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.