He took his time removing the jeans because he was enjoying watching her watching him. Most of all he enjoyed her gasp as he stepped out of his boxers and moved towards her, his erection thick, heavy and impressively telling of just how aroused he was.
Brianna scrabbled to sit up, pulses racing, the blood pumping in her veins hot with desire.
She couldn’t believe she was doing this, behaving in a way that was so out of character. She sighed and moaned as the mattress depressed under his weight; the feel of his hands tucking into the waistband of the jogging bottoms, sliding them down, signalled the final nail in her crumbling defences
‘You’re beautiful.’ He straddled her and kissed her with intimate, exquisite thoroughness, tracing her mouth with his tongue, then trailing his lips against her neck so that she whimpered and tilted her head to prolong the kiss.
Every small noise she made, every tiny movement, bore witness to how much she was turned on and it gave him an unbelievable kick to know that she had allowed herself to be pulled along by an irresistible force even though it went against the grain.
Her skin was supple and smooth, her breasts perfect, dainty orbs that barely fitted his large hand.
He teased the tip of her nipple with his tongue and then submerged himself in the pleasure of suckling on it, loving the way she writhed under him; the way her fingers bit into his shoulder blades; the way she arched back, eyes closed, mouth parted, her whole body trembling.
He let his hand drift over her flat stomach to circle the indentation of her belly button with one finger while he continued to plunder her breasts, moving between them, sucking, liking the way he could draw them into his mouth. He was hungry for more but determined not to take things fast. He wanted to savour every second of tasting her body.
He parted her legs gently with his hand and eased the momentary tension he could feel as she stilled against him.
‘Shh,’ he whispered huskily, as though she had spoken. ‘Relax.’
‘It’s...been a long time.’ Brianna gave a half-stifled, nervous laugh. He raised his head and their eyes tangled, black clashing with apple-green.
‘When you say long...’
‘I haven’t slept with anyone since... Well, it’s been years...’ She twisted away, embarrassed by the admission. Where had the time gone? It seemed as though one minute she had been nursing heartbreak, dealing with her father’s death, caught up in a jumble of financial worries, her life thrown utterly off course, and the next minute she was here, still running the pub, though with the financial worries more or less behind her. She was hardly sinking but definitely not swimming and living a life that seemed far too responsible for someone her age.
Leo tilted her face to his, kissed her on the side of her mouth and banked down his momentary discomfort at thinking that he might be taking advantage of her.
Yet she was perfectly aware of the situation, perfectly aware that he wasn’t going to be hanging around. Naturally, she was not in possession of the true facts regulating his departure, but weren’t those just details? Looking at the bigger picture, she knew where she stood, that this was just a fling—not even that.
‘I’ll be gentle.’
‘I guess you...you’ve had a lot of girlfriends?’
‘I haven’t espoused a life of celibacy.’ He slipped his finger into the wet groove of her femininity and felt whatever further questions she wanted to ask become stifled under her heated response. She moved against his finger and groaned.
He could have played with her body all day, all night. Right now, he couldn’t get enough of her and he moved downwards. She sucked in her breath sharply and he rested the palm of his hand flat on her stomach, then he nuzzled the soft hair covering the apex between her thighs. He breathed in the musky, honeyed scent of her and dipped his tongue to taste her. How did he know that this was something she was experiencing for the first time? And why was that such a turn on?
He teased the throbbing bud of her clitoris and, when she moaned and squirmed, he flattened his hands on her thighs so that her legs were spread wide open for his delectation.
Brianna had never known anything like this before. There wasn’t a single part of her body that wasn’t consumed with an overpowering craving. She wanted him to continue doing what he was doing, yet she wanted him in her, deep inside. She weakly tugged at his hair but was powerless to pull him up. When she looked down and saw his dark head between her legs, and his strong, bronzed hands against the paleness of her thighs, she almost passed out.
Could years of living in icy isolation have made her so vulnerable to his touch? Had her body been so deprived of human contact that it was now overwhelmed? It felt like it.
When he rose, she was so close to tipping over the edge that she had to squeeze her eyes shut and grit her teeth together to maintain self-control.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ Leo raised some hair from her flushed face to whisper in her ear. He rubbed his stiff erection against her belly and felt sensation lick through his body at frightening speed.
Brianna blushed and nodded, then raised herself up so that she could kiss him on the mouth, draw him down over her so that their bodies were pressed together, fused with slick perspiration. She reached down and took him in her hand and he angled himself slightly away to accommodate her. His breathing thickened as she continued to work her movements into a deep rhythm.
He was impressively big and she shivered with heady anticipation.
‘A condom... Wait; in my wallet...’
Already he was groping in the pocket of his jeans for his wallet and fumbling to fetch a condom, his eyes still pinned to her flushed, reclining body. How on earth could he be thinking of anything at a time like this? She just couldn’t wait for him to be inside her, filling her with his bigness.
‘You’re well prepared.’ She sighed and thought that of course he would be; he was a man of the world after all.
She groaned and felt the slippery, cool sheath guarding his arousal; her hands impatiently guided him to her, longing for the moment when he would fill her completely. She flipped onto him and arched up, her hands on his broad chest, her small breasts tipping teasingly towards him. ‘I know you’re moving on and I like it that way.’ Did she? Yes, she did! ‘I need this.’ She leaned forward, bottom sticking up provocatively, and covered her mouth with his. ‘The last thing I would take a gamble on is with a pregnancy.’
‘You wouldn’t want to be stuck with a loser like me?’ Leo grinned, because those words had never passed his lips before. ‘A travelling writer hoping to make his fortune?’ He curved his hands on her rear and inserted himself into her. He drove into her and Brianna felt a surge of splintering pleasure as he moved deep inside her. Her head was flung back and he could feel the ends of her long hair on his thighs, brushing against them.
‘A guy could feel insulted.’
She was on her back before she knew it and he was rearing up over her, big, powerful and oh, so breathtakingly beautiful, one-hundred per cent alpha male.
She came with such intensity that she had to squeeze her eyes shut on the gathering tears. She knew her fingers were digging in to the small of his back and they dug harder as she felt him swell and reach his orgasm inside her.
God, nothing had ever felt that good. Years of celibacy, running the pub and coping with all the day-to-day worries had obviously had the effect of making her respond like a wanton to being touched. She had never been like that before. But then, she had been so much younger when she had met Danny. Had the years and the tough times released some sort of pent-up capacity for passion that she had never known about?
‘So...’ Leo drawled, rolling onto his side then pulling her to face him so that their naked bodies were front to front and still touching, almost as