Marcus could feel his hand trembling as he stroked Polly’s damp hair back off her face.
He had waited so long, loved so long, but never once had he imagined there would be—could be—anything like this. He was not a promiscuous man but there had been women, relationships…pleasure; but none of it—none of them—had ever come anywhere near this.
He cupped Polly’s face, wanting to tell her how he felt, how much he loved her, how insanely jealous he had felt tonight seeing her with someone else, but as he turned his head to look down at her he realised that she had fallen deeply asleep.
Very gently he lifted her, touching her tenderly beneath the bedclothes, kissing her lovingly before joining her there. His last thought as he switched off the light was one of awed disbelief that they should have shared what they had just shared.
Polly was having the most blissful dream imaginable. In it she was snuggled up in bed with Marcus, close to his body, totally enveloped in its warmth and his love. Euphorically she moved closer to him, murmuring his name, breathing in the warm scent of his skin, nuzzling her mouth into the warmth of his bare shoulder.
‘Mmm…Marcus…’
He was moving his arm to draw her closer and she could feel the way his mouth was smiling as she touched it.
‘Marcus!’
Bemused, Polly opened her eyes. It wasn’t a dream at all; she was actually in bed with Marcus.
As she tried to sit bolt upright he laughed softly, as though her being there with him was so natural and right that they might have been sharing a bed for years.
‘Mmm…Now that you’ve woken me up, what are you going to do with me?’ he asked her teasingly. But the way his hand was stroking her naked breast and playing with its hardening tip suggested that he knew very well already what it was he wanted to do with her, Polly recognised, as the final shreds of her dream dispersed and full recollection of the events of the evening brought her eyes wide open and her thoughts into confused shock.
No wonder Marcus was behaving the way he was after what she had said…done…
‘Mmm…Nothing to say?’ Marcus was nuzzling her breast, her throat, her mouth, his hands sliding over her, stroking her, positioning her.
Polly wasn’t naive; she knew, of course, that it was possible to have sex in a wide variety of positions, but she and Richard…well, they had been young, inexperienced and…
She gave a small gasp at what Marcus was doing with her…to her…
‘It’s nice like this,’ he was whispering. ‘I can touch all of you as well as…’
Polly gasped again as his fingers stroked her intimately, gently exploring and caressing her. She could feel her body responding to him, reacting to him. Helplessly she closed her eyes and gave in to the surge of desire flooding her.
‘Lie still,’ Marcus was telling her. ‘Let me…please you…like this…’
Polly moaned softly under her breath, unable to silence her pleasure. Marcus moved her again, pushing back the bedclothes so that in the dim light she could just see what he was doing. His body filled hers, fitting her so fully that just to feel him inside her caused her to quiver in a series of tiny convulsions.
‘Marcus…’
She clung to him, unable to do anything other than ride the waves of pleasure that were starting to swamp her. Even the smallest movement of his body within hers seemed to trigger them, tremor after tremor, wave after wave until, the tiny movements became not so much a pleasure but a refined form of torture.
She reached for him, digging her fingers into his forearms as she tried to pull him closer, deeper within her. The suddenness with which he acceded to her hungry demand shocked her at first, robbing her of breath as he drove powerfully within her, but then almost immediately she was moving with him, responding to him, opening to him.
This time her orgasm was deeper, longer, and so intense that it flooded her eyes with tears, bewildering her with the complexity of the emotions it released, leaving her shakily and emotionally needy, wanting to cling to Marcus and to be reassured by him that he felt the same way about her as she did about him. At the same time, defensively agitated, she wanted to deny what she was feeling because it made her feel so afraid of her own vulnerability.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she told Marcus.
‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘We’re both free agents, aren’t we?’
When Polly made no response, his grip on her arms tightened.
‘Polly…’ he began warningly, but Polly had had enough. She had seen him earlier with Suzi, after all. Suzi, whom Briony so much wanted him to marry. Briony! Dear God, what on earth was she going to think if she…?