Luke bent his head and claimed a long, intense kiss. His tongue skated across hers and a piercing dart of such primitive longing slithered through her that it was a challenge to stay upright. A strong arm slid to her spine to support her slender frame and he lifted her off her feet with breathtaking ease to carry her back into the bedroom.
Allie surfaced to find herself lying on the bed. After that burning kiss she felt a little as if she had been hit with a brick because her brain no longer felt as if it were functioning. Luke was poised several feet away, stripping off his robes and letting them fall on the rug, his proud dark head already bare. She breathed in slow and deep.
It was time, she told her quailing nerves firmly. They were married. This was the deal she had made. Neither love nor liking came into the arrangement. Sex was on the menu, nothing else, and she had to learn to be practical about the fact.
Naked but for his boxers, Luke was an intimidating sight, a literal power-house of whipcord muscle overlaid with smooth bronzed skin. Her intent gaze skated down over the steely muscles of his formidable chest, down over the little furrow of soft dark hair disappearing below the waistband of his boxers, and screeched to a sudden halt. The bulge of his straining masculinity was larger than she had expected today and she tensed, telling herself not to be silly, not to get all worked up about something that other women took in their stride. She wasn’t a child.
She’d missed this. Missed him. A part of her was scared that she’d never see him again, never get to enjoy sex with him again but now that she’d found out the truth, there was nothing that was going to stop her from claiming Luke.
“I’ve wanted you for two lonely nights now,” Luke admitted, running long supple fingers through the swirling spill of her honey-coloured hair across the pillows. “You’re so beautiful…”
Luke was the truly beautiful one, an outstandingly gorgeous male, who had stolen her heart the first time she saw him and broken it the day he got married, sending her plunging from the heights of happiness straight down into the darkness of despair. In the aftermath she had picked herself up and gone on but the trust he had broken remained broken and she was a much more anxious, suspicious person than she had once been.
His thick silky hair nudged her cheek and then his mouth, velvet and warm, claimed hers again, closing out the rest of the world as though it had never been. There was nothing then but the racing beat of her heart and the tightening at her secret core. Without warning the towel she wore was gone and he cupped her full breasts, his thumbs strumming her engorged nipples to send currents of fire shooting down into her pelvis. Her hips shifted, rose without her volition and at the heart of her she felt tight as a drum and desperate for more.
Luke drew back, lean, strong features taut. “If you truly don’t want this, I will stop. I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give, baby”
Taken aback, Allie stared up at him, still partially lost in the stirring responses shimmying through her lethargic body.
Luxuriant black lashes dipped low over his tawny eyes.
His mouth dipped to her delicate collarbone and the tip of his tongue flicked the pulse beating there below her pale fine skin and she tingled in reaction from her head to her toes.
His hands rested on her ribcage and she wanted so badly for him to lift his hands and touch her breasts again. The strength of that craving took her aback for nothing in her experience had ever equalled it. She shut her eyes, shutting him out but the craving, the sheer hunger mushroomed up inside her without abating. And why was she surprised? She wanted him; she had always wanted him.
Allie lay back, pliant and melting with helpless anticipation. She had come to an understanding with herself and the past and present were melding into a seamless whole. She had always wanted Luke to become her first lover because she had never wanted another man the way she wanted him and sharing her body with him made perfect sense to her. He nipped at her lower lip and then blew softly over a rosy straining nipple before suckling erotically at the tender peak. Ribbons of hot desire pulled taut between her breasts and her thighs.
Luke slid down the bed, tugging away the towel still partially wrapped round her and skimming off the boxers he still wore with impatient hands. Lying there naked, Allie reddened, fighting off the urge to yank the sheet over her exposed body. He parted her thighs and before she could react moved down the bed towards her on his knees with the predatory grace of a stalking cat. Allie lay still, eyes rounding when she glimpsed the long thick length of his erection hung low between his muscular hair-roughened thighs. A spasm of something she didn’t recognise pulled taut in her pelvis.
Luke dropped a kiss on her gently rounded stomach and tension leapt high inside her as he stroked the soft skin of her inner thighs, moving ever closer to the heart of her desire.
“I want to taste you,” he told her hungrily. “I want to drive you crazy with need and then I want to make love to you until you are senseless…”
His hands rested on her ribcage and she wanted so badly for him to lift his hands and touch her breasts again. The strength of that craving took her aback for nothing in her experience had ever equalled it. She shut her eyes, shutting him out but the craving, the sheer hunger mushroomed up inside her without abating. She wanted him; she had always wanted him.
Luke lifted his head to gaze down at her while he trailed his fingers through the damp tangle of curls at the apex of her thighs.
“I want to watch you writhe and come, baby” he husked. “I want to hear you scream with the pleasure I give you.”
“Don’t want to scream,” Ella framed with the greatest of difficulty, so hard was it for her to control her breathing and her voice enough to speak.
A fingertip found the swollen bud of her clitoris and dallied. He knew exactly what he was doing. He touched and she burned with every delicate caress. Her hips rose off the mattress in a movement as old and unstoppable as time. She struggled to breathe, actually sobbed out loud as he lowered his proud dark head and captured an engorged pink nipple between his lips and teased with his teeth. As he divided his attention between her straining, unbearably sensitive breasts and the tormentingly tender bud between her thighs, the twin assault became too much for her to bear. The hollow sensation at the heart of her was getting stronger while rhythmic waves were washing through her womb until suddenly the knot of tension there sprang free, plunging her into the grip of writhing convulsions of almost intolerable pleasure.
That shattering climax and the flood of ecstasy that followed took her by storm.