After the Affair(17)

He grabbed her so quickly and so roughly that she gasped in pain. "Hurt's not true!' he ground out, his rasping breath only inches from her own. 'I know that for a fact. And do you know why? You're incapable of it! Your soul is so twisted and warped with bitterness, you've forgotten what love is. You're too full of hate!'

Suddenly his hands fell away from her arms, but a dangerous smouldering still remained in his gaze. It held Cassie, leaving her breathless and weak. When his right hand came up to cup her chin she did not pull away. She stared back at him, stunned into a dazed submission.

'Do let's be honest, my darling,' he drawled in a low, sensual voice. 'It's lust, not love, that drives you into that man's bed. You're a very sexy woman, Cassie Palmer—incredibly easy to turn on. Do you think I didn't notice the way you responded to me yesterday? Me...a man you despise. I dare say that if you hadn't remembered who was kissing you I could have taken you here, in this room, either on the desk or on the floor.'

His smile was cruelly knowing. 'That's lust, my lovely. And lust is a very transferable emotion. Very transferable!'

His hand slid down her throat, down over a single swollen breast, down over her ribs till it stopped on her quivering stomach.

Cassie sucked in a ragged breath through dry, parted lips. Why don't I do something? she asked herself dazedly. Why don't I stop him?

The hand moved again, this time sliding across then up over the curve of her hip to rest at her waist. 'You're trembling, Cassie,' he whispered harshly. 'Do you tremble for Roger so easily? Or is it only for me...?'

She almost said it, almost made her ghastly confession. Her lips actually opened, the words already forming. Only for you... Only for you...

His kiss smothered them totally, utterly, and, while Cassie's first instinct was to shut her mouth, to struggle, it was short-lived. From the moment his arms moved to enfold her close against him, the battle was lost. She groaned under his passionate onslaught, and slowly, inexorably, her lips parted, allowing his tongue the entry it so clearly desired. A sound growled deep in his throat, arousing her with its primitive, animal quality.

Her own tongue moved forward, quite instinctively, but when it slid into Dan's mouth she was not prepared for the explosion of passion she had so unwittingly unleashed.

His arms tightened around her till she could barely breathe, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth in a savage, primitive rhythm. On and on went the kiss till Cassie's head was whirling, till her limbs were like jelly, till her body was a lifeless, malleable object moulded to Dan's in blatant sensuality. Chest was fused to chest, stomach to stomach, thigh to thigh.

Finally, he did take his mouth away, sliding swollen lips across her cheek till he found her ear. The tip of his tongue traced a wet path around the shell before dipping inside again and again, making Cassie shiver with sheer electric pleasure.

Her head fell backwards, offering up her throat to his ministrations, and when he took it, sucking the throbbing flesh at the base with hot, hungry lips, she groaned.

The sound brought his mouth back to hers in yet another kiss, this one even more feverish than the first. Blood began roaring in Cassie's ears. Liquid fire gushed along her veins. She was in another world, a crazy, ecstatic world where the senses swam, where time was suspended, where her only desire was to remain in Dan's arms.

She was dimly aware of his hands relaxing their hold to run up and down her back, but when he began rubbing her softness against the hard muscle of his manhood Cassie's pleasure gradually changed to an aching, escalating tension. It wasn't enough to have his mouth fused to hers. It wasn't enough to have his hands on her. It wasn't nearly enough.

She wanted to feel him moving deep inside her. She wanted the release that only his total possession could give. And even as she wished it her own body started to move, writhing against him in an invitation as old as time.

Dan pulled back for a second, his eyes wide with passion and wonder, and then he was drawing her down on to the carpet, stretching out beside her. He kissed her again, one of his hands sliding down her taut, eager body, down to her knee then slowly up, up her softly trembling thigh.

She arched against him, tense, expectant, her whole being concentrating on his hand, which was moving inexorably closer to the hot, molten core of her desire.

The door of the library opened.

'Mr McKay, I knocked, but you didn't...'

Cassie almost died. She wrenched her mouth away and gaped over Dan's shoulder. The intruder was a complete stranger to her. He was no more than twenty-five and might have been good-looking under the red face. 'Hell! I...I'm terrible sorry, Mr McKay, I ‑'

'Get out of here!' Dan growled, his stiffened body held rigidly above her. 'And close the bloody door on your way out!'