thighs had the effect of making her feel self-conscious or apprehensive.
She could feel the faint tremor in his hands as he touched and held her, seeing the aching male hunger in his eyes as he lifted his head and looked deeply into her own before looking back at the soft, shadowed, exposed triangle of silky hair that not so much concealed her sex, Claire recognised as her heart started to race with feverish longing, but rather emphasised its feminine sensuality and allure.
She could see the way Brad’s eyes darkened with open desire as he placed one hand over her, his fingertips stroking the silky hair, parting the softly fleshed lips which were already signalling their longing for his touch.
But as he knelt over her Claire’s attention was suddenly caught by something. ‘No, wait,’ she demanded huskily.
‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘I won’t hurt you, Claire. I won’t do anything you don’t want. I won’t…’
Quickly she shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘It isn’t…’ Her fingers touched his wrist, marvelling at the strength of bone and sinew that his flesh covered. ‘I want to see you…’ she whispered huskily. ‘I want to look… to watch…’
For a moment she thought that he didn’t understand what she meant, but then, as his eyes met hers, she saw that he did, and her breath caught on a small, fierce stab of pleasure as she saw, too, how much her whispered plea had aroused him.
Silently she watched as he pushed aside the duvet, aware not only of the tautly male eroticism of his body but of the way he was trembling slightly as well, of the way he paused, hesitated almost nervously, as he watched her watching him.
That he should exhibit such nervousness filled her with female tenderness. Gently she reached out and touched him, running her fingertips from his breastbone right down to where the fine line of body hair became a silky male tangle, openly, thickly sexual, that cushioned the power and promise of what lay over it.
This was her first self-chosen intimate contact with male arousal, but somehow to Claire, as she slowly looked at Brad and absorbed the physical reality of him, it was as though a part of her had known him and known this for always.
Even before her fingertips ran slowly and exploratively along the length of his taut arousal she knew exactly how his whole body would stiffen and shudder beneath her touch… how he would moan softly beneath his breath and close his eyes, arching his spine as he submitted to her exploration, only the fierce rigidity with which the flesh she was touching swelled just that little bit more against her touch betraying how much it craved the pleasure of her caress.
A man’s body was at once both so sexually powerful and dangerous and so vulnerable, Claire marvelled, watching Brad’s jaw clench as he tried to control his reaction to her. If just this, her lightest touch, had the power to affect him so intensely, how would he react if she were to bend her head and press her lips to his tautly sensitive skin—to kiss and caress it, to slide…?
She gave a tiny gasp of shock when she heard Brad saying something savagely fierce under his breath as he removed her hand and then lowered his head over her body, kissing her stomach and then her thighs with a frenetic urgency, touching her, stroking and caressing her, first with his fingers and then with his mouth until she was turning and twisting beneath the unbearable pleasure of what he was doing to her, alternately shuddering with the seismic convulsions that engulfed her and pleading with him to stop, crying out to him that she couldn’t endure such sensual ecstasy.
Only Brad wouldn’t stop, and it wasn’t until he was finally buried deep inside her, his body moving with rhythmic urgency within hers, his voice thick and guttural with praise and pleasure as he finally succumbed to his own desire, that she recognised that physical ecstasy and female fulfilment could be even more intense a second time than it had been the first.
Half an hour later, still feeling blissfully euphoric from the intensity of their lovemaking and emotionally dizzy from the unexpectedness of what had happened, Claire struggled to fight off the waves of sleep washing over her, murmuring a soft sound of appreciation as Brad drew her closer to his body and kept her there, unable, it seemed, to relinquish her, his lips feathering gently against her hair as Claire drifted off to sleep.
When she came awake abruptly later in the night, at first she had no idea where she was, but the physical sensation of Brad’s hot body next to hers and the sound of his voice as he cried out something unintelligible in his sleep froze her into shocked awareness as she realised what she had done.
Her body shaking with reaction, she started to ease herself free of Brad’s still constraining arm.
At some stage Brad must have switched off the lamp because the room was now almost in darkness. However, there was still enough light for Claire to be able to see that the fever which had originally brought her into Brad’s room, anxious for his health, had disappeared. Still trembling, she eased herself out of his bed, her eyes widening as she caught sight of her discarded robe lying on the floor.
As she shrugged herself into it, her hands were trembling so much that she couldn’t fasten the tie-belt.
Hot shame scorched her skin as she remembered how eagerly, how unbelievably provocatively she had silently encouraged Brad to remove it… As her mind relayed flickering, unwanted images of what had happened to her she shrank inwardly from what they were revealing to her. She didn’t recognise the image of herself they were giving her, the message about herself that they were giving her. She didn’t want to recognise them.
In her anxiety to get out of Brad’s room she almost stumbled, holding her breath as he moved in his sleep, his forehead furrowing as he reached out an arm across the bed as though searching for her. For her… or merely for a woman… any woman…?
Had he known it was her when… when he had behaved in that incredibly sensual way, or had he simply been in the grip of some fevered state of semi-consciousness? Claire fervently prayed that it was the latter as she hurried back to her own bedroom.
But then, as she climbed into her cold bed, she stiffened. Brad had called her by her name… He had opened his eyes and looked at her, recognised her. He had whispered to her, made it clear that he wanted her.
How on earth was she ever going to be able to face him again? she wondered miserably. For a man to make love to a woman without being committed to her, without loving her, was still, in the eyes of a too cynical world, socially acceptable. For a woman to do the same thing…
But she had not done the same thing, had she? She…
Claire sat up in bed, hugging her arms around her knees, forcing herself to confront the truth.
She was not permitted the merciful excuse of being able to blame her behaviour on male hormones or a deep fever, and she knew that underneath the sheer sensuality of what she had done, the fierce intensity of a physical desire so strong that it had caught her off guard like an unexpectedly strong current in a previously placid stretch of calm water, she was emotionally drawn to Brad—emotionally responsive to him.
Emotionally drawn… A bitter sound of smothered hysterical laughter rasped at the back of her throat.
Be honest with yourself, she jeered inwardly; you’re in love with him. You, a woman of your age, are making a fool of yourself with emotions more suited to a girl in her teens.
A woman of her age maybe, but she did not have the experience, the knowledge of herself as a sexual being, that other women of her age enjoyed, Claire admitted painfully. In that
