‘Cassie…’ he breathed into her mouth as the intensity of what she was experiencing caught hold of him too.
Her fingernails clawed twin death grips into his shoulder muscles, her lungs fighting for breath against the hot urgency of his mouth. She was aware she was losing touch with reality, aware that he was losing it with her, aware that they climbed the towering walls of excitement together and even let go together, tumbling into the long, rolling waves of intense, soul-shuddering release.
Last time they’d done this it had been wild and uncontrolled. This time it crossed both those barriers to reach a different level entirely. Coming down from it was physically painful; letting her grip on it slip away was like giving up an elemental part of herself. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t make her limbs work, so they remained wrapped around his hot, sweat-slicked, muscle-flexed frame.
He touched his lips to her hot cheek and she felt his tremor. His fingers were unsteady as he used them to comb her tumbled hair back from her face. When she managed to lift up her heavy eyelids she saw his eyes were too black to be real, glazed and drunk on what they’d shared. They didn’t speak; their eyes did it for them. No smiles, no teasing, no attempt at a joke to ease them from this point on to what had to follow—the final touchdown with earth again, the separation.
As her legs finally allowed her to relax their hold on him, they slid down his powerful thighs and legs without breaking contact with his warm golden skin. He was heavy on her but she liked it, liked the way her breasts were crushed against his hair-roughened chest and the flat of her stomach took the weight of his pelvis. He strung slow, gentle kisses along the satin arch of her eyebrows, the top of her nose, then her mouth again, and the tension in her arms slowly relaxed, her fingers feathering across his wide, muscled shoulders then the line of his jaw and onto his cheeks.
This was how it had been for them their first time together—every time they’d come together during that long, fruitful night in her narrow, girly pink bed.
How could he have forgotten that? How could he have wiped it from his memory as if it had been nothing worth remembering?
The doorbell gave a sharp, stinging peal, screaming through her head like an alarm bell and dumping her rudely back into now.
‘Oh, my God, the twins,’ she gasped, launching him off her with the strength of ten women and jackknifing to her feet.
Her legs were still luxuriating in a million warm tingles, so making them move was the most difficult process. Grabbing up her robe because it was the nearest thing to her, Cassie dragged it on over her love-flushed body. Forty-five minutes…they’d been lost in what they’d been doing for forty-five minutes! It sent her dizzy just thinking about it.
‘For goodness’ sake, move, Sandro!’ she shook out at him because he was still lying on her narrow bed how she’d left him, flat on his back with the long length of his nakedness on full display.
Cassie reeled her gaze away from him and opened the bedroom door, her fingers trembling as they tried to comb her hair out of its disarray as she reached for the front door latch and opened it to face her two children and her next-door neighbour feeling what could only be described as as guilty as her wildly flushing skin.
‘Our daddy is here!’ Bella squealed in excitement.
‘We saw his car outside!’ Anthony joined in.
Jenny said nothing; however, her wide-eyed expression had plenty to say, which had Cassie clutching her robe to her throat. ‘S-sorry,’ was all she could find to offer to the other woman. ‘I should have called you to—’
A sound directly behind her sent her head swivelling round as the twins barged past her with excited shrieks, totally uncaring that their mother was dressed in her bathrobe, only caring about one thing: reaching Sandro, who had come out of the bedroom, when Cassie would have much preferred him to remain hidden away in there. Now he was filling the tiny hallway with his lean, dark presence as he greeted the children with light touches to their heads and smiles.
She didn’t know how he’d done it in the time available but he’d pulled on his shirt, trousers and shoes—no socks, she noticed with an inconsequence which almost made her burst forth with a hysterical laugh. His dark hair was mussed, eyes still heavy with what they’d been doing, the cuffs of his shirt hanging loose around his wrists. He might as well have stepped out here naked, she thought helplessly, cheeks burning all the more. When he caught her expression he raised a wickedly satirical eyebrow then stepped up and drew her back against him with an arm he looped around her waist.
The twins were talking ten to the dozen to him. Bella had a grip on his other hand while Anthony became tangled up in his feet. Ignoring her tension, he looked at the older woman over the top of Cassie’s tumbled blonde head and said, ‘Ah, the only person in the world to whom my future wife will entrust the care of our children. It is a great pleasure to meet you at last, Mrs Dean…’