation of his skin beneath her fingertips and her awareness of the effect she was having on him.
Another three days and it would be time for her to leave, to return to her own life.