very slowly...’ Leo asserted, ‘revealing only one tiny piece of you at a time.’
Her tummy performed a somersault, consternation filling her as she wondered if she would be up to that sophisticated challenge.
LEO’S LIPS WERE aggressive and smooth on Grace’s as he lifted her and laid her down gently on the bed, breaking contact only to flip off her shoes and let them fall.
Grace breathed in deep, mastering her nervous tension, terrified of letting it show. Of course she could have told him the truth that she was a newbie in the bedroom, but she was convinced that it would seriously dent her desirability in his eyes. And being treated as if she were rather more beautiful and seductive than she was felt especially good to her at that moment. She wondered where the bathroom was, knew she would have preferred diving in there to undress before reappearing casually wrapped in a towel or something. But wouldn’t that be aping a fifties bride on her wedding night? Shyness and inhibitions were not sexy, she told herself impatiently.
‘I love your hair,’ he told her, stroking the tumbled strands as he sank down on the bed at the same time as he removed his cufflinks and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘It’s a gorgeous colour.’
‘I got called “Carrots” at school and hated it for years,’ Grace recalled with a rueful grin.
‘When you smile, meli mou, your whole face lights up,’ Leo said softly, lowering his head to claim another passionate kiss that rocked her even where she lay, her body behaving like a Geiger counter detecting radiation, strange new reactions awakening inside her.
His shirt parted, giving her a glimpse of broad, strong pectoral muscles and washboard abs that made her mouth run dry. He was excessively good to look at, what one of her friends would term ‘man candy’. The pool of warmth at her pelvis spread. He turned her over, ran down the zip and gently spread the edges back, kissing one slim white freckled shoulder and then the other and tugging her back against him.
‘Do you always go this slow?’
No, he didn’t and, considering that he was already hugely aroused, Leo had no idea why he was determined to be the perfect lover for her. ‘Depends on my mood... I want to savour you...’
He slid the sleeves down her arms and paused to appreciate the full globes filling the cups of her bra before he succumbed to temptation. With a soft little sound of impatience, he snapped loose the catch on the bra and raised his hands to cradle her superb breasts, massaging the creamy flesh, pressing her flat to explore them with his mouth and lingering over her straining rosy nipples.
‘You have amazing breasts,’ Leo muttered thickly as he dallied there, employing both his tongue and the glancing edge of his teeth to tease the straining buds.
Grace was rather more amazed at the effect he was having on her ignorant body. A hungry ache stirred at the heart of her. All of a sudden catching her breath was a challenge and she ran her fingers through his luxuriant black hair, surprised by how soft it was and how right it felt to touch him. She had thought she might have to steel herself to respond to him, genuinely hadn’t expected to be quite so caught up in the process as she was, had even believed that throughout the process some part of her quick and clever brain would be standing back assessing and judging. Instead as he lifted her to find her mouth again Grace was engaging in some exploration of her own, hands sliding below the open shirt to trace his wonderfully honed muscular torso, skimming over the flat male nipples and the etching of crisp dark hair sprinkled there before sliding down to stroke the flexing muscles of his taut stomach.
‘Don’t...not this first time,’ Leo urged, pulling back from her to slide off the bed. ‘I’m too close to the edge.’
Grace blinked, bemused, having assumed he would be as eager to be touched as she was. And, ‘not this first time’? Was that simply his prodigious self-assurance doing the talking for him? Her body all aquiver about even the thought of a single experience and the unlikelihood of her wanting a second, Grace watched him strip off his clothing with something less than the laid-back cool she had come to expect from him.
Everything came off at once, ensuring that she had little time to be curious about what her first aroused male looked like. He was larger than she had assumed he would be, but that was only a point of academic interest, she assured herself nervously, surveying the prodding length and breadth of his bold shaft. She knew she would stretch and she envisaged neither pain nor anything else that might reveal her inexperience. After all she had gone horse riding from an early age and believed any physical barrier would be long gone. With the same focused intellectual interest, Grace wondered why she literally felt overheated when she looked at Leo naked, her body hot, her breath catching in her throat as if she lacked oxygen.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Leo remarked, coming back down to her, dropping several foil-wrapped contraceptives on the bedside cabinet, soothing Grace’s instinctive terror of what had happened to her mother also happening to her.
For a split second she was almost tempted to tell him the truth about herself but innate reserve, learned growing up in a household where she had never belonged, kept her silent.
‘I’m used to women who chatter,’ Leo admitted with a slanting grin that was irresistible.
‘I’m quiet,’ Grace admitted, sliding for purchase on the slippery surface of the bedspread and flipping it back to scramble beneath the sheets, still clad in her panties, which she whisked off under cover.
‘Someone so beautiful could never be shy,’ Leo assumed, sliding in beside her in one lithe movement to reach for her. ‘But you are a cheat... I wanted to see you...all of you.’
Grace knew she wasn’t beautiful. She had grown up with the belief that tall, thin and blonde was the epitome of beauty and all the most popular girls at school had fitted that blueprint. But when Leo studied her with wide wondering eyes she felt beautiful for the first time in her life and, even though she was convinced it wasn’t true, it made her feel special. ‘I have to admit I liked seeing you,’ she confessed tensely, striving to reward his appreciation.
‘Really?’ Leo laughed, amused by that little morsel of flattery when he was accustomed to a positive barrage of compliments in the bedroom. He admired Grace’s restraint and lack of drama even while he could hardly wait to shatter her defences and see her lose herself in the throes of passion.
He kissed her and it was like the first time all over again, his tongue thrusting into her mouth to set her alight, tiny little spasms of excitement igniting afresh to clench her womb. He pushed her legs apart, ran a forefinger along the seam there and she stiffened, knowing she was damp and knowing it was absolutely crazy to get into bed with him and be embarrassed about such a natural thing but unable to overcome her self-consciousness. What on earth had happened to her belief that she could make him a science project? she asked herself suddenly, dismayed to be losing her detachment. She closed her eyes tight while he played with the most sensitive spot on her entire body, pleasure and longing traversing her in steady waves. She gritted her teeth, suddenly terrified of getting too carried away and losing control as her hips rose involuntarily.
She made no effort to evade him when he pushed back the sheet. In fact she braced herself to tolerate the intimacy as he tipped her legs over his shoulders and homed in on the most private part of her.
‘You’re beautiful here too,’ Leo purred with a lack of inhibition that shook her and she studied
