Climax!
Shattering in its power, tempestuous in its rolling rush through every cell in her body, blissful in its aftermath.
Then a long, sweet, sensual kiss, gentling hands, contented sighs, a slow, reluctant parting.
They looked at each other, in their eyes a wordless acceptance of having experienced something special. How special it was to him, Lucy had no idea. In her need to draw some heart-warming admission from him, she remembered a claim he had made earlier today.
‘You said you always used protection,’ she blurted out, secretly—anxiously—watching for some sign that it was different with her for a host of reasons that were emotional, as well as physical.
His mouth curved with some private pleasure. ‘I didn’t want anything to come between us.’
‘But to break a personal rule…’
He smiled into her eyes. ‘Isn’t that what we’re both doing, Lucy? Breaking all the rules we set ourselves? Messing with our work relationship because we wanted this?’
The realisation that it wasn’t sensible for him, either, gave her hopes a boost. But giving in to temptation after eight months…was that really a sign that she was special to him or merely an admission that desire had finally overridden good business sense?
‘Besides, you said I didn’t need protection and you wouldn’t lie about that, Lucy,’ he went on. ‘Not about control. It’s too important to you.’ He trailed his fingers down over her stomach making her flesh leap at his touch. ‘Even just now you called the shots.’
‘Hardly,’ she protested, amazed that he thought she had any control at all over what she felt.
His eyes teased. ‘Didn’t I move to your command?’
Her mind jolted with the memory of Josh inadvertantly suggesting he was a slave to her whims and James then thinking she had dominatrix tendencies. But surely he didn’t really believe that.
‘I don’t remember standing over you with a whip. More like you did what you wanted, as well,’ she replied, mocking his assertion.
He laughed, a happy gloating in his eyes. ‘No complaint. But I shall contest your timing in the next round.’
‘Round? Is that what you call it?’ Again her heart fluttered apprehensively. Did he see this as some kind of contest he had to win? Was that what had really excited him?
‘There’s always a battle of the sexes,’ he answered sardonically, stroking her hair away from her face. ‘And I see no surrender in your eyes. In all probability you’re plotting the next move.’
She didn’t want a battle with him. Never had. Just two people finding love and holding onto it. Why did it have to be so complicated between them? Couldn’t he simply feel they were right for each other?
She shouldn’t have deceived him with Josh. Yet hadn’t that deception triggered the change in his attitude towards her, heightening his interest and sharpening the desire he’d repressed for the sake of not messing with his business set-up?
Desperately needing time to think, she said, ‘If we don’t soon move to the swimming pool your mother will start to wonder.’
‘Ah! To the shower!’
He swung off the bed, scooped her up and carried her to an ensuite bathroom. Caveman style he hoisted her over his shoulder as he opened the door to the shower stall and turned on the taps. Lucy didn’t get any time to think. He no sooner set her on her feet under a streaming spray of water than he grabbed a bar of soap and started sliding it over her.
Her hair was getting wet and it would be a mess—was the last rational thought she had. He soaped her breasts with a slow sensuality that trapped her into a fascinated thrall. It was as though he was rapt in the structure of them, and as fascinated as she was by their response to his caressing. Then the glide of the soap over her abdomen and down between her legs. Never had she been washed so intimately, and she felt his fingers circling, drawing more intense excitement.
Mindlessly, she lifted her hands to his shoulders, instinctively seeking a steadying support. The hair on his chest was plastered into tight curls. His naked body somehow seemed magnified this close—big…big all over, overwhelmingly male, intensely physical, powerfully sexual.
Suddenly he lifted her, lifted her against the shower wall and his mouth was lashing her breasts, licking, sucking, wildly tugging on her tightly extended nipples, and she was embracing his head with a fierce desire to hold him there, her legs encircling him just as possessively, and when he pushed inside her again, her only thought was a sweetly savage… Oh yes! Yes…yes…her whole being exulting in the compulsive madness of it, the incredible arc of pleasure from her breasts to her womb, the pumping of it to another intense climax. She was totally consumed by the tumultous power of it, even when it was over.
James gently eased her down to stand on her own two feet. ‘This could get addictive,’ he murmured, his eyes simmering with a lust for more. ‘But I guess we’d better go and swim.’
‘Yes,’ she managed to reply, struggling to appear as composed as he seemed about what they’d just shared.
He turned off the taps, stepped out of the stall, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her, touching her cheek in an oddly tender salute as he said, ‘I’ll find you something to wear.’
Had he given up the idea of battle, she wondered, watching him leave the ensuite bathroom, aware of every nerve-ending in her body buzzing with pleasure and wantonly anticipating being served with more and more of it. No control at all, she dazedly thought, and decided it didn’t matter. She could only hope that whatever was driving James would last beyond tonight because she was beyond controlling anything.
He came back with a silvery maillot. ‘This should fit. Stretchy fabric.’
There was no bra structure in it and the leg-line was cut high to her hips. The thin nylon provided little more than a second skin over what it covered. Didn’t matter, she reasoned again. Only he was going to see her. Possibly his mother, too, she belatedly remembered, but that would only be in the pool if Zoe Hancock happened to look over the verandah railing.
The brief black costume James had put on was just as revealing. Her gaze strayed to the heavy bulge at the apex of his thighs. Three times today already, Lucy thought, wishfully—lustfully—wondering if he was planning on more. It was a terrible thing about lust. Having it so brillantly satisfied seemed to generate more.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, taking her hand.
Even that contact felt intensely sexual.