He shuddered soundlessly for long minutes, but even when his rigidity began to ease, Nina didn’t dare release him from her fierce embrace. She didn’t know if she could give him what he really needed, but she had promised and she wouldn’t—couldn’t—let him down.
Her muscles trembled from the strain and still she held on. His arms slumped over her hips, his body becoming warm, then hot as their combined heat built up within the thick cocoon of blankets, and the ragged, uneven breathing against her throat became a slow and regular sigh of sound, a tempting lullaby seducing her to sleep.
Time became elastic. Her concentration wavered and she closed her eyes to centre her drifting thoughts, and when she opened them a scant few seconds later, it was morning. The cold grey daylight edging in around the imperfectly pulled curtains had chased the shadows from the room.
And from Ryan’s face.
For a split second, her sleepy brain registered the pure rightness of waking up beside him, but then her dawning consciousness slammed down the barriers.
They were practically nose-to-nose on the pillow, his warmly exhaled breath ruffling against her soft lips, his spicy male scent a tantalising tang in her nostrils. Their bodies were still melded together, his thigh nestled securely between her crooked legs, her arms tucked like folded wings under his as they loosely encircled each other in warm bands of flesh. With one of her arms caught under his side, Nina was forced to lie there contemplating her mistake.
She had allowed herself to get far too involved. She had allowed her fright, her fears, her compassion, to override her caution and now she was trapped by an unwelcome sense of emotional connection to the stranger she held in her arms.
And not only emotional, she thought, as he stirred in his sleep, his long thigh flexing between her legs, his loins resettling even more intimately into the cradle of her hips. Even through their clothes she could feel the firm contours of his manhood nudging into the cusp of her thigh. An electrical thrill shot through her body, the tips of her breasts suddenly erotically sensitised to the purring vibration of his chest, and she decided that it was definitely time to stage a strategic withdrawal.
She had begun inching her lower arm carefully out from under his body when there was a fluttering under his closed eyelids and a faint frown furrowed his brow, pulling slightly at the neat slash of stitches punctuating his left temple. She stilled, waiting for him to settle back down.
‘Nina?’ he muttered. He inhaled deeply and his frown was replaced by a sensuous smile of sleepy satisfaction as he identified the unique personal fragrance that spilled across the pillow. ‘Nina…’
Eyes still closed, his head dipped and his mouth homed unerringly in on hers, parting her lips in a leisurely kiss that caused a delicious chaos in her startled senses. He made a soft sound of lazy enjoyment as his open mouth moved enticingly back and forth over the succulent plumpness of her lower lip, taking tiny, nibbling bites along the ripe curve before sucking it into his mouth, creating an erotic, rhythmic tugging that made her toes curl inside her socks.
His hand smoothed up her spine to cup the back of her head, holding her still as the moist string of gentle sips deepened to a slow and lingering exploration. His mouth was as smooth as silk, as slick as satin, his tongue gliding over her teeth, licking into the sultry depths of her feminine being, corrupting her with a fierce pleasure that felt both alien and scorchingly familiar.
What had begun as a light, languorous kiss had suddenly flared into white-hot excitement. Nina was bombarded with overwhelming sensations as Ryan swept her along in his hungry passion, the intimate scrape of his beard, the taste of his spicy-warm tongue, the rasp of his ragged breathing and the musky scent of his arousal, all combining to shatter her illusion that she was safe from the wildness that stalked the darkest corridors of her imagination. Ryan’s hand slid under her sweatshirt and touched her bare skin, then, almost too late, a shocked awareness of what was about to happen crashed over Nina.
She wrenched herself away from him, burning with shame. ‘My God, what are we doing?’
‘We’re doing what comes naturally…making love.’
‘I—no!’ She fought free of the tangled blankets and stumbled out of bed, backing away from him as if he were the devil himself—the devil in a faded sweatshirt with eyes as bright as heaven and a mouth that was pure sin.