Part 13 (1/2)

”Because he wanted?”

Nicola shook her head, stopping him, a shaky laugh trembling through her.

”No, it was nothing like that. The last thing Gordon wanted from me was s.e.x. No...”

”But you still love him...?”

”Love him?” She gave Matt a shaky look.

”I never loved him. We were just friends--barely that, really. It was convenient for us to date one another.” Her voice became slightly bitter.

”It was safe...”

”Because Gordon wouldn't ask for s.e.x. Oh, Nicki, what have I done to you?” he asked her remorsefully.

”I had no idea.. never dreamed.. ” She shook her head.

”It wasn't your fault, it was mine. I should never have behaved like that in the first place, then Jonathon would never...”

She heard Matt groan and stopped speaking.

”You were a baby, that was all, just a baby.” He gave her a fierce look and added forcefully, ”And I'll tell you this, if I had made love to you, drunk or not you would have been able to remember it...”

Something quivered deep inside her, a soft, fluttering sensation that made her tense her body automatically, even as she drew in a tiny, shocked gasp of breath.

”I wanted to, you know,” she heard Matt saying to her.

”I think that's what made me so angry with you--the fact that even knowing you hadn't the least interest in me, despite all that determined flirting, I still wanted you. In fact, I still do...”

She stared at him, trembling inwardly.

”But you can't,” she protested.

”Not after everything that's happened.

Not after tonight and Jonathon. and the conference. ”

”To h.e.l.l with Hendry and the conference. What's far more important right now is you and the way I feel about you. I want to make love to you, Nicki,” he told her shockingly.

”Because you feel sorry for me?” she questioned sharply, her expression defensive.

”Because you feel--' ” Because I feel such a need for you that I can't resist it . or you,” Matt corrected her, and she thought she heard him saying as he lowered his mouth to hers--but she couldn't be sure-” Because I love you. ”

It was useless trying to tell herself to stop him; her senses drank in the intimacy of him so greedily that their need obliterated everything else.

She trembled as his hands slid into her hair, tenderly holding her captive as he kissed her, slowly, lingeringly as though he wanted to savour each individual millisecond of pleasure, his lips brus.h.i.+ng hers, sensitising them, until they clung eagerly to his, urgently seeking a deeper pressure, a greater intimacy.

”If you don't want me, you'll tell me, won't you?” Matt whispered between kisses.

If she didn't want him! It must be shamefully obvious to him how much she did want him, she reflected dizzily as she clung to him, her nails digging into the firm flesh of his back in a sharp, involuntary reaction to the pa.s.sionate intensity of his kiss. The top half of his body was covering hers, pressing her back into the settee. She could feel the unsteady race of his heartbeat, the heat coming off his flesh. As she closed her eyes, she could visualise his body, hard and male, his skin satin-sleek over his muscles, strong and powerful. A deep shudder ran through her, but when Matt mistook the reason and started to lift himself away from her she clung to him.

Immediately he responded to her unspoken plea, wrapping her in his arms and holding her against him while he kissed her throat and caressed the narrow line of her shoulder. Her skin burned where he touched it, her clothes an unbearable barrier between them. She ached for him to touch her skin with an intensity she couldn't contain. When he stroked her lips with his tongue-tip, she made a small, taut sound deep in her throat that caused him to deepen the kiss to a level of intimacy that sent pleasure jolting through her body at the same time as it made her ache and move frantically against him.

Nicola wanted to touch him everywhere, to stroke him, to caress him, to taste him and show him. She made a soft, whimpering sound as he broke the kiss and buried his mouth in the hollow of her throat.

When his hands touched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, gently holding them, shaping them, the need to be free of her clothes was so intense that she had to stop herself from crying it out loud to him. But he seemed to know what she was feeling because he reached behind her and gently lowered the zip so that he could ease the fabric away from her, telling her thickly as he did so, ”If I had made love to you then, that first time, I would have done so like this, slowly and gently, trying not to frighten you. trying to control what you were doing to me.”

He was touching her skin was he spoke, cup 5 ping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, finding the hard, betraying points of her nipples and caressing them, telling her in between kisses, ”You would have felt just the way you do now--soft, feminine, your body willing to be responsive to mine. I'd have known then that you'd never known the kind of intimacy I wanted to share with you, the kind of desire that drives a man to caress a woman's body, not just with his hands but with his lips, his tongue.”

He was sliding her b.r.e.a.s.t.s free of the silk covering of her bra as he spoke. In the shadows of the room her flesh gleamed palely, the aureolae of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s darker, her nipples tautly hard peaks that seemed to beg for the intimacy he was promising.

”Then you'd have looked at me just the way you are doing now, and your body would have looked just like this, your b.r.e.a.s.t.s all feminine temptation, so much temptation that I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from touching them ... tasting them.”

Nicola watched tensely, tiny shudders running through her as Matt slowly bent his head to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, cupping them in his hands as he gently kissed them.

An aching need burst into life inside her, a sharp desire to arch her back, to catch hold of his head, to hold him there against her breast while he--Heat seemed to burst out of all her pores, a strangled sob stifled in her throat as she fought not to do what her instincts were urging her to do, but Matt seemed to sense her need because his mouth sought the aching peak of one breast, his lips caressing it gently, and then less gently when he felt her shuddering response.

The shock of the sensation engulfing her made her cry out, a high, sharp sound of shocked pleasure and need, her body arching as she offered herself to that need like a sacrifice to some pagan religion.

”Beautiful, you're so beautiful,” she heard Matt muttering against her skin, the words a litany of praise and wors.h.i.+p as his mouth continued to feed on her aching b.r.e.a.s.t.s, creating a mindless sea of sensuality to surround them with warm, lapping waves of increasing arousal.

Only when her own need to reciprocate, to touch him with the same intimacy with which he was touching her, became too much for her, did Nicola push him away, struggling to explain to him when he held her and kissed her, apologising for shocking or hurting her, that what she wanted was to be able to touch him without the barrier of their clothes, to be able to see if his body reacted to her the way hers did to him.

The words were fragmented, unstructured, and uncertain, but Matt still seemed to be able to make sense of them, guiding her fingers to his s.h.i.+rt, helping her unfasten the b.u.t.tons, groaning softly when she tried to tug his s.h.i.+rt off and became side-tracked into exploring the hard leanness of his chest with her lips, fascinated by the flat hardness of his nipples, wanting to know if he would react to her the way she had to him, awed to find out that he could and did, half thrilled, half shocked by the things he said to her, by the things he promised her.

At eighteen this intensity of pa.s.sion would have terrified her, she suspected, but she wasn't eighteen now, and far from being terrified-”Much more of this and there'll be no going back, you know that, don't you?” Matt warned her hoa.r.s.ely as she reached for his belt.

Her eyes followed his movements, her body shuddering with excitement as she watched him remove his clothes. He studied her gravely for a moment before holding out his arms to her, and she recognised that in doing so he was asking her to make her own decision, to choose freely of her own accord to go to him or to withdraw.

He was standing in front of the fire. Only half a dozen paces or so away but, as she got up from the settee and walked unsteadily towards him, Nicola knew they were the most difficult half a dozen steps she would ever have to take.

When she reached him and his arms folded around her, she discovered that she was trembling not just with arousal, but also with relief.

Relief that she had found the courage to come to him, relief that she was here held safely in his arms. A relief that combined with the knowledge that, no matter what else the future might hold, no matter whether Matt only wanted her fleetingly--so fleetingly that this one night might be all she had of him--she would never, ever regret what they were sharing.

He might only feel desire for her, but it was a clean, honest desire. a pure desire in its way. a desire that by its very intensity would burn itself clean of any taint.

And for her there would be no regrets, no guilt. nothing but the knowledge that he had wanted her, and that that wanting had been strong enough to make their coming together special. sacred to her, if not to him.

As Matt held her, gently removing her clothes so that they stood body to body, warmed by each other's skin, each other's pa.s.sion, she felt such a deep, flooding sense of joy that she actually trembled with the force of it, instinctively lifting her face, inviting his kiss, opening her mouth to the deep penetration of his tongue, welcoming the urgent stroke of his hands against her body, his arousal, his maleness.

When he touched her his hands were gentle, knowing, leading her tenderly towards the intoxicating discovery of her own sensuality, until her response to him overwhelmed them both and he told her huskily how much he wanted her, how much he needed her.

When he lowered her to the floor, protecting her from its hardness with the cus.h.i.+ons he had dragged off the settee, she shuddered tensely, wanting him, aching for him so much that the sensation of him moving gently against her so sensitised her already aroused flesh that she cried out to him in frantic need, causing him to forget caution and surge into her. And each powerful thrust of his body was so intensely erotic that she quickly became lost in the sensations he was arousing, clinging to him, begging him never to let the pleasure stop, crying out loud to him in awed disbelief when her body finally became caught up in the fierce spiral of completion.

The sense of fulfilment that followed the frantic, driving race of desire, when Matt held her in his arms, tenderly stroking the damp hair back off her face, kissing her eyelids and the tip of her nose, and then finally and lingeringly her mouth, made her eyes burn with unexpected tears. Tears which Matt did not seem to find strange at all as he wiped away their dampness and then kissed her moist skin. An exhaustion that was as much mental as physical suddenly washed over her. Despite her efforts not to do so, she discovered that she was closing her eyes, giving up the fight to stay awake.