Page 53 of Christmas at Sturcombe Bay (Sturcombe Bay Romances #3)

He had dreamed of this moment, painted every detail in his imagination. Somehow, she reached him in a way no other woman had, and although that thought bothered him, it wasn’t enough to keep him from taking what she was offering.

* * *

She had dreamed of this moment, but this was no dream. It was far too real. Those hard muscles, those strong, sensitive hands, those sizzling kisses . . . She moaned and writhed beneath him as his hot mouth traced a scalding path down her throat, dragging her to the edge of reason.

His hands laced in her hair as she grasped his shoulders. She wanted him, wanted to feel his smooth muscles move under her hands, wanted to taste every inch of his skin.

With a deft movement, he unhooked her lacy bra and tossed it aside, then his hands were on her breasts, caressing and crushing them beneath his palms, tormenting the ripe peaks with tiny tugs and pinches that sent sparks of electricity zinging through her tautly strung nerve fibres.

Laughing and taunting him some more, she wriggled out from beneath him again and crawled up a few more steps. He caught her, but she twisted free and made it to the landing.

Stumbling over each other’s feet, they crashed through the bedroom door and finally managed to tumble onto the bed.

“See? We made it.”

She could hardly breathe for laughing, for the urgent desire roiling in the pit of her stomach.

She reached for him, dragging him down to her, revelling in the contact of hot, naked flesh, of hard male muscles taut and strong under her hands, of that smattering of rough, curling hair across his wide chest.

“Now, let’s see how many points I can earn for this,” he growled, bending his head to take one taut pink nipple into his mouth. She gasped and arched against him as he suckled deeply, using his teeth and tongue to torture her with pleasure, making her squirm and gasp for breath.

“A hundred . . . A thousand . . . A million . . .”

She felt the laughter rumble in his chest as she clung to him.

Making love had never been like this — fun, playful, crazy.

Wild. They rolled on the bed, her hair tangling around them and getting in his mouth; him crushing her beneath his weight to hold her down; her wriggling and twisting to land on top of him.

Somehow her lace knickers had disappeared, and she felt the stroke of his hand up the smooth inner flank of her thighs, his clever fingers exploring the soft velvet folds between, and finding the tiny sensitive seed-pearl that was the focus of all her arousal.

Pressing her lips to his throat, she tasted the dark male flavour of his skin. All her senses were bound up in what his mouth and hands were doing to her. Weak with desire, she could do no more than breathe his name as the ripples of pleasure flooded her veins.

He leaned over to the bedside table and she heard the rip of foil, sensed him smooth the gossamer sheath over his hard length, and she moaned softly as she took him into her, deep and slow, moving together in a dance as old as Eve.

Her arms were wrapped around him, clinging to him as the only thing that was real in this wild storm of sensation.

There was no past, no future, only this moment and this man. Higher and higher she rose, spinning dizzily in a vortex of fire, until with a last aching cry, she felt as if she was exploding into a trillion stars, collapsing onto the bed, tangled up in his arms.

* * *

Paul drifted for a long time between sleeping and waking. Jess lay in the crook of his arm, her slow, even breathing warm against his shoulder. She seemed to fit there as if they had both been designed that way. Her glorious autumn hair was spread across the pillow, just as he’d always imagined.

So what now? The whys and wherefores he had refused to consider before came crowding back into his mind. Without being arrogant, he’d known she was attracted to him, but she had seemed set on keeping him at arm’s length.

And then, suddenly, she’d changed her mind.

He was at a loss. He’d never been one to ask questions about a relationship before — he’d never needed to. None of them had been important enough.

But this one was. Which was a rather scary thought.

* * *

Jess woke to the pale-grey light of dawn filtering through her window. No, not her window, she realised as she opened her eyes. Memory came back quickly along with the warm ache in her muscles and the sensation of a long hard male body close against hers.

She had slept with Paul Channing.

Turning her head carefully so as not to wake him, she studied his face on the pillow beside her. Those long dark silky lashes lay against his cheeks — a lot of women would kill for lashes like that. A dark morning stubble shadowed his hard jaw, and there was a half-smile on that well-made mouth.

But the niggling voice in the back of her head that she had let herself ignore when he was making love to her was still whispering. Okay, she had been the one to instigate this, and okay he wasn’t at all like Glenn.

But he was Paul Channing. The man who changed his girlfriends as often as he changed his socks. Maybe she could last a little longer. After all, she had made him wait longer than he was used to.

But now the clock was ticking. A few weeks, even a month or two, and that would be it. Sayonara.

And in the meantime, she would be falling in love with him. In truth, she already had. And if she stayed, she would end up getting her heart shattered beyond repair.

She had to leave — now, before he woke up. Before he could smile at her, before those dark eyes could glint with teasing amusement and blow away every shred of willpower she possessed.

Moving silently, she slipped out of bed and found her clothes, then tiptoed from the room with a last regretful glance back over her shoulder. He was still sleeping, his breathing deep and slow. Her heart creased with pain. Walking away from him now was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

But she had to go.

She crept down the stairs, thankful that none of the treads creaked, and dressed quickly in the hall. Then she eased open the front door and stepped out into the frosty air, closing the door firmly behind her and picking her way carefully though the crisp white snow.