She closed her eyes briefly before opening them again. ‘I need you to touch me,’ she groaned pleadingly. ‘I ache, Darius.’
‘Where?’
‘Everywhere,’ she breathed agitatedly. ‘My breasts. Between my legs. Everywhere—’ She broke off as Darius’s hands once again cupped and lifted beneath her bottom, turning her so that she now lay full length on the sofa as he unfastened the button and zip on her jeans.
Which was when Andy remembered and began to panic, her hands moving to cover his in order to stop him from going any further.
‘I already know about the scars, Miranda,’ he spoke softly.
Andy stilled, hardly daring to breathe, sure her heart had ceased to beat too as she gazed up at him with wide and stricken eyes. ‘How could you possibly know?’
‘Logic.’ Darius gently removed her now unresisting hands before he continued to fully unzip, and then peel her jeans down to her thighs and further down her legs. ‘Your injuries in the accident were extensive.’
‘It wasn’t...’ Andy stopped her protest as she realised she had once again been about to claim that her fall four years ago hadn’t been an accident at all; no one had believed her then, and the last thing she needed right now was for Darius to think she was a bitter and twisted hysteric.
‘They would also have required several operations, painful ones,’ Darius guessed grimly. ‘Coupled with Tia Bellamy’s comments last night, about the ankle length of your gown, it isn’t difficult to guess that you have scars.’
He had managed to pull her jeans down the rest of the way as they talked, and he now discarded them completely, his breath catching in his throat as he turned back and saw that Miranda wore only cream silk and lace bikini briefs beneath. Her golden curls were visible against the dampened silk.
And the scars were visible high up on her right thigh—a delicate tracery of surgical incisions that had faded to silver during the past four years, but were still visible nonetheless.
They were scars Miranda now attempted to hide with her hand. ‘They’re hideous.’
‘They’re a part of who you are,’ Darius corrected gruffly. ‘Like war wounds,’ he added softly as he lowered his head and placed his lips gently on each and every one of those scars.
Andy made a choking noise in her throat. ‘Darius!’
He continued to kiss her scarred thigh as he murmured, ‘We all carry scars, Miranda. Some are visible, others not, but never doubt that we all bear scars from our past.’
Andy heard the bleakness underlying Darius’s tone, and wondered what scars he carried around inside him. Recalling the conversation between the two brothers the evening before, it wasn’t difficult to realise that it probably somehow involved the father Xander had described as a bastard. It was—
She gave a gasp, all other thoughts leaving her head, as Darius now hooked his thumbs into her lacy briefs and slowly, purposefully, slid them downwards, until he had her completely naked. Her breath caught and held, the heated warmth colouring her cheeks, as he nudged her legs apart before moving to kneel between her thighs, spreading her legs even further apart as he gazed his fill.
‘Beautiful,’ Darius finally breathed huskily before looking up at her. ‘You’re beautiful, Miranda. All of you.’
Miranda squirmed uncomfortably. ‘I’m feeling a little underdressed.’
Darius clearly heard the embarrassment beneath Miranda’s husky tone. ‘I believe I’m the one who’s a lot overdressed,’ he corrected as he reached for the bottom of his T-shirt and drew it up and over his head before throwing it onto the pile of her clothes already gathered on the floor. ‘Better?’
Andy totally forgot her embarrassment as she looked at Darius’s bared and lightly tanned torso. She drank in his wide and muscled shoulders and chest, defined abs, with not an ounce of superfluous flesh anywhere, testament to the fact that he didn’t spend all of his time behind a desk. There was a dusting of dark hair covering the middle of his chest and tapering down beneath the waistband of his jeans. He was the one who was beautiful, mouth-wateringly so.
‘I’m going to taste you now, Miranda,’ he growled hungrily in warning even as he slid down the couch until he was settled between her thighs, the width of his shoulders forcing her legs even further apart.
‘I— Oh, dear Lord...!’ Andy groaned as she felt Darius’s tongue sweep slowly over her, gasping as he hummed his pleasure.
She couldn’t resist looking down at him, so dark and primal against her fairness, his lids closed, dark lashes fanning the sharp planes of his cheeks.
Andy’s fingers curled into the darkness of his hair as she thought she might die from the pleasure of his lips and tongue.
‘I need you to touch me too, Miranda,’ he encouraged as he moved up onto his knees, unfastening the button and zip of his jeans and pulling them down.
Andy was thrilled to see his excitement and to know that she was the cause of his arousal. She hesitated only briefly before her fingers closed about his length, amazed at how soft the skin was that encased the steel hardness beneath. Instinctively she moved her hand up and over, mimicking the rhythm he had resumed as he continued to caress her with his tongue.
‘Harder, Miranda,’ he paused to groan achingly. ‘Faster.’
She drew her breath in sharply, her fingers tightening about him, squeezing harder, as Darius’s mouth closed completely about her and he suckled deeply, at the same time as he slid first one and then a second finger deep inside her.
Her pleasure rose higher still, threatening to consume her as it rose to a crescendo. Higher, and then higher still, until Andy felt that wave hold, crest, before exploding in a kaleidoscope of sensations, emotions and colours that left her gasping.
Beneath her hand she felt Darius harden before he joined her in his own shuddering climax.
Darius was breathing heavily as he lay against Miranda’s thighs, too physically satiated to want to move. Instead he simply enjoyed the pleasure of having her fingers moving caressingly through his hair as she lay just as relaxed beneath him.
It had never been like this for him before. So intense. So immediate. To the degree that Darius hadn’t been able to control or stem his own pleasure, and he’d experienced the deepest and most intense climax of his life.
Damn it, the two of them had made out on Miranda’s sofa like a couple of teenagers!
Darius might have laughed at himself for that adolescent eagerness if he weren’t so bemused by it.
Not just bemused, utterly confused.
He’d been sexually active since he was in his teens and had always enjoyed sex as a recreation, a release of tension, but this—this time with Miranda had been unlike anything he had ever known before.
He’d felt a connection, the emotions so intense, he had been unable to stop himself from climaxing in her hand like that overeager teenager. And he hadn’t even been inside her yet!
A fact his body was only too well aware of, if the stirring of renewed arousal was any indication.
What did it mean?
What did he want it to mean?
He liked Miranda. Admired her even. But was it more than that? Could it be more than that?
How was he supposed to think, about anything, when Miranda still lay naked beneath him, and with the smell of her feminine musk invading, capturing, all of his senses?
Distance.
He needed distance.
Between himself and Miranda.
Except