A smile chased through his eyes, but it left them.. bleak? she wondered. Why would that be?
‘It’s just that some things can never be reversed.’ He circled her mouth with his thumb as her lips parted.
‘I know that,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference to how I feel. And if you’re trying to say you may not be a marrying man, I may do my darndest to change that, knowing me, but that’s… in the future, and what will be will be. Just don’t turn your back on me now; I couldn’t bear it.’
He stared down into her eyes. They were glimmering with unshed tears like drowned emeralds, but her gaze was very direct and very honest. All the same he held back for some moments longer.
Moments where he thought back over the past days and how he’d had to rein in a growing desire for this girl. Days during which he’d questioned his motives time and again. Times when he’d told himself firmly that she was just another girl, rather touchingly innocent at times, yes, then exceedingly determined at others, but all the same, he could take her or leave her…
He had to doubt that now, in the face of her.. what was the word for it? Gallantry? Yes, and honesty. And what his body most ardently desired. The truth of the matter was, he reflected with a streak of self-directed irony, he could no longer keep his hands off Maggie Trent, or any longer deny himself the final satisfaction of taking her.
‘Turn my back on you,’ he repeated and released her to cup her face in his hands. ‘I couldn’t bear it either.’ He lowered his head and kissed her.
Maggie clung to him and kissed him back in a fever of relief this time. Then he untied the knot of her sarong and it floated away. Her bikini top suffered the same fate shortly afterwards.
‘The perfect gymnast’s body,’ he murmured as he cupped her high, small breasts peaked with velvety little nipples.
‘Thank you.’ She drew her hands down his chest and trembled because it felt like a rock wall. Then he was kissing her breasts and sliding his hands beneath her bikini briefs to cup her hips and cradle them against him.
Maggie shivered with delight and she stood on her toes and slid her arms around his neck. ‘You do the most amazing things to me,’ she said against the corner of his mouth.
He lifted her off her feet and she curled her legs around him. ‘If we’re not careful this could be over in a matter of seconds,’ he replied with a wry little smile and walked inside with her, ‘on account of what you do to me.’ He nuzzled her neck, then lowered her to the bed.
He turned away and opened a drawer of the bedside table.
‘If that’s what I think it is,’ she said softly, ‘you don’t need to worry. I’m on the pill—to correct a slight gynaecological problem I have but, according to my doctor, I’m protected against—as he put it— all eventualities.’
Jack looked down at her. ‘Is that what you were going to the doctor for the day after we got locked in the shed?’
‘Mmm… It’s not serious, just a bit debilitating sometimes.’
He lay down beside her and said no more or, she thought dreamily, he let his hands and lips do the talking. He held her and caressed her until she became aware that areas of her body she’d never given much thought to before could become seriously erotic zones beneath his hands and mouth. The nape of her neck, the soft, supple flesh of the inside of her arms, the base of her throat and that pathway that led down to her breasts, her thighs…
She became aware that she could make him catch his breath by moulding herself to him and sliding one leg between his. She discovered that his touch on her nipples sent a thrilling, tantalizing message to the very core of her femininity.
She marvelled at his clean, strong lines and the feel of sleek, hard muscles, and she buried her face in his shoulder with a gasp as he parted her thighs and a rush of warmth and rapture claimed her.
‘I just hope you’re experiencing what I am,’ she breathed as she started to move against him in a rhythm that seemed to come naturally to her. ‘It’s gorgeous.’
He laughed softly, then kissed her hard. ‘To put it mildly, I’m about to die. Ready?’