Miranda Lee - It Started With A Kiss

Her mouth gaped open. ‘You…you mean you’re going to do what you…d…d…described?’

‘Every single bit of it. And so are you.’

Her face flamed.

‘You’ll like it, I promise,’ he purred as he pulled her round crosswise and began peeling off her bikini bottom.

She did like it. Too much. Way too much.

But he was wrong about afterwards. He might have fallen into blissful oblivion on the bed afterwards, but she lay there wide awake, her thoughts going round and round.

She wasn’t going to be able to give him up after a mere fortnight. That was the truth of it. She was going to want him around for much longer than that.

Why? That was the question. Was it the way he could make her forget everything but the moment? Was it for the brilliant and blinding climaxes he could give her? Or was it something more insidious, something she’d vowed never to do, ever again?

Fall in love…

Rolling over onto her side, she looked at him lying there, sprawled naked on the lemon sheets, his arms flung wide, his silky brown hair. Leaning forward, she lifted one heavy lock from across his eyes and dropped it onto the pillow, then removed another which was covering his nostrils and mouth.

As if sensing that he could now breathe more easily, he sighed a deep, contented sigh, his mouth almost smiling in his sleep.

Isabel found herself smiling as well. Maybe she wanted to keep him around because she just liked him. And because he seemed to really like her in return.

Liking was good, she decided. She could live with that.

Finally, Isabel’s worries calmed, she curled up to Rafe and went to sleep.

‘NO RINGING for a dinner drop tonight, Isabel,’ Rafe told her. ‘We need to get up, get dressed and get away from here for a while. Do something else for a few hours. Have a change of scene.’

Isabel’s head lifted and she smiled at him. ‘Yes, Rafe darling, but surely you don’t want me to get up and get dressed right at this precise moment.’

He stared back down into her cool blue eyes and wished he had the strength to tell her, yes, stop. Stop tormenting me. Stop enslaving me. Stop making me addicted to your body. And to you.

It was Wednesday, and they were back in bed, not long awake from an afternoon nap after a rather rigorous morning. They’d gone for a dawn swim after minimal sleep the night before and hadn’t bothered with swimwear. There was no one to see them, after all. No one to see what they did in the water. Or on the wet sand. Or in the hammock again.

The hammock…

Rafe swallowed as he thought of what he’d done to her in the hammock last night, how he’d used the silk sarong she’d been wearing to bind her hands to the rope up above her head. He’d never done anything like that before. And neither had she, if he was any guess.

But what a sight she’d been stretched out there, naked, in the moonlight. Rafe had been incredibly turned on. And Isabel…Isabel had been beside herself. She’d come so many times he lost count. In the end, she’d begged him to stop.

But he hadn’t been able to stop, not for a long long time.

And now he wasn’t able to stop her as she drew him deep into her mouth once more.

He moaned at the heat of it. And the wetness. It was like being sheathed in molten steel. He was going to come. He knew he was going to come.

His raw cry of warning stopped her, leaving him dangling right on the edge.

‘You have a problem, lover?’ she drawled huskily as she reached for one of the condoms they kept beside the bed.

He choked out a rueful laugh. ‘You’re cruel, do you know that?’

‘Now you know how I felt last night,’ she said as she protected them both. ‘Just as well my perfume acts as an effective insect repellent or I’d have been covered with insect bites.’

‘Instead, you have a few bites of another kind.’

‘Beast.’

‘You loved it.’

‘And you’re loving this. So why don’t you just lie back and enjoy?’

He sucked in sharply when she bent to take him in her mouth once more.

‘No, don’t,’ he groaned, and her head lifted, her eyes surprised. ‘No?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Not like that.’

He reached down and pulled her up and onto him, spreading her legs outside of his, then pushing his tormented flesh inside her once more. With a primal groan he grabbed her buttocks, kneading them as he rocked her quite roughly up and down on him. They came together, backs arching, mouths gaping wide apart, bodies throbbing wildly in unison.

‘Oh, Rafe,’ she cried, collapsing face down across his chest, her insides still spasming.

He held her to him till she stopped, though a shudder still ran through her every now and then.

Too much, he began thinking. This is all getting too much.

‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ he told her a bit brusquely.

‘No, don’t leave me,’ she begged, clinging to him.

‘Sorry. Nature calls.’ He was out of her and off the bed in a flash, lurching across the sea matting floor and into the bathroom. Closing the door, he leaned against it for a few air-sucking seconds before staggering over to the toilet, not really needing it except to do some essential personal housekeeping.

When he went to do just that, he stared down at himself in horror.

‘Oh, no…’ he muttered.

Not once had Rafe had a condom break before on him. Not once!

Till now…

His heart sinking, Rafe inspected the damage and it was the worst scenario possible. The darned thing had totally failed. Ripped asunder. Right across the tip.

Immediately he thought of Isabel and in his mind’s eye he could see millions of eager little tadpoles careering through her cervix and into her womb, swimming around with more energy than the Olympic water-polo team, watching and waiting to score a home goal.

What were the odds of their doing just that? he wondered frantically, his mind scouring his memory to recall what Isabel had said to him that Sunday just over two weeks ago. Something about her period being due that week. Probably early on in the week, he guessed. She’d said something about suffering from PMT that day.

Rafe did some mental arithmetic and worked out that if Isabel was a normal regular female with a normal monthly cycle, then she had to have already entered, or be entering, her ‘most likely to conceive phase’ right now.

Rafe sank down on the side of the spa bath. He might have just become a father!

His head whirled. So did his stomach. She was going to kill him when he told her.

Then don’t tell her, came the voice of male logic. It will only spoil everything. And there’s nothing you can do about it now. Besides, it might not happen. It might not be the right time. Even if it was, couples sometimes tried for years—hitting ovulation day right on the dot—and the woman didn’t fall pregnant. Let’s not be paranoid about this.

But what if Isabel had fallen pregnant. What then?

Cross that bridge when you come to it, Rafe.

Right. Good advice.

Rafe stood up, jumped into the shower and turned on the water. Picking up the shower gel, he poured a generous pool into his hands and slapped it onto his chest.

But a baby, he began thinking as he washed himself. His baby. His and Isabel’s baby.

Talk about the best plans of mice and men.

Isabel lay there listening to Rafe in the shower and thinking she could do with a shower herself. She felt icky. But no way was she going to join him in there, not after the way she’d just carried on, clinging to him and pleading for him to stay with her like some lovesick cow.

How typical of herself! And how humiliating!

No wonder he’d bolted out of the bed.