pulling free his belt with damn near the same frenetic action.
She saw him then. Her first glimpse of him unleashed and hungry and pointing at her, a compass needle finding true north. Once she might have wanted to believe it. But she was wiser than to believe such fantasies these days, and much wiser to the consequences. Which reminded her…
‘Protection,’ she muttered through the fog of need, but he was already ripping open a sachet with his teeth, rolling it on before pulling her back into his kiss. Her breasts met his chest, the feel of skin against skin taking her breath away, or maybe it was what he was doing with his hands and clever fingers.
Her dress bunched at her waist, his hands kneading her behind, fingers teasingly close to the centre of her, driving her insane with need, as he lifted her, the wall at her back, still kissing her as he urged her legs around him until she felt him, thick and hard, nudging, testing, at her entrance.
She cried out, something unintelligible and primal, lost in an ocean of sensation, drowning under the depths. It was almost too much and yet it was nowhere near enough and she only knew that if she didn’t get him inside her she would surely die of need.
He didn’t keep her waiting. With a guttural cry of his own he lowered her, meeting her with his own thrust, until he was lodged deep inside her.
A moment in time. Just a moment, a fraction of a second perhaps, but Eve knew it for a moment about which she would always remember every single detail, the salt of his skin and the smell of his shampoo, the feel of his big hands paused at her hips, and the glorious feeling of the pulsing fullness inside her.
Could it get any better than this?
And then he moved, and it did, and flesh against flesh had never felt so good, every new moment giving her treasures to secrete away, to add to a store of memories she would take from this night, of sensations she would never forget. Sensations that built, one upon another, layer upon layer, higher and higher, fed by each calculated withdrawal, each powerful thrust.
Until there was no place to go, no place higher or brighter or more wondrous as the sensation, the friction, the furious rhythm of his pounding body all melded together into a cataclysm, taking her with it.
She screamed her release, throwing her head back against the wall, her muscles clamping down hard as he shuddered his own frenetic release.
She didn’t know how long they stood together that way, she couldn’t tell, too busy trying to replace the oxygen consumed in the fire of their coupling while her body hummed its way down from the peak. But slowly her feet found the floor, slowly her senses and sensibility returned. To the knowledge she was standing barely dressed between a wall and a near naked man she barely knew but with whom she’d just had mind-blowing sex.
‘Wow,’ she said, embarrassed in the aftermath as he dispensed with the condom and she remembered her own wantonness. Had she really pulled his shirt apart in her desperation to get inside it? Had she really cried out like a banshee?
And he laughed, a low rumble in a velvet coat. ‘Evelyn Carmichael,’ he told her with a chaste kiss to her lips, ‘you are just one surprise package after another.’
He didn’t know the half of it. She found the straps of her dress, pulling it up to cover herself before she started looking for her underwear.
‘Leave it,’ he said, his hand around her wrist. ‘There’s no point. It’s only coming off again.’
‘Agai n?’
His eyes glinted. ‘This book I was telling you about. It’s a long book,’ he said. ‘That was only chapter one.’
She blinked up at him, her dress gathered in front of her, and he pulled her arm away, letting the dress drop to her waist, then slide over her hips in a whisper of silk to pool like a lake on the floor.
And even though they’d just had sex, she felt nervous standing there before him wearing nothing more than lace-topped stockings and spiky sandals. She hadn’t been with anyone since Sam’s father. She didn’t have the body she’d once had, her belly neat but traced with tiny silvery lines and softer than it had been before bearing a child.
She held her breath. Could he tell? Would it matter?
‘You look,’ he said, ‘like a goddess emerging from the sea.’ And some tiny, futile creature somewhere deep inside her grew wings and attempted a fluttery takeoff.
‘And you look like a pirate,’ she countered, reminding herself it was just a game. It wasn’t real and that pointless tiny creature inside her would soon die a rapid death, its gossamer wings stilled. ‘Ruthless and swashbuckling.’
‘Uncanny,’ he said, his lips turning in a half-smile as he swung her into his arms. ‘However did you know?’
‘Know what?’ she asked, feeling a secret thrill as he carried her into the next room.
‘The goddess of the sea and the swashbuckling pirate.’ He winked at her and he laid her gently on the king-sized bed. ‘That’s the title of chapter two.’
It was a long and detailed chapter. There were passages Eve found agonising going, like when the pirate sampled the goddess, tasting every last inch of her except there, where she craved his detailed attentions the most, and then there were the passages that moved at what felt like breakneck speed, where he feasted on her until she was bucking on the bed.
And even when she lay, still gasping, after her latest orgasm, the chapter didn’t end and he joined her in savouring the final few pages together until that final breathtaking climax.
Outside the lights of Melbourne winked at her, the skies unusually clear, a heavy full moon hanging above the bridge over the Yarra.
Inside the suite, Eve’s breathing slowly returned to normal as she savoured the feel of Leo’s arm lying pro-prietorially over her stomach as he lay face down alongside her, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted, his thick black hair mussed into bed-head perfection by her own hands. He wasn’t asleep, she knew, but it was a wonder given the energy he’d used tonight. Definitely a pirate, she thought. And very definitely a magic night. But it was late and magic nights had to end, just as goddesses had responsibilities too.
Oh, my, he’d actually called her a goddess! And she felt that tiny winged creature launch itself for another lurching spin around her stomach.
‘I should go,’ she said, with a wistful sigh for the ill-fated beast before she returned to sensible Evelyn Carmichael again and considered the practicalities of not having a functioning hot water service. ‘Do you mind if I take a shower before I go?’
And his eyes blinked open, the arm around her waist shifting, scooping higher to capture a breast. A smile played on his lips while he coaxed a nipple into unexpected responsiveness. ‘I’ve got a much better idea.’
She swallowed. Surely it wasn’t possible? But still her body hummed into life at the thought. ‘Chapter three?’
He nodded, his busy fingers hard at work on the other nipple, adding his hot mouth to the mix, guaranteeing the result. ‘The goddess returns to the sea only to find the pirate lurking in the depths, waiting to ambush her.’
‘That’s a long title.’
‘It’s
