His hands were spread against her collarbone and her throat, his thumbs massaging her fragile bones, his lips brushing just the merest tantalising breath of heat against the pulse that raced so frantically beneath her skin.
‘Where exactly is it you want me to kiss you, Saskia?’ he was asking her. ‘Here...? Here...? Here..?’
As his mouth moved tantalisingly over her throat and then her jaw, covering every inch of her face but her lips, Saskia heard herself start to moan softly with longing until, unable to endure any more of his delicious torment, she put her hand against his face and turned his mouth to hers, exhaling in a soft swoon of relief as she finally tasted the hard warmth she had been aching for.
‘Andreas... Andreas...’ She could hear herself whispering his name as she slid her fingers into his hair and clasped his head, probing the hard outline of his lips with small, frantic thrusts of her tongue-tip.
Over her shoulder Andreas caught sight of their entwined reflections in the mirror. Saskia’s naked back view was as perfectly sculpted as that of any classical statue, but her body was composed of living, breathing flesh, and just the feel of her sweetly firm breasts pressing against him, never mind what the dedicated assault of her honey tongue was doing to him, totally obliterated everything but the way he felt about her.
Against the delicate pallor of her Celtic skin his hands looked shockingly male and dark as he caressed her, held her, moulded her so close to his body that he could taste her small gasp of sensual pleasure as she felt his arousal. His clothes were a hindrance he no longer wanted, but he couldn’t make the time to remove them until he had punished that sexily tormenting tongue of hers for the way it was destroying his self-control.
He felt the deep, racking shudder of pleasure that ran right through her body as he opened his mouth on hers, taking into his domain full control of their kiss and of her.
Saskia gasped and trembled, yielding the sweet intimacy of her mouth and the soft-fleshed nakedness of her body to Andreas’s dominance. What was happening between them was surely the pinnacle of her whole life, the reason she had been born. Here, in Andreas’s arms, love and desire were coming together for her in the most perfect way possible.
Saskia had forgotten what she had been going to tell him, why it was so imperative for her to leave. This was what she had wanted to happen from the very first second she had set eyes on him.
Unable to bring himself to break the intoxicating sensuality of their shared kiss, Andreas picked Saskia up and carried her over to the bed. Whatever she had been before no longer mattered. From now on she would be his.
The heavy natural linen curtains Saskia had closed over the large windows before taking her shower diffused the strong sunlight outside, bathing the room in a softly muted glow that turned her fair skin almost ethereally translucent. As he laid her on the bed Andreas gave in to the temptation to caress the taut quivering peak of one breast with his lips, savouring it in a slow, careful exploration which made Saskia’s whole body shake with sharply intense arousal.
‘No, I don’t want to rush this,’ Andreas denied to her, his voice thick, almost cracking over the words as he refused the frantic pleas of her writhing body. ‘I want to take my time and savour everything!’ he emphasised as his hand caressed the breast he had just been suckling, his thumb tip etching unbearably erotic circles around the sensitively receptive nub of flesh.
‘I want you so much,’ Saskia whispered achingly. ‘I want you...’ She stopped, her eyes clouding with a mixture of anxiety and uncertainty as she heard her own voice and briefly recognised her own danger.
It was too late. Andreas had heard her. Pausing in the act of removing his clothes, he leaned over her, bracing himself so that the muscles in his arms corded tautly, capturing her awed gaze whilst he asked her rawly, ‘Where do you want me, Saskia? Tell me... Show me...’
But he already knew the answer to his question because he had already lifted his hand from the bed and brushed his knuckles in the gentlest of touches the full length of the centre of her body, letting it come to rest palm-down against the soft swelling of her most intimate heart.
‘You haven’t answered my question, Saskia,’ he reminded her softly, as his fingertips drew delicate circles of pleasure against her, so jaw-clenching desirable that Saskia thought she might actually faint from the heat and intensity of the longing they were arousing.
‘Tell me...tell me what you want,’ Andreas was insisting, spacing each word between kisses so ravishingly tender that Saskia felt as though she was melting.
In the cocoon of her own private world he had become for Saskia the lodestone that drew her, the focus of everything she was experiencing, of everything she was and ever wanted to be, the centre of her world.
‘I want you,’ she responded feverishly to him. ‘I want you, Andreas. I...’ She shuddered, unable to say any more because Andreas was kissing her, sealing her mouth with a kiss that was a hot, passionate brand of possession. As he wrapped his arms around her Saskia clung to him shyly, stroking the side of his face.
‘Look at me,’ he demanded.
Hesitatingly she did so, the melting, soft, languorous longing of her gaze entrapped by the hot, fierce glitter of his.
Very slowly and tenderly he began to caress her. Saskia felt as though her whole body was going to dissolve with her longing for him, her need of him.
She reached out to touch his bare shoulder, his arm, and made a helpless little sound of taut female need against his throat as she pressed her lips to it.
Beneath his hands her body softened and responded magically, welcomingly, as though his touch was a special key. But he was the key to what she was feeling, Saskia acknowledged hazily, lost fathoms—oceans—deep in her love for him.
‘There isn’t going to be much time...I want you too much,’ he told her almost bluntly, softening the words with another hotly passionate kiss that made her hips lift achingly against him whilst her whole body writhed in longing for him.
‘Next time we can take things more slowly,’ Andreas gasped harshly against her breast, his voice and actions revealing his increasing need.
Next time... Saskia felt as though she might die from happiness. ‘Next time’ meant that he shared her feelings, that he felt the same way as she did.
It seemed to Saskia almost as though the air between them throbbed with the intensity of their shared passion, with the way their bodies synchronised together with a perfection surely only given to true lovers.
Each sigh, each gasp, each heartbeat served only to bind her closer to him, emotionally as well as physically, until she was captive to him and her desire, her love, was laid as bare to him as her quivering body.
When he finally whispered to her, ‘Now, Saskia... Oh, God, now!’ she knew her body had given him its most eager assent before her lips could even begin to frame the words she wanted to say. Automatically she was already wrapping the slim length of her legs around his waist, raising up to meet him, to feel him. She heard him cry out as he entered her, a sound of both torment and triumph, and then he was filling her with his own unique intimate, heavy warmth, and her body, pausing only to tense briefly in sweetly virginal shock, welcomed each ever deepening thrust of him within her.
Andreas felt her body’s unexpected resistance, his brain and his emotions even registered their shock at what it meant, but his body refused to react to that knowledge. It loved the hot snug fit of her around him, holding and caressing him, urging him to forget what he had just experienced and to satisfy the age-old demand her femaleness was making on his maleness. Deeper, harder, stronger, until you reach the deepest heart of me, each delicately soft contraction of her flesh around his urged him. Deeper, stronger, surer, until you are there. Yes, there...there...
Andreas felt as though his heart and lungs might burst as he drove them both to the place where they could finally fly free.
Saskia cried out in softly sweet awe and relish as she experienced for herself what true completion was...what it truly meant to be a woman, completely fulfilled, elevated to a place, a state...an emotion so piercingly intense that it filled her eyes with hot, happy exhausted tears.
Someone was trembling... Was it her...or was it both of them? She had heard Andreas groan in those final unbelievable seconds before he had wrapped his arms securely around her and then sent them both hurtling into infinity, calling out her name in a way that had made her tingle with raw emotion.
As he fought to regain control of his breathing, and himself, Andreas looked down at Saskia.
She was crying, huge silent tears. Of pain? Because of him...because he had...?
Even now his thoughts skidded away from the reality, the truth that his brain was trying to impose on him. She couldn’t have been a virgin... It was impossible.
But his self-anger and guilt told him that it wasn’t, and she had been. Unforgivably, he had hurt her and made her cry, selfishly taking his pleasure from her at the price of her innocence, so unable to control what he felt for her that he had not been able to stop when he knew that he should have done.
Sickened by his own behaviour, he pulled away from her.
‘Andreas...’ Saskia reached out towards him uncertainly. Why was he withdrawing from her? Why wasn’t he holding her, caressing her...loving and reassuring her?