With perfect understanding and feeling shockingly debauched, Tessa coiled her hands around his neck and groaned as their bodies found the perfect position. Her legs wrapped round him and, with a gasp of absolute fulfilment, she felt him move strongly inside her, thrusting and manoeuvring her with expertise so that her breasts bounced against his chest.
They came as one, shuddering on that final thrust, and Tessa curved lovingly against him as he carried her to the bed.
‘Next time, my darling, we’ll take all the time in the world, but I just couldn’t wait…’
‘Nor could I…’ she murmured. She ran the palm of her hand against his chest and, with a smile, he did the same to her, pausing to cup her swollen breast in his hand and eliciting a tiny moan when he began rubbing her stiffened nipple between his fingers.
‘You’re the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth,’ he said solemnly. ‘Next to you, every woman seems to fade into the background.’ As if unable to help himself, he lowered his head so that he could take one nipple into his mouth and suckle on it and Tessa was more than content to let him stay there, feasting, with her hand resting lightly on his head. She smiled when he finally looked up at her.
‘My life only has meaning with you in it,’ he told her, and she tugged him up so that their faces were once more on a level and she could gently kiss his mouth, pressing her body against his and moving sinuously against his already stiffening member.
‘You don’t know how I’ve longed to hear you say that,’ she confessed, smiling and arching back as his hand curved along her thigh, seeking and finding the wetness that spoke of her desire. She drew her breath in sharply as his fingers rubbed insistently, sending shooting stars through her. ‘What about the meal waiting downstairs?’ She giggled, moving against his hand and then, reaching down, guiding his hardness against her sensitised softness.
‘Mmm. Good question.’ He grinned and rotated the tiny bud of femininity, loving the way she squirmed in response. ‘I just had to touch you, Tessa…had to tell you how much I love you…how much I’m committed to a lifetime with you. I want you to have my kids, brothers or sisters for Anna, and I want you to grow old with me. And, yes, I really want you to ask me how my day went when I get back from work and arrange dinner parties with people when I’d rather just stay in and have a meal with you.’
‘You mean with me and Anna and all those babies you want us to have…’ How was it possible that she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time?
‘That’s right, my darling. The old year is on its way out, just like my old life is. The significance of the timing wasn’t lost on me as I pulled out all the stops to get here, to see you. The end of something and the beginning of something else, something wonderful. For ever is in front of us…and it’s perfect…’
‘Yes,’ Tessa breathed. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘So what do we do? Go back down or just stay up here…?’
‘Go back down, I think…’ She smiled at him lovingly. ‘But now I don’t think I’ll be coming up to my room to avoid the midnight hour…’
Was it her imagination or did Bill and his wife exchange a look of satisfaction when she told them that dinner would now be for two and that they would both be enjoying the celebrations together?
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the man she loved was by her side and when the clock struck twelve, the lips that touched her own promised a future she had never dared dream of…