he assured himself, snatching in a sustaining breath as he raised her up from the pillows to run down the zip on her dress with the finesse he had somehow forgotten that first time. Stray half-formed thoughts were running through his brain, his father confiding that love in combination with unalloyed lust was a trap of the cruellest order, a trap that had almost destroyed the older man. Jai had always known that he didn’t have to worry about such a weakness because he was controlled, cautious, far less naive and trusting than his unfortunate parent had been when he had fallen like a ton of bricks for Jai’s mother. Cecilia, the apparent love of his life when he had been twenty-one, Jai conceded cynically, had done that much for him, at least.
Jai lifted the dress over her head and the instant he glimpsed the pouting perfection of her tiny breasts cupped in something white and intrinsically feminine, the blood ran roaring through his veins. He gritted his teeth, briefly marvelling at the fierce possessiveness shock-waving through him. Willow was his wife, the mother of his son, and it was perfectly natural for him to experience such responses, but it was something new, which had to be why alarm bells were shrieking inside his head.
‘What’s wrong?’ Willow asked abruptly.
‘Nothing whatsoever, soniyaa,’ Jai declared, crushing her mouth under his in a surge of denial at those alarm bells.
Willow’s hands crept up to his shoulders, her anxious gaze pinned to his lean, darkly handsome face. ‘Take your shirt off,’ she almost whispered.
Jai laughed at her sudden boldness, watching the colour build in her cheeks as he leant back and loosed the buttons before peeling it off, enjoying the way in which her eyes stayed glued to him, recognising with satisfaction that his bride wanted him as much as he wanted her. He slid off the bed and began to strip, deliberately taking his time, reacting to the synergy between them.
Willow rested back against the pillows, entranced by the display because she hadn’t seen Jai naked on the night of the funeral, had only caught little glimpses of him in the dim light filtering into her bedroom from the landing. And the more he took off clothes-wise, the harder it got for her to breathe through her constricted lungs, because he was a masculine work of art, dark-hair-dusted, lean muscles flexing with his every movement, that long, powerful body of his making her fingers tingle and her breasts swell and tighten inside her bra. She had not known that it was even possible for such a response to assail her and it shook her and then he was coming back to her on the bed, a symphony of lean bronzed masculinity, boldly aroused, and she acknowledged the surge of dampness at the heart of her with burning cheeks.
‘What are you blushing about?’ Jai husked, sliding a hand to her slender spine to release her bra.
‘I liked watching you undress,’ she said, as if that was some kind of revelation.
‘Let me tell you a secret,’ Jai rasped, long fingers curling round a straining nipple. ‘I would like watching you undress just as much. I want you as much as you want me…’
‘Honestly?’ Willow exclaimed as she quivered all over, not quite believing that statement of his.
Jai watched her soft pink mouth open and suddenly he knew he was done with talking, the raw hunger he was struggling to keep within acceptable boundaries overpowering him. He pressed her back against the pillows with the force of his mouth on hers, all the keyed-up ferocious urgency of his need released in that kiss.
Willow squirmed beneath his weight, her hands lifting to clutch at the smooth skin of his strong shoulders, the sheer heat of him an education, a memory, another burning coal to add to the bonfire in her pelvis and the hot, sweet ache stirring there. ‘Oh, Jai…’ she muttered, pulling her lips free to get some oxygen back into her starved body. ‘I don’t know what it is that you do to me but it’s almost scary.’
That admission so exactly matched Jai’s thought about her effect on him that it spooked him, and he buried it fast, too full of need to concentrate on anything else…
WILLOW QUIVERED AND shook as Jai worked his sensual path down over her squirming body.
She was back in that sensual world where her heart hammered and her body burned with hunger. Her nipples were stiff little points begging for his attention and he dallied there a long time, driving her insane with frustration as her hips rocked on the mattress because she wanted more, needed more. ‘Jai, please…’ she gasped, the burning ache throbbing between her thighs more than she could bear.
‘This time, we’re going to do this right,’ he ground out, his bright gaze glittering with resolve.
‘But there is no right or wrong here…only what we want,’ Willow protested, running an exploring hand down over a long, lean expanse of his torso and delving lower, finding him, stroking him, revelling in the satin-smooth hardness of his thrusting manhood, which every cell in her body craved.
Above her, Jai groaned, pushed her hand away, determined not to be deflected by his hunger. But her fingers slid up into his hair to drag him down to her so that she could have his mouth, the deep delve of his tongue, the awesome nip of his teeth along her sensitive lower lip until she was panting for breath and straining up to him, slender thighs wrapping round his narrow hips to hold him there.
Anticipation was licking through Willow in a raging storm of electrifying impulses as she tangled with his tongue, arched her back so that the hard wall of his chest abraded the straining tips of her breasts and ran her hands down his long, lean flanks. Her hunger was racing out of control, the way it always seemed to be with Jai, and she knew she would be mortified later, but just then she couldn’t prevent herself from urging him on by every means within her power.
And with a raw expletive, Jai suddenly surrendered without warning. He reached for a condom, dealing with it fast before pushing her back and plunging into her so hard and deep that her neck extended, and her head fell back. Her hair tumbled like rumpled silk across the pillows as she cried out at the raw sweet force of that invasion. He rode her like a runaway horse and she angled up to him in feverish yearning, the wild excitement he fired in her shock-waving through her in a storm of response. It was everything she remembered from that first night, the naked, burning, demanding heat of the violent passion that had brought her alive. There was nothing cool about it, nothing scheduled or controlled. It took over, wiped everything else from her brain and it was, she dimly registered, incredibly addictive.
All the lean power that was Jai drove her to an explosive orgasm that went splintering through her and lit up every nerve ending in her trembling body. In the aftermath of what had felt like a hurricane striking and devastating every sense, she was weak.
‘Epic,’ Jai breathed with driven honesty, yet still furious with himself for having failed to meet his own standards yet again and for having fallen on her like an animal. Once again he questioned what it was about her that made everything go wrong when it should have been going right this time around, and that only put him in mind of something else he was keen to discuss. No time like the present, he decided, tugging her into the shelter of his arms and dropping a kiss on her smooth brow.
‘I wish I’d been around when you were carrying Hari,’ he admitted.
Surprise winged through Willow and she was so taken aback she sat up to look down at him while simultaneously thinking how very beautiful he was in the sunlight filtering in through the screen. A five o’clock shadow accentuating his superb bone structure, his extraordinarily light black-fringed
