'Don't you?' he urged.
'It's okay,' she admitted.
'Only okay?' he purred. 'Then I must be losing my touch.'
The arrogant boast should have raised her defences, for it implied that he was a consummate expert where touching women was concerned, but all Keri felt was a debilitating curiosity to know whether he was.
Losing his touch? Like hell he was! Helplessly, her eyes fluttered to a close as he began to stroke her neck. She lifted her head so that more of it was available to him, and the ripple of sensation became a stronger swell which pulled her along with it.
Keri felt pure excitement and expectancy as his touch danced sweet, tantalising pathways over her skin, as if he was opening up sensitive nerve-endings for the first time. How could the simple brush of someone's fingers against someone else's neck be so … so electric?
'Sh-should we be doing this?' she questioned unsteadily.
CHAPTER FIVE
JAY nearly said that they weren't doing anything … not yet, but instead he smiled a brief smile. 'It isn't a capital crime, is it, sweetheart, for me to touch you?'
'That … that wasn't quite what I meant.'
'Oh, I get you.' The smile hardened into one of granite. 'You mean … that it's unprofessional?' he queried acidly. 'Because I'm just the driver and you're the … client?'
Her eyes flew open at the use of a word which was open to rampant misunderstanding, but he shushed her with a shake of his dark head and his smile became cajoling.
'But I'm not working now, Keri,' he said. 'Neither are you. And what we do in our own time is nobody's business but our own. Is it?'
Put that way, it seemed to make sense. 'No,' she agreed slowly. 'I guess not.' She couldn't think straight; she was lulled by his touch, by the blinding light in his eyes and the sensation of her blood growing thick and heated in her veins, wanting him to touch her some more. Somewhere that wasn't her neck.
'Such a beautiful neck,' he mused, his voice deepening like a connoisseur. 'Like a swan-so pale and pure-such beautiful lines.'
'Why, thank you,' she murmured, once again taken aback by the elegance of his words, which seemed so at odds with his tough, no-nonsense exterior.
She smiled, and Jay smiled back, knowing what a woman wanted when she smiled at you like that. She was so accessible, so unexpectedly compliant, and he leaned forward and placed his mouth where before there had been only his fingers, opening his lips slightly as they touched against her neck, so that he breathed soft and warm against the silk of her skin. He felt her instinctive shivering response beneath him, and the biting of her fingernails into his shoulders as she reached up her hands to grip him.
'Oh!' she breathed.
He continued to graze his lips against her neck, sensing that she wanted him to kiss her properly, but he knew from experience that the best way to turn a woman on was to make her wait. The slow, slow burn. But he felt her distracted little movement, the restless shake of her head, and suddenly it wasn't so easy to do that.
He lifted his lips from her neck and took her face between the palms of his hands, giving her one hard look before he lowered his mouth to hers. He kissed her long and deep, and it was as if someone had just pressed a button marked 'sizzle'.
Her lips opened hungrily, greedily to his, and she swayed against him, making no protest when he pulled her to the floor and into his arms, and through the desire which was fast building in his groin he felt momentarily taken aback.
He had expected ice, not fire. He had expected to have to work a lot harder than this … His fingers moved experimentally to her thigh, waiting for her to sit up and tell him that this was outrageous, but she did no such thing, just made a little moan of encouragement. He smiled as his fingertips roved upwards, to find the lacy provocation of her stocking-top and the silky skin above it. So his first impression had been the wrong one; she was obviously a lot more physical than he had thought.
She wriggled with pleasure as she felt the splay of his fingers over her inner thigh. 'Jay!' she whispered.
'Mmm?' His mouth was on her breast now, suckling at her tiny breasts through the thin sweater she wore, and her fingers moved distractedly to thread themselves in his hair. That was when he moved over her and began to kiss her.
'Oh, God-Jay!' she moaned.
He raised his head and looked down at her, his eyes glittering and impenetrable as his fingers tiptoed over her cool yet heated flesh. 'What is it?' he questioned unsteadily.
'That's good,' she breathed, a note of wonder in her voice. 'So good.'
'Tell me about it,' he said, in an odd strained voice, as his hand moved further and alighted on the delicious moistness of her panties. She writhed and mouthed a husky little plea until he lowered his head and began to kiss her again, feeling like a man who had tried to light a match and then discovered he had dynamite in his hands.
Maybe it was because it was so unexpected that the desire he felt was close to explosion point already, and Jay sucked in a dry, painful breath. Take it easy, he told himself. And take it slow.
But she didn't seem to want that. He knew enough about women to realise that she was pretty close to the top. Roughly, he slid the leather skirt up her thighs and her legs parted for him. She was so warm and so wet. With a little groan he reached up and slithered the panties down, noting the way that she lifted her feet to help him. Oh, yes-she wanted this-maybe even more than he did.
He pushed the skirt still further up. Leather wasn't the easiest material in the world to cope with, but there wasn't a skirt invented which couldn't be slid up, and soon he had it rucked up round her hips, leaving her deliciously accessible. And that was when he discovered that she was shaved completely bare, and the unexpected novelty of that made him want to take her there and then, but he held back. He was good at holding back-a lifetime of discipline and training paid dividends at times like this.
'Oh, my,' he murmured, on a low, sweet note of anticipation. 'Now, what shall we do next?'
'Anything,' she gasped. 'Everything.'
She was so eager! 'How could any man resist an invitation like that?' he murmured.
Keri experienced a mixture of disbelief and satisfaction as he moved downwards and she felt the tickle of his dark hair between her knees. Her head fell back-she had never liked this, never let … And then his lips were brushing up her thigh, his tongue slicking its way up and up until it found the most intimate part of her, and then her mouth parted and she gave a tiny scream of pleasure.
It was as if someone had catapulted her into another dimension, or as if someone else had suddenly started inhabiting her skin. She began to move her head from side to side-and surely those gasping little cries weren't hers?
'Oh, Jay,' she moaned softly. 'Jay, Jay, Jay!'
Through a sensation so intense that she thought she might pass out, some tiny voice in her head reached out to tell her that she shouldn't be letting this happen, that someone had to stop it and it had to be her.
But she couldn't.
Wouldn't.
Not now.
Especially not now, because something was happening to her and she wanted it so badly that she felt she would die if she didn't get it. Something which was filling her with a fast-building heat and an unbearable hunger, and she was terrified in case it would go away and she would fail to reach it.
'Jay!' she whispered, on a tiny, pleading note.
He didn't answer. He was too busy orchestrating her response with the seasoned flick of his tongue-tasting the sweetness of her unmistakable woman's taste, teasing her with a featherlight touch which soon had her sobbing.
Keri heard her own wild, uninhibited cries, but they seemed to come from a distant place-and maybe she'd invented them, because she never cried out like that before. As if she was desperate and yearning and scared and seeking all at the same time-like being on a runaway train which just wouldn't stop.
He felt her tense, and knew she was close, and he licked at her luxuriously until he felt her spasm against his mouth. He held onto her hips while she bucked against him, tasting her sweet surrender. It seemed to go on and on and on, and he remembered reading somewhere that when women shaved like that it made them more sensitive. Was that why she had done it? To increase the power of her orgasm? Then he really had misjudged her.