condemning to oblivion anything that might have tried to stand in its way. It was pointless for her to try to tell herself that the fiercely possessive hunger of Ash’s touch belonged in reality to another woman. Foolishly her body wasn’t willing to listen, not when Ash’s obvious desire for it was laying out in front of her a positive banquet of intimate delight. From the curl of his hand in her hair as he pushed it back from her neck so that he could kiss its slender stem, to the strength of that hand on her as he smoothed his thumb over her skin, trapping the betraying rash of goose bumps that gave away her sensual vulnerability to him, every touch aroused a storm of sensual longing and delight.
He should stop, and right now. Every rational and responsible thought in his head told him that; Ash struggled to obey those voices but when he tried to pull away from her Sophia moved closer to him.
Ash was going to leave her but he mustn’t. He couldn’t. Not when the female hunger and need he had aroused was such an intense longing ache inside her. Sophia wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing small, eager, pleading kisses of her own against the dark sensuality of his throat, shivering with pleasure as she tasted the salty male tang of him on her lips, that taste feeding her appetite for more. His shirt was unfastened at the neck allowing her to slide her hand against the lower buttons and unfasten them, which in turn allowed her to kiss her way along the hard jutting angle of his shoulder.
No. No. A thousand times, no. He might be voicing that denial inside his head but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to say those words out loud, Ash realised as his flesh burned raw with the hunger that Sophia’s kisses were igniting. How long had it been since a woman had affected him like this, made him hunger and ache like this?
A groan of torment—for past guilts and present longings—tortured his throat. Sophia’s kisses, the soft sweetly passionate kisses of a woman to whom the deepest dark mysteries of the raw heat of sexual intimacy were still unknown, filled him with a need to take her and show her how he longed to be touched, how intimately and possessively he wanted to be taken and owned by her feminine desire.
He had never known a need like this, never allowed himself to imagine it could exist. Now he wanted to lie naked beneath Sophia’s learning touch, to give himself up completely to her tender exploration, give himself over to her innocent possession. Then when she had had her fill, he wanted to turn things around and show her, teach her, give her the full power of his male desire until their mutual possession of each other took them beyond time and space.
It was too late. Things had gone too far. He couldn’t pull back now. He couldn’t give her up now. Ash felt Sophia’s hand tremble as she battled with his shirt buttons.
The feeling of Ash’s chest lifting as he drew in a deep breath and then trapped her hand against his body filled Sophia with despair. He didn’t want her touching him. He was going to stop her. But to her shock and disbelief when he lifted her hand from his shirt, instead of releasing it, he placed it flat against the hardness of his erection. For a handful of seconds Sophia allowed herself the erotic joy of knowing him so intimately, of feeling the life force of his maleness beneath her hand, of letting that hand curl against the breadth of his arousal. She felt slightly dizzy, giddy with the swift rush of the responsive desire that was pounding through her own lower body, setting up a rhythm she could feel pulsing into the very heart of her sex.
‘Ash …’
His name on her lips was a soft sound of agonised need, her breath rushing his skin. In the dimly lit bedroom her skin gleamed a soft gold, the almost pagan sight of her naked breasts full and taut, their nipples swollen and dark, wrenching away the remnants of Ash’s self-control. In between possessively intimate and erotic kisses he undressed himself, watching with raw male pride when Sophia shuddered softly at the sight of his own naked body, her eyes slipping helplessly to his sex, her small tremble of longing mingled with uncertainty answering a need in him as old as time itself.
‘Touch me,’ he commanded her softly. ‘Touch me and know me.’
There was something almost hypnotic about Ash’s voice, or was it her own desire that was hypnotising her, Sophia wondered helplessly as she went towards Ash. Letting him take her hand and draw her down onto the bed with him where he put her hand back on his body, he told her again, ‘Touch me.’
Just the sound of the words was enough to send quivers of eager desire darting through her as she bent towards him. The feel of his hard hot flesh beneath her uncertain fingers was both alien and yet somehow in some way already known, as though in her dreams she had touched him like this a thousand plus times before. Each touch, each discovery, each sound of pleasure wrenched from Ash’s locked throat felt like a marker put in place on a territory that she had been destined to call her own.
Growing braver, she leaned over and brushed her lips against the taut plain of Ash’s flat muscular stomach, hot wilful pleasure possessing her when the slide of his hand into her hair and the raw gasp her touch drew from him told her that despite his stillness his body ached as much as her own.
A few more kisses, scattered daringly against the hair-roughened tautness of his thigh, a tentative caress of the hot tension of his erection, an awareness of the damp heat and the ache between her own thighs, and the coil of need within her had become a full-blown ravening demand.
Inside her head, images formed: the temptation to straddle Ash where he lay and let her body demand the upward thrust of his body into her own and the satisfaction it yearned for, a relentless unceasing hunger that grew with every breath she took.
How long before his self-control broke—how many seconds, how many heartbeats. How much could one man bear and not give in to such an intensity of need? Like a dam breaking, Ash felt his self-control give way. Reaching for Sophia he pulled her down against him, kissing her throat, her jaw, her mouth, taking the sobbed breath of pleasure she exhaled as he covered her breasts with his hands, kneading their soft warmth, letting his thumbs and fingertips mimic the intimate movement of his tongue within the soft damp heat of her mouth, When he made to lift her on top of him she moved eagerly, almost knowingly, to his guidance, one fierce tremor of her body and the flash of desire in her eyes her response to his removal of her briefs. Her sex was open and naked to his gaze and his touch and it was impossible for Ash to withstand the temptation to caress its soft inviting warmth, his touch drawing a wild shudder of pleasure from Sophia married to a sweetly agonised cry of female longing. The need to pull her down on top of him and pleasure her aroused flesh with his lips and his tongue had Ash sliding his hands along her thighs before he could stop himself, his hunger for the intimate taste of her overwhelming him, as much as Sophia’s moan of shocked delight overwhelmed her.
How could she endure such pleasure? How could her body hold back the tide of longing that swept her or the convulsive tremors of preorgasmic sensitivity it unleashed? A fine dew of aching arousal bathed her skin. Her nails raked Ash’s skin as he lowered her onto his body, a small mewling sound escaping her lips in her exquisite agony of relief as her muscles welcomed the full hard thrust of him within their embrace, her body rising and falling in concert with his as passion gripped them both.
Without thinking about what he was doing as they lay together in the aftermath of their shared ecstasy, Ash instinctively ran his hand down Sophia’s still-damp back, and let it come to rest on the curve of her hip. It was only a small gesture, a natural one, he suspected, for a man who had just shared so much pleasure with his partner, and who wanted to draw that partner closer for the intimacy that came after such intensely satisfying sex, but it was not one with which he was familiar, not one he had ever been tempted to indulge in ever before. Abruptly he withdrew his hand and moved back from her. Moved back but did not leave the bed. They were husband and wife; he was not a machine, and he was certainly not without respect for Sophia or her role in his life. She had just given herself to their marriage, to their commitment to each other to create the next generation, not just with her natural
