the momentous decision that desire had propelled her into making, to ditch her hard and fast principles and sleep with him, had been made with no real prior knowledge of just how wonderfully liberating it would feel for her.
Yes, she had imagined it.
In practice, it was all oh, so wildly different. She felt joyously free and absolutely certain that what she was doing was the right thing for her to do.
Burning up, she watched Lucas as he looked at her. He was so big, so dangerously, sinfully handsome, and he was gazing at her as though she was something priceless. The open hunger in his eyes drove away all her inhibitions and she closed her eyes on a whimper as he leaned back down to trail his tongue against her collarbone.
Then he pinned her hands to her sides, turning her into a willing captive so that he could fasten his mouth on one nipple. He suckled, pulling it into his mouth while grazing the stiffened bud with his tongue.
This was sex as Katy had never imagined it. Wild, raw and basic, carrying her away on a tide of passion that was as forceful as a tsunami. This wasn’t the physical connection from a kind, considerate and thoughtful guy who had wooed her with flowers and talked about a happy-ever-after future. This was the physical connection from a guy who had promised nothing but sex and would walk away from her the minute their stay on his yacht had come to an end.
His mouth and tongue against her nipple were sending piercing arrows of sensation through her body. She was on fire when he drew back to rid himself of his swimming trunks. The bulge she had felt pressing against her was impressively big, big enough for her to feel a moment of sheer panic, because how on earth could something so big fit inside her and actually feel good?
But that fear wasn’t allowed to take root because desire was smothering it. He settled back on the bed and then tugged down the bikini bottoms.
Katy closed her eyes and heard him laugh softly.
‘Don’t you like what you see?’ Lucas teased and she cautiously looked at him. ‘Because I very much like what I see.’
‘Do you?’ Katy whispered, very much out of her depth and feverishly making all sorts of comparisons in her head between her boyish figure and the women he probably took to his bed. She wasn’t going to dwell on it, but she wasn’t an idiot. Lucas Cipriani could have any woman he wanted and, whilst she was confident enough about her looks, that confidence took a very understandable beating when she considered that the man in bed with her was every woman’s dream guy. ‘Sexy’ didn’t get more outrageous.
Lucas felt a spurt of pure rage against Powell, a man whose existence he had known nothing about a week ago. Not only had he destroyed Katy’s faith in the opposite sex, but he had also pummelled her self-esteem. Any human being with functioning eyesight could have told her that she was a show-stopper.
He bent over to taste her pouting mouth whilst at the same time gently inserting his hand between her thighs.
She wasn’t clean-shaven down there and he liked that; he enjoyed the feel of her soft, downy fluff against his fingers. He liked playing with it before inserting one long finger into her.
It was electrifying. He slid his finger lazily in long strokes, finding the core of her and the tight little bud that throbbed as he zeroed in on it. In the grip of sensations she had never known before, Katy whimpered and clutched him, all frantic need and craving. She was desperate to ride the crest of a building wave and her whimpers turned into soft, hitched moans as she began to arch her spine, pushing her slight breasts up, inviting him to tease a nipple with his tongue.
He released her briefly to fetch a condom from his wallet then he was over her, nudging her legs apart with his thigh and settling between them. Nerves firmly back in place, Katy smoothed exploratory hands along his back, tracing the hardness of muscle and sinew.
Her coppery hair was in tangles over her shoulders, spread like flames across the pillows. Lucas stroked some of the tangles back and kissed her.
‘I want you,’ Katy muttered into his mouth, and she felt him smile. Desire was a raging force inside her, ripping all control out of her grasp and stripping her of her ability to think straight, or even to think at all.
She felt his impatience and his need matching hers as he pushed into her, a deep, long thrust that made her cry out. He stilled and frowned.
‘Don’t stop,’ she begged him, rising up so that he could sink deeper into her. She was so wet for him and so ready for this.
‘You’re so tight,’ Lucas murmured huskily in a driven undertone. ‘I can’t describe the sensation, mia bella.’
‘Don’t talk!’ Katy gasped, urging him on until he was thrusting hard, and the tight pain gave way to a soaring sense of pleasure as he carried her higher and higher until, at last, she came...and it was the most out-of-body experience she could ever have imagined. Wracked with shudders, she let herself fly until she weakly descended back down to planet Earth. Then, all she wanted to do was wrap her arms around him and hold him tightly against her.
Lucas was amused when she hugged him. He wasn’t one for hugs, but there was something extraordinarily disingenuous about her and he found that appealing.
He gently moved off her and then looked down and frowned, his brain only slowly making connections that began to form into a complete picture, one that he could scarcely credit.
There wasn’t much blood, just a few drops, enough for him to work out that none of that shyness and hesitancy had been put on. She’d blushed like a virgin because that was exactly what she was. He looked at her as the colour drained from her face.
‘This is your first time, isn’t it?’
For Katy, that was the equivalent of a bucket of cold water being poured over her. She hadn’t thought that he would find out. She had vaguely assumed that if she didn’t say anything then Lucas would never know that she had lost her virginity to him. She hadn’t wanted him to know because she had sensed, with every pore of her being, that he wouldn’t be thrilled.
For a man who didn’t do commitment, and who gave warnings about the perils of involvement, a virgin would represent the last word in unacceptable.
She quailed and clenched her fists because making love to Lucas had been the most wonderful thing in her life, just the most beautiful, right thing she had ever done, and now it was going to be spoiled because, quite rightly, he was going to hit the roof.
She wriggled and tried to yank some of the covers up because there was no way she was going to have an argument with him in the nude.
‘So what?’ She eyed him mutinously under the thick fringe of her lashes and glowered. ‘It’s really no big deal.’
‘No big deal?’ Lucas parroted incredulously. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I know how you would have reacted,’ Katy muttered, hugging her knees to her chest and refusing to meet his eyes for fear of the message she would read there.
‘You know, do you?’
Katy sneaked a glance at him, and just as fast her eyes skittered away. He was sprawled indolently on the bed, an in-your-face reminder of the intimacy they had just shared. She was covering up for all she was worth but he was carelessly oblivious to his nakedness.
‘I
