Читать книгу Sharon Kendrick Collection - Шэрон Кендрик, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 14
ОглавлениеGERAINT tipped Lola’s face up and looked deep into her eyes. ‘God, yes, Lola!’ he groaned. ‘Yes and yes and yes!’ And without warning he scooped her up into his arms.
Lola had never been picked up as an adult before, and while she was absurdly flattered by such a display of masterful dominance she was also slightly worried about giving him a hernia! ‘P-put me down, Geraint!’ she spluttered.
‘Why?’ he queried softly. ‘Don’t you like being carried?’
Lola sighed, tipping her head right back. ‘Oh, yes! I love it! It makes me feel just like Scarlett O’Hara!’
‘Well, then, just lie back and enjoy it.’
‘But I’m much too heavy to be carried all the way upstairs!’
‘Let me be the judge of that,’ he chided. ‘And anyway, how do you know I’m going to carry you all the way upstairs?’
Her blue eyes widened into saucers. ‘You mean you aren’t?’
‘I mean that I rather thought you liked the sound of being ravished in the hallway. At least, that’s the impression you gave me a little while ago.’
Lola flushed. ‘I didn’t—I mean. . .’ Her voice tailed off. Making love was an unknown quantity and all she wanted was the relative sanctuary and comfort of a large bed. For surely the kind of sexual gymnastics he was hinting at would be inappropriate for a novice such as herself?
He bent his head to brush his lips lightly against her forehead. ‘I was only teasing you, Lola,’ he told her mockingly. ‘But I quite understand your having reservations about being here. Shall I take you next door to Dominic’s? Would you prefer that?’
Lola shuddered. Prefer to be made love to in Dominic Dashwood’s house? No, thank you! She could just imagine the hordes of perfectly toned lovelies who had passed through that particular mansion!
And in fact the longer they went on discussing things so cold-heartedly, the more self-conscious she felt about the whole situation. She buried her head in his soft, fragrant silk sweater and wished herself a million miles away.
And perhaps Geraint could sense the sudden shyness which had paralysed her, for he dipped his head and kissed her again, full on the lips this time, softly and yet passionately and very, very thoroughly. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he murmured.
His words and his kiss made Lola feel so dizzy with longing that they were halfway up the sweeping staircase before she realised it.
One of her hands daringly crept beneath his silk sweater and she closed her eyes in ecstasy as she felt that first touch of smooth, bare skin. She placed her palm flatly over the thudding strength of his heart, and she felt him draw in a deep, shuddering breath as her fingertips instinctively moved to knead distractedly at one nipple.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured appreciatively.
She risked a peep at his face, and saw such a mixture of emotions there—pleasure and longing and, most curiously, that fleeting look of regret again—that she hastily shut her eyes, and did not open them again until she felt the soft resistance of a mattress dip against her back, and she found herself in the middle of the large bed in the spare room, with Geraint lying beside her, propped up on one elbow.
Lola looked at her surroundings in confusion, momentarily disorientated by the anonymous, cream-washed walls and the nondescript paintings of a room which she had rarely been in.
‘But this isn’t my bedroom!’ she exclaimed in surprise. There were a number of rooms he could have chosen, including her own, which was decorated in soft, pale greens and peaches, and which she had chosen for its cool neutrality—it was feminine without being at all fussy. But at least he had not chosen to bring her to what she had always assumed was Peter’s old bedroom, with its deep crimson walls and its sporting prints and old, polished wood.
‘No,’ agreed Geraint quietly. ‘It isn’t.’ He shifted slightly, positioning himself so that he could stroke all the wayward curls off her face. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he told her.
‘No!’ She shook her head furiously. ‘You don’t have to say that just because we’re—’
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said again, very deliberately, and this time, largely because of the intense look which accompanied it, Lola actually found herself believing it.
‘And you’re still wearing your uniform,’ he commented, on a delicious note of anticipation.
The anticipation struck an answering chord in Lola, and she found herself stretching indolently, opening her eyes very wide as she replied, ‘Mmm, I know!’
He cocked his dark head to one side. ‘It must be a little hot and uncomfortable, surely?’ he quizzed.
‘Well, y-yes. Funny you should say that. It. . . is. . . actually,’ she managed, through lips which were suddenly parched.
His fingers moved unerringly to the top button of the pale blue shirt which strained across her tender, swollen breasts, and he stared down at her, a question in his stormy grey eyes.
‘I think we ought to take it off,’ he mused. ‘Don’t you?’
Even if she had wanted to say no, which she most definitely didn’t, Lola still felt that she would have been powerless to, especially when he was looking at her that way—with that smoky look of passion darkening his eyes, that barely contained hunger hardening his lips.
‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, please!’
He gave a laugh of delight. ‘Oh, sweet Lola,’ he sighed as he trailed his fingers provocatively down to the first button. ‘I’ve dreamt of doing this to you since the first moment I saw you. Dreamt of this luscious, sinuous body and imagined it naked and compliant in my arms.’
It was so close to her own fantasy that Lola trembled with excited recognition, wondering how a man with a look of such stark passion on his face could have the control to take so long to remove a shirt.
Oh, yes, she was enjoying the teasingly provocative movements of his fingers as they grazed over the thin cotton—in fact, she was getting more and more turned on by the second-but she wanted him to take the wretched thing off. And quickly!
‘There.’ She could almost hear the smile of satisfaction which deepened his voice as he released a second button. ‘How’s that?’
Lola gave herself up to the feelings which were building a delicious slow blaze deep inside her. ‘Oh, Geraint,’ she gasped brokenly. ‘It’s so. . .’ Words failed her, and he smiled.
‘Isn’t it?’ he whispered, and Lola thought she detected a faint note of surprise in his voice.
She opened her blue eyes very wide, aware of the first faint flush of sexual excitement which tingled along her cheekbones, finding the way that he was watching her almost unbearably intimate.
She shut them again immediately. Quite apart from anything else, if she kept her eyes tightly closed, then her inexperience would be kept secret from him until the last possible moment—and by then it would be too late for him to stop. Lola had read enough books on sexual behaviour to have heard about the ‘point of no return’.
Because although she had claimed to know nothing about Geraint Howell-Williams she suspected that beneath his harshly handsome, swashbuckling exterior there lay an honourable man.
And honourable men did not bed virgins! Not unless their intentions were serious. And Lola was not going to fall into the trap of believing that.
‘Oh!’ she gasped suddenly as the third button flew open, and then the fourth, and the fifth. She felt the cool air washing over her heated, swollen breasts and longed for him to take her bra off.
‘Oh, what?’ he husked innocently.
She shook her head.
‘Tell me,’ he urged.
‘I like it,’ she told him honestly. ‘So much.’
‘Do you? And this?’ He watched her closely. ‘Do you like this, too?’ His finger lightly grazed over her bra, where the hardened nubs were now clearly visible through the silken cobweb of lace, and Lola started violently as his touch produced an unbearable ache deep in the most intimate fork in her body.
She felt the sweet, wet release of desire and her throat dried and constricted and she made tiny, mindless moans of pleasure.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, as calmly as if he were discussing the price of stocks and shares. ‘I can see that you do like it. I think you’re going to like everything I intend to do to you, Lola. Don’t you?’
‘Mmm,’ she agreed, though she had scarcely heard what he had said. She began to move restlessly as he peeled off her airline shirt and dropped it over the side of the bed and then his hand moved down to undo her skirt, sliding the zip down in one fluid movement.
He used his knee to ease it all the way down her legs until it had joined the blouse on the thick, oatmeal-coloured carpet and Lola was left reclining against the antique lace bedspread wearing nothing but that cream bra, her black stockings and suspenders and a pair of navy blue knickers. Oh, why hadn’t she put on matching underwear that morning? she asked herself despairingly.
He was still for a minute, and silent, too, and Lola lifted her eyelids fractionally, gazing covertly at him from beneath the lush shelter of her eyelashes, and was staggered and thrilled to see the look of rapt absorption on his face as he scrutinised her partially clothed body with all the thoroughness of a policeman searching for vital clues.
Her knees jerked up protectively to shield her belly, and he frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’
It sounded so stupid to say it. ‘My underwear doesn’t match,’ she whispered.
‘I’d noticed.’ He smiled. ‘And I’m glad.’
‘Glad?’
‘Mmm. I like the fact it doesn’t match. If you were wearing your most expensive scraps of French lingerie, it would seem as though you had planned this. And I don’t want you in underwear which another man has bought for you!’ he finished harshly.
‘Geraint!’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘No man—’
But he had leaned over and taken her in his arms and now he started kissing her with an unrestrained passion which drove every sensible thought from her head, and suddenly nothing in the world mattered other than Geraint kissing her.
And when he had kissed her mouth so thoroughly that Lola was certain her lips must be bruised he sought out other erotic destinations. He kissed her neck, her cheeks, her eyelids, and the tiny, vulnerable spot behind her ears, which had her trembling with an ecstatic reaction which made him halt and look down at her with a kind of hungry bemusement.
‘God, Lola, you’re so responsive,’ he observed, on a sultry note of pleasure. ‘So exquisitely responsive.’
Lola felt as though she had just landed in paradise, and the way he was making her feel right now drove all other considerations clean out of her mind. Like how abandoned she must look, with her black-stockinged legs sprawled across the bed, and wearing nothing but a few items of flimsy, mismatching lace underwear.
But Lola knew that she could not just take, take, take from Geraint without giving anything back. Lovemaking was supposed to be a two-way thing, and just because she had very little experience in what turned men on that did not mean to say that she was lacking in the imagination department. She had read the books and the magazine articles about sex which seemed to be everywhere these days. She knew what to do to Geraint to make him purr with pleasure.
She allowed her hands to roam unchecked beneath his luxurious silk sweater, her palms circling rhythmically over the tight whorls of hair on his chest. Her fingers crept their way teasingly over his torso, until at last she let her nails curl like a possessive kitten round each flat, hard nipple.
She felt his body jerk with pleasure. ‘Do you like that?’ she whispered shyly.
He forced his eyes open with an effort, a rueful smile deepening the little corner creases beside his mouth. ‘I love it, sweetheart—but quite honestly I’m so turned on by you already that I think if you threw me under a cold shower I would still want to make love to you all night! Which I fully intend to do, by the way.’
‘Oh,’ said Lola, thrilled and yet ridiculously embarrassed by his erotic statement.
‘Lola, you’re blushing again,’ he murmured.
‘Yes.’ It was just the shock of hearing him talk so openly about his desires and reactions like that. Her mother had brought her up with a tight-lipped repression which had forbade Lola ever to ask questions about sex. Consequently everything she had ever learned about making babies had been gleaned from a book. ‘I suppose you hate it?’
‘Hate blushing?’ he queried incredulously. ‘Sweetheart, you must be kidding! Don’t you know that it’s the greatest compliment you can pay to a man, to blush prettily in his arms? It makes him feel strong and powerful. . .’
‘I’m sure you don’t need me to help you feel those things, Geraint,’ Lola said mock-demurely, her eyes darkening without her realising it, so that he stared at her very intently and then gave a husky sigh of pleasure.
‘Don’t I?’ he murmured. ‘Then what do I need you for, Lola? This, perhaps?’ And he unhooked her front-fastening bra with an easy familiarity which made Lola wonder slightly nervously just how many similar items of underwear he had removed in his life.
But she wondered for no longer than it took for the frivolous scrap of lace to flutter unnoticed to the carpet, because Geraint gave her a long, smouldering look of sensual intent then dipped his head, his tongue tracing tiny circles over each aching mound.
‘It was the hardest thing in the world to watch you on that aircraft, bending down in that short, tight skirt,’ he murmured, his breath warm against her nipple. ‘I wanted to take it off so much that my hands were shaking.’
His words only served to heighten the sensations which he was producing with his hands, and Lola felt her body arch from the bed, as if she had received a sudden electric shock.
‘Oh, Geraint!’ she moaned helplessly as his tongue wetly continued its tantalising little journey, moving steadily but inexorably towards each rocky nipple. ‘Please, no!’
He raised his head to look at her, just as his mouth latched onto one rosy, straining nub, and Lola found the sight of him suckling her unbearably erotic. ‘You mean that?’ he said indistinctly. ‘You want me to stop?’
For answer she reached out and clung onto his dark head, forcing him to stay there and continue with what he was doing. ‘You know I don’t!’ she protested hoarsely, her body beginning to stir with a new and restless kind of energy. ‘You know I don’t!’
‘Good,’ he murmured, his tongue tracing impossibly erotic little patterns around each hard nipple while he teased her with slow fingertips to the tops of her thighs, and this double helping of pleasure made Lola fiercely determined to make his body rack with sensual response.
Or rather what she really wanted to do was to tell him that she adored him, that she already cared for him more than she had for any other man, and that she had no idea why; that on an instinctive level she knew that he was the man for her, that she was now almost convinced that she was in love with him, and that she didn’t just want to give him her virginity—oh, no—it was much more than that. The thought of surrendering her innocence to Geraint Howell-Williams filled her with a fiercely primitive kind of pride.
But of course she could not tell him any of these things—if she did, she was convinced that he would run a mile! And the last thing she wanted Geraint doing was running anywhere! Especially now!
Instead, she experimented, her fingernails softly scraping their way round to his back, where she raked them up and down the smooth, satin skin there—hard enough for him to feel, but not deep enough to draw blood. Even though she wanted to draw blood. . . to taste its sweet, dark, sticky saltiness. . .
‘Shall we take something else off now?’ he murmured.
‘Y-yes!’ Dear Lord, now his hands were resting provocatively at the tops of her thighs and Lola was almost weeping with frustrated pleasure and . . . and. . . his fingertips lightly grazed over the brief pair of navy knickers.
‘What about these—they seem fairly superfluous to requirements, don’t they?’
He began to slide the taut silk of her panties over the high curve of her buttocks, and Lola sucked in an agonised breath of longing as he deliberately did not touch her where she had been praying he would. Teasing swine!
Well, two could play at that game. . .
She scrabbled at his belt, unhooked it and discarded it as, somewhat awestruck, she felt the power of him straining against the zip of his jeans. She should release him. Touch him. Kiss him. Stroke him.
But she couldn’t.
She had never touched a man there before.
She closed her eyes. This was crazy! Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she should call things to a halt now, before he. . . before they. . .
But if she let him go much further, then not only might he be unable to stop—but she doubted whether she would have the strength and determination to tell him to stop.
‘Oh, Geraint. . .’ she began as her heart pounded a senseless rhythm in her ears.
‘Do you still like what I’m doing?’
She swallowed. ‘You know I do,’ she agreed hoarsely, and parted her thighs in an instinct as old as time itself.
She heard him murmur something shockingly explicit beneath his breath as he finally kicked away the moist silk of her panties, but then he cupped her face within the palms of his hands, looking down at her before saying quite sternly, ‘Do you want to stop? I mean it, sweetheart.’
Lola stared up into his gorgeous square, chiselled face—such a strong face—hearing the plea for what it was. His voice only sounded as grim as that because he was obviously holding himself in check, she realised. That much was evident from the rigid control which was etched onto every agonised and strained feature.
At a stage where most men might have tried to sweet-talk or kiss her out of any doubts, Geraint was showing a remarkable degree of restraint by offering to stop.
She shook her head wildly. ‘Of course I don’t want you to stop,’ she whispered hectically. ‘I want you to do what you said you were going to do.’
‘And what was that?’
‘To make love to me all night long,’ she prompted hungrily.
‘Did I say that?’ he murmured. ‘Well, in that case. . .’
And, with that, he began to remove his sweater and then his jeans. And by the time he was as naked as Lola and she had allowed herself to touch every single centimetre of him hungrily she was so mad with desire for him that she tried, foolishly as it happened, to take the lead.
And Geraint smiled with pleasure and turned her onto her back quite firmly, and entered her with a power and a strength and a brief pain that almost made her faint away. Then he stilled, his face growing dark with some inexplicable kind of horror, as he said, in a strangled kind of voice, ‘No! Oh, no! Dear God! You’re new to all this, aren’t you, Lola?’
Mutely, she nodded and lifted her face to meet his gaze with defiance, at the same time pushing her hips forward for the first time experimentally.
She heard his harsh intake of breath, saw the indecision which tortured his features, and so she daringly pushed again, and again, and each time she moved he filled her more completely, until she felt as though he was piercing through to the very heart of her.
She watched his eyes darken helplessly as he began to thrust inside her—so, so slowly at first, until he no longer seemed quite able to exercise such painstaking control. Then his movements became faster, harder, stronger—tinged with a kind of desperation which was so exciting it was almost unendurable. And he took Lola with him, leading her along a deliciously tempestuous path which defied description.
When pleasure came, it racked Lola’s body with its bitter-sweet waves, leaving her almost weeping with an overwhelming sensation which quickly became a warm glow of contentment when she heard Geraint give a strange, hollow moan of fulfilment as he shook with passion in her arms.
Someone had covered her up with a duvet—soft and warm and womb-like. Its feather-softness cocooned Lola’s deliciously aching body. Mmm!
She was just about to snuggle back down into the pillow when she remembered the circumstances which had led to her lying completely naked in the spare bedroom in the middle of the day.
She stifled a silent groan, and her eyelids fluttered open to reveal Geraint lying on his back beside her. She risked a peek at him. His dark face was closed and guarded, although there was a heated flare running along both of his deliciously high cheekbones and his eyes were bright and alive—and she knew what had caused that.
Lola shut her eyes again hastily.
‘I’m not just going to go away, Lola,’ he told her softly, then paused significantly as he levered himself up on one elbow and turned to face her. ‘Especially now.’
Blue eyes peeped out at him from the shelter of sooty lashes. ‘There’s no need to feel guilty—’
‘I am not feeling guilty,’ he interrupted coolly, although the note of irritation in his voice was un-mistakable. ‘Although I must admit to feeling just a little baffled.’
Not half as baffled as me, thought Lola, yawning hugely and wishing that he would start kissing her again and stop glaring at her as though she had just committed a major crime. ‘Baffled?’ she ventured innocently.
‘Ub-huh.’ A pair of interested grey eyes were trained steadily on her face. ‘And I hope that you’re not going to insult my intelligence—or yours—by feigning ignorance as to why I might be suffering from this state of confusion.’
Lola sighed. She had rather hoped that he might ignore the subject and that then it might just go away. But that was clearly not to be. ‘You mean about my-virginity?’ she asked, trying to sound more confident than she actually felt. But it wasn’t surprising she felt odd—it was not the easiest of words to introduce casually into a conversation!
‘The very same,’ he agreed.
‘Are you very angry?’ she tried boldly.
‘That I was the first man for you?’
‘Yes,’ she answered in a small voice, hating the indifferent way he had phrased his question. He made it sound as though he was just going to be the first in a long line of many. And she didn’t want him to be!
What she wanted, she realised, was for Geraint Howell-Williams to be her one and only lover. And the chances of that being the case were pretty remote. She looked down and pretended to scratch at her bare shoulder, afraid that he might see the misery clouding her eyes.
‘No, I’m not angry,’ he told her as he smoothed a lock of damp hair from her forehead. ‘What man in his right mind could feel anger at being given something so precious?’ He bent his head and kissed the tip of her nose, but Lola sensed the sadness which lay behind the gesture without really knowing what had caused it. ‘Although I am slightly exasperated that you didn’t choose to tell me until it was too late.’ He stared down at her with narrowed eyes, and frowned. ‘Why not, Lola? Why did you keep it a secret from me?’
‘Perhaps I wanted to prove to you once and for all that I had not been sexually involved with a man almost forty years my senior,’ she said.
He raised his dark, elegant brows in disbelief. ‘Rather an extreme way of going about it, surely?’
She found that she couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘I suppose so.’
‘And why me?’ he persisted quietly.
Should she tell him the plain, unvarnished truth? she wondered. Oh, not that she suspected she had fallen hopelessly in love with him, but something more socially acceptable?
Lola took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I was afraid that you would change your mind and stop if you knew that I was a virgin,’ she confessed. ‘Isn’t virtue supposed to be a big responsibility for a man?’
He nodded. ‘Yes,’ was all he said, but the look he threw her was a thoughtful one.
Lola summoned up the rest of her courage to ask, ‘Well? Would you have done?’
‘Played the honourable man, you mean, and stopped?’ He gave a small shrug of his shoulders, causing the duvet to slither down to his waist, revealing that magnificent torso, and Lola found herself gazing at him hungrily again. He saw the expression, gave a low laugh and shook his dark head very slightly. ‘Be patient, Lola,’ he scolded softly, and pulled her into his arms.
Her heart leaped as he held her tightly, but his words were far too noncommittal for her to read anything into.
‘As to whether I would have stopped, I like to think that, yes, I would have done.’ He lifted her chin and gave her a steady look. ‘But if I’m being perfectly honest I suspect that nothing in the world could have prevented me from carrying on once we had started.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ she said demurely, and ran a questing finger experimentally down over his chest until eventually it dipped into the indentation of his navel. She heard him suck in a long, shuddering breath, before he removed her hand quite firmly and held it tightly in his.
‘Not yet!’ he told her sternly, but his smile belied his tone, and that smile melted every last one of Lola’s inhibitions.
She sat up in bed, elated to see his eyes darken as the rosy tips of her breasts stiffened on contact with the cooler air.
As if he couldn’t help himself, he lifted his hand and cupped one breast possessively, capturing her gaze intently as his finger flicked provocatively over an exquisitely sensitive nipple.
‘I’m going to suckle you later, sweet Lola,’ he murmured, and snaked his tongue slowly over his lips as if to illustrate the promise.
Lola gasped aloud at the expression in his eyes and the slick, moist look of his mouth and the feel of his hand intimately stroking her breast. Excitement devoured her completely as she felt the hot bubble of desire burst into rampant life. She looked deep into his eyes and commanded softly, ‘Why wait? Why not now?’
For a split second he looked as overwhelmed as she felt, and then he dipped his head, taking the nipple into his mouth as sweetly as he had promised, his free hand roaming over her belly and beyond, until he had delved into the silken depths between her parted legs.
Lola gasped again and fell back helplessly against the pillow as he moved to lie above her, and it came as no shock to discover that he was aroused.
So incredibly aroused. . .
Lola wriggled her hips impatiently, longing for the newly discovered and sweet release of sex, but longing more than anything for Geraint to possess her—because in that most basic communion Lola had felt more complete than she had ever done before.
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he whispered into her ear, and entered her with such a bold, hard sweep of passion that Lola’s eyes widened with pleasure and thought became impossible, and all that was left in its place was feeling.
