Читать книгу Australia: Wicked Mistresses - Robyn Grady, Jan Colley - Страница 15

GABRIEL strode over and drew her body hard against his. As his mouth came crashing down upon hers, Nina braced herself not to weaken.

In a way, she’d expected this. This man’s middle name might be “irresistible,” but after that discussion she would rather jump from a plane without a parachute than confirm the terrible, wonderful heat his kiss stirred deep inside her.

He wanted her gone. No problem.

She was going.

Go … ing …

After several breathtaking, ultra-persuasive moments, the kiss softly broke and Gabriel’s hot-lidded gaze brushed over her face. His fingertips traced hair from her brow and he murmured, “Are you listening now?”

She swallowed, but held her chin high. “No.”

He kissed her again, and those defences crumbled more. Her head told her to pull back, to slap his face; who did he think he was, assaulting her like this? Her body, on the other hand, whispered to her heart to press in more.

His kisses only got better.

When his lips left hers a second time, her breathing was tellingly deep. A practised hand skimmed her side before he took a lingering kiss from her temple, her cheek. To stop herself from snaking her arms around his neck, she fisted his shirt in her hands.

Feeling giddy, she groaned, “What do you want from me?”

He cupped her chin. “You have to ask?”

She closed her eyes and prayed. She had to clear her foggy brain. Had to keep smart. Keep strong.

“You’re Gabe Turner,” she reminded herself. “You sacked me.” Her eyes opened. “If you think I’ll sleep with you again, you’ve got rocks in your head.”

He scooped her up into his arms and began to walk.

She managed to straighten to a board as her stomach pitched. “I’ll scream.”

His mouth hooked into the sexiest of smiles. “Promise?”

As he carried her into his bedroom, Nina told herself she should struggle and demand he set her down. She had to put this rabid sexual thirst away. Lock the door and throw away the double-edged key. Because, while this might seem a natural extension of their previous smouldering night together, tomorrow she would pay the price.

She’d already lost her job. She didn’t want to lose her self-respect too.

But by the time he stopped in the middle of the shadowy bedroom, and she gazed up into those haunting ice-blue eyes, her arguments had wound down to nought. Rather than warnings she heard only a sweet chorus, urging her to go forward. It was as if history were already written. The deed was already done. Right or wrong, she would go through with this. The reason was simple.

There’d never be another Gabriel. One more time with him would be more than a lifetime with anyone else.

As if he read her thoughts, the lines either side of his eyes crinkled with a soft smile. He crossed the room and set her carefully down beside the bed. Then he flicked down the quilt and stood back, running an eye over her dress, as if approving of the design but also analysing the most effective way to remove it.

Stepping close again, he gripped the hem and the dress slid like butter up over her hips, her waist, her head, finally her arms. While she trembled inside from crown to toe, his hot gaze consumed her. She felt every stroke of his appraisal as it sizzled over her strapless bra, lower, to her abdomen then across her red silk briefs.

His gaze jumped and held hers again while he peeled the shirt off his back and dropped it to the timber floor. With the broad expanse of his chest rising and falling, he pulled her up against his hard heat and, after murmuring that he’d wanted her all day, claimed her mouth with his again.

She’d expected his kiss to ignite her as it had last night, to take over her senses and leave her deliciously weak and desperately wanting. She’d expected the same fireworks to leap up, lighting her blood until flames devoured any lingering whim to resist.

She was surprised.

When they’d lain together last night she’d never felt more alive, more grateful for each breath, and for the man who’d made another day possible. Tonight his kiss went beyond that. This heady emotion wasn’t about outside influence or circumstance. It was about them … how well they meshed … how amazingly well they fitted. As his head angled more, and he kissed her thoroughly, her soul floated away and joined his, twining and spiralling off into blessed infinity.

Nina coiled her arms around his neck, unable to imagine anyone feeling as much as she felt at that moment. The desire was both an all-consuming necessity and a magnificent release that remade her, as light as the moonbeams slanting in through the open plantation blinds. No one could ever have felt this deeply before this.

Before them.

His mouth gradually broke from hers to trail down the side of her throat. She arched her neck, allowing him better access, and sighed when he snapped open her bra. As the bra dropped between them, his mouth slid along her collarbone and, one palm supporting her weight, he lowered her back upon the sheets.

He unzipped his trousers and not soon enough stood before her naked. She shouldn’t stare. She’d seen him sans clothes before. The straight stance, lean hips, hard bronzed frame that tapered into a perfect V. This sight proved yet again that he was no ordinary man. He was so much more than that.

He rested one knee on the bed and, with his hands either side of her shoulders, asked, “You okay? Your ankle?”

Relishing the abandon, she dragged him down. “I’m not thinking about my foot.”

While she battled to keep her heart behind her ribs, his palm traced down over her waist, her leg, all the way to her bandage and then up again. Above the knee, however, his direction curled in to feather up her inner thigh. When his fingertips skimmed her panties’ damp crotch a flash of darkest desire plunged through her, gripping her insides and coating them with warm liquid want.

Biting her lip, she turned her head towards the pillow. “You want to torture me?”

He chuckled. “Not the word I’d have used.”

She found his hand and held his palm against the pulse that was both freeing her spirit as well as compressing every thought and feeling gloriously tight. His lips nuzzling hers, he tugged her panties’ crotch aside. At the same time as cool air brushed between her thighs, his mouth left hers. A moment later his warm breath was a whisper away from her most intimate, private place.

Gripping the sheet at her sides, she fought the urge to buck her hips, to let him know how dearly she wanted this. Wanted him. When he urged her folds apart, and his tongue dipped to swirl over the sensitive nub, she bit her lip harder to quell the cry.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

Then he kissed her again, with his lips, with his tongue, twirling and tasting until he’d drawn out every ounce of vulnerability she’d ever hidden from the world. She felt the roughness of his beard and the pleasure in his smile as he groaned and hummed against her. The vibration filtered through her blood, igniting a glittering roadmap of longing that swept along her veins. And then …

One second she was vaguely aware of her surroundings, of her individual heartbeat and the rhythmic wash of the waves outside. The next the spiral of sensation had smashed through the ceiling. The tingling burn heightened, deepened, widened, until nothing existed but the heat-lightning rushing over her breasts, scorching her nipples and shooting blazing stars through her mind to her core.

From the moment Nina surrendered, Gabriel knew tonight wouldn’t be their last. Holding her now, as she cried out his name, he was struck by another revelation. Whatever lay behind their fiery connection, it was real—and she knew it too. She wanted this to continue as much as he did—if not more.

As her contractions eased, and she breathed out a full-bodied sigh, he pulled himself up over her amazing curves. Her eyes were closed and an almost innocent smile graced her swollen lips. He drank in the sight, drawing out the anticipation, and with every passing second his want for her grew.

Dreamy, she blinked open her eyes. She focused, then her smile fanned and her arms went out to him.

Pressing tender kisses to her brow, he entered her, with finite, together-again care. When he was certain she was ready, when he felt her urgency had built again to breaking point, he gripped the top of the bedhead with one hand and cupped her nape with the other. He looked into her eyes and, in one, long slow act, drove in all the way.

Her head went back and she gasped, at the same time as he summoned every ounce of will-power to stop the intense push from getting the best of him. He couldn’t remember having experienced this kind of smouldering force before. It was like trying to catch and hold a fleet of flaming arrows in one hand.

He’d reined himself in and was moving again when the worst possible thing happened. Nuzzling up against his ear, she whispered his name.

A wave swept over his body at the same time as she trailed her fingertips up and down his sides. Goosebumps flashed over his skin and that fleet of arrows shot at his groin. He trembled, shuddered, tucked in his chin. But then she cupped his jaw and craned up to steal a tender yet urgent kiss. With her tongue edging lovingly over his, his erection throbbed and hardened to become near unmanageable.

Struggling to smile, he murmured against her mouth, “Did someone mention torture?”

Her laugh was more of a purr. “I can put you out of your misery.”

Her velvet walls contracted around him, squeezing and holding while her teeth tugged his bottom lip. His hand dropped from the bedhead to iron up over her ribcage and knead her breast. As their movements blended and synchronised, he understood he’d never enjoyed an experience quite like this. The fire was so formidable that his blood had turned to lava.

It had nothing to do with their bond over her brother. Nothing to do with saving her life. It was physical, sure, but it was beyond that too. Every ion seemed to fuse in all the right places. She fitted him, he fitted her—everywhere.

Every way.

He took her mouth and kissed her hard as his skin steamed and pressure grew. A moment later she quietened beneath him, shrinking into herself and quivering while her breathing ceased altogether. With every tendon and muscle clenched, he withdrew fully, then filled her once more, hitting a place and a moment so high neither one would reach the ground again without jumping off.

Her fingers dug into his biceps as her frame arched high. The sky opened up—fierce, bright—and Gabriel dived into the light.