‘So is he or isn’t he?’ he asked roughly, his breathing all fast and ragged and his eyes glazed.
She stared up at him, her heart twisting and tugging, and she could feel herself falling under his spell just as she had the moment she’d looked into his eyes at the bottom of that ski slope in Italy.
The longer she looked up at him, the more her head began to swim with the emotions that she’d kept buried for so long and were now breaking free. Love, hate, joy, despair, desire.
And bewilderment, because had she spent the long lonely weeks, months, years since their divorce hoping for this? Hoping he’d come and find her? Had she been living a lie the whole of the last five years? And if she had, what did that make her? Nuts? Lucky? A hopeless case?
And what did all of this mean? Did Kit still feel something for her other than lust? Something more? Were there still feelings between them? Did they have a second chance?
Her mind teeming and her heart racing, Lily let the weight of emotion submerge the voice of reason bellowing in her head and warning her to be, oh, so very wary.
There’d be time for talk later, time for analysis and perhaps regret, perhaps hope. Right now, though, she just wanted him.
With excitement rushing through her and her pulse thundering, Lily took a deep, shaky breath, then said, ‘Despite what I may have implied earlier Nick isn’t my boyfriend, and he isn’t going to be.’
* * *
Kit was wound so tight with tension and desire and the expectation of a slap across the face that for a moment he couldn’t work out what Lily was saying.
And then, when his shell-shocked brain finally got round to working it out, couldn’t quite believe it. Couldn’t quite believe that the risk he’d taken had paid off.
Yet apparently, against all the odds, it had, because here she was, not moving, not lifting her hand to slap him. In fact her eyes were shining, her chest was heaving and she was giving him the kind of look they’d shared at the beginning of their relationship, the one that was filled with heat and need and desperation and had always made his head spin.
That acting on what was clearly going through both their minds wasn’t a good idea didn’t seem to matter. That there was so much between them and starting something up again would only make things worse and set them back years seemed an irrelevance.
Kit was drowning beneath a wave of desire that had been absent for so long and lust was hammering through him so strong and hot that it drugged his senses, wiped out his reason and everything but the thought that he needed this and he needed Lily. With a desperation and hunger that was eating him up. And it was the same for her too judging by the way she’d just kissed him back.
With one quick move, before she had time to rethink the wisdom of her choice, Kit had her back in his arms and was then twisting her round away from the door and backing her up against the hall wall. The feel of her, the heat of her blasted into him and a bolt of sheer desire powered through him.
He planted his hands on either side of her head while she threw her arms around his neck and then their mouths met, tongues tangled and his mind went blank.
He’d never met anyone who kissed as Lily did, who threw themselves into it with everything they had and everything they felt. Kissing her had always been intoxicating and it was no different now. It was familiar and hot and made him burn.
As did the little moans coming from the back of her throat and the way she was melting against him.
Moving his hand, he buried it in her hair and angled her head so he could kiss her deeper, harder, and she responded with equal need.
Breaking for breath several long, hot minutes later, Kit pulled back and stared down into her eyes. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he muttered.
‘No,’ she said dazedly, her breathing all ragged and harsh. ‘Are you?’
‘Hell, no.’
‘Then what are we doing? What is this?’
‘Who knows?’ he said, sliding his hand round to her jaw and stroking his thumb over her lower lip. ‘Irresistible chemistry. Undeniable attraction. A disaster, probably.’
‘You could be right.’
‘Want to stop?’ It might kill him but if she was having second thoughts he couldn’t blame her.
‘Don’t you dare.’
She pulled his head back down to hers and started kissing him again. And then things switched up a gear because she was making sounds—familiar, encouraging sounds—that he hadn’t heard for years, and tugging at his clothes, reaching beneath his coat, pulling his shirt from the waistband of his jeans and pushing it up.
He could feel her impatience, but it wasn’t a patch on his, and as she put her hands on the bare skin of his back it sent such a shot of desire through him that Kit couldn’t wait any longer.
Breaking the kiss, both of them breathing hard, Kit lowered his hands to her thighs, slid her dress up and wrenched her knickers down, feeling as he did so how wet, how ready for him she was. He released her for a moment so that she could kick them off while he grappled with his belt. Which, with shaking hands, was frustratingly difficult.
‘Let me,’ Lily muttered, brushing his hands aside, unbuckling his belt and then making swift work of the buttons of his jeans.
As she slipped a hand inside his shorts and caressed the rock-hard, aching length of him he groaned and nearly exploded right there and then.
‘Enough,’ he muttered, removing her hand and planting it on his neck.
‘Hurry,’ she said with an urgency that nearly obliterated his control.
‘Hold on to me.’
She did, wrapping her arms round his neck and her legs round his waist as he lifted her, pressed her back against the wall for support, and with relief, desire and heat rushing through him he drove into her.
At the warm, wet feel of her he let out a groan of pleasure, relief and who knew what else.
Lily moaned, dropped her head back but, honestly, he was too far gone to notice much what she was doing. All he could feel, and all he could think, was that he was in absolute heaven.
Then she moved and as heaven came that little bit closer Kit realised he was in deep trouble. Because he wanted to go slow, savour the moment, make sure that she was with him every step of the way, but it had been so long, so incredibly long, and if she didn’t hold still he’d lose what little control he had left.
‘Stop moving,’ he said roughly, his fingers digging into her thighs in an effort to hold her still.
‘I can’t help it,’ she whimpered.
As he gritted his teeth against the pressure she held on to him tighter, pressed herself closer. He could hear her breathing go haywire, could feel her tight around him, hear those little pants and he began to spin out of control.
‘Stop it now, Lily.’
‘No, it feels too good.’
She tilted her hips, pulled him in deeper and that triggered a primitive need in him he couldn’t begin to comprehend, let alone control. His head swam with the urge to take, to possess, to reclaim. His heart thundered and inside him there was simply too much urgency. Too much build-up. Too much everything, and his resistance collapsed beneath the sheer force of it.
His control now history, instinct took over and, with the sound of Lily’s whimpers and sobbing moans in his ear, he started blindly thrusting in and out of her, faster and harder, unable to stop or even slow down.
And just when the tightness gripping his lower body