Out Of The Night. PENNY JORDAN

THREE

      ‘YOU’RE sure you want this…Me?’

      The words thrilled against her skin, raising a rash of gooseflesh, making her quiver and then tense as she felt Matt’s lips tracing the shape of her mouth, exploring it, cherishing it so that her tension died in a flood of wonder and pleasure.

      Why had she never known that it was possible to feel like this; that the delicate, almost hesitant touch of another mouth against her own could arouse her to such dizzying pleasure and need? It was as though this sensual exploratory meeting of their lips was something she had dreamed of—yearned for for an aeon of time, rather than knowing she wanted it only seconds before she experienced it.

      Against Matt’s mouth she whispered back, ‘I want you,’ and another thrill of anticipation ran through her as she felt the answering tension in Matt’s body.

      An unfamiliar heady eagerness to reach out to him and show him, with the touch of her hands and her lips, just what delight it gave her to have him near her overwhelmed her. She, who had never once initiated an embrace with any man—not even Gerry—had suddenly turned into a woman she could hardly recognise.

      How had she known that the delicate touch of her fingertips against his skin would make Matt tense and groan against her mouth, tightening his hold on her, drawing her down against him so that her body was enveloped in the heat and maleness of his?

      His hands cradled her head, his fingers sliding into her hair as his mouth explored the delicate contours of her face. His warm breath against her ear made her tremble and shiver beneath a shower of fiery darts of excitement. Sensations she had never known existed coiled through her stomach and swelled the soft curves of her breasts, inciting her to move with instinctive enticement against Matt’s body, as her wanton flesh silently begged him to free it from the final barriers left between them.

      She wanted to feel him against her, she recognised. She wanted to feel the hard heat of his skin against her own, to experience the touch of his hands and mouth against her body, and to explore the alien contours of his with hers. Her needs suspended reality and her ability to rationalise, her mind reeling under the shock of the dominating demands of her body.

      As Matt’s hand swept back her hair to lay bare her throat to the hungry assault of his mouth, she arched eagerly towards him, not in humble supplication, but in proud demand, knowing by some primitive instinct that, whatever the differences between them, in this their need for one another they met as equals.

      The heat of his breath against her skin, the hard pressure of his mouth, the sharp bite of his teeth, the rough stroke of his hands on her skin, all of them were so perfectly attuned to her own needs that to experience them fed her desire at the same time as they momentarily satisfied it.

      An instinct she hadn’t known she possessed told her when to draw her own mouth against his flesh, when to stroke it tenderly with her tongue and when to graze it more ardently with the subtle pressure of her teeth.

      Their surroundings, the storm which had brought them together, the fact that they were strangers to one another—all these had faded into insignificance. All that was important was that Matt had at last removed the last barriers of their underwear, and that his hands were cupping and shaping her breasts. That his thumbs were stroking eagerly, wonderingly almost, against the sensitive hardness of her nipples as though he knew exactly the intensity of her need to have him touch her just like that; as though he knew that even another second’s delay in doing so would have stretched out the taut hot wire of desire that compelled her that little bit too far.

      And, when he lowered his head and took one tender, flaunting nub of flesh into his mouth, caressing it gently with his lips and then his tongue, raking it less gently with his teeth and then finally sucking so erotically and rhythmically on it that her whole body turned fluid and pulsed in a shockingly arousing harmony with it, it was as though she had waited for this moment, this pleasure…this man, for an infinity of time.

      What she was experiencing went far beyond right or wrong, far, far beyond worrying about doing the right thing…about defending herself from hurt and pain. This need they were sharing was so elemental, so fierce, so overpowering that it cut across every layer of civilisation, laying bare the deepest essences of their humanity.

      The Emily she had always known, had always been, would rather have died a thousand deaths than cry out in a pleasure that was almost pain at the sheer impossibility of containing what she was feeling—what he was making her feel. The Emily she had thought of herself as being could never have imagined herself wanting to share with any man her joy in the pleasure he was giving her—wanting to tell him, to show him, to give to him in equal measure all that he was so generously giving to her. The Emily she had thought she was would never have eagerly and openly murmured her need when Matt turned his head to caress her other breast as he had done its twin.

      ‘Francine…I can’t believe this is happening. You’re…’

      Emily tensed. Francine. She had forgotten about that. Would he have wanted her the same if she had told him she was Emily? A rose by any other name…

      Francine. Perhaps it was being Francine that gave her the freedom to behave in a way that Emily could never have behaved.

      Matt’s mouth touched her stomach, sending tiny pulses of electric sensation coiling through her, making tiny nerve-endings beneath her skin beat frantically in excitement. His hand stroked her hip; soon…

      ‘No. Not yet,’ she told him huskily. ‘I want to…’ She stopped, realising that she had almost said ‘I want to love you.’ What words did you use to tell a man that you wanted to explore and enjoy the sensation of his flesh beneath your hands and mouth the way he had done yours? That you wanted to give him the same pleasure he had given you; that you wanted to share with him your joy in the fact that he was a man?

      If they existed she had no idea what they were, and so, while he hesitated, she simply asked softly, ‘Can I do this?’ and then placed her mouth against his body, tentatively tracing the aureole of his nipple, so different from hers—and yet, perhaps in some ways not so very different after all, she decided as she felt him shudder and move restlessly against her, his hands gripping her waist and then stroking up over her body before he buried them in her hair, silently urging her to repeat the caress, and then not so silently as she fulfilled his silent command and experienced the satisfaction of feeling his body shudder in immediate response to her touch.