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‘Clare,’ he murmured, drawing back and trailing hot kisses down the length of her neck.
‘R—’ She bit back the name she’d been about to use. His given name of Robert. For he hadn’t granted her permission to do that. And the last thing she wanted was to offend him when, so far, everything seemed to be going well. Swiftly, she substituted his title. ‘Rawcliffe.’ She sighed.
‘Mmm…’ He groaned in a way that sounded appreciative as his lips closed over one breast, through the fabric of her shift. She didn’t know whether it was the hum of his voice against her, or the wetness of his tongue, or whether it was because he was paying attention to her there, but she became so excited she simply couldn’t keep still. She ran her hands up and down the satin expanse of his back, revelling in the feel of his muscles flexing and bunching under the skin. Ran her leg up and down his, stroking the springy hairs with the sole of her foot.
Lifted herself when he began to push her chemise out of his way, so that they could be together, skin on skin, from breast to thigh.
And then it was like nothing she had ever experienced. As though she’d been lit on fire and had become one great conflagration of need. She was aching, hollowed out by needy fire. Needed him to fill that aching hollow that sprang to life between her legs, where he was stroking, and probing, and teasing with his fingers.
‘Oh, please,’ she sobbed, ‘don’t tease me any longer. I can’t bear it. I need… I need…’
‘I know what you need,’ he growled and came over her fully, thrusting her legs apart with his own, and probing at her with something that wasn’t his fingers any longer. His…his manhood. She blushed as he began nudging at her with it. She knew it was coming, of course, but the way he was opening her with his fingers so that he could thrust it inside was so…so…
‘Oh!’
Painful. That was what it was. And she hadn’t expected that. Not from him. He was so experienced. And she’d never heard even the faintest suggestion that he’d ever given any woman anything but pleasure.
Why was it so different for her?
He stilled, stroked her hair back from her face, kissed her brow. ‘There, that’s the worst bit over with,’ he said.
‘Is it?’ She opened one eye to squint up at him.
He ground his hips provocatively against hers.
And to her surprise, and relief, the pain turned into the achy wanting feeling again. He half-lowered his eyelids in a satisfied, knowing way, as though he knew exactly how he was affecting her.
Well, of course he did. He’d done this before. With lots of other women.
She shut her eyes again on a wave of hurt that was not the slightest bit physical and turned her head to one side in an attempt to conceal it from him.
And he kissed her neck. Fastened his lips to a point just beneath her ear as his lower half pushed slowly in and out. And then made a throaty, growling sort of noise that reverberated right through her. Right down to the tips of her toes. And somehow made her forget about all those other women. Forget everything but him, and her, together now.
And suddenly, almost out of nowhere, she caught fire all over again. She was all flame. Slick, burning, incandescence.
Which he stoked into a crescendo of burning, pulsing rapture. It was so consuming that for a few seconds she was aware of nothing else. But when it started to fade, it was to the discovery that Rawcliffe was panting into her ear, his own body slack over hers. As though he, too, had reached that place where she’d just gone.
It made her feel strangely close to him. Made her want to hug him, with her arms and her legs. And kiss him again. Like a besotted little fool.
Deliberately, so that he’d never guess how vulnerable she was to him, she uncurled her fingers, which were clinging into the skin of his shoulders, and began to run them down his sweat-slick back instead.
He reared back. Gave her one of his half-smiles.
‘That went remarkably well, considering,’ he said.
And just like that, the feeling of intimacy, of tender closeness, shattered. For his casual remark had reminded her that this hadn’t been anything special, for him. She was just the latest in a long line of his conquests.
