eyes darkened in intensity, that familiar nerve pulsing in his clenched jaw. ‘I am well aware of the fact that you are a big girl, Isabella.’
‘Then I suggest you stop treating me like I’m six years old rather than twenty-six!’
His mouth flattened into a disapproving line. ‘Showing concern for your welfare is treating you like a child?’
Bella shook her head impatiently. ‘No, actually treating me like a child is doing that!’
‘How would you have me treat you, Isabella?’ Gabriel glowered his frustration with this conversation.
Bella became very still, very aware of the sudden tension in the room. She could almost feel the crackle of electricity that arced between herself and Gabriel…
She swallowed hard. ‘I think you should just go.’
Gabriel thought so, too. In fact, he knew so! Before he did something he would later regret. Something they might both have reason to regret.
Except…
Bella looked tired after their long journey, her eyes purple smudges in a face that was pale with exhaustion, and the fullness of her lips bare of lip gloss. But nevertheless there was a beguiling determination to the stubborn lift of her chin, that challenge reflected in the brilliance of her eyes and the proud stance of her tiny body.
Gabriel felt the throb of his arousal just looking at her.
Telling him it was definitely time that he left!
‘I should go, yes,’ he acknowledged huskily.
‘Yes.’
‘Now.’
‘Yes.’
‘Bella—’
‘Gabriel…?’
He drew in a ragged breath. ‘I need to go!’
‘You do.’
Except Gabriel moved towards Bella rather than away from her as he crossed the room in two long strides to pull her hard against him even as his head lowered and his mouth claimed hers in a need as primitive and as old as time.
As wild and primitive as his fierce, uncontrollable desire to possess Bella again…
Gabriel’s hands moved to become entangled in her hair as he kissed her hungrily, fiercely, his lips parting hers and allowing his tongue to plunge deeply into the heat beyond. Bella’s mouth tasted of honey, and was hot, so very hot, as she drew him deeper inside her.
Gabriel curved her body into the hardness of his as he continued to kiss and claim her. His hands spread over her bottom as he pulled her against him and pressed her to the ache in his thighs, his arousal hard and pulsing, demanding, the need to possess her so strong that Gabriel could think of nothing else, feel nothing else but Bella.
He wrenched his mouth from hers to bury his face against the satin smoothness of her throat, licking, tasting, biting. ‘We should stop this now, Bella!’
‘Yes,’ she breathed shakily.
‘I cannot be gentle with you!’ Gabriel groaned, knowing it was true. He had waited too long. Wanted her for far too long!
Bella already knew that, had felt his urgency the moment he took her in his arms. An urgency that she echoed, that had ignited the moment he’d touched her. No, even before he’d touched her! This physical awareness had been there between them all day, Bella realised now, burning just below the surface of even the most mundane of conversations.
‘I won’t break, Gabriel,’ she encouraged, her throat arched to the erotic heat of his questing mouth, her fingers entangled in the silky softness of his hair. ‘Just don’t stop. Please don’t stop…’ She quivered with longing, several buttons ripping off her blouse as Gabriel parted it to bare her breasts to his lips and tongue, drawing one swollen tip into the heat of his mouth hungrily as one of his hands cupped and squeezed its twin.
Bella sobbed low in her throat as the pleasure ripped through her, to become centred as a hot ache between her thighs. She was so swollen there, so needy as she pressed against Gabriel’s arousal, she could barely think straight.
He moved against her, his hardness, his length and thickness, a promise of even greater pleasure. A pleasure Bella had no intention of letting Gabriel deny either of them. She wanted him inside her. Wanted to look up at Gabriel, to watch his face as he stroked long and hard inside her. Wanted to hear his groans of pleasure as they matched her own. To hear his cries as they reached that pinnacle together.
‘Not this time, Gabriel.’ She moved away as his hand went to open the fastening of her jeans. ‘I want to touch you first. Kiss you. All of you,’ she added huskily, her gaze deliberately holding his as she unbuttoned his shirt before slowly slipping it down his arms and dropping it onto the carpeted floor. Her fingers looked much paler than the darkness of Gabriel’s skin as she touched the hard wall of his chest. ‘You’re so beautiful, Gabriel…!’ she whispered before she began to kiss each and every one of his scars, her tongue a delicate rasp against the heat of his skin as she tasted him.
Gabriel knew that his scarred body was far from beautiful, but he ceased to care about anything else as Bella’s lips roamed across him freely, her tongue flickering against him even as her hand flattened against the hardness of his arousal, his erection responding immediately as that hand moved against him slowly, rhythmically. Gabriel felt his blood pulsing, pounding, increasing in urgency.
They had spent five weeks together before their wedding and two days alone on a romantic Caribbean island. And yet it was here, and now, in Bella’s tiny cottage, when he knew they would be apart for several hours, that Gabriel completely lost control!
‘I need—Bella, I need—’ He broke off with a groan as Bella unfastened his jeans and pushed them out of the way so that she might fulfil that need.
Her mouth was so hot as she took him inside her, her tongue moist and her fingers curling about him as she caressed the length of him.
Gabriel became lost in the pleasure of this dual assault upon his senses, his neck arched, his muscles tensing, locking, as he fought to maintain control.
Just a little longer. He wanted—needed to enjoy being with Bella just a little longer, and then he would leave, Gabriel promised himself silently as Bella manoeuvred him gently backwards so that he sat down in an armchair, her hair a wild tumble about his thighs as she knelt in front of him.
Just a few minutes more of being inside the heat of Bella’s mouth. Of her wicked little tongue moistly caressing the length of his shaft. Of her fingers about him as he instinctively began to move to that same mind-blowing rhythm.
Bella raised her lids to look at Gabriel, deliberately holding his gaze with hers as her tongue swirled provocatively about the head of his pulsing erection. Licking. Teasing. Tasting.
Gabriel’s face was flushed with arousal, his eyes fevered, his jaw clenched, and the muscles standing out in his throat as he fought not to lose that control.
‘No more!’ he growled even as he reached down and pulled Bella away from
