of her bottom, fingers spread, stroking and lifting. Lifting her into himself. He let his hips rest against hers, and with a surge of sudden excitement Lissa felt the hard, revealing strength of his arousal. Her breath caught and her eyes went to his.
There was knowledge in his eyes, and a rich, deep desire.
‘And now, cherie, it is time for you to touch me,’ he said softly.
For a moment she hesitated. She was supremely conscious of the fact that she was standing against him, stripped to her skimpy panties, her breasts swollen and peaked, her hair loose down her naked back—a woman waiting to be taken to his bed while he, fully aroused, was also fully clothed. The contrast shivered through her with erotic intensity.
Her arms lifted, and she draped them loosely around his neck. The movement brought the breasts he had caressed to ripened fullness into contact with his suited body. She felt the contact of his jacket against her nipples, and the sensation excited her yet more.
Her breathing quickened yet again.
She softly pressed hips barely covered by the thin silk of her panties against his, and felt the delicious contact there, as well. Against a yet more intimate part of her body.
She watched his face—quite deliberately. There was a line of tension along his cheekbones. It sent a thrill through her. Oh, she might be one of many women a man as gorgeous as Xavier Lauran could have for his pleasure, but right now she was the woman in his arms—she was the one who was causing that tension, that arousal, that absolute focus of his extreme attention.
It would not last. She knew it with a distant portion of her mind. But she did not care. She would pay the price when it came, and come it would, and then she would return to her real life, but for now she would have what she had never thought she would have, never thought she would experience.
For one delicious moment longer she held still, simply revelling in the feel of her silk-veiled pubis against the strength of his straining shaft, then she leaned back slightly from him, so that their hips were still in contact but she had the space to draw her hands back from around his neck.
Her fingers went to his tie. Teased open the knot. Then, never losing contact with his eyes, which were locked to hers, she slowly slid the tie out from beneath his collar. She discarded it on the floor. It lay, coiled, beside her bra and her other clothes, unseen, unattended to. She had more to attend to with her fingers.
One by one she slipped the buttons on his shirt, easing and teasing each button loose with deliberate slowness. As she worked her way down, the backs of her fingers rested on the smooth white surface of his shirt. She could feel the heat from his hard flesh beneath. Soon, so very soon, her fingers would be gliding over that smooth, firm flesh.
Opened, she eased the shirt little by little from his waistband, and then, when it was loose, her hands went back to his shoulders. His gaze was still locked to hers, still unreadable, although she knew perfectly well, with every feminine instinct, that he was exerting supreme control over his reactions, forcing himself to stay immobile while she stripped him down to the lean, perfect body beneath the expensive tailored clothes.
Her hands, at last, slid beneath the surface of the material of his loosened shirt, and the sensation of his warm, smooth skin beneath her palms was heady in its intimacy. Her fingers cupped his shoulders and worked the shirt from his body and arms. It slithered to the floor. Only then did she allow herself the luxury of letting her hands stroke over his torso. It made her breath catch—it was perfect, quite perfect. A column of lean, muscled flesh and bone, neither over-nor under-developed, neither broad nor slim, but perfect. It was bliss to touch, bliss to let her hands roam free, drifting in slow sweeps on its surface warmth, sliding around his waist to glide up over the muscled contours of his back.
And then, most blissful of all, to lift her body against his again, and let the contact of her swollen nipples graze across his own naked, exposed flesh.
She felt his arousal strengthen, and it made her breath catch, made the excitement surge again in her. As if it were a cue for him, suddenly, from being immobile, he took control again. His hands wrapped around her back, fingers splaying out in possession.
His mouth came down on hers.
This was no soft kiss as at the hotel, nor was it urgent with relief as it was at her flat. This was the kiss of a man, a male, strong, sensual, possessing her mouth as if it was his to take for the asking. He opened her to him with effortless intent and speared within, meeting her and deepening the kiss with sensual mastery.
Desire surged in her, stronger and more insistent. She returned kiss for kiss, her hands moving up to cup the shape of his skull beneath the pressure of her fingertips, buried in the silken, sable hair.
Her body was ripe, engorged, her lips swollen, her breasts straining, and between the vee of her legs, where the strength of his shaft pressed insistently, intimately against her, she felt a quickening that fed the hunger she must sate.
As if he felt she had reached that point, he suddenly caught her up and deposited her on the wide, soft bed. Her breath caught as he stood briefly, to strip, with controlled, swift movements, the last of his clothes. He came down beside her and in the same moment his fingers hooked into the hip-level waistline of her panties and peeled them from her. Where they fell she did not know or care. Knew only that she was lying naked to his view. And now he was perusing her, propped on one elbow, just a little way from her on the wide bed, his eyes moving over her naked body leisurely, lingeringly, until his gaze reached her eyes, and held.
It was the most intimate look he had given her yet, and Lissa knew that now they were truly about to start making love together. This was her moment of time with him.
She felt beautiful. More beautiful than she had ever felt in her life. The beauty of her naked female form, her long hair flowing out in a swathe behind her, her limbs, her body, all displayed for him, for him alone—the body of a woman in desire, a desire that she would consummate with this man, whose perfect body lay beside her, in a state of nature as was hers. There was a naturalness about it, a rightness about this coming together of two bodies, two people, giving themselves to each other.
Not in love, nor lust, but in mutual appreciation of the gift of physical sensuality.
She smiled. It was a warm smile as the recognition of the rightness of what she was doing, where she was, what was to happen, glowed in her. For just a second something veiled in his eyes—as if it might be a question, and then it was gone, banished, and he was looking down at her with an answering tug at the corner of his beautiful mouth.
‘Xavier,’ she said softly. A statement, a recognition. An acknowledgement of what she was about to do. Make love with a man she desired above all others. ‘Xavier,’ she breathed again.
It was all he needed. His head lowered to hers and he began to kiss her. Slowly this time, but with such skilled, arousing sensuality that she was lost—lost in a world she had not known possible, a world where every touch, every caress, drew from her a response that intensified with every exquisite contact.
He stroked her body, his hand warm on her flanks, her breasts, smoothing and gliding over her stomach, cupping her breasts with the bowl of his hand, fingers scything slowly either side of her nipples as if the touch were as pleasurable to him as it was to her. She moved her head in the soft pillows, sensuously revelling in the sensation as his hand moved down over her flank again, dipping between the pillars of her thighs, parting them for himself.
The tips of his fingers glided between, and she was dewed for him already, her
