Oh, help! Her ribs didn’t feel substantial enough to cage the wild tattoo of her heart. His eyes had turned her resistance to molten desire.
‘I want…’ he said, catching his breath sharply as she nervously touched the tip of her tongue to her dry lips. ‘I want to be feeling your bare breasts against my chest and I want to be hearing your voice begging…pleading. I want to be inside you, Rachel. Will the truth get me where I want to be this time?’
‘You can’t talk to me like that,’ she gasped. ‘It’s…it’s offensive.’
‘It’s the truth, and you’re not offended, Rachel. You’re aroused.’
The achingly erotic words were swirling around in her head, gathering impetus rather than losing impact as, eyes wide and fearful, pink lips slightly parted, she stared helplessly back at him.
‘So am I.’
Rachel willed her eyes not to drop from his face. She could fell the faint beading of perspiration break out over her upper lip. The conflicting emotions were tearing her to pieces.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she managed hoarsely. I’ll show him I can cope with sexual innuendo—not that there had been much innuendo about his comments, she thought ruefully. Advances didn’t get much more direct!
‘Not just when I’m with you—when I see you. Just thinking about you is enough.’ He gave a sudden hard laugh. ‘And I think about you a lot, Rachel. It conjures up a picture of adolescent excess to bring a smile of superiority to your lovely lips. You’re not smiling. Doesn’t it make you feel powerful?’
Powerful! That was the last thing she felt. She’d never felt so helpless in her life. She felt weak, needy, out of control and likely to fall victim to spontaneous combustion any second. Tiny black specks began to dance before her glazed eyes. It took an immense effort to make the buzzing in her ears diminish to a dull roar.
‘Perhaps, Rachel…’ His tone had dropped to a husky, intimate drawl. The jacket he’d unceremoniously dropped was trampled underfoot as he covered the space between them. She had a whimsical image of him trampling all over her will-power with his handmade size elevens. Rejection wasn’t what he read in her face or body and it showed in his self-assurance.
‘Perhaps my gross, offensive words make you feel hot and…’ He drew a sharp, shuddering breath that involved all the muscles of his impressive chest. ‘I like to think of your body warm and moist…ready for me.’ Hands resting on her shoulders, his fingers stroked her neck.
‘It is.’ Whatever residual defences she’d had had crumbled at the first rasp of his erotic confessions.
He reached for her then, pulling her against him with a hungry desperation. His mouth was greedy and hot as his tongue made a slow, lascivious meal of the inner recesses of her parted lips.
‘Rachel…Rachel.’ He was mumbling her name in between open-mouthed kisses and tantalising soft bites. His hands moved jerkily over her body. One arm swept her closer as it tightened around her slender waist until her weight was almost wholly supported by the strength of his braced legs.
She clung, she whimpered as their embrace grew more frenzied and urgent. The sensual maelstrom carried her along until she had no thought in her head that didn’t involve the taste and texture of the man who held her.
‘Where?’ he said, one arm half out of the shirt she had unbuttoned. ‘Where is your room?’ he panted.
‘Over there.’ She gestured vaguely behind her and her arm was still elegantly curved in a graceful arc over her head as he picked her up. Head back, her body curved with sinuous grace, she felt the dragging weight of her hair as it obeyed gravity.
‘I don’t have a double bed,’ she commented, looking up at him with sultry speculation from her narrow single bed. What would he do next…? Each individual nerve fibre in her body was tensed in pleasurable anticipation.
‘We’ll cope,’ he said confidently, straddling her over his knee. ‘This is pretty; I like this.’ His fingers worked at slipping the rouleau loops that held her pale blue camisole together. He didn’t remove it; he just pushed aside the fabric to reveal the peaks of her engorged breasts. ‘But not as pretty as these.’ He laid his hands at either side of her breasts and examined his prize with enraptured eyes.
Rachel groaned in languid ecstasy as his clever tongue set about paying homage to these twin symbols of her femininity. Her head fell forward, her chin angled against the top of his bent head. She let her hands slide, palms flat, from his shoulders down the marvellous sculpted perfection of his back. The action brought her up on her knees. Face still buried between her breasts, Benedict growled and slid his hands under her raised buttocks and a sharp jerk brought her hard against the pulsing evidence of his arousal.