breathe in the fresh air,’ Andy continued with determination even as her cheeks warmed as the gleam in his eyes told her exactly what form of exercise Darius would prefer! ‘Admire the flowers, watch the ducks in the pond, the people walking their dogs, and the kids playing on the swings and slides. It’s what us less privileged people do for fun after lunch on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon.’
‘Very funny.’
She chuckled as she reached up a hand and pulled the confining band from her hair, allowing its silky straightness to fall about her shoulders. ‘Stop grumbling and let’s go!’ She slipped her bare feet into a pair of ballet pumps near the door.
‘You’re awfully bossy today.’
She quirked a blonde brow. ‘You really shouldn’t complain when I’ve just cooked you lunch.’
‘I’m not complaining. Surprisingly, I think I like it.’ Darius stepped close enough for Andy to be able to feel the heat of his body. ‘Are you this forceful in bed too?’
Andy felt a quiver of awareness run the length of her spine as the huskiness of his voice caressed all the way to her core. Her breasts tingled with sensitivity, the nipples hardening and pressing against the soft material of her bra, and an aching warmth spread between her thighs. ‘I...’ She cleared her throat as her voice came out as a croak. ‘Could we just go for that walk now?’ she snapped impatiently.
Darius was still chuckling about her reaction as they left the apartment before crossing over the road to enter the park.
Andy’s complete awareness of Darius wasn’t helped by the fact that he insisted on holding her hand, his fingers laced intimately with hers, as they strolled through the park together.
* * *
‘Now do we get to enjoy my form of exercise?’ Darius murmured an hour or so later, as he turned to take Miranda in his arms the moment the two of them had re-entered her apartment.
‘Darius...’
‘I’ve been suffering the torments of hell for hours as I watched the way your jeans hug the tautness of your bottom and imagined your breasts beneath that over-large T-shirt,’ he groaned.
‘I don’t think that’s appropriate, Darius.’
‘Has anyone ever told you that you think far too much?’ He raised his hand to cup one side of her now heated face, the soft pad of his thumb moving lightly across the fullness of her bottom lip.
‘Has anyone told you that you don’t think enough?’ she countered. ‘Today, our lunch, the walk in the park, was as far as this goes for us, Darius, so let’s not do anything that might complicate things, hmm?’ she continued with determination. ‘We both know there’s absolutely no reason we need ever meet each other again after today.’
His eyes narrowed, his jaw tensed. ‘I don’t like that idea.’
‘Tough.’ She grimaced.
Darius looked down at her searchingly. Her windswept hair framed the delicate beauty of her face: those sparkling and long-lashed green eyes, the flush to her cheeks, those oh-so-kissable lips so soft beneath his caressing thumb. Her neck was gracefully slender, deep hollows visible at the base of her throat. Her nipples were erect and visibly aroused as they pressed against her T-shirt.
The warmth of his gaze returned to her flushed face. ‘I’m going to kiss you now, Miranda. And you’re going to let me,’ he added firmly as she seemed about to protest.
Letting Darius kiss her wasn’t what worried Andy—well, it worried her, but only because she had no idea where it would end. Or if it would end at all...
He continued to hold her gaze, his eyes seductively slumberous and warm and holding Andy captive as his head lowered towards hers.
Her lips parted, her breath leaving her in the softness of a sigh at the first touch of Darius’s mouth against hers; her body melted instinctively into his even as her arms moved about his muscled waist to feel the flexing of the muscles in his back as her hands moved beneath his T-shirt, and she touched the warmth of the bare flesh beneath.
‘Oh, yes, Miranda, I want your hands on me,’ he encouraged gruffly, his breath warm as his lips now travelled across the smoothness of Andy’s cheek and down the arched column of her throat, sipping, tasting, gently biting, followed by the moist rasp of his tongue against that sensitised flesh. ‘I’ve longed to do this since the moment I first met you.’ His mouth captured hers once again, more fiercely this time. ‘And I’ve ached to finish what we started last night.’
Andy’s half-hearted protest died in her throat as Darius’s hands cupped the cheeks of her bottom and he lifted her up so that her feet no longer touched the ground. She knew that everything that had gone before had all been leading up to this. To this moment.
Andy entwined her legs about his waist and the thickness of his arousal now pressed long and hot against her heated core, before his hips moved in slow and sensual arousal against her as he carried her over to the sofa before sitting down.
Her legs were draped either side of him as the kiss deepened, grew hungrier still as they took from each other, her knees resting on the sofa cushions as she straddled his thighs, pressing that lengthy hardness deeper against and into her, as her arms moved up over his shoulders and her fingers became entangled in the heavy thickness of the dark hair at his nape.
She groaned as Darius’s tongue licked across her parted lips, tasting, sensitising, before invading the heat beneath in a claiming sweep, his tongue a sensual caress as it stroked against hers, slowly at first, and then more demandingly as his hands moved beneath her T-shirt to unfasten her bra and cup her bared breasts.
Her back arched instinctively at the feel of Darius’s hands on her sensitive skin; she broke the kiss to give a pleasurable gasp as he captured her nipples between fingers and thumbs, her arousal increasing as he rolled and then lightly pinched those engorged tips.
‘This has to come off!’ Darius pulled her T-shirt up and then tugged it over Miranda’s head to remove it completely before throwing it and her unfastened bra aside, his eyes feeling hot and heavy as he gazed down at her bared breasts.
A lifetime of exercise meant her breasts were small, but perfectly formed, and he cupped a hand beneath each perfect up-tilting mound, enjoying the touch of her silky soft skin as he caressed and squeezed her before slowly lowering his head to capture a nipple into the heat of his mouth.
It took every effort of will on his part not to suckle greedily. He wanted to take this slowly, to savour and enjoy every single moment of making love with Miranda.
To show her that there was every reason why the two of them should—and would—meet again.
He sucked gently on her nipple, taking the time to taste her thoroughly, even as his tongue lathed and rasped across it. He was instantly rewarded by Miranda’s soft mewls of pleasure as her fingers clung to his shoulders and she arched into him, wanting more, demanding more.
Darius gave it to her as he captured her swollen breast in his hand before turning the attention of his tongue and teeth to its twin. He suckled hard as he drew as much of that breast into the heat of his mouth as he could, even as he rolled the length of his arousal up and into the heat between her thighs.
He
