Madeleine Ker - The Alpha Male

Still kissing, whispering one another’s names, they undressed each other with clumsy haste. When she was naked, he pushed her onto her back and stared down at her with devouring eyes.

The blaze of the fire made tiger-stripes across his magnificent naked chest. He was like a great cat, brooding over her, and like a cat he touched her skin with his nose and drew her scent deep into his nostrils.

‘You always smell so wonderful. Your skin is like rose petals.’

‘A rose with thorns.’ But though she uttered the warning, she was responding to him. This was insanity, worse than madness, because she was colluding with her own downfall.

He stroked the curving softness of her belly. She shuddered at his sensual caress. ‘You will always be mine, Penny,’ he whispered. ‘Nobody else’s. Mine alone.’

He kissed her nipples gently. The silky disks ruckled in his mouth, their hard tips pushing against his tongue with unabashed desire. He sucked the eager peaks, one after another, and Penny whimpered his name softly.

He gazed down at her, his eyes heavy with desire. ‘I’ve missed you so much. I thought I had lost you forever!’

Her naked body was like alabaster in the firelight. Her hips were fuller than her narrow waist would have implied, and he stroked the curves with the fingers of an artist touching an exquisite vessel.

‘Your hips were made for love, my darling,’ he whispered. ‘For bearing children. I’m so sorry you lost our child.’

‘How could you think I would throw away my baby?’ she demanded, raising herself on her elbow. ‘How can you say you love me, if you think that?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘This morning I felt as though you had stabbed a dagger into my heart.’

She felt the scalding tears slide down her cheeks. They splashed onto her nipples, shining wet on her skin. ‘Why did you come?’

For an answer, he sealed her mouth with his own. It was a kiss as hot as her tears, filled with passion and desire. His hands caressed her naked body, moulding the tender curves of her breasts hungrily, sliding down between her thighs to cup the nest of soft curls there.

She responded with a rush of desire that overwhelmed her.

‘Have you been with anyone else since you left me?’ he asked her, looking into her eyes.

‘No,’ she confessed. ‘Have you?’

‘No. So we don’t need to go to the clinic for a clean bill of health before we do this…’

She kissed him to stop him saying any more.

Ryan’s tongue was in her mouth, seeking her own, demanding a response. She felt his fingers encounter the melting wetness of her own desire. With gentle, expert movements of his fingers, he brought her to the very edge of her climax in no more than a few seconds. She cried out against his mouth. His own urgency matched hers. As though unable to resist any longer, he mounted her.

Penny cried out again as she felt the swollen length of his manhood between her thighs—a feeling so familiar, so thrilling, so achingly beautiful. She locked her arms around his neck and looked up into his eyes. Ryan was panting as though he had run a mile, his eyes no longer cold or hard, but glowing with passion.

She raised her hips, her thighs lifting to hold his taut, muscular waist.

The invitation was unmistakable. With a soft, purring sound, Ryan lowered his body so that his erect manhood caressed the wet petals of her sex. Penny moaned, her eyes half closing. He slid himself to and fro across the most sensitive zones of her body, arousing her unbearably.

She had been alone for so long, locked in her own misery. Now he was back, and deep inside her. Penny had not known that there was so much need in her, so much emptiness aching to be filled. So much tenderness aching to be given.

She dug her fingers into his powerful shoulders, demanding that he enter her; but it was not until she was already starting to climax that he finally thrust slowly and deeply into her body.

Ecstasy flooded her whole being. She felt herself arching against him, calling his name inarticulately. He filled her so completely, each movement bringing new waves of pleasure and fulfilment, as though her soul was stretching and expanding.

And at last he reached his own vertex and crushed her in his arms, covering her face with burning kisses.

Slowly, like leaves settling to earth after a gale, normality returned. They slid into an exhausted tangle by the fireside.

‘Now that I’ve found you, I will never let you go.’ He pulled her head onto his chest and cradled her there, the way he used to do, long ago.

They lay in silence for a while, listening to the crackling of the flames. Then he spoke.

‘I almost lost you forever, and I didn’t even know. You’re not safe to be out on your own. Why won’t you let me cherish you for the rest of your life?’

‘Because I need to live it for myself,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to live your life for you, sweet girl. I just want to be next to you.’

‘You don’t. You want to swallow me up.’ This was getting perilously close to the sort of arguments they’d had in London. ‘And you couldn’t have stopped me from getting encephalitis, anyway.’

‘I would have made sure you got the best treatment, the best doctors in the world.’

‘Oh, I know that, Ryan. If you could, you would have had the illness instead of me, wouldn’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘But I needed to have that illness for myself, my love. It was part of my life, part of my destiny, for good or for bad. To take it from me would have been to cheat me.’

‘I don’t agree with that,’ he said. ‘Avoiding misfortune is sensible. You don’t have to run to it with open arms. You’re too much of a pessimist.’

‘A fatalist,’ she corrected.

‘Tell me the name of the hospital you were admitted to in Exeter.’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I would like to speak to the doctors who treated you.’

She felt icy cold, and then burning hot. ‘So you can check the hospital records? To see if what I’ve told you about the miscarriage is true?’

There was enough strong feeling in those words to make him frown. ‘Have I offended you?’

‘No.’ She pushed away from him and sat up, her slender body silhouetted against the firelight. ‘As a matter of fact, you’ve just proved that you’re the heartless bastard I always knew you were.’

He cocked his head at her. ‘I’m the heartless one? I know I have a heart, because you broke it this morning, Penny. That was the last news I expected to hear.’

‘I’m sorry, Ryan, but it was far worse for me, believe me.’

‘Are you going to give me the name of the hospital?’

‘So you can try and obtain my medical records? No, Ryan, I’m not. If you choose not to believe my simple word, then nothing else really matters, does it?’

‘I suppose not,’ he said in a strange voice.

‘I think you’d better go now.’ She was tying her hair back into a pony-tail, turning her face away from him so he wouldn’t see the tears pouring down her cheeks.

‘I’d rather stay,’ he said, touching her naked shoulder.

Penny shook her head. ‘You got what you wanted. Go now.’

‘I want all of you,’ he said, caressing her shoulder. ‘I’ll never be happy until I have all of you.’

‘Why not be content with what you’ve had?’ She wiped her tears away clumsily. ‘You’ve proved I’m still a fool. You can go back to London now and forget me forever.’

He was silent for a while before answering. ‘You were never this cold, this hard,’ he said at last.

‘As you said, I’ve changed. I used to be soft as putty. But not any more. I’ve learned to fight for myself at last.’