it did, Emily felt her skin flush with brilliant colour, her voice as dazed as her brain as she whispered huskily, ‘You can’t mean that.’
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t mean it, but I’m afraid it’s the truth. I want you in my arms, under my body—in the most intimate way it is possible for a man to want a woman,’ he underlined almost savagely. ‘And believe me, you can’t be any more contemptuous of me than I am of myself. I assure you, I’m not—’
He broke off, leaving Emily to wonder what he had been about to say. He wasn’t going to pretend he loved her…how could he? He wasn’t going to apologise for wanting her? He wasn’t going to actually put his physical desire into actions? Why not, when every sense she possessed was telling her how much she wanted that same intimacy with him which he had just described so brusquely. Wanted it…ached for it…yearned for it…She took one shaky breath and then another. This had to stop, and right now.
She opened her mouth to tell him so and instead, shockingly, incredibly, heard herself asking breathlessly, pleadingly almost, ‘Do you really want to make love to me?’ What was she saying? Where was she going? What was she doing, embarking down a road which could only go one way?
It seemed a long time before she heard his bleak, clipped, ‘Yes…why?’
She took a deep breath, not allowing herself to think about what she was doing, holding fast to a deeper, more primitive instinct, like someone clutching a lifeline in heavy seas.
‘I…I feel the same way.’ When he was silent, she added, ‘I want to make love with you.’
It was said…the need voiced. She had opened herself to him to accept—or reject—whichever he chose, and she could not begin to understand why she had done so. Only that she had responded to something within him that had struck an answering chord within her.
As she waited she said hesitantly, ‘I can’t pretend to understand why. I know I’ve probably shocked you. If you’d prefer not to…’
Opposite her, Matt tried to probe what lay behind the cool, well-mannered words—if she was simply playing a joke on him, trying to make a fool of him, or if she actually meant it. He tried to tell himself that there was no way he could feel this urgent, clamouring desire for a woman about whom he knew nothing at all other than that he wanted her, but his body refused to listen to such logic. His body was reinforcing what he already knew—his body…
Emily heard him mutter something under his breath and tensed, waiting for his rejection, her back held rigidly towards him.
And then, unbelievably, she felt his hands on her shoulders turning her towards him, his voice low and ragged as he said rawly, ‘We shouldn’t be doing this, you know…’ He held her roughly as though pleading with her to deny him.
‘No…I know…’ Emily responded breathlessly, knowing even as she spoke that there was no power on earth that could stop this extraordinary mutual need that was driving them both.
And most extraordinary of all, she marvelled dizzily as she felt his arms close around her and draw her down against him, was the feeling she had of being so safe with him…so free to express herself and her desires, so free from restraint and shyness, so in tune with him that it was as though she had known him all her life, rather than a space of time that could be counted in minutes and hours instead of days and years.
‘If you should change your mind…’ The words whispered against her lips, tantalising their soft flesh.
Here was her chance to hold back, to let caution and common sense hold sway, to withdraw from this madness which seemed to have possessed her—but ignoring it, rejecting the opportunity he was giving her, she heard herself saying almost fiercely, ‘No…no. I don’t want to change my mind…’
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU’RE sure you want this…Me?’
The words thrilled against her skin, raising a rash of gooseflesh, making her quiver and then tense as she felt Matt’s lips tracing the shape of her mouth, exploring it, cherishing it so that her tension died in a flood of wonder and pleasure.
Why had she never known that it was possible to feel like this; that the delicate, almost hesitant touch of another mouth against her own could arouse her to such dizzying pleasure and need? It was as though this sensual exploratory meeting of their lips was something she had dreamed of—yearned for for an aeon of time, rather than knowing she wanted it only seconds before she experienced it.
Against Matt’s mouth she whispered back, ‘I want you,’ and another thrill of anticipation ran through her as she felt the answering tension in Matt’s body.
An unfamiliar heady eagerness to reach out to him and show him, with the touch of her hands and her lips, just what delight it gave her to have him near her overwhelmed her. She, who had never once initiated an embrace with any man—not even Gerry—had suddenly turned into a woman she could hardly recognise.
How had she known that the delicate touch of her fingertips against his skin would make Matt tense and groan against her mouth, tightening his hold on her, drawing her down against him so that her body was enveloped in the heat and maleness of his?
His hands cradled her head, his fingers sliding into her hair as his mouth explored the delicate contours of her face. His warm breath against her ear made her tremble and shiver beneath a shower of fiery darts of excitement. Sensations she had never known existed coiled through her stomach and swelled the soft curves of her breasts, inciting her to move with instinctive enticement against Matt’s body, as her wanton flesh silently begged him to free it from the final barriers left between them.
She wanted to feel him against her, she recognised. She wanted to feel the hard heat of his skin against her own, to experience the touch of his hands and mouth against her body, and to explore the alien contours of his with hers. Her needs suspended reality and her ability to rationalise, her mind reeling under the shock of the dominating demands of her body.
As Matt’s hand swept back her hair to lay bare her throat to the hungry assault of his mouth, she arched eagerly towards him, not in humble supplication, but in proud demand, knowing by some primitive instinct that, whatever the differences between them, in this their need for one another they met as equals.
The heat of his breath against her skin, the hard pressure of his mouth, the sharp bite of his teeth, the rough stroke of his hands on her skin, all of them were so perfectly attuned to her own needs that to experience them fed her desire at the same time as they momentarily satisfied it.
An instinct she hadn’t known she possessed told her when to draw her own mouth against his flesh, when to stroke it tenderly with her tongue and when to graze it more ardently with the subtle pressure of her teeth.
Their surroundings, the storm which had brought them together, the fact that they were strangers to one another—all these had faded into insignificance. All that was important was that Matt had at last removed the last barriers of their underwear, and that his hands were cupping and shaping her breasts. That his thumbs were stroking eagerly, wonderingly almost, against the sensitive hardness of her nipples as though he knew exactly the intensity of her need to have him touch her just like that; as though he knew that even another second’s delay in doing so would have stretched out the taut hot wire of desire that compelled her that little bit too far.
And, when he lowered his head and took one tender, flaunting nub of flesh into his mouth, caressing it gently with his
