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Why, why was her body responding to him like this? she wondered helplessly as he peeled away her top to reveal the warm curves of her breasts.
She tried to will her body not
to react to the warmth of James’s breath as he bent his head towards her.
‘No!’
Even as she made the thick, guttural denial and twisted her body desperately from side to side, Poppy knew shamingly that, far from making her want to be released from the sensual bondage of James’s mouth’s possession of her breast, the deepening and intensifying sensation of that possession as he subdued her attempts to break free of him somehow only increased the erotic effect of his mouth against her body.
Lost in the sensation caused by James’s mouth slowly savaging the sensitive flesh of her breasts, Poppy was unaware of the fact that he had unfastened and removed her skirt until she felt the sudden coolness of the air-conditioning against her bare skin, her only covering the small white triangle of her cotton briefs.
James still had her hands pinned above her head, and as he released her breast and started to unfasten his shirt Poppy turned her head to avoid looking at him, knowing already what just the thought of the satin heat of his naked skin against her own was doing to her, and as she did so she inadvertently caught sight of her reflection in the mirror on the wall, her body tensing as she stared transfixed at her image, unable to withdraw her gaze.
Was that really her, that creature with the dark, tangled mane of hair, the full, swollen mouth whose colour echoed that of her erotically pouting nipples, her skin so creamily pale, so silky and glistening as she lay against the coverlet of the bed, her spine arched, her body stretched out like some wanton, sensual offering?
Even to her own eyes there was something about her almost voluptuous dishevelment, the disarrangement of her limbs that positively flaunted her sensuality, her sexuality, she recognised in wide eyed shock, the white triangle of her briefs somehow more of an enticement than a barrier, her thighs slightly parted as though... as though...
‘What are you looking at?’ she heard James ask as he pulled off his shirt and stepped out of his trousers and leaned towards her, his image joining hers in the mirror, his mouth curling in a smile that made her stomach muscles lock in protest against the wave of shocked excitement it caused her.
‘Ah,’ he said softly, ‘so you like looking at yourself, do you, Poppy? You like watching whilst—?’
‘No,’ Poppy protested, her face burning as she heard him laugh and saw the way he stretched out his hand and slowly ran his fingertips along her skin, making her shiver and tremble in helpless response.
‘Well, remember what I said about making you eat your words,’ he reminded her softly. ‘Would you like that, Poppy?’ he added, so gently that the words slipped up under her guard. ‘Would you like to know what it feels like to have a man’s mouth against your body whilst he...?’
His hand was covering her sex now, not touching or caressing her, simply lying there, but the weight and heat of it, the knowledge of it, was enough to accelerate the pulse which had been slowly throbbing there ever since be had first taken hold of her—throbbing in a deep, fierce ache so intense that she felt sure that he must be able to feel the vibrations as they shook her helpless body.
He was naked now, his body darkly powerful in contrast to hers, his skin like the taut, warm pelt of a jungle killer.
The urge within her to reach out and touch it, to touch him was so compelling that Poppy couldn’t withstand it, her fingertips trembling as they finally came into contact with his body.
The fierce shudder that ripped through him made her stare at him in confused surprise, her eyes staring straight up into the dark heat of his, her breath coming faster between her half-parted lips as her body responded instinctively in its recognition of the arousal of his.
For some reason his arousal shocked her. Shocked her and excited her, she acknowledged, unaware that her eyes were betraying her emotions to him, unaware of anything other than the heat and power of him as he lowered his body against hers and took hold of her, smothering any protest she might have wanted to make.
Whilst her body shivered its pleasure in his arms, her lips responded to the pressure of his, parting, opening, her mouth drinking in the taste and feel of him.
In the distance Poppy could hear a sound—a soft, keening cry of desire and urgency that she didn’t recognise as hers until James lifted his mouth from hers and demanded roughly, ‘Now tell me that you don’t want me...that you want my brother.
‘Look, Poppy,’ he commanded, one hand cupping the side of her face, turning it so that she was forced to look at her reflection in the mirror—at their reflections in the mirror—at the way that, without knowing she had done so, she had arched herself against him, opened her thighs to accept the weight of one of his between them, to accept it and...
Poppy shivered as she saw the way her flesh clung longingly to his, the way her whole body silently betrayed its yearning need.
‘No... No, this isn’t what I want,’ she protested in a panicky whisper. ‘This can’t be what I want. You aren’t what I want...’
As she tried to push James away, to reassert her independence, her determination to reject everything that both he and her body were telling her, she saw anger and another emotion she couldn’t define flash like warning darts of fire through the brilliance of his eyes.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she protested huskily. ‘You don’t want me. You don’t even like me. You must want... What happened?’ she asked him bitteerly. ‘Did your Japanese lady-friend turn you down after all? Well, that’s not my fault, so don’t try to... to... take out your frustration on me.’
‘Why not?’ James challenged her brutally. ‘Why shouldn’t I use you the way you used me? Exactly the way you used me!’
Poppy gasped in shock at the ugliness of his accusation. ‘That’s not fair... It’s not... it’s not true,’ she defended herself. ‘What happened the other night was a... a mistake,’ she told him shakily.
‘Was it? Well, there won’t be any mistakes this time,’ James responded mirthlessly. ‘Look into the mirror, Poppy,’ he instructed her again, adding forcefully when she tried to turn her head away, ‘Look... and tell me what you see.’
Poppy’s whole body trembled beneath the weight of her emotions. How could she tell him what she saw? How could she shame herself by putting into words what her body was so obviously experiencing—the desire, the need...the sensuality she could see in every taut line of her flesh, every aching curve, every inch of the body she could barely recognise as her own as she was forced to look, witness its open hunger for the man holding it?
The man holding it... And that man was James. Not Chris but James. James, whom she could not possibly cerebrally want or desire, whom she did not even like, never mind love.
What had happened to her? she wondered helplessly as she caught back a panicky sob. And why had it happened to her? Why had her own flesh so blatantly turned traitor on her? Why was it... she...so out of control, so... so...
‘The other night you told me you wanted me...begged me to make love to you. This time, when you say those words again, there’ll be no taking them back, Poppy, no pretence that you think I am Chris. This time both of us know just who exactly it is you’re crying out for.’
Was that why he was doing this to her? Poppy wondered achingly. Because his pride couldn’t stomach the thought that a woman—any woman, but most especially a woman whom, after all, he had made it clear he despised so absolutely and completely—should dare to prefer another man? Was this, then, male pride, male anger, male desire, male power generated and fed by some testosterone-fuelled need to be first, to be the best?
‘Say it again, Poppy,’ she heard James demanding softly as his mouth started to caress her throat in what she knew was a slow and deliberate assault on her defences. ‘Tell me you want me...’
‘No,’ Poppy refused stubbornly, panicked by the thought of losing control, by the knowledge that what he was doing could all too easily make her lose control.
She felt her whole body shudder as his mouth burned paths of fire down over it. In the mirror she could see her tort
ured twisting and turning as she tried to evade his lips and hands, but already her denials and her movements possessed a slow, drugged quality that made them sound and look more like some subtle form of enticement than genuine rejection.
There was something about the sight of James leaning over her, half straddling her, something about the sheer, naked power of his body that sent waves of heat blistering through her, that made the hands she knew she had reached out to fend him off somehow seek to draw him closer instead.
When she felt the warmth of his mouth caressing her stomach, she cried out to him to stop, but his hands were already sliding her briefs free of her body, and although she fought desperately not to look the sight of his dark head against the pale silkiness of her thighs caused such a fierce spasm of sensation within her that her whole body jerked visibly.
‘No, don’t—please don’t,’ she whispered protestingly, but his hands were already holding her, lifting her, his lips stroking the soft, vulnerable flesh on the inside of her thighs, his palm resting against her sex, touching it, making it... her... tremble in a paroxysm of combined anxiety and pleasure.
Even though she had known what was going to happen, how he was going to punish her and exact full payment for her defiance, her denial, and, even though she had thought she had prepared her body so that she could defend herself from it, the shock of his mouth actually moving against the most intimate part of her—and her reaction to it—caused her to cry out helplessly to him that she couldn’t bear such pleasure, that she was afraid of what he was going to do to her, of what she was feeling.
‘James... James...’
She heard herself call his name as her body exploded in violent spasms of intense pleasure and knew she was babbling incoherently to him as he moved over her and took her in his arms, kissing her breasts and then her mouth with the taste of her body still on his lips.
‘James... James...’
Her body was still quivering, still empty...still aching for him, she recognised in breathless wonder.
