She shivered and leant into that kiss, knees wobbling under her, hands suddenly coming down to steady herself on his long, powerful thighs. The swollen tightness of her nipples hurt. The very thought of his expert hands on her made her tremble with eagerness and already she was way beyond rational thought or restraint.
‘Please…’ she heard herself say.
‘I want to take my time…I’ve pictured this too often,’ he murmured roughly.
Mesmerised, she stood there, gazing into gorgeous golden eyes shaded by luxuriant black lashes longer and more luxuriant than her own. Just like Jake’s, she conceded, and her throat tightened and she knew that she would have no choice but to tell him about his son now. Intimidated by the thought, she blanked out her mind.
Reaching up, Christien brushed the camisole straps down over her slim forearms, baring the proud, creamy swell of her breasts. The fabric caught on the taut rosy peaks. On fire with wanting, she felt her nightdress fall to her hips and he vented an earthy groan of bold appreciation.
‘Stop looking at me like that…’ she gasped, racked by shamed embarrassment for the terrible hunger that kept her standing there, exposed and desperate for his touch.
‘I can’t…you are exquisite,’ Christien ground out, hauling her to him and closing his mouth to a pouting pink nipple.
All the breath pent-up inside her escaped in a startled gush, her soft lips parting, her head falling back, sweet, intense sensation thrumming through her in a heady tide while the moist heat at the heart of her quickened. His hands on her rounded hips, he roved from one stiff, sensitive bud to the other and she whimpered in response to urge him on. There was only him and what he could make her feel, and what he could make her feel drove out all else.
Long fingers shaping and moulding her tender breasts, he took her lush mouth again and again and the hard, male urgency of his plundering kiss wiped her out. She clung, gasped, felt the nightdress fall away and cried out low in her throat as he let sure fingers explore the slick, wet flesh between her thighs. She was trembling, utterly seduced by the screaming demands of her own body. He brought her down on the bed and stood over her while he hauled off his sweater with something less than cool.
‘Ciel…I forgot how it feels with you, ma belle.’ Dark colour accentuating his proud cheekbones, he stud
ied her with raw intensity.
‘I’ve never forgotten.’ Tabby was deliciously, wickedly aware of the size and the strength of his big, powerful body and the hard ridge of male arousal jutting below the tight jeans he wore left her weak with wanting. Belatedly conscious of her own nudity and the golden eyes flaming hungrily over her, she curled her legs up and he gave her a slashing smile of wicked amusement.
She could not take her eyes off him. His lean bronzed torso bore a triangular pelt of black curls across his pectorals. He was powerfully muscled but as sleek in movement as an athlete. His stomach was washboard-flat and dissected by a silky furrow of dark hair. She watched him unsnap his jeans, skim them down to reveal boxers and long, hair-roughened thighs and the shame of her own excitement almost overwhelmed her.
‘You make me crazy for you…’ Christien groaned, his rasping, sexy accent sending an evocative quiver down her spine.
He pulled her back to him. He made a praiseworthy effort to be cool, seductive and slow the pace with some seductive kissing, but her tongue twinned with his and he shuddered against her and ground his aching shaft into her pelvis with a raw growl low in his throat. Suddenly she was flat on the bed and he was devouring her with a wild, ravaging kiss. Her hunger went rocketing up the temperature scale and she rose up under him and sobbed his name below his marauding mouth, back arching in an agony of longing as he worshipped her breasts with his lips and his teeth.
‘Please—’
‘If I don’t wait, I’ll blow it,’ Christien grated in raw warning.
‘No…you won’t.’ She would have told him anything.
‘Oui…just like the first time, like a stupid, overeager kid, I’ll hurt you!’ Fabulous bone structure rigid, Christien glowered down at her as he struggled to maintain a grip on his fast-shredding control.
‘That wasn’t your fault.’ Tabby pressed her lips to his strong jawline in a soothing gesture as natural to her with Christien as living. ‘It was my first time and I should’ve told you but I was too embarrassed.’
Christien blinked. Her first time? When they met she had been a…virgin? One hundred per cent innocent, pure and untouched? And he hadn’t noticed? He was stunned by the belated awareness that somewhere deep down where he had had no desire to probe he had always had that suspicion, but had never taken it out and faced it before. Why not? Was it possible that he had been reluctant to accept that amount of responsibility?
‘Christien…?’
Golden eyes haunted by rare guilt, he steeled himself to back off, but her small hands were sliding into his hair, shaping his skull, and he looked down into luminous green eyes and fell victim to their enchantment instead. The drugging collision of their mouths ignited the hunger to a frantic fever again and her desperation only increased when he probed the hot, satin sensitivity between her thighs. She was in sensual torment, arching up to him, begging for more with every fibre of her being.
‘I need to be inside you…’ Dark blood delineating his hard cheekbones, Christien dragged her under him.
He plunged his swollen member into her damp, heated core and thrust deep. Sensual shock momentarily held her still. She could feel him stretching her and it had been so long that her own excitement was almost unbearable. His pagan possession thrilled her to the depths of her wanton soul. Her blood roared through her veins and her heart thundered as he drove her into his stormy rhythm. She was flying higher than she had ever flown and then she was crying out his name and her body was jerking, convulsing, breaking apart in a sweet, sweet rush of ecstasy. It felt so good, so wonderful it almost hurt and a surge of tears stung her eyes. His magnificent body shuddered over hers and she clutched him tight in the aftermath. It was as if she had been in suspended animation for almost four years and had suffered a sudden revival. She was in shock.
Christien emerged from the wildest, hottest orgasm of his life and struggled just to breathe again. He rolled over, carrying her with him, and stared down at her in a daze, pushing her tumbled honey-coloured hair back off her flushed, oval face with a lean brown hand that he noticed was trembling. That shook him even more.
Tabby drank in the musky, sexy scent of his damp skin and revelled in the familiarity even as a little voice shrieked inside her that she had just committed an act of insanity.
Christien pressed his lips to her smooth brow and rearranged her slight body over him. ‘Once is never enough with you—’
‘Don’t be greedy,’ she teased, snuggling into him like a homing pigeon, determined not to think about what she was doing.
‘I should have guessed that you were a virgin when we met,’ Christien breathed, for he was only just beginning to disentangle that startling reality from the miasma of misinformation with which he had deliberately fenced his memories of her in the intervening years.