Now, like lava running hot from deep down inside the earth, this man—a man whose blood and history had made him part of this island of volcanic uncertainty—was deliberately inciting her own fevered desire to the point where she could no longer control it. She could feel the need building up inside her—overpowering, commanding, demanding that she give herself over to it and to the man who had aroused it.
What was it about this woman that enabled her to transform herself into this living, breathing embodiment of such erotic and intense sensual responsiveness? He asked himself. It was as though she knew his every need, and could answer it in a way that took him deeper than he had ever previously gone into the molten heart of his own desire.
What her touch, her flesh, her self were drawing from him could never have been conjured up by mere sexual experience or tired, over-used mechanical responses of the ‘you touch me like this and I respond like this’ variety.
Somehow she was able to imbue even something as simple as the unsteady breath of her heartbeat against his flesh with such passion that her pleasure seemed new and tumultuous—an acknowledgement of a gift from him that took her into sensual realms she had never known before. Just the heavy-lidded and helplessly liquid look of longing that seemed to be dragged from her as though her need for him completely overwhelmed her was a form of arousal, and it took him in turn to a pitch that promised—and threatened—a degree of pleasure that challenged his own selfcontrol.
When his touch had brought her to a state of semicollapse, to lie boneless and mutely imploring against him, Rocco removed her top and then her bra, before sliding off her linen trousers.
Below the twin concave dips on either side of the minute swell of her stomach, he could see quite clearly, through the sheer fabric of her knickers and the more intimate covering of silky blonde hair that covered her sex, the frantic fast pulse of her need.
Rocco closed his eyes protectively and took a deep breath that lifted his torso, exhaling slowly as he fought for the command of himself that he could feel slipping away. But it was no good. The minute his eyelids lifted his gaze and returned it to that pulse, his whole body reacted to it.
He started to undress, unfastening just a few buttons on his shirt before he stopped, driven by his own need to lean forward and place his palms flat on the bed on either side of her hips, so that he could lower his head and feel that pulse, with its message of sensual untrammelled heat, against his mouth, so that he could take it deep inside himself to where his own body ached in exactly the same way.
Julie heard herself cry out—a sharp, keening sound somewhere between uncontrollable longing and helpless recognition that she was lost now to any kind of self-restraint.
The heat of Rocco’s mouth penetrated the fine fabric covering her sex, making her feel as though she was melting inside, turning wet and soft, her flesh yearning.
When Rocco straightened up she wanted to protest, to beg him to continue. A wild, feverish and driving clamour of physical urgency was possessing her, causing her to move restlessly on the bed. The small out-of-control movements of her body reflected her impatience and her need, but then she realised that Rocco was removing his clothes, and her movements stilled. Her concentration was focused on watching as he shrugged off his shirt. The late afternoon sunlight breaking through the clouds strobed golden bars of light against his naked torso—honey against amber, sleeked with silk and velvet darkness where his body hair arrowed down beneath the waistband of the trousers he was now unfastening.
At some point he had removed his shoes, and for some reason the sight of his feet, bare, tanned and masculine, caused her heart to flip over. It was laughable, really, that such a small intimacy should possess such an intense charge. Was it because when James had made love to her he had never properly undressed, claiming that his shared student digs made it unwise? Did the sight of Rocco’s bare feet somehow signal to her senses that now at last they would be able to experience what true sexual passion and the possession that went with it really meant?
Was it true after all that one did not need to be in love to enjoy passionate sex? Did she care?
Rocco stepped out of his trousers. Julie’s heart took a high dive into shuddering delight. She had seen adverts for men’s underwear, featuring what she had always suspected must surely be digitally honed and enhanced male models, but now she realised they had come nowhere even close to reflecting anything like the degree of male sexual perfection that was Rocco Leopardi. And how well that name suited him. Like the leopard, his flesh clung to sensuously strong muscles that moved sinuously and gracefully: a hunter’s body, dangerously sleek with strength and purpose, its flesh satin-smooth, making her ache to reach out and stroke her hand against it.
When he removed his sleek-fitting white boxer shorts Julie sucked in her breath.
Had she actually ever seen James naked? If so, suddenly she not only couldn’t remember but didn’t really care. This—Rocco’s body—was surely physically male sexual perfection? She had never given any thought to wondering if one day she might look at a naked man and want to feast her gaze on his sexuality. She simply hadn’t thought in those kind of terms. She had loved James as a person, not for sex, and she was not the kind of woman who had ever been interested in going on a girls’ night out to watch male strippers. She had believed that desiring a man came from loving him, but now, shockingly, she realised that just looking at Rocco was making her feel positively faint with lust.
Rocco watched Julie looking at him with a slanting halfhidden glance. Her lips were parted, her tongue pushing between them to dampen them, and her heart was thudding visibly and unevenly against her ribs. Her nipples were gathered and hard, but it was the look of open and awed delight he could see in her eyes that his own flesh registered first and responded to.
It was a look that said she was paying him the greatest compliment a woman could pay a man who had not yet been her lover. A look that aroused him even as it honoured and welcomed him.
He lay down on the bed beside her, kissing her slowly and with deliberately erotic intensity, using his tongue to tease and enflame her until she was reaching for him, her hands curling into the hard muscles of his arms, her mouth opening beneath his and her body arching up against him in open abandonment.
He cupped her breast and rubbed the pad of his thumb against her nipple as he kissed her neck, and then her shoulder, feeling her whole body jerk up against him in hot pleasure. He took her hand, lacing his fingers with her own and kissing the inside of her wrist as he played sensually with her nipple, before drawing her hand down to place it against his erection.
She made a semi-mute sound, her eyes widening as though with confusion and uncertainty. Her fingers trembled as they brushed against him, and then closed round him whilst she released her breath in a ragged exhalation.
His flesh felt hot and slick and heavy, moving almost of its own volition within her hold, causing her hand to tighten around it in possessive female delight. She released him to touch and stroke the full length of him, from the hard and shiny tip to the thick hair growing round the base that prickled against her fingers and then back again, until the sensation of his mouth against her breasts pierced her with such unbearable pleasure that her hand automatically gripped him. She was unable to enclose him fully, but still she tightened her fingers around him as the movement of her hand mirrored the slow, deep tug of his mouth against her nipple.
Rocco reached down and slid his hand into the open silk organza leg of her knickers, probing the already swollen and unfolding protective outer lips of her sex. Just as her tongue-tip had tempted him earlier, so the hard arousal of her clitoris tempted him now.
What was Rocco doing? James had never. But of course she knew what he was doing, Julie realized, and as she lay back, panting softly under the intensity her own pleasure. She wasn’t that naïve, even if she had not experienced such a pleasure before. It gripped her and took her, softening some muscles and tightening others, opening her legs, lifting her hips, making her tremble violently, ready to throw herself into the heart of the volcano if necessary, rather than be denied pleasure.