Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

was supposed to be a two-way thing, and just because she had very little experience in what turned men on that did not mean to say that she was lacking in the imagination department. She had read the books and the magazine articles about sex which seemed to be everywhere these days. She knew what to do to Geraint to make him purr with pleasure.

      She allowed her hands to roam unchecked beneath his luxurious silk sweater, her palms circling rhythmically over the tight whorls of hair on his chest. Her fingers crept their way teasingly over his torso, until at last she let her nails curl like a possessive kitten round each flat, hard nipple.

      She felt his body jerk with pleasure. ‘Do you like that?’ she whispered shyly.

      He forced his eyes open with an effort, a rueful smile deepening the little corner creases beside his mouth. ‘I love it, sweetheart—but quite honestly I’m so turned on by you already that I think if you threw me under a cold shower I would still want to make love to you all night! Which I fully intend to do, by the way.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Lola, thrilled and yet ridiculously embarrassed by his erotic statement.

      ‘Lola, you’re blushing again,’ he murmured.

      ‘Yes.’ It was just the shock of hearing him talk so openly about his desires and reactions like that. Her mother had brought her up with a tight-lipped repression which had forbade Lola ever to ask questions about sex. Consequently everything she had ever learned about making babies had been gleaned from a book. ‘I suppose you hate it?’

      ‘Hate blushing?’ he queried incredulously. ‘Sweetheart, you must be kidding! Don’t you know that it’s the greatest compliment you can pay to a man, to blush prettily in his arms? It makes him feel strong and powerful. . .’

      ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to help you feel those things, Geraint,’ Lola said mock-demurely, her eyes darkening without her realising it, so that he stared at her very intently and then gave a husky sigh of pleasure.

      ‘Don’t I?’ he murmured. ‘Then what do I need you for, Lola? This, perhaps?’ And he unhooked her front-fastening bra with an easy familiarity which made Lola wonder slightly nervously just how many similar items of underwear he had removed in his life.

      But she wondered for no longer than it took for the frivolous scrap of lace to flutter unnoticed to the carpet, because Geraint gave her a long, smouldering look of sensual intent then dipped his head, his tongue tracing tiny circles over each aching mound.

      ‘It was the hardest thing in the world to watch you on that aircraft, bending down in that short, tight skirt,’ he murmured, his breath warm against her nipple. ‘I wanted to take it off so much that my hands were shaking.’

      His words only served to heighten the sensations which he was producing with his hands, and Lola felt her body arch from the bed, as if she had received a sudden electric shock.

      ‘Oh, Geraint!’ she moaned helplessly as his tongue wetly continued its tantalising little journey, moving steadily but inexorably towards each rocky nipple. ‘Please, no!’

      He raised his head to look at her, just as his mouth latched onto one rosy, straining nub, and Lola found the sight of him suckling her unbearably erotic. ‘You mean that?’ he said indistinctly. ‘You want me to stop?’

      For answer she reached out and clung onto his dark head, forcing him to stay there and continue with what he was doing. ‘You know I don’t!’ she protested hoarsely, her body beginning to stir with a new and restless kind of energy. ‘You know I don’t!’

      ‘Good,’ he murmured, his tongue tracing impossibly erotic little patterns around each hard nipple while he teased her with slow fingertips to the tops of her thighs, and this double helping of pleasure made Lola fiercely determined to make his body rack with sensual response.

      Or rather what she really wanted to do was to tell him that she adored him, that she already cared for him more than she had for any other man, and that she had no idea why; that on an instinctive level she knew that he was the man for her, that she was now almost convinced that she was in love with him, and that she didn’t just want to give him her virginity—oh, no—it was much more than that. The thought of surrendering her innocence to Geraint Howell-Williams filled her with a fiercely primitive kind of pride.

      But of course she could not tell him any of these things—if she did, she was convinced that he would run a mile! And the last thing she wanted Geraint doing was running anywhere! Especially now!

      Instead, she experimented, her fingernails softly scraping their way round to his back, where she raked them up and down the smooth, satin skin there—hard enough for him to feel, but not deep enough to draw blood. Even though she wanted to draw blood. . . to taste its sweet, dark, sticky saltiness. . .

      ‘Shall we take something else off now?’ he murmured.

      ‘Y-yes!’ Dear Lord, now his hands were resting provocatively at the tops of her thighs and Lola was almost weeping with frustrated pleasure and . . . and. . . his fingertips lightly grazed over the brief pair of navy knickers.

      ‘What about these—they seem fairly superfluous to requirements, don’t they?’

      He began to slide the taut silk of her panties over the high curve of her buttocks, and Lola sucked in an agonised breath of longing as he deliberately did not touch her where she had been praying he would. Teasing swine!

      Well, two could play at that game. . .

      She scrabbled at his belt, unhooked it and discarded it as, somewhat awestruck, she felt the power of him straining against the zip of his jeans. She should release him. Touch him. Kiss him. Stroke him.

      But she couldn’t.

      She had never touched a man there before.

      She closed her eyes. This was crazy! Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she should call things to a halt now, before he. . . before they. . .

      But if she let him go much further, then not only might he be unable to stop—but she doubted whether she would have the strength and determination to tell him to stop.

      ‘Oh, Geraint. . .’ she began as her heart pounded a senseless rhythm in her ears.

      ‘Do you still like what I’m doing?’

      She swallowed. ‘You know I do,’ she agreed hoarsely, and parted her thighs in an instinct as old as time itself.

      She heard him murmur something shockingly explicit beneath his breath as he finally kicked away the moist silk of her panties, but then he cupped her face within the palms of his hands, looking down at her before saying quite sternly, ‘Do you want to stop? I mean it, sweetheart.’

      Lola stared up into his gorgeous square, chiselled face—such a strong face—hearing the plea for what it was. His voice only sounded as grim as that because he was obviously holding himself in check, she realised. That much was evident from the rigid control which was etched onto every agonised and strained feature.

      At a stage where most men might have tried to sweet-talk or kiss her out of any doubts, Geraint was showing a remarkable degree of restraint by offering to stop.

      She shook her head wildly. ‘Of course I don’t want you to stop,’ she whispered hectically. ‘I want you to do what you said you were going to do.’

      ‘And what was that?’

      ‘To make love to me all night long,’ she prompted hungrily.

      ‘Did I say that?’ he murmured. ‘Well, in that case. . .’

      And, with that, he began to remove his sweater and then his jeans. And by the time he was as naked as Lola and she had allowed herself to touch every single centimetre of him hungrily she was so mad with desire for him that she tried, foolishly as it happened, to take the lead.

      And Geraint smiled with pleasure and turned her onto her back quite firmly, and entered her with a power and a strength and a brief pain that almost made her faint away. Then