Trying to remember the last time that anyone had worried about him, Raul stifled his instinctive desire to flatten her underneath him, sensing with an unusual degree of insight that this would not be a good move.
On the other hand, not flattening her underneath him didn’t seem like a good move either.
‘Are you all right? You’re so, so tense. I can feel it from here.’ She was staring anxiously at his face and Raul realised that she had absolutely no idea that she was responsible for the rocketing levels of his tension.
Exasperated with himself for not being able to control himself around her, he scanned his options swiftly.
‘I need air,’ he ground out, turning and striding out onto the beach in the hope that fresh air and distance might succeed where logic and will power had failed.
What was the matter with him?
Since when had his mind focused on nothing but sex?
He’d always had a high sex-drive, yes, but sex had never before intruded on his every waking moment until the day he’d first met Faith.
He inhaled deeply, searching for some semblance of the control on which he’d always prided himself.
Faced with nothing but the dark expanse of the ocean, the nagging throb in his body eased slightly and some of the tension left his shoulders. But his respite was short lived because he suddenly felt her arms slide around his waist. She leaned her head against his back in an affectionate gesture that took him by surprise.
‘I love you.’ She spoke the words softly but he heard them nonetheless and her honest declaration knocked the last of the breath from his lungs.
He felt at a loss and he never felt like that and when she walked round to stand in front of him, he braced himself for yet another serious disturbance to his emotional well-being.
But she didn’t say a word.
Instead she lifted her hands and slowly undid the buttons on his shirt and slid her hands over his chest. Her fingers were warm and gentle and he sucked in a breath as she pushed the shirt from his shoulders. Then she touched her mouth to his flesh and the arousal he’d been fighting returned with twice the intensity.
Driven by the throbbing ache low in his body, Raul followed his instincts and slid his fingers into her hair, holding her still for his kiss. Passion exploded between them and his mouth devoured hers with explicit, erotic intensity. He felt her slender frame quivering against his, her uninhibited response sending his own levels of arousal soaring into the stratosphere.
But before he could follow his instincts and lower her onto the sand, she eased away from his grip and slid her hands over his chest.
‘You’re an incredible kisser.’
More than happy to demonstrate the full breadth of his skills, Raul reached for her again, but she evaded his grasp and pressed her mouth against his chest, her mouth slowly tracing the line of his body hair.
Then she dropped to her knees in the sand.
Her blonde hair was bright in the moonlight and her green eyes sparkled like jewels as she threw him a look that blew the circuits in his mind. She was pure, lethal seductress and while Raul was still recovering from the shock of that look, she’d apparently finished the task of undressing him because he suddenly discovered that he was naked.
Accustomed to always being the aggressor when it came to sex, Raul’s mind was still dragging far behind his body when he felt the scrape of her nails on his thighs and the warm flick of her tongue.
He uttered an oath and her response was to slide her mouth closer to his potent masculine arousal.
‘Don’t talk,’ she ordered and Raul was more than happy to comply with that particular request because he no longer had the ability to string a sentence together. The subtle brush of her fingers against his bare flesh was so shockingly good that his abdomen clenched in violent anticipation. His body pulsed and throbbed but instead of doing what he ached for her to do, she teased him, as he had teased her so many times before, with lips, tongue and fingers, seducing and exciting until every bit of his body was pumped up and hard with arousal.
Just when he thought he was going to explode, she took him in her mouth and an earthy groan of disbelief tore from his throat.
His mind went totally blank and his entire world centred on that one, throbbing part of him. Nothing existed for him except the raging, burning heat in his loins and the incredible, unbelievable sensations created by her warm, damp, knowing mouth. That part of him was so shockingly sensitised that he was hyper-aware of every tiny movement she made—the flick of her tongue, the warmth of her breath, the brush of her fingers—and then it all merged and he felt his self-control splinter and crack as he was hurled headlong into the most all-consuming, violent, incredible climax of his life.
Completely unaware of time, Raul stood with his eyes tightly shut and his jaw clenched, waiting for his body and brain to return from that place of blind, sexual ecstasy.
Finally he opened his eyes and found himself staring straight into hers.
He opened his mouth, closed it again and then gave up on speech because this was one occasion when actions would definitely speak louder than words.
He lifted her and tumbled her gently down on the sand, his body covering hers in a decisive, possessive movement but immediately she pushed at his chest.
‘I want you on your back,’ she breathed. ‘I haven’t finished.’