before. ‘There is enough for two if you would like some,’ he said, indicating the coffee-pot with a careless waft of his hand.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I never feel truly awake until I’ve had my first caffeine hit.’
‘I will go and get a cup for you,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘Would you like a croissant? I jogged down to the bakery first thing this morning.’
Emma gave him a rueful smile. ‘You’re making me feel guilty, talking about early-morning jogs,’ she said. ‘I’m not normally so lazy, but I didn’t sleep well last night.’
His expression was mask-like, although Emma thought she saw something flicker in his eyes as they held hers. ‘I hope it wasn’t something I said.’
She let out a tiny sigh. ‘It was everything you said. I feel like I’ve totally misjudged you. You’re not the person I thought you were. I’m sorry. I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.’ She looked up at him appealingly and added softly, ‘I’d like us…I’d like us to be friends.’
The silence stretched for a moment or two.
‘Is that pity I hear in your voice, Emma?’ he asked in a flint-like tone.
She frowned at him. ‘No…no, of course not,’ she said. ‘I’m just glad I now know what happened to your brother and how it affected you and your father’s relationship. Life has been very hard on you. I didn’t realise how hard until last night.’
His eyes glittered darkly as they seared hers. ‘So it explains why I am a complete and utter bastard, does it, Emma?’
She compressed her lips. ‘That’s a choice you make,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to be that way. Lots of people have tragic backgrounds and yet manage to move on without letting it ruin their life and all their relationships.’
‘I have not let it ruin my life,’ he said. ‘And as for my relationships, that is my business and my business alone.’
‘I think you have let it ruin your life,’ Emma countered. ‘You lock yourself away from feeling. I suspect you’ve done it for years. You’re doing it now. As soon as anyone gets close you put up a wall of resistance. You let your guard down with me last night and now you’re regretting it. That’s why you’re being so cutting and unfriendly towards me now.’
He gave a mocking laugh. ‘So little Emma now wants to be friends with me, does she?’
She tightened her mouth without answering.
He stepped closer and, capturing her chin between his finger and thumb, tipped her gaze to meet his. ‘How far are you prepared to take this offer of friendship?’ he asked. ‘All the way upstairs to my bed?’
Emma felt her stomach go hollow as he brought his hard male body even closer. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, her heart beginning to ram against her ribcage as she felt his arrant maleness springing to turgid life against her. He placed a hand in the small of her back, pressing her even closer so she felt the pounding of his blood against her softness.
And then his head came down…
The kiss was explosive. Their tongues wrestled and tangled, darted and dived and submitted and conquered simultaneously. Emma became breathless with growing excitement, her body on fire as his mouth commandeered hers with bruising passion. Her lips throbbed with the pressure, she even thought she could taste blood at one point, but wasn’t sure if it was hers or his, as she had nipped at his bottom lip with just as much fervour as he had hers.
His mouth was still locked on hers as he shoved aside the thin straps of her top and bra, his hands cupping the slight weight of her breasts, her pert nipples driving into the moist heat of his palm. The tingling pleasure wasn’t nearly enough. Emma wanted more of his touch and leaned into him, whimpering her need into the hot cavern of his mouth.
Her breathing came to a screeching halt as he lifted his mouth off hers to suckle on each breast in turn. She arched her back as the rasp of his tongue laved her tender flesh, her fingers grasping him by the shoulders to anchor herself as sensation after sensation coursed through her.
He brought his mouth back to hers, his tongue a thrusting force she welcomed with the shy dart of her own. She heard him make a sound at the back of his throat and her skin lifted in goose-bumps of feverish excitement at how she was affecting him. She could feel the heat and weight of his arousal pressing against her and reached boldly between their locked bodies to explore it with her fingers. He groaned again as she brushed her fingertips over the summer-weight linen of his shorts, the proud bulge of his body making her feel heady with feminine power. She wanted to touch him intimately, she wanted to feel the satin of his flesh in her hands, to shape him, to feel the surge of his blood, to tantalise him the way he was tantalising her.
‘God, I want you,’ he said against her mouth. ‘I am going crazy with you touching me like that.’
His feverish confession incited Emma to slide down the zipper on his shorts, her searching fingers moving aside the final barrier of his underwear. Her breath caught as she felt his body leap against her hand, the smoothness and strength of him rising out of the springy masculine hair making her belly crawl with desire. She looked down at him, her eyes going wide at the size of him as he quivered against her tentative feather-light touch.
‘Harder, Emma,’ he said on a gasping breath. ‘Touch me harder and faster.’
She did as he said, her own body quaking with the need to feel him fill her and explode with the banked-up energy she could feel throbbing against the pads of her fingertips.
He placed his hand over hers, stilling the movement. ‘Stop,’ he said, giving a little shudder. ‘I am going to come right here and now if you do not stop.’
‘Would that be a problem?’ Emma asked on an impulse too strong to withstand. The desire to pleasure him was suddenly irresistible. She wanted to see how much he wanted her, to witness the way his body responded to her caressing touch.
His eyes were so dark she couldn’t see his pupils. ‘I am in the habit of abiding by the principle ladies come first,’ he said.
Emma quickly made a token effort to locate her reasons for not sleeping with him, but not one of them was at the forefront of her brain. All she could think of was the thousands of reasons she wanted to be in his arms: the passion, the excitement, the pleasure and the thrill of experiencing the rapture of his possession.
But if her mind was her traitor, so too was her body. It was already pressing against him insistently as his mouth came down to hers, her arms going around his neck, not even a sound of resistance escaping from her throat as he lifted her bodily in his arms and carried her into the house.
He didn’t take her as far as his bedroom. The largest sitting room was the closest, and, letting her slowly slide down the length of his aroused body to stand on the carpeted floor in front of him, he looked down at her with that scorching gaze of his.
‘Take your clothes off,’ he commanded.
That should have been Emma’s cue to stop this madness, but somehow her hands went to the bottom of her top and pulled it over her head, dropping it to the floor at her feet. She hesitated for the briefest moment before taking off her shorts, leaving her standing before him in her pink lace bra and knickers.
‘And
