скачать книгу бесплатно
Setting her on her feet, he pressed her away long enough to open her jacket. They were both breathing hard, and she shrugged out of the short coat to let it fall to the floor with an impatience he applauded. He wished he could muster a smile of satisfaction, but desire was throbbing in him like an imperative. He threw his own shirt off and kicked away his shoes.
Rowan grasped his arm and bent one leg to unzip her long boot. The second one was released and she stepped out of them, so much shorter than she seemed when her larger than life personality was on full display. This Rowan was …
Vulnerable.
For all her urgency there was a shyness in the way she hesitated with her hands on the snap of her jeans, her pillowy bottom lip caught between her teeth. “Should we … um … close the door?”
Her modesty took him aback, turning over places in him he’d buried under years of jaded enjoyment of women without engaging with them. He had a distant thought to drawl a somewhat tasteless, Who’s going to come in? but found a shred of a gentlemanly behavior instead. He turned to press the door closed.
And as the click echoed in the silent room the word gentleman mocked him. “What are your intentions, Nic? Men like you …”
Nic curled a fist against the seam of the closed door, fighting the invasion of the dark memory. He and Rowan had cleared the air. He believed her. They wanted each other; it was as simple as that. This had nothing to do with intentions and futures. It was two adults coming together in mutual desire. Not the sort of thing Olief should have had any disdain for, given the way he’d fathered a child from one mistress and lived in sin for nearly a decade with another.
Rowan had fumbled her jeans open, but couldn’t bring herself to peel them down while Nic had his back to her. Having him watch her wouldn’t make it easier, but her self-confidence was draining fast as he leaned on the door like that, tension gathering across his naked shoulders. He had such a beautiful back, strong and tanned, powerful muscles shifting as though he was bearing up under a great weight.
“Nic? Are you—?” Having second thoughts? She would die.
He brought his head up and turned. Desire flared past whatever dark thoughts had taken him for a split second. His avid glance made her feel beautiful even though she wasn’t any kind of sex goddess. Her hair was wind-whipped, she wore next to no makeup, and was probably pale with the stagefright that was threatening on the periphery. But he strode forward with purpose and cupped her head, kissing her like he had in the car—like he would spontaneously combust if he didn’t do it this second.
It was the reassurance she needed. Grasping his head, she kissed him back with all the passion in her, grateful and excited and swimming in rising desire. When he began to peel up her top she lifted her arms to help him. It landed in a purple stain in the middle of the floor and was quickly topped by her bra.
Nic dragged her close, and the contact of his hard, hair-roughened chest on her breasts undid her. She melted, fingers splaying wide to touch as much of him as possible, while she slowly writhed against his sensuous heat and turned her lips into his throat.
He said her name and swore, then said raggedly, “I’m trying to find a little finesse here, but—” His fingertips swept her spine and shoulderblades before he brought his hands forward and sweetly captured her breasts.
“It’s okay. I’m in a hurry too …”
He groaned and his hands gently crushed her curves as he crowded into her, covering her mouth once, hard, before he stepped back and pulled off his jeans. He skimmed his shorts off with them and knocked the crumpled heap away with his foot, straightening before her with feet braced.
A purely female ache of longing clenched deep inside her as she took in his wide chest and taut flat stomach, powerful thighs and even more powerfully thick erection. She swallowed as she measured him with her eyes, intimidated.
Nic opened hands that had curled into tense fists and stepped close to begin easing her jeans down her hips. He loomed tall and potent, his penis brushing her stomach as his mouth touched her shoulder.
Rowan made herself breathe, but it was shaky, and she wasn’t getting nearly enough oxygen. As he lowered the clinging denim down her thighs she trembled, wriggling to help him and stepping out of them quickly so she could rush back against him, hiding, but deeply affected. She had never been naked with a man, never touched one like this, and she desperately wanted to give Nic pleasure.
Pressing for a little space, she clasped him lightly and gasped, shocked by how silky he felt. Satin over steel. He seemed to thicken and harden in her tentative hold and his big hand covered hers once, the single stroke a too brief lesson before he peeled her hand away and brought her palm to his mouth.
“I don’t want to disappoint you either,” he said wryly, and edged her backward, effortlessly levering her onto the bed beneath him.
Rowan couldn’t find her voice, too besieged by each tiny sensation she was trying to memorize. Nic’s weight beside her on the mattress. His hand massaging her belly as he kissed her again. His tongue stroking over hers so it felt like hot honey gathered between her thighs. His heavy thigh rested across hers, holding still the legs that wanted to pedal in sensual pleasure. The burning rod of his penis was rampant against her hip. She couldn’t touch enough of him, couldn’t process all the delicious parts of him when her blood pressure was rising in relentless increments.
He slid down a little, his tongue going to her nipple, his knee pressing between her thighs to part her legs. He very lightly stroked the crease where her thighs met plump folds. She grew acutely sensitive under his barely there fondling, her tangled nerve-endings gathering in a storm of greedy hunger. She tried to turn into him, wanting more contact, but he took her nipple deep in his mouth and parted her with knowledgeable fingers.
Pleasure struck like a hammer-blow, making her groan unabashedly. He deepened his caress, stroking and circling, gently invading, then teasing again, repeating the play so the meltdown became a build-up.
“Nic,” she moaned, dragging at his hair to lift his head.
He looked at her like he was drugged and swept a hand out. Efficient and quick, he protected them both, then shifted to cover her.
She experienced a stab of nervousness again. Her legs twitched as they parted on either side of his hips. She bent her knees, instinctively wanting to embrace him with her thighs. Every part of her wanted to gather him in. He was so strong and fiercely beautiful with that intense expression on his face, looking down at her like she was the most incredible thing he’d ever seen. Her nipples were shards of crystal that wanted to pierce into him as his chest came down on hers, heavy and firm.
And then he pressed into her.
Rowan caught her breath, startled by the shocking intimacy of the act. It hurt a little, but she was so aroused she didn’t care. She ached for the stimulation of pressure and stretching as she felt the thickness of him invade.
“Rowan,” he said raggedly, his expression a little bewildered beneath his flush of extreme arousal, “you’re—”
“Don’t be mad, Nic,” she urged, curling her legs around him in a vice-like trap, using her lean strength to pull him in and impale herself a little more. She couldn’t help the gasping cry that left her. It felt so extraordinary. “I want this. I want it to be you.”
“—so tight,” he ground through clenched teeth, demonstrating how strong he was by keeping her from forcing the penetration. He shuddered and gave her an incredulous look. “You liar,” he breathed, then kissed her possessively while he very, very slowly and oh, so carefully let the weight of his hips settle on her.
And gently, inexorably, his flesh drove all the way into hers.
Rowan tipped back her head and moaned in exultation.
She belonged to him. Now and forever.
Nic kissed her again and again—long, languorous kisses on her lips and sweet caresses down her throat and across her shoulders. Rowan melted under his attention, not realizing how much tension her muscles had gathered until it eased away.
That was when he groaned and started to withdraw, making her protest and cling to him in ways she hadn’t realized she could. He came back, body trembling with the effort to discipline himself. It was a control she instantly felt compelled to shatter.
Rowan stroked her hands over his arms and shoulders, lightly raking her nails down to his buttocks. Nic’s hips jerked into hers. It hurt, but the friction, the fullness, was so good at the same time. The conflict of wanting to self-protect and yet let him push her toward the pinnacle made her scrape her nails down his back again. He caught her wrists and flattened her hands beneath his, sealing their palms together. With a glitter of pure animal need in his flame-blue eyes he increased the pace, becoming relentless and remorseless, feeding her tension until everything in her began to gather.
It was astonishing. She couldn’t hold on, couldn’t hold back. “Nic!” She squeezed her legs around him, suddenly feeling the heart-stopping culmination very close. She didn’t want it to end! She fought giving in, but wanted it so badly. He kept thrusting and her body clenched on his shaft, as if she could hold him forever. He drew her nerve-endings to their very limit …
And then …
Release.
Everything dimmed for a heartbeat before the cataclysm struck deep within her. Shattering pleasure was carried outward in waves of abject joy. Rowan could only receive him, feeling the writhe of his hard muscles as he released a guttural shout and drove deep. The pulses of his tremendous climax were visceral, playing against her own so they were locked in an exquisite paroxysm. She’d never felt so close to anyone in her life. His name pulsed in her head with the crashing throb of their mutual release. Nic, Nic, Nic.
The final sob of ecstasy was hers. For the end that was so beautiful and so unbearable. She wanted to stay joined with him forever, but a final shudder jolted through him and her own climactic pulses began to fade. Still breathing hard, he carefully disengaged and rolled away.
The wordless removal of physical contact smacked her with the savage brutality of casual sex. She’d felt on the edge of a burgeoning beauty, something so profound it filled her chest and made her eyes dampen with happiness. Having him pull away left her instantly bereft. His back was to her and his feet were bound to hit the floor any second. The door would be next.
Appalled to find herself near tears, Rowan swallowed a pained cry and rolled to her side of the bed, starting to swing her feet off. She could make it to the bathroom before he walked out. It would save a shred of her dignity to not be the one left in the bed.
A thick arm snaked around her and a heavy leg scooped hers back to the middle of the mattress. He was so hot. She instinctively pushed her hands against his damp chest where his heartbeat still raced. He carried her hands to a point above her head, trapping them in his own while his massive body engulfed hers in a blanket of hard muscle.
“Wait,” he growled, breath still short. “Why me, Rowan?”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_14be9fcc-3e85-5f7c-ad73-5cb65aaf1296)
NIC felt as though he was looking at a stranger—one so beautiful she made his heart lurch. Her eyelids were swollen under a smoky smudge of makeup, her green irises like rain-soaked moss, her lips ripened by his kisses. He pulled back a little for a lengthy study of every flushed curve and trembling muscle.
How in the hell was he the only man who’d ever seen her like this?
Rowan wriggled in muted protest. He was still aroused enough for rational thought to recede and instinct to want to take over. She was so smooth and soft, her warmed scent a soporific drug to his senses. The desire to sink down on her and rediscover every decadent inch of her increased.
His heartbeat elevated, but she stiffened in wariness.
“What are you doing?”
She sounded breathless. Her flat stomach contracted under the weight of his hand while her wrists turned in the light grip of his other hand. Her flexing was a seductive trigger he fought out of self-preservation. This situation didn’t make sense and he needed it to.
“I’m admiring this gift you’ve given me.” Her springy curls begged for petting, but he resisted, taking heed of her belligerently angled chin instead.
“You don’t have to be so sarcastic about it,” she said.
“I’m not trying to be sarcastic. I’m stunned.” Winded. Very much in danger of being moved. He had to stick to cool analysis or he’d begin attaching meaning to this unique circumstance. He had worried being in his bedroom would make the act too personal, but she had shot things into a realm of intimate sharing that didn’t happen often between any two people—most especially between him and anyone.
“How, Ro? There was a boy at school. I heard the stories.”
Her lips firmed and her cheeks darkened. “That … didn’t work out. I thought I was ready, but I wasn’t. I called it off. He was getting dressed when the headmistress found us. Would you let go of me, please?”
He released her and she sat up. Her narrow back seemed very vulnerable. He felt an unaccountable urge to pull her back into his embrace and keep her sheltered against him. A curious lump formed in his chest. She’d been so tight. Exquisite and succulent. Her rippling orgasm had been unmistakable, but her sheath new and small. If he’d hurt her he’d never forgive himself.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine. You?” Rowan flipped the edge of the coverlet up and across her front, dying with self-consciousness. “Shall we have a post-mortem on your past, too? Did you get it right the first time, or do you have an inept experience you’d like to share?”
Nic was impervious to the glare she sent over her shoulder. He sprawled as comfortably as any male animal whose appetite had been recently sated. The condom was gone, she noted—with a glance that he caught.
His brows went up while his eyelids stayed heavy.
She prickled with embarrassment, willing to give anything to take back that peek. He was still hard. Had he not been satisfied? The coverlet bunched thickly in her hands as she curled her fingers into apprehensive fists.
“I’m not trying to pry,” he said. “I just can’t understand how you’d still be a virgin when I’ve seen you with men I thought were your lovers.”
“Who? Dance partners? We’re all very familiar. It doesn’t mean anything.” Kind of like how this act seemed to have no profundity for him beyond a mystery to be solved.
She couldn’t believe she had felt apprehensive at the thought of him walking out. This was far worse—sitting naked next to him, insanely aware of what they’d just done, how he’d touched her like he not only owned her but knew her body’s responses better than she did, trying to have a conversation.
Her entire world had been flooded with color. A huge bubble of elation had threatened to split her chest. But he didn’t need time to savor and process. He wasn’t suffering any craving for reassurance. He’d done this a thousand times.
A thousand and one.
“You might have offered a clue,” he chided dryly.
“Like what? Can you imagine Cassandra O’Brien’s daughter running around wearing one of those ‘Proud To Be A Virgin’ bracelets? I was happy people thought I’d been with that boy. My school friends quit teasing me. I dated when I could, but my schedule didn’t allow for anything long-term so sex never happened.”
“I meant you might have said something today.” His voice changed, becoming darker and crisper.
She sensed that word long-term had done it and swallowed. He didn’t move, but she watched a new level of coolness come over him. It made the tiny inch of space between them seem cavernous and the warm room grow cold.
“Why would you throw it away on me?” he asked.
Throw it away. Her stomach clenched. Not exactly a treasured moment. More like taking out the garbage. She hated herself then for not being able to control who she was attracted to. For letting that attraction rule her to the point of waiting half her life for him and then giving herself despite knowing it meant nothing to him.
Yet when she tried to conjure regret all she felt was a stunned ache of poignant joy. It had been the most singularly beautiful experience of her life. She was glad it had been with Nic.
“Do you really think virginity is something precious to be bottled up and hoarded for a special occasion?” she asked with a catch in her voice, trying to hide how deeply stirred she was as she reached back to brace herself on her arm and face him. Her other hand held the coverlet firmly across her breasts and thighs, but she did her best to mirror his nonchalance, affecting only vague interest.
His gaze cut a swift glance at her nude shoulders and exposed knee before meeting hers again. “I guess I wouldn’t be a very progressive man if I did, but I imagine you’ve had other opportunities, so choosing to give it up now—with me—seems odd.”
“Why not you?” she challenged, her heart dancing close to a tricky ledge.
His intense look of concentration blanked for a second into a hollow gaze before he shuttered his expression. “Indeed, why not me when any man would do? Why now is the real question, isn’t it?”
An urge to correct him caught in her throat, but she didn’t want to reveal how much she had wanted it to be him. At the same time a stunning insight struck her. Nic had no idea he was special to her or anyone else. She had been told all her life that she was special—so special she had to live up to unrealistic expectations—but he hadn’t had that problem. His father had ignored him. What about his mother?
Rowan ached to ask, but prying was out of place. He wouldn’t appreciate it, given what a proud, aloof man he was. She let her hair fall forward to hide her frown of empathetic pain.
“I was tired of fighting with you. Fighting that feeling,” she confessed, hoping he wouldn’t make her tell him exactly how long that feeling had been twisting like a flame inside her. Tossing her hair back, she made a false attempt at flippancy. “And you’re the one who thinks I need to grow up, so it’s rather fitting for you to be the one to make me a woman, don’t you think?”
A disturbing sense of privilege poured into Nic. Plainly this act held a lot less importance to her than it did for him, so he did his best to laugh it off the way she had. “Is that what this was? A coming-of-age ceremony?”
For a second he thought Rowan flinched. A familiar bleak valley threatened to swallow up his brief sense of pride. He tensed, but then Rowan produced a wide smile that was like light breaking over the dark edges that surrounded him, bathing him in reprieve. She cupped the side of his face, leaning close enough to touch a light kiss to his mouth.
“Yes, Nic. You might not be given to sentimentality about these things, but I shall forever look back on you fondly as My First. That’s almost as good as whatever you get for being Newsman of the Year, isn’t it?”
Always so glib, but her words had a profound effect on him. That forever look back ought to be reassuring. He had barely let himself acknowledge the fear that her taking him as her first lover and dropping words like long-term meant she expected a relationship. He most certainly was not the man to give her anything like that.
But that fondly squeezed feeling out of his incompetent heart. Two days ago he wouldn’t have given any thought to parting with animosity between them, but quite suddenly he hoped for something better than that.
She started to pull away and he brought his hand to the back of her head, silky curls crushed under his gentle insistence she stay close.
“I won’t forget this either,” he admitted.
Which scared him as much as the vulnerable way Rowan caught her lip between her teeth. He closed his eyes against a look that searched for reassurance and drew her forward so he could kiss her, making her release her bottom lip to his own gentle bite and lingering attention to soothe any tenderness he inflicted.
The kiss quickly got out of hand and he groaned, never having come up against anything like this: the desire to make love again so soon after the most intense orgasm of his life, or with a woman so new to it she couldn’t.
When she breathed his name against his lips and set a hand on his collarbone he had to let her put space between them.
“Are you saying you won’t forget in a good way or a bad way?”
Was she kidding? He glanced down at the raging muscle straining from between his thighs like a compass needle seeking North.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Her flush was pure mortification. “I thought it was good for both of us, but—”
“Maybe if you’re willing to practice we can do something about it?” he chided facetiously.
Rowan paled and he realized with horror that she’d taken it the wrong way. She tried to bolt from the bed and again he had to grab her, holding tight to her wiry strength while she struggled and slapped at him.
“That was a joke,” he insisted, trying to speak over her angry demands to quit manhandling her. He wouldn’t let her go, though—not when his heart was bottoming out at how badly he’d misread her sensitivity. “Rowan, listen. Ouch.” He swore as he took a scratch down his rib cage before he immobilized her.
“That wasn’t funny, Nic!” She was breathing hard, muscles a taut bundle of resistance against his hold, eyes spitting venom. “I know more about practice than anyone, and I’ll be damned if I’m going back to trying and not getting it right. For you. I’m living for me now—understand? I don’t care if it was good for you. It was good for me, so you can go to hell with your practice.”
