her hard and fast, as the blood pounding in his veins urged him to do. She was not behaving as he had expected her to. His previous sexual encounters had always been with experienced women, who knew how to please him and were not shy about stating what pleased them. But Jess was clearly waiting for him to take the lead.
She looked incredibly sexy, stretched out on the bed with her fiery hair spread over the pillows, her small, pale breasts with their tightly puckered pink nipples practically begging for the ministrations of his tongue. And yet at the same time he sensed an innocence about her that made him think that she had not had many lovers.
Why the idea should make him want to grin he did not know, but as he smiled at her and watched her lips curve in a tentative response he felt a curious tug on his insides, and he forced himself to relax and slow the pace a little.
‘Show me how much you want me,’ he murmured as he bent his head and slanted his mouth over hers. Her immediate response stoked his desire, and he groaned and deepened the kiss until he felt tremors run through her body and realised that he was shaking too.
He heard the faint catch of her breath when he stroked her breasts, and the soft moan she gave as he flicked his thumb-pads across her nipples made him want to drag her beneath him and seek the release he craved. She was so sweetly responsive, and yet he sensed she was surprised by his caresses, as if the sensations she felt when he kissed her and touched her body were new to her.
From then on Drago forgot his own needs and concentrated on arousing Jess. He breathed in the delicate fragrance of her skin as he kissed her throat, the creamy slopes of her breasts, and finally closed his lips around one taut, dusky peak and then its twin. Her nightgown was bunched up around her waist, and he pushed it over her hips and placed his hand over the slight mound of her womanhood, hidden from his gaze beneath the fragile barrier of white lace knickers. She gave an involuntary movement and tried to clamp her legs together, but released her breath on a shivery sigh when he gently eased her thighs apart and slid his fingers beneath her panties. With delicate precision he dipped a finger into her moist opening and felt her buck her hips as he probed deeper into her honeyed sweetness.
Jess trembled as Drago continued his intimate exploration. She had never experienced such intense pleasure as he was eliciting, with his wickedly inventive fingers and with his mouth as he bent his head to her breasts and lashed her swollen nipples with his tongue. Sex with Seb had been very different, she thought ruefully. The few times she had slept with him he had seemed far more intent on his own pleasure than hers, but she had been so besotted with him that she’d felt grateful for any small sign of affection from him.
She was jolted from her thoughts of the past when Drago stood up from the bed and stripped off the rest of his clothes. Black silk boxers followed his trousers to the floor, and the sight of his naked, hugely aroused body stole her breath.
Feeling a little nervous now, she circled her lips with the tip of her tongue in an unknowingly provocative gesture and blurted out, ‘Oh, heavens.’
Drago gave a ragged laugh. ‘Cara, if you continue to look at me like you are doing I think I’ll explode.’ His voice thickened. ‘It has to be now, mia bella. I can’t wait any longer.’
As he knelt above her, his dark eyes glittering with the intensity of his desire, Jess’s heart rate quickened and the slight fear she’d felt that he was too big and powerful for her to cope with faded. She had never been so aroused, so desperate to ease the aching need that throbbed in every pore of her body.
His skin felt warm beneath her palms as she slid her hands over his chest and felt the faint abrasion of his chest hair. She loved the feeling of closeness to another human being. It was something she had rarely experienced. She did not remember her father ever hugging her as a child, and at the children’s home the staff had been kind but never affectionate.
All Drago was offering was sex, she reminded herself. And that was all she wanted too—the satiation of this feverish yearning that blotted out all other thoughts and left her mindless with desire. Her heart thudded when he pulled her knickers down her legs and pushed her thighs apart. The deliberation of his actions increased her excitement and she whimpered when he touched her intimately again, the sensations he aroused as he found the most sensitive part of her making her arch her hips in urgent invitation.
The solid ridge of his erection jabbed her belly, but when she curled her fingers around his swollen manhood he made a harsh sound.
‘Not this time, cara,’ he growled as he pressed forward and entered her with a deep thrust that drove the breath from her lungs. Feeling her sudden tension, he stilled and stared into her eyes, a look of puzzlement in his. ‘Did I hurt you?’ His voice was rough with concern. ‘I did not expect you to be so tight.’
She flushed. ‘It’s been a while,’ she admitted, suddenly fearful that he would be disappointed by her.
‘If it is uncomfortable for you we’ll stop.’
‘No!’ Feeling him begin to withdraw, she clutched hold of him and wrapped her legs around his hips. ‘I don’t want to stop.’
Drago closed his eyes, struggling for control as his body reacted to the mind-blowing delight of feeling her vaginal muscles grip him in a velvet embrace. As Jess slowly relaxed he could not resist sinking deeper into her, and his buttocks clenched as he fought against the hot tide of pleasure that was threatening to overwhelm him.
‘I’m not going to stop,’ he assured her as he withdrew a little and she made a husky protest. If he was honest he did not think he could stop when his body was so tight and hot and hard, he acknowledged ruefully. ‘See?’ He thrust into her again—once, twice—each stroke harder and faster than the last as he set a rhythm that drove them both higher.
‘Oh…’ Jess gasped as he slid his hands beneath her bottom and tilted her so that the tip of his steel-hard arousal hit an especially sensitive spot deep within her. Waves of pleasure ripped through her as he plunged between her trembling thighs with an urgency that told her his control was close to breaking. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps, and she gripped the silk sheet beneath her, her fingers clawing at it as her excitement built to an intolerable level.
Nothing had prepared her for the ecstasy of her first ever orgasm. It overwhelmed her. Shock waves of incredible sensation pounded her and she shuddered with convulsive pleasure. Almost simultaneously she felt a tremor run through Drago’s big body and he gave a harsh groan. The sound of it was somehow more shocking than anything that had gone before. The fact that this powerful man had come apart in her arms filled Jess with fierce tenderness, so that she curled her arms around his neck and stroked his hair as he laid his head on her breasts.
In the lull after the storm only the sound of their breathing gradually slowing broke the intense quiet, and in those moments when they were still joined it seemed to Jess that they were the only two people in a private, magical world.
Early next morning—so early that the light filtering through the crack in the curtains was a pale, iridescent glimmer—Jess lay still, pretending to be asleep, although in fact she was studying Drago from beneath her lashes.
He was lying on his back, staring up at the drapes of the four-poster bed. His hard-as-granite profile was not encouraging and her heart sank. Of course she had not expected to wake in his arms, or for him to kiss her tenderly as the new day dawned. She was stupid—falling into his bed last night had proved that—but she harboured no illusions that the passion they’d shared had been anything more than mind-blowing sex.
So why were tears blurring her vision? Why was she wishing with all her heart that
