She opened her eyes to see Lucca looking at her with a mercurial glint in his gaze. ‘You weren’t pretending, were you?’
She still felt a little dazed by what her body had experienced. ‘That was … out of this world…. I felt like I was shattering into a thousand pieces.’
He stroked a lazy hand down her thigh. ‘You’re beautiful when you come.’
Lottie wondered why she wasn’t feeling awkward or embarrassed. She hadn’t given a thought to how she had looked in that most private of moments. All she could think of was how she felt. Her body had experienced the most ecstatic interlude of its entire existence. And he had made her feel that way. ‘Thank you … not just for saying that but for doing that….’
‘Making you come?’
She tried to keep her tone light and flirty, even though she was experiencing a turnaround of feelings that was as complex as it was unwelcome. ‘I can see why women are lining up to get into bed with you. You really are very good at this, aren’t you?’
His smile should have looked smug but somehow didn’t. He brushed her lower lip with the blunt pad of his thumb, his tone deep with unusual gravitas. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. If it’s been a while you might not be ready for the full deal.’
Lottie stroked her palm against the stubble of his lean cheek. ‘I’m ready. I want you. I want to come with you inside me. I want to feel you come.’
He drew in a shuddering breath as if her words had touched on something deeply primal in him. ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt of that happening. I’m only holding on by the width of a hair as it is.’
‘Really?’ She sounded as surprised as she felt and wondered if she should have toned it down a bit. Was there such a thing as being starstruck by sex? If so, she had just experienced it.
He did that brushlike movement with his thumb on her lower lip again. ‘You turned me on the minute I walked into that morning room at the palace and saw you standing there, firing daggers at me from those beautiful green eyes of yours.’
She felt a thrill tingle through her flesh. She had felt it too, that electric tension in the air, the sparks they had struck off each other in enmity.
What sparks would they strike off each other in love?
Love?
The errant concept was a like a splash of cold water. It dripped on her common sense in icy droplets of reality.
Lucca Chatsfield didn’t do love. He was only interested in the here and now … as she was. Wasn’t she?
Of course she was.
This was a bit of fun—a light-hearted fling to get her back out there. To reclaim what had been taken away from her all those years ago. This was not about finding a life partner, someone to share the joys of life, of having a relationship that was exclusive and full of trust and companionship, of bringing up a family together.
This was about having hot sex with a man she would probably never set eyes on again once her sister’s wedding was over.
He tipped up her chin as he searched her gaze for a heartbeat. ‘Hey, did I lose you there for a moment?’
Lottie smiled a sultry smile as she brought his head down. ‘I’m yours until midnight, remember?’
LUCCA’S MOUTH MOVED over hers with heart-stopping thoroughness, taking his time with each stroke and glide of his tongue against hers, building her need for him to a point where she was feverish to feel him inside her. Her inner core was slick with a clawing, aching want, a pulse beating so insistently for satiation she moved against him, breathlessly urging him to take things to completion.
He kept her dangling, teasing her to the edge and backing off again, his mouth on her breasts, then underneath them where the skin was baby soft and supersensitive. Then to the cave of her belly button where he swirled his tongue in and out, making her nerves scream for him to go farther down south. His fingers played with her, not enough to set her off but enough to make her desperate for the fulfilment he promised.
She raised her hips off the bed, giving a gasping plea for him to end this torture. ‘Now. Please now.’
‘Condom first.’
Lottie watched as he sheathed himself, held her breath as he came back over her, balancing his weight on his forearms. He took it slowly, far too slowly for her liking, but a part of her secretly delighted in his consideration for her comfort. The shallow sex-crazed hedonist the press painted him as was at complete odds with who was making love to her so tenderly now. Nothing about his movements, his caresses, his kisses, his strokes, had anything selfish about them.
They were all about her pleasure. Her comfort.
He had put her pleasure before his own. It must be killing him to have to wait so long for his own release. She could feel the turgid length of him against her labia, only his steely self-control delaying the primal urge to mate.
He gently nudged her apart and tested her acceptance of him. ‘Tell me if I’m hurting you.’ His deep voice was a sexy burr.
‘You’re not hurting me.’ She clutched at his buttocks and drew him in farther. He felt so thick and strong and her body was so wet and greedy for him. She heard him suck in a breath as he went in deeper. She could feel his control wavering. He wanted to bury himself to the hilt but only kindness and consideration for her comfort was stopping him.
Lottie dug her fingers into his taut flesh as she lifted herself up to receive him farther. He glided a little deeper, waiting for her body to accommodate him. Her body gripped him tightly. She felt the ripples of pleasure course through her. Her wetness. His thickness. His strength. Her softness.
She grew more and more impatient. Her body was poised on a precipice. Tense. Titillated. Tortured. Her flesh was crying out. Every nerve screaming, Now. Now. Now.
‘Please …’ Her voice was a gasping plea. ‘Oh, please …’
He gave a grunt against her neck as he surged forward, the swollen thickness of him completely filling her, the friction of him delighting her senses, reeling her senses in a crazy whirlpool.
His thrusts were gentle to start with. She could feel him holding himself back in the way he measured each stroke of his body within hers. He gradually increased the rhythm, which felt strangely familiar to her and yet unlike anything she had experienced before. It was as if her body recognised him. Was uniquely tuned to him. Responded to him like no one else. Responded to him with honesty, with naturalness, with enthusiasm and zero self-consciousness.
He slipped a hand between their bodies, caressing her clitoris in soft little teasing strokes that triggered a tumultuous release that reverberated throughout her body, shaking it like the tremors of a powerful earthquake. So intense was her release she momentarily lost all sense of time and space. She was limbless, floating in a languid sea of contentment….
He kept thrusting, working himself to his own release, and taking her along for the ride. She clung to him as his pace quickened, her body tingling at the way his was so thick and tight within hers. She felt the tension building in him, in the strongly defined muscles of his back and shoulders, in his thighs where they were entwined so erotically with her own.
He drew in a breath and let it out in a shuddering whoosh as he emptied himself, the quaking of his body sending aftershocks of pleasure through hers.
Lottie waited for the moment of awkwardness. The messy business of the condom. The furtive scramble for clothes. The regret. The I-shouldn’t-have-had-sex-with-you moment that always felt like a blot on her conscience.
It