Dani Collins - Modern Romance March 2019 5-8

She felt frightened and excited, the only reason she held back the burden of her embarrassing inexperience. Should she tell him? It was the possibility that he might reject her that tipped the balance. She couldn’t risk that. She needed this to happen too much.

‘I want you too,’ she whispered, as, framing his face with her hands, she kept her eyes open as she kissed him.

For a moment he did nothing as her lips moved across his, then she felt a groan vibrate deep in his chest and he kissed her back with a frantic hunger, a driving desperation, that forced the air from her lungs and drew frantic little moans from her own throat.

He slid down beside her and, one hand hooked behind her head, he slid his free hand down over the curve of her body and pulled her hard against him to face him. He stopped kissing her long enough to tangle his fingers in her hair, to pull her face away so that he could look at her. She just stared at him raptly as he swept away the strands of hair from her face.

She touched his face, smoothing her fingers over the stubble on his cheek and jaw, fascinated by the strength, the beauty, of the angles and hollows.

Her throat ached as she looked at him. ‘You’re beautiful.’

His jaw quivered in reaction to her awed whisper. This might be just sex but he needed it— her —as much as he needed the oxygen he was dragging into his lungs. He had never experienced a passion as powerful and as all-consuming as the one that drove him now.

The whispered touch of his breath on the skin of her face before he kissed her was a delicious torture and she was so ready when he did cover her parted lips with his own that she whimpered with relief, the sound lost in his mouth.

Still kissing her, his mouth moving in a series of open-mouthed, warm kisses down the graceful column of her neck, he slid his hands under the dress she wore, easing the straps off her shoulders and exposing the angles of her collarbones and the upper slope of her breasts. Her skin had an alabaster glow, the clarity enhanced somehow by the sprinkling of freckles.

Desire roared inside him like an inferno as he held her passion-glazed eyes and then suddenly, expertly, he pulled them both to their feet so that he could reach around her to ease the zip of her dress undone. He watched hungrily as the garment slid to the floor, leaving her standing in just her underwear. She shivered as the cool air hit her hot skin...and then shivered again when his hooded glance dropped to her chest. Her nerve endings reacted to the sensuous sweep of his hooded eyes as it would a touch.

‘You’re beautiful.’ He reached round behind her, unclasping her strapless bra, and watched appreciatively as her breasts were fully exposed to him.

He tilted her back towards the bed and laid her down. His hands resting either side of her shoulders, his body was suspended above her, not touching... She wanted to touch him.

Did she say so? She had no idea, but he suddenly kissed her hard and levered himself off her and stood by the bed.

Her dismay switched to relief as he began to tear off his clothes.

Lying there, her only covering a tiny pair of pants, her breasts lifting and falling in time with her short, shallow inhalations, she watched him kick himself free of trousers and fight his way out of his shirt. The intoxicating wildness pumping through her bloodstream made her feel light-headed, reckless, unlike herself. She was literally paralysed with lust and longing. It infiltrated every cell of her body, every inch of her skin.

She ached for him in a way she hadn’t known existed.

He paused for a moment by the bed, giving her greedy eyes the opportunity to gloat over his streamlined perfect body, every muscle beautifully defined under skin that glowed gold.

One knee on the bed, he leaned over and ran his fingers under the waistband of her knickers, sliding them slowly down over her smooth thighs.

The first skin-to-skin contact made her gasp then sigh as he kissed her, his tongue slipping deep between her parted lips.

She grabbed his head to deepen the pressure of her tongue meeting his.

The soft keening moan of protests when his head lifted dissolved into a deep moan as he cupped one breast in his big hand, and, drawing a thumb up to the aroused rosy peak, he covered it with his mouth. By the time he moved to apply similar treatment to the other breast, she was writhing. The only thing stopping her floating away was his hand on her hip.

‘Look at me, cara ,’ he slurred thickly.

His searing stare held her blue eyes tight as his hand slid between her legs.

‘You feel ready for me,’ he said, stroking her.

‘I feel on fire,’ she rasped. ‘This is too...too...much!’ Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheek as he eased a finger into her.

‘So tight,’ he murmured against her ear. ‘Incredible.’

She moved restlessly, pressing against his hand, not realising what else he was doing until he curled her fingers around him.

A choking sound of shock vibrated in her throat.

‘That’s how much I want... I need you. I want to be inside you, cara .’ He could not remember wanting a woman this much in his life. It felt like a fever roaring in his blood, driving him to the act of possession. Teeth clenched, he fought the need, wanting her to need this as much as he did. His skin was slicked with sweat by the effort of staying in control.

No woman had ever tested his control this much.

The dark, driven need in his face increased her excitement. Her skin was on fire...she was burning up with need from the inside out. ‘I need you too,’ she gasped faintly.

As he rolled her beneath him she arched up into him. The touch of his body against the curls at the apex of her legs brought her eyes wide open and on a collision course with his hot, hungry stare.

‘Please,’ she said simply.

She felt the deep, animal groan building in the vault of his chest and it emerged at the same moment he slid into her.

She jerked, gasped and wrapped her legs around him. Eyes tight, focused on each advance and retreat, each thrust taking her deeper into herself. She focused on the places he was touching that had never been touched, the muscles that clenched by instinct, building the pressure, the pleasure, the nerves that were singing, the tension that was building and building.

She forgot where she ended and he began and it felt as if she couldn’t bear any more, and then she saw explosions behind her closed eyelids, bursts of light as the heat and pleasure rocked through her body, as the pleasure centre in her brain went into overload.

The floating back to earth was gentle, as was his kiss before he rolled off her. They lay there, side by side on their backs, fingertips touching as their sweat-slick bodies cooled.

‘So.’ He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her deliciously flushed face, remembering the look of concentration on her face as the heat had built inside her. His body stirred lazily, and then not so lazily as his glance slid a little lower. The sheet ended just below her coral-tipped, perfect breasts; they quivered as she covered her face with both hands.

The lazy element vanished at the quivering. His hunger for her had flared into full, hot life.

‘Look at me, Flora.’

She dropped her hands and did. It would always be a pleasure to look at him, but right now it was a struggle to meet his gaze.

‘I suppose you’re talking about the virgin stuff.’

‘You suppose right...’ He adjusted a pillow and put it behind his head. ‘I was under the impression that you’d had a love affair, were engaged.’ He’d certainly not imagined there had been only one man in her life, so the discovery that he was her first lover had been one of the biggest shocks of his life.