was hardly romantic, but it didn’t matter.
All that mattered was them, alone together and driven by a need that had come out of nowhere and wouldn’t be denied.
Their clothes hit the floor—jackets, her scarf, his sweater dragged off over his head so that his chest was right in front of her eyes and jammed her breath to a halt in her throat.
She reached out to touch it, her fingertips tracing the outline of taut, firm muscles that jerked at her touch. His hand caught her chin, gentle fingers tilting her face up to his, and he stared down into her eyes for a long moment before he stepped back out of reach.
‘Undress for me.’
His voice was gruff, a muscle twitching in his jaw, and his eyes held hers, fire and ice dancing in their depths. Her heart was trying to climb out of her chest, jamming her breath, but she sucked air in somehow, coming out of her trance as the oxygen reached her brain and reality hit.
He thought she was a glamour model. How could she do this? Undress for him as if she had all the confidence of a woman who earned her living with her body? She couldn’t even remember what underwear she’d flung on after her shower!
Matching? Probably not. The bra was hot pink, she knew that, because the lace was scratchy, and if she had that bra on, it was because she was getting to the bottom of her underwear drawer. Which didn’t bode well for the knickers.
She peeled off her top, and his breath hissed in between his teeth. His hand moved as if to reach for her, and then stopped, hauled back into his pocket beside a tell-tale bulge that made her body weep and her legs turn to mush.
She sat down on the bed and unzipped her boots, tugging them off and then standing up again to slide down the zip on her jeans and wiggle them over her hips, catching a reassuring glimpse of her knickers. Navy lace shorts edged with pink ribbon, so sort of matching. It could have been a lot worse.
Easing her breath out slowly on a silent sigh of relief, she slid the jeans down, but they clung to her legs and there was no sexy way to get them off.
‘Here. Let me.’
He crouched in front of her, the fabric bunched in his hands as he pushed the jeans down her legs, lifting her feet in turn to strip them away. His breath was hot, drifting over her legs, the tender skin of her thighs, seeping through the lace fabric just a hand’s breadth from his mouth. His hands slid round and cupped her bottom, holding her still as he closed the gap, breathing out, the hot rush going straight to her core.
‘There goes that fantasy,’ he murmured, and her ego quailed.
‘What fantasy?’ she asked, just so she could flagellate herself with it in the future, but he laughed softly.
‘Red shoes—’
‘—no pants,’ she finished, and felt her breath ease out in a sigh of relief.
‘I’m sure we can fix that,’ he said, his voice a low rasp, but she put her hand out to stop him as he reached for them.
‘Your turn,’ she said, stalling for time, and he smiled wickedly and dumped his wallet and keys and phone on the bedside table before he kicked off his shoes, peeled off his socks and shucked his jeans, kicking them away to land in a heap with hers.
There was nothing unusual or remarkable about his snug jersey shorts, but the contents...
‘Keep going,’ she ordered, and he quirked a brow and peeled them slowly down, letting them drop to the floor as he stood there bold and unselfconscious and gloriously naked.
How wonderful to be so sure of yourself, she thought as he pushed her down onto the bed and tipped her back, reaching out his hands to draw the dark blue lace with its pink ribbons slowly down over her hips, her legs, her feet...
‘Now that’s more like it,’ he said, and the searing flame of his eyes stroked her with fire.
She whimpered, clenching her knees together to stop the blaze from burning her up, but he reached out a hand, pressing her knees apart, his wicked, clever fingers replacing the stroke of his eyes as his hand slid up her thigh and found its target unerringly.
The intimacy shocked and yet excited her, the tension winding tighter and tighter in her body with every touch, and then suddenly he was gone, leaving her lying there exposed and aching, screaming for release.
‘Sam—?’
‘Two seconds.’
She heard a slight rustle, a faint tearing sound, and then he was back. A condom, she realised. Thank God one of them was thinking straight, although he didn’t need it because she was on the Pill, but she knew nothing about him—
‘Shove up,’ he muttered, and she wriggled into the middle of the bed as he followed her, peeling away her bra, his mouth taking its place, fastening over one breast and suckling hard as a hand found the other and cradled it in his warm palm.
His knee nudged hers apart and she yielded to him, her body aching for his, arching into him as she begged incoherently, her hesitation forgotten, pleading for something out of reach, something special, and so elusive.
‘Easy,’ he murmured, and then he was there, filling her, her face cradled gently in his hands as he kissed her. His mouth was hot and sweet and coaxing, his body taut and so, so clever, and the feeling inside her escalated wildly. She felt the pressure building, tried to squirm away, to stall it because suddenly to give him so much of herself seemed too great a step, making her too vulnerable to this stranger who could play her body like a violin.
He held her, though, his body claiming hers, refusing to free it, to let her escape the thing she’d yearned for and now dreaded because it would tear down her defences and leave her wide open to hurt.
‘Look at me, Kate,’ he demanded softly, and his eyes captured hers and held them, steady and sure, the flame burning bright as he drove her over the edge and crumbled all her defences into dust.
Then, and only then, did he close his eyes, drop his head against her shoulder and let himself go.
SAM PROPPED HIMSELF on one elbow and watched Kate sleeping, her rich toffee-coloured hair an unruly tangle, her limbs sprawled in exhaustion.
He knew how that felt.
Their mutual thirst was finally slaked, but on the way there he’d wrung every last gasp out of her, taken both of them to the limit of their endurance over and over again. It had been amazing, astonishing. Compelling beyond anything he’d ever felt before.
Guilt plagued him at that, but he pushed it away. It was only sex, nothing more. It wasn’t disloyal, because this wasn’t a relationship, just a crazy night out of nowhere. Surely to God he was allowed to have fun sometimes, to forget, just for a few hours?
A curl lay across her cheek, and he lifted it away, careful not to disturb her. Not that he thought he would. She was sleeping like the dead—
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. It was only six thirty, but the man who owned the boat was going out on the tide
