him whisper, and when she saw the heat of desire turn his hazel eyes to molten gold as they roamed her naked body from head to toe, suddenly she wasn’t cold any more.
She reached out trembling hands towards his shirt again, half expecting him to stop her, then whimpered in frustration when she found she couldn’t force the little discs through their respective holes anyway.
‘I can’t do this!’ she complained. ‘And I want to see you, too.’
His eyes met hers, the heat in them fierce enough to turn cold water into steam, and her arousal was so intense it was almost pain.
It had never felt like this before, even though she’d desired Jake from the first moment she’d met him.
‘Maggie, you don’t want to do this,’ he was warning her, even as he was stripping his shirt over his head. ‘It’s just the result of the shock of being scalded coming on top of the scene in the club.’
Her only response was to reach for his head with both hands, sliding her fingers through his hair to pull him closer.
‘If you don’t want to make love with me, then say so,’ she said, her steady words totally at odds with her trembling body. She was very afraid that he would be able to see her vulnerability in her eyes but she couldn’t look away.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to…’ he denied quickly, but she wasn’t reassured—not when he wouldn’t meet her eyes properly. Had she read him so wrong? Was it just because she’d never wanted anything as much as she wanted this, that she was presuming that he felt the same way?
‘Jake!’ She heard the pleading in her voice but after two long years of wanting him it didn’t really matter. ‘I need you,’ she whispered, the words almost lost in the sound of the freezing torrent as her teeth started to chatter and she reached for the fastening of his waistband.
Whatever reservations he may have had disappeared completely then. In moments, he was stepping back into the cubicle and her heart soared as he reached for her.
‘Kiss me!’ he growled as he wrapped his arms around her in the confined space, but she was already tilting her face up towards him.
It was everything she’d dreamed of and more—hot, sweet, fierce and every bit as ravenous as she could have wished.
‘Please!’ she whimpered, tightening her grasp so that her slick flesh slid against his in a graphic illustration of her need for more.
‘Hold tight,’ he ordered, and he bent to lift her, his hands cupping her bottom.
Without any prompting she wrapped her legs around his waist and when she felt him press against her intimate heat she trembled in anticipation of what was to come.
‘Oh, Maggie!’ he groaned, and she was certain that she felt him quivering with the same onslaught of pleasure. Then he turned to brace her against the tiled wall of the cubicle, leaning back just far enough to gaze his fill at the way they fitted in each other’s arms.
He was so broad and strong against her slighter frame, his muscles and sinews standing out in stark relief as he supported her, every swell and hollow slick with rivulets of water that eventually disappeared between their bodies.
‘Give me your breast,’ he demanded hoarsely.
She hesitated momentarily, stunned to feel everything inside her clenching in response to his raw command. Lack of experience made her waver, but a glimpse of uncertainty in his gaze was enough to restore her courage and she cupped one hand around herself and offered her breast up to him.
He nuzzled his face against her and the smoothness of his jaw told her that he must have shaved recently. He was so warm against the chill of her skin that she was briefly reminded about the necessity of taking the heat out of their recent scalds, then he opened his mouth to take her inside and nothing else mattered.
She’d never dreamed that she would be so in tune with him, every move so well choreographed as if they’d already been lovers in fact rather than in her imagination. Finally, when she could bear his teasing torment no longer, she took control, tightening her legs around him as she impaled herself to the hilt and shattered around him with a high keening cry.
Even as her body clenched rhythmically around him she felt him follow her into the maelstrom, and he gave a wordless shout of ecstasy as his release exploded into her secret depths.
For several moments it seemed as if neither of them could have moved if they’d wanted to, their arms wrapped tightly around each other as they panted for breath. Maggie was absolutely certain that if Jake hadn’t been pressing her against the tiled wall she would have slid bonelessly down its slick surface into the puddle in the bottom of the bath.
She was totally stunned. Was this what she’d been missing all these years? Or was it something special, just between the two of them? She chuckled when she realised that there was only one way to find out.
‘Wow! What do you do for an encore?’
‘Encore?’ Was that disbelief in his voice? It was hard to tell when his face was buried in the curve between her neck and shoulder. ‘I’m still waiting to find out if I’ve survived the overture.’
She gripped her legs around his waist then squeezed the muscles that surrounded him where he was still buried deep inside her. She laughed again, a throaty, husky sound that she’d never heard herself make before, when she felt the burgeoning proof of his returning arousal.
‘Take it from me,’ she whispered, ‘you’ve definitely survived. I’ve got the evidence to prove it.’ And she deliberately tightened her internal muscles around him again.
He groaned, apparently helpless to stop himself thrusting in response, and she felt a surge of feminine power.
‘You say you’ve got evidence?’ he demanded hoarsely, finally straightening up enough to meet her eyes. ‘Well, how about taking this somewhere warmer and drier to explore that evidence?’
WHAT had he done? What on earth had he been thinking about? his brain screamed at him the next morning when Jake woke up to find Maggie still spread-eagled limply across his body.
‘Down, boy!’ he muttered when his body reacted all too eagerly to her soft curves. It knew exactly what had happened during the night and was only too willing for it to happen again. The fact that it was something he’d wanted for the last two years had nothing to do with it. He’d known right from the first that he and Maggie could never be more than friends.
It was precisely because she was a friend that he’d come to try to talk to her. He’d been worried about her. Worried about the fact that, at a time he would expect a woman to need the support of a female friend, she was refusing to answer her door to Karen. Worried about her state of mind, knowing how much she’d been looking forward to being a mother to Liam’s two children and concerned about her reaction to the destruction of her dream of having a houseful of her own.
Not that he’d thought for a moment that she would do anything stupid or life-threatening—she had her feet far too firmly on the ground for that. And besides, he knew from working with her in the A and E department that she valued
