Bestselling Authors Collection 2012(47)

‘Welcome home.’

Her simple welcome was a balm to the soul. His hands shifted. Slowly, subtly as he looked at her, but inexorably towards the column of her throat. He sensed her breath hitch, he saw the fluttering heartbeat at her neck, watched her pupils dilate.

His fingers splayed in her hair as he drew her closer, steered her lips against his own and drank in her sweet essence as he kissed her long and deep. Welcome home. Oh, yeah. This was a welcome home.

Her taste was addictive. Irresistible. It wasn’t enough. He wanted all of her.

His hands brought her closer until her breasts met his chest and her bump met his aching hardness and he could find a way to say what he needed to say.

‘I want you,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know why. I know it’s probably wrong or immoral or unethical or all of the above, but I want you and I know that if I kiss you again there is no way I’m going to be able to stop without making love to every single part of you. And even if I don’t kiss you, it’s what I want.’

She made a small sound—a whimper—and he was afraid that she was halfway to raising an objection, telling him he was crazy and about to go running and screaming for the hills. But she didn’t pull away, made no attempt to go running screaming for the hills, her blue eyes looking up at him with what looked like wonder.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered as he brought her forehead to his lips for a kiss. ‘Let me make love to you.’

She paused—a moment in time, she knew, had never felt so rich and agonizingly beautiful.

‘I’m afraid,’ she whispered, trembling into his arms.

He kissed her cheeks. Her eyes. Her nose.

So am I, he heard, the words coming from the cracks in the stone that was his heart. So am I.

But he said nothing. He just kissed her and swung her into his arms. Lust, he told himself, trying to reassure himself, plastering over the cracks while he carried her to his room next door. Pure animal lust.

Absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

He placed her reverentially on the bed. Along with Rosa’s cooking, his big bed was one of his favourite things when he came home from business trips. Now, with Angelina lying on the covers, her chest rapidly rising and falling, her cheeks pink, her hair like a golden halo against his dark cotton, the bed shot straight to the top of the list.

Oh, God.

He wanted to be able to go slow except he didn’t know if he could. He knelt down next to her and dipped his head, unable to resist the lure of that wide mouth and those parted lips, unable to stop himself from exploring her with one hand. The dip of her waist, the flare of her hip, the curving tightness of her belly. Everywhere his hands found magic, every part of her a joy, and when he cupped one breast, brushed one peaked nipple with his thumb and felt her mewl of pleasure in his mouth, he felt a primal surge of pride.

He loved the sundress she was wearing, loved that he could slide the fabric up her long, smooth legs, loved that he could take his hand all the way to the sweet curve of her behind with nothing to stop him on the long slide north to paradise. She shuddered into his mouth, trembled with want under his hands and arched into his touch.

Take it slow? She was killing him. His blood thundered in his veins as he found a zip, slid it down, manoeuvred her out of the dress and damn near came when he gazed down at her.

She was beautiful. Long limbs. Glorious breasts he would delight in liberating from a plain white bra, her breasts somehow turned into wicked temptation. And his baby stretching her belly.

He shrugged off his shirt and she shuddered as she watched hungrily and he knew she was on as tight a knife-edge as he was. And then he undid his trousers and he saw her eyes follow his hands and widen in an age-old feminine sign of approval as he kicked them away.

‘Dominic,’ she uttered breathlessly as his underwear joined them and he joined her back on the bed with a kiss that blew his mind. Skin against skin. Was there any better sensation in the world?

No, he decided, as he peeled her straps down her arms with his teeth and released her breasts to his gaze, his hands, his hot mouth. She cried out when he took their pebbled peaks between his lips; her hands clawed at him, clung to him, her need rivalling his own.

No, he decided, as his tongue trailed lower, to the swell of her belly. He put his lips to her bump, a kiss for the baby that grew beneath, a kiss for the woman who would give him this child.

No, he decided as he moved down the majesty of her ripening body, gently lowering her underwear from her hips, revealing her most secret place to his gaze, his hands at her thighs, stroking, relishing. No better feeling.

She moaned, a low soft moan that called to his inner beast and he dropped his head, parted her gently and supped on her. Her hands tangled in his hair, her body bucking, her gasps coming quick and fast as his tongue destroyed what defences she had left and laid waste to her.