guttural with desperation. ‘It’s the same reason you let me into the apartment. I can’t get you out of my head.’
And then his lips were on hers. And all pretence of sense, or even sensibility, burned away in a fireball of need.
Her fingers sank into the glossy strands of hair at the base of his skull, massaged his scalp as he devoured her mouth, bit into her lower lip. She thrust her tongue into the hot recesses of his mouth, kissing him back with an instinctive need to taste, to take, to torture him the way he was torturing her.
He dragged his mouth away. His harsh breathing rasping against her ear as he fumbled for her running vest, yanked it over her head, then pressed his palms against her sports bra, lifting the weight of her heavy breasts. Her thin cry of need reverberated in her ears.
‘How can I still want you this much?’ he groaned, his words echoing her thoughts.
He released the hook on her bra and scooped up her tender flesh with his rough palms. Then his mouth—hot and wet—closed over the straining nipple. He suckled hard then transferred to the other nipple, tugged on the newly sensitive peak and made a pistol shot of need explode inside her.
She sucked in a shuddering breath, sobbed as he continued to torment first one breast then the other, and the firestorm rushed towards her. She screamed, the clench and rush of fulfilment sudden and shockingly intense.
‘Did you just come?’
All she could manage was a weak nod, as stunned by the staggering speed and intensity of her orgasm as he was.
His brows rose up his forehead then he swore, grasping her hips and lifting her easily onto the countertop. She clung to him, her body limp, sated, despite the pressure now burning like an inferno between her thighs. The Formica felt cold on her bottom as he yanked down her sweats, pulled them off and ripped the purple silk of her knickers. She listened in a trance to the sound of clothing being struggled out of, ripping foil, the ragged pants of their breathing.
And then he was there, huge and solid, the blunt head of his erection probing her entrance.
He stopped abruptly, his chest heaving as the deep blue gaze connected with hers. ‘I want to be inside you.’
She watched his jaw clench, rigid with the effort to hold back, and somewhere her dazed mind registered that he was asking her for permission before he took that final plunge. She lifted her arms around his neck, wrapped her legs around his hips and pressed her burning centre against the brutal pressure, letting instinct take over and damning the consequences.
‘Don’t stop,’ she demanded.
He groaned, gripped her bottom and impaled her in one glorious, all-consuming stroke. He pulled out briefly, then thrust back, harder, faster and further—filling every part of her. His fingers dug into her buttocks, anchoring her for the brutal possession, his movements not smooth or controlled, but basic, elemental, just like their first time. He adjusted her hips, his pelvis caressing her swollen clitoris with each powerful inward thrust, and the pleasure built in an unstoppable rush, rolling through her. Forcing her up, dragging her back, and hurling her over again.
She sobbed through that last brutal release and crashed past the final barrier as his feral shout of fulfilment followed her over the edge.
CHAPTER FIVE
PLEASE let it have been an erotic dream…
TESS squeezed her eyes shut and prayed as she walked down the hallway of her apartment, drying her damp hair after a desperate attempt to rinse off the scent of sex and insanity in the apartment’s power shower.
‘I made coffee. All I could find was decaff.’
Her gaze darted to the kitchenette at the husky comment, and the towel flopped onto her shoulders. The muscles in her spine tensed at the sight of the man standing by the counter with a mug of coffee at his lips.
Fabulous.
This was no dream. It was a nightmare. She really had made love to Nate Graystone like a sex-starved rabbit, twenty minutes ago.
Apart from the two undone buttons at the top of his pristine white shirt, and the furrows in his thick black hair, he didn’t look like a man who had recently been ravaged by a nymphomaniac.
Unfortunately, she knew better.
She resisted the urge to groan. And let go of the fervent prayer that he might have taken the hint when she shot off to the shower, and miraculously vanished.
‘Decaff is all I have.’ She avoided his eyes, deciding that the post-coital politeness was as unbearable as the antagonism that had preceded it.
‘I hope black works, because I couldn’t find cream either,’ he said, handing her a cup.
‘Black’s fine.’ She leant over the counter to take the mug he must have pulled out of her packing case, careful not to step back into the kitchenette with him.
Best not to get too close to him again. The man had some weird chemical effect on her self-control that appeared to be exacerbated by her pregnancy—how else could she have allowed this to happen? Again.
‘I’m moving out this afternoon. Hence the empty fridge,’ she said, ignoring his steady, concentrated gaze as she skirted round the countertop and retreated back into the living area.
She heard his footsteps on the wooden flooring as he took the hint this time and followed her into the larger space.
‘Listen, Tess.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Despite how it looks, I didn’t come here to…’ She turned when he hesitated, surprised to see the dull flush on his cheeks beneath his tan.
Some of the tension in her shoulder blades eased at the thought that he was as confused by their insane behaviour as she was.
‘To boff me senseless on my kitchen counter,’ she finished for him.
He looked taken aback for a moment, then huffed out a laugh. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
He sipped his coffee, watching her intently over the rim as if he were trying to gauge her mood. ‘I seem to have serious control problems when it comes to you and confined spaces.’
Despite the flutter of panic still buzzing about in her belly, she smiled. ‘Ditto.’
‘You’re not angry?’ he asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
‘Why would I be angry? You gave me the choice and I distinctly remember giving you my whole-hearted permission.’
He chuckled, his eyes glittering with amusement.
‘Although I think next time you give a girl a choice,’ she added playfully, hoping humour would skim over the awkwardness, ‘don’t wait until the moment of penetration. It might make your offer seem a little disingenuous.’
He stepped forward. ‘Point taken.’
‘And knicker-ripping is sort of frowned on too. Those happened to be Indian silk.’
‘I ripped your panties?’
