Modern Romance May 2015 Books 1-8. Кейт Хьюит

It happened that fast, that her reaction was so strong it almost blew her away. Her hands slid up his arms, holding him to her, every skin cell in her body alight in a blaze.

      She had told herself that it wouldn’t be like that if she touched him again. She had told herself that the response she recalled was the result of infatuation, exaggerated by an imagination reluctant to let go of the sparkly romance that had turned into car-crash viewing. But she had lied, not knowingly, but out of ignorance and wishful hopes because the discovery that Jaul could still deliver a kiss that could set her on fire was downright terrifying.

      Struggling to catch her breath, she looked up at him, into eyes dark and glittery as a starry night, and for a split second of madness she wanted to drown there and turn time back in its tracks. Instead, she rested her cheek against a broad shoulder, breathing in the musky, clean scent of him like a hopeless addict. He smelled so good, he smelled so right that it frightened her. She quivered, insanely aware of every line of his long, lean body against hers and the terrible wanting rising inside her like a drug haze she couldn’t possibly fight and win against. ‘Jaul?’

      Long brown fingers cupped her cheekbones. ‘Give me your mouth again,’ he husked.

      No, that wasn’t going to solve anything and she knew it, but still she tilted her head back like a programmed doll and he kissed her again, longer and deeper, harder and stronger and her senses went spinning off into a fantasy land of rediscovery. It had been so long, far too long since she had even had a kiss and what could be said about a kiss? she scorned inwardly. A kiss was no big deal even with an estranged husband and he was so good at kissing, so wickedly erotic he should have been bottled and sold like precious oil. He lifted her up against him with that easy strength of his that had once thrilled her to the marrow. He hitched her legs round his waist, nuzzled his mouth against her throat where she was, oh, so sensitive, oh, so responsive, and suddenly her whole body was vibrating like a tuning fork, greedily reaching for every sensation and drinking it in.

      Her eyes were tightly closed as if what she didn’t see didn’t have to be accounted for. This wasn’t her doing this and letting Jaul carry her upstairs. This wasn’t what she wanted but, oh, dear heaven, how much she wanted him! That mad, frenzied wanting was throbbing and pounding through her as unstoppable as a runaway train. She buried her face in his shoulder in despair at her own weakness.

      ‘I can’t do this...I can’t,’ she whispered feverishly.

      In an awkward movement, Jaul nudged her head up and found her mouth again, briefly, devastatingly. ‘Yes, you can, because in your heart you know I will never hurt you again.’

      ‘It’s not that simple—’

      ‘It is as simple as you will allow it to be,’ he growled, his breath fanning her cheek.

      But nothing was ever that simple with Jaul, her brain reminded her. Sometimes he was too clever, too devious for her, while she was a straight-down-the-line open and honest person. He pushed a door open and then he kissed her again and carnal heat engulfed her in an irresistible tide, washing away every thought.

      She was lying on something soft and yielding and above her Jaul was virtually ripping off his T-shirt, smooth brown pectoral muscles rippling down washboard abs before her eyes. And seeing that beautiful body again was too much temptation all at once because her hands rose of their own volition and smoothed up over that torso from the vee rising out of the loosened waistband of his jeans to the narrow waist and up over the lethal strength etched into the sleek lines of his hard, muscular chest. The heat of him burned her palms and a clutch of longing pulled in her belly. Desire was like an old familiar stranger, controlling her, silencing her, heightening the craving to a dangerous level. She couldn’t have him, she shouldn’t have him, but the hunger was intolerable and more than she could withstand.

      He came down to her again, hot and half naked, peeling off her top and then her bra, filling his hands with the pouting mounds of her breasts, fingers grazing her tightly beaded nipples and tugging them before he put his mouth there with hungry urgency. Her back arched, arrows of flaming need slivering through her quivering length to the heart of her. Sweet sensation tugged at her with every suck of his lips, every lash of his tongue, and then he kissed her again and her fingers knotted in his black hair. Tiny little sounds broke in her convulsing throat as he tugged off her panties and traced the swollen flesh between her thighs. A single finger pierced her and she cried out, already so hot, so ready she was wet and oversensitive.

      ‘Don’t wait,’ she heard herself mumble, wanting, needing, strung on a high of anticipation.

      But Jaul never had been a male prone to following instructions in bed and he teased her first, toying with the tiny button of her desire so that she gasped and her hips jerked and her legs flailed and what remained of her control was ruthlessly wrenched from her. He shimmied down the bed and used his mouth and his tongue on her most tender flesh. From that point, she no longer knew what she was doing, was positively enslaved by the wanton hunger beating like an angry drum inside her, pushing her responses higher and higher until her whole body convulsed on a bitingly fierce climax, wave after wave of almost forgotten intense pleasure pounding through her weakened length.

      ‘That’s one,’ Jaul husked with his unforgettable confidence, dark eyes shimmering gold pools of hunger as what remained of his clothing went sailing across the room. He tore the corner from a small foil pack with his teeth and came down to her, lean brown powerful body arching over hers with balletic grace and all the hard, driving promise of extravagant pleasure she had learned to expect from him.

      I’m not doing this, I’m not really doing this, she reasoned crazily with herself, still intoxicated by the physical gratification she had denied herself for too long. The long, slow, torturous glide of him into her damp sheath was irresistible, stretching sensitive tissue before sinking deep in a deliriously energising thrust. She strained up to him and she couldn’t help it because excitement was powering her and he was moving, hard and fast, sending ripples of deliciously dark erotic sensation travelling through her lower limbs. His rhythm was the blinding white heat of passion and she was lost and defenceless against the erotic moves of his lithe, strong body, caught up in the moment and reaching desperately for the highest peak with every sobbing, gasping breath. And then the scorching, blinding heat splintered into ecstasy as potent as an explosive charge and she cried out as the voluptuous, spellbinding pleasure expanded and flooded her with sweet sensation in the aftermath.

      Afterwards, Chrissie wasn’t even quite sure where she was because Jaul was still holding her close and that felt both familiar and strange and she didn’t know how to react to it. Instead she lay there like a stick of rock, barely breathing, under attack from a roaring grip of discomfiture. On the very edge of the divorce that she had told him she wanted she had slept with him again. Humiliation engulfed her and powered her into pulling free and rolling over in silence to the other side of the bed.

      Powered by no similar onslaught of self-consciousness and regret, Jaul got the message and sprang out of bed. ‘We start again,’ he pronounced with decision as he stretched, his long brown back rippling with muscle in the sunlight.

      And somehow the very fact that it was still daylight and that her innocent children were napping somewhere in the huge house made Chrissie feel even more guilty and conflicted than ever. In that turmoil of uneasy emotion she almost didn’t notice the scarring on Jaul’s back as he strode towards what she assumed to be the bathroom. Striated silvery lines marked his spine and she frowned, momentarily sidestepping her other anxieties to say abruptly, ‘How did you get the scars on your back?’

      ‘In an accident...car,’ Jaul told her flatly.

      As he stood there, naked and brown and gorgeous, his perfect profile turned towards her, she wondered if he had always had the scars and she simply hadn’t noticed them. How observant had she been of his back view? she asked herself wryly, dismissing her momentary concern to let the other feelings of confusion and self-loathing engulf her again.

      ‘I still want the divorce,’ Chrissie told him stonily.

      His strong jawline clenched. ‘We’ll discuss it after