He shrugged out of his clothes with urgent movements that lacked his usual grace, his gaze locked with Ella’s as he stripped. His shirt fell carelessly to the floor, swiftly followed by his trousers. Satisfaction and a heightened sense of anticipation surged through him when he stepped out of his boxers and heard her sharply indrawn breath as she stared with flattering fascination at the jutting length of his arousal.
The only naked male body Ella had ever seen had been sculpted from marble and standing in an art gallery. Vadim’s body was more beautiful than any sculpture, she thought, her mouth suddenly dry as her eyes moved over his broad chest, gleaming like polished bronze in the torchlight and overlaid with a covering of wiry black hair that arrowed down over his flat stomach. Heart pounding, she dropped her gaze lower still and felt a jolt of shock when she absorbed the awesome strength of his erection. He was all hard, muscular male, and as he walked purposefully back to the bed she tensed. What was she doing? the voice of doubt in her head demanded. She knew of Vadim’s reputation as a playboy-she must have been mad to have allowed things to get this far.#p#分页标题#e#
‘Are you going to live like a nun for the rest of your life?’ Jenny’s words taunted her. No, she denied fiercely, she did not want to remain a virgin for ever. Nor was she saving her virginity for when she fell in love. Love was an illusion. But the instant she had seen Vadim across a crowded room in Paris she had fallen in lust, and at twenty-four it was high time she discarded her innocence.
Vadim knelt on the bed, leaned over Ella and captured her lips in a hard, hungry kiss, sliding his tongue into her mouth in an erotic mimicry of how he would soon drive his throbbing shaft into the welcoming slick heat of her femininity. Next time he would take the leisurely route and taste her honeyed sweetness with his mouth, maybe tease the tight nub of her clitoris with his tongue until he brought her to the edge of ecstasy. He would encourage her to touch him too. But right now just the thought of her slender fingers encircling him intensified his arousal, so that he feared he was about to explode with the hot, pulsing need that made his entire body shake.
He broke the kiss briefly to reach into the bedside drawer, and donned protection with swift efficiency before he positioned himself over her and nudged her thighs apart. The faint wariness in her eyes made him pause for a second, but his blood was pounding through his veins, his desire for her an unstoppable force, urging him to surge forward. He slid his hands beneath her bottom, lifted her hips and entered her with one powerful thrust-and instantly stilled when he felt the tear of a fragile membrane and heard her shocked cry of pain.
For a few seconds he stared at her in stunned incomprehension which swiftly turned to anger as his brain accepted the indisputable truth. ‘Your first time?’ he demanded harshly. He swore savagely in Russian. ‘What the devil are you playing at, Ella?’
‘I’m not playing at anything,’ she denied falteringly, shaken by his reaction. Perhaps naïvely, she had not expected her initiation into sex to be quite so uncomfortable. When Vadim had penetrated her untutored body she had felt a sharp, stinging pain, but already it was fading, and the restless ache in her pelvis was once more clamouring to be assuaged. She could not hide her confusion when he abruptly withdrew from her, and she tentatively placed her hand on his arm, thinking that he was angry with himself for hurting her. ‘Vadim, it’s all right…’
‘The hell it is,’ he bit out savagely. His facial muscles were so taut that he looked as though he had been carved from granite, and Ella’s stomach dipped as she realised that he wasn’t angry with himself, but with her. ‘If I’d had any idea you were a virgin I would never have taken you to bed.’
He closed his eyes and in his mind he saw Irina. He had been her first lover, and making love to her on their wedding night had been a special experience for both of them. With Ella it was simply sex. But he was aware that her first time should have been special, with someone who cared for her, and he felt guilty that he had unwittingly stolen her virginity. She had chosen to sleep with him, he reminded himself. But he hoped she did not think his emotions were involved, because she meant nothing to him.
The heated passion in Ella’s veins quickly cooled, leaving her feeling shivery, and sick with mortification. There was no hint of the hungry desire that had blazed in Vadim’s eyes when he had carried her up to his bedroom, and she felt stupid and embarrassed that she hadn’t warned him of her inexperience.
He rolled away from her and swung his legs over the side of the bed, raking his hand through his dark hair as he struggled to control his simmering frustration. From the moment they had first met the chemistry between them had been explosive, and her passionate response to his kisses had given no indication that she had never had a lover. He turned his head to stare at her slender body, her skin milky-pale against the blue silk bedspread and her small, pert breasts pouting at him, tempting him to close his mouth around her nipples and feel them harden against his tongue. Desire clawed in his gut but he forced himself to ignore it.#p#分页标题#e#