and circled her and a rolling wave of pleasure gripped her. Her eyes closed, teeth tightening to hold back a gasp but her control was broken within moments because she had never ever experienced that much pleasure. Sounds were wrenched from her parted lips and her fingers knotted in his hair as the screaming ache for fulfilment inside her built and built and she was lost in the storm of it with her heart thundering and her body writhing. And when she reached a climax, it was explosive and mind-blowing and all the superlative exaggerated words of description that once would have made her roll her eyes in disbelief.
‘You’re incredibly responsive, meli mou,’ Leo husked, finding his every expectation mirrored in the dazed pleasure in her wide eyes and the closing of her arms round him in the aftermath.
Grace was dimly aware of him reaching for a foil packet. Her body might still be leaping with pleasure but her brain was firing back on all cylinders because he had blown her expectations out of the water with his very first move.
He shifted over her, lithe and confident as a jungle cat on the hunt, and she shut her eyes tight again against the intrusion of his. It was going to happen, it was finally going to happen and she would be like almost every other woman, no longer in the dark, no longer ignorant. But it had never occurred to her before that any man could make her want him so desperately that nothing else seemed to matter. His hands cupped her hips to tilt her boneless body back into a better position and then she felt the crown of him at her entrance and she tensed at the exact same moment he thrust deep and hard. The tender tissue of her channel burned and then a sharp little sting sliced through her, provoking a cry of discomfort from her lips. Leo froze.
‘What the hell...? I hurt you?’
Forced by the unexpected to open her eyes, Grace knew her face had to be redder than a ripe apple. ‘I was a virgin,’ she admitted belatedly.
‘A virgin?’ Leo yelled, as if she had jabbed him with a red-hot poker. ‘And you’re telling me that now?’
‘It was private,’ Grace told him succinctly, her lush mouth folding into a compressed line. ‘Now that it’s done, can we just go back to where we were?’
Go back to where we were? In a different mood, Leo would have laughed at that wording. But he was in the grip of angry astonishment, his every assumption about her wiped out. He didn’t like surprises, but as Grace shifted up to him in reminder that he was still inside her he discovered that his body was much less particular. He stared down at her with stunning dark golden eyes. He was her first and there was something mysteriously satisfying about that discovery. She was so tight and warm and wet. Struggling to control his every move, he sank deeper and a breathy little sigh that certainly wasn’t a complaint escaped her.
Grace shut her eyes again, ripples of pleasure reclaiming her, that momentary stab of discomfort forgotten. She could feel his girth stretching her and his hips ground into hers with every slow, heavy thrust. He was being so careful.
‘It’s OK...you’re not hurting me at all,’ she mumbled guiltily.
His pace quickened and a deep guttural moan was torn from him as her body clenched around his. He felt so good Grace couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe she had lived so many years without realising what she was missing out on. A sense of wonder seized her while her heart rate began to race with enjoyment as he pushed into her harder, faster and deeper. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t breathe for excitement; she felt as though she had stolen a ride on a comet. The excitement rose and rose to breaking point when without her volition her body jerked into another intense orgasm. Ecstatic cries broke from her lips as the white-hot heat exploded in her pelvis and left her lying limp and utterly drained but with a glorious feeling of satisfaction that was new to her.
‘Care to tell me why?’ Leo demanded, shattering her idyll. ‘Why did you pick me?’
‘You did the picking,’ Grace reminded him without hesitation, lifting her arms to break his hold on her to enable her to roll away. ‘There’s no agenda here, if that’s what is worrying you. I found you attractive and I decided it was time that I took the plunge.’
‘I would have preferred a warning,’ Leo told her drily.
‘I wasn’t expecting that jab of pain. After years of horse riding I assumed there’d be nothing there...my mistake,’ Grace pronounced with dignity. ‘But thanks for the experience. You were very good.’
Prior to his engagement, Leo had been a legendary womaniser but he felt quite ridiculously put down by Grace’s comment. He sprang off the bed and then a much more pressing matter came to his attention before he could reach the bathroom and he uttered a single crude expletive.
Grace froze at the sound of that word. When she was a child she hadn’t known it was a bad word because her mother had used it all the time. Unhappily when she had used that word in Jenna’s home, her aunt had screamed at her and put a soap bar in her mouth. She had still been throwing up when her uncle came home. The couple had had a massive row and Grace had never ever used that word again.
Impervious to her reaction, Leo had strode into the bathroom to dispose of the evidence. He reappeared, bronzed and stark naked in the doorway. ‘The condom broke...’
Grace sat up in horror. ‘What?’
‘Breaking you in probably strained it,’ Leo retorted with deliberate curtness because it was just one more unexpected development that he didn’t want.
‘It...burst?’ Grace whispered. ‘But I’m not on the pill—’
Leo grew even more rigid in his bearing. ‘Shouldn’t you have taken that precaution before you embarked on a one-night stand?’
Grace just ignored him; she didn’t have to talk to him just because she had slept with him. In fact now that the main event was over she decided that she should ask for a boat back to the marina. Or would that be running away?
‘May I use the bathroom?’ she asked with careful politeness. ‘And then possibly you could organise me a lift back to the marina?’
Leo moved to let her into the bathroom but his temper was now on a short fuse. Wham, bam, thank you, sir. Well, a woman had never treated him like that before but there was always a first time and maybe that was healthy for his ego. But the recollection that it had been her first time stopped his building aggression in its tracks. She didn’t know what she was doing. She wasn’t as much quiet as she was secretive and, flipping mentally back through the time he had been with her, he reckoned she had to be as innocent as a newborn lamb when it came to the nastier things in life. Perspiration beaded his upper lip when he thought of what might have happened to Grace had she gone off so casually and trustingly with some of the seedier individuals he had met on his travels.
‘I want you to stay the night. I’ll take you back tomorrow,’ he stated.
‘This is a one-night stand...you don’t get to tell me what to do!’ Grace flamed back at him with spirit.
‘You’re not doing so well right now when it comes to looking after yourself,’ Leo pronounced drily.
In the space of a moment, Grace travelled from a mood of silent resentment to one of raging rancour and sooner than betray herself by spitting out something inappropriate, she slammed the bathroom door on him. Who did he think would look after her but her own self if she was unlucky enough to conceive after that contraceptive accident? It was none of his business that she had come on holiday without planning
