The Good, the Bad and the Wild (6 page)

He explored her body with his tongue, his teeth, his lips. Suckling hard then drawing back, transferring from one breast to the other. His hand flattened against her belly. She bucked, shocked by the intensity of sensation rocketing up from her core as he cupped her, then discovered the slick burning nub. He circled and retreated, teasing her with fleeting caresses that took her to the brink but were never enough. She clung to his shoulders, sobbed out incoherent pleas for him to do more.

He gave a rough laugh. Then he touched, right at the heart of her. She opened her thighs, bumping against the knowing brush of his thumb, the nerves exploding.

She cried out, the orgasm cascading through her in strong, sure, wonderful waves.

Quivering, shaking, she kissed his cheek, laughed with delight, the rush of achievement, of abandon sensational as she floated in afterglow.

‘Thank you. Thank you,’ she murmured, tears of emotion, of joy sliding down her cheeks.

The sense of validation was triumphal. Sex was more wonderful, more fulfilling than her wildest fantasises, all she’d had to do was wait—for the right man to unlock the secret passion inside her.

‘You’re welcome.’ He chuckled, sounding surprised and amused. His brows drew together as he stared down at her in the moonlight. He touched his thumb to her cheek, lifted a drop. ‘That was quite a show. Do you always cry when you come?’

The inquisitive, vaguely mocking tone brought her sharply back to reality, the hazy joy clearing to be replaced with embarrassment. Appalled at how exposed she felt—and at how much she’d let him see.

This means nothing to him
.

‘Not always,’ she lied. She choked out what
she hoped was a frivolous laugh. ‘You’re good at that.’

He grinned, the flash of pride almost boyish. ‘Only good, huh?’ he said, clasping her hips in large hands and positioning her beneath him. ‘Let’s see if I can do better.’

She had a moment to tense, prepare for the devastating entry and then he plunged hard.

She cried out, the pain raw and shocking, as his girth thrust through the barrier of flesh.

‘What the hell?’ He reared back, stopped dead, the penetration so deep she could feel every inch. ‘Are you okay?’

She nodded, robbed of speech, the pain still raw, still brutal. ‘Don’t stop,’ she said, through gritted teeth, determined to bear it.

He cradled her cheek, still lodged impossibly deep. ‘Are you sure? You’re so tight.’

‘It’ll be all right in a minute,’ she said and prayed that it would be.

‘Relax,’ he murmured. ‘You’re tense.’ He stroked his hand down, pressed his thumb to the punch of her pulse. He didn’t move, didn’t thrust. And slowly the pain receded. To be replaced by an impossible pressure. He smiled down at her, and she wondered if he somehow knew.

‘Let’s see if we can go for better than all right,’ he said, then lifted her hips.

She sucked in a sharp, ragged breath as he settled deeper still. She gave a low groan, grateful
when the pain didn’t return, even though the pressure increased. His forearm strained beside her head, the muscles of his bicep bunching and releasing, as he held his weight off her. Then he drew his other hand down. Delving into the curls at her core with expert fingers, he exposed the swollen nub and flicked it with his thumb. She jerked, thrusting against him, the sudden rub of intense sensation both exquisite and shocking.

He continued to play, continued to circle and rub and flick until slowly, gradually, the swell of pleasure built again, unstoppable, unrelenting this time. The pressure then turned to a new exquisite pain as he began to move at last, rubbing some spot so deep inside, the pleasure intensified. She moaned, gripping his bicep to anchor herself and moved too, meeting the expert thrust of his hips with her own untutored movements.

She heard his harsh grunts against her ear. Felt him swell to even greater proportions, the fullness of his penis triggering a brutal, pulsing series of contractions that rolled over her. Then shattered, shooting her into oblivion.

Feeling, sensation, sanity returned in tiny incremental bits and pieces. The ragged pants of his breathing rasping in her ear, the musty scent of sex and sweat overlaying the clean fresh scent of rainwater and him, the muscled shelf of his shoulder resting on her collarbone, the large, but
softening column of his erection still impaling tender flesh.

‘Damn.’ His low murmur cut through the silence. ‘That was good.’ He sounded as dazed, as disorientated as she.

He lifted off her, pulled out gently. She flinched, a groan escaping as her swollen flesh released him, the soreness a cruel reminder of the initial pain. She rolled away from him, and shifted across the bed.

As incredible as that had been, she felt fragile and wary. She’d never imagined, never realised, sex would be anything like that. The heady romances she’d read certainly hadn’t prepared her for something so brutal, so basic, the elemental nature of it nothing short of animalistic.

‘Hang on a minute.’ One muscled forearm banded around her waist, drawing her back into his chest. ‘Where are you off to?’ His lips nuzzled her neck.

‘I need to…’
Get away from you
, she heard her mind shout, shocked by the renewed blast of arousal as his thumb played lazily with her nipple. She hurt, all over. She couldn’t possibly want to do it again. But still the molten heat between her thighs gushed back.

She lay motionless, clamped down on the need to struggle out of his grip. She didn’t want him to figure out the truth, that their coupling had been a life-altering experience for her.

She couldn’t bear for him to know now that
she’d been a virgin. It would make this far too intimate. And it was intimate enough already. She’d assumed this would be anonymous sex, only to discover that the intimacy of the act meant there was probably no such thing.

‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said.

‘All right.’ His hand stroked her belly in an oddly possessive manner. ‘There’s an en suite over there.’ His chin touched her shoulder as he nodded towards a door in the opposite wall. ‘I’ll keep the bed warm,’ he murmured, his hand skimming down her buttocks before he released her.

The proprietary words reverberated in her head as she shot across the room naked.

She couldn’t have been? Could she?

Nick frowned at the moonlight reflecting off the polished wood of the bathroom door, the niggling suspicion slowly but surely clawing its way through the sweet, heady buzz of afterglow.

Rolling over, he snapped on the bedside light, and flipped the duvet back. Then blinked several times at the two dark red splotches on the pale blue linen bed sheet.

He jerked upright, then cursed softly.

No way. Not possible
.

He stared blankly for several long minutes at the evidence before him. Then raked his hand through his hair, the contraction in his chest forcing him to finally process the truth.

Eva the sexy anthropologist was a virgin. Correction, had been a virgin. Right up until the moment he’d ploughed into her.

He swore again, a lot more forcefully this time. And pushed back the sickening wave of guilt at the memory of her face, white with shock.

How the hell was that even possible? How could a woman as alluring and spontaneous and mind-blowingly sexy as she was have waited into her twenties to have intercourse? And why had she?

A picture of her wide blue eyes, petal soft skin and the tempting sprinkle of freckles across her shoulder blades formed in his mind. He gulped down the constriction in his throat. Damn. Assuming she was in her twenties. Why hadn’t he stopped long enough to ask her? To be sure?

He acknowledged the residual hum of heat in his groin, and had his answer.

Because he’d been spellbound. That was why. Even now, the memory of her lush body writhing in his arms, the weight of her full breasts in his palms and the sound of her stunned gasps as he ran his hands over the puckered pink flesh had the blood surging south. He’d been mesmerised by her ever since he’d spotted her in the gallery. And once he’d got her back here, got her naked, the last semblance of restraint had been
swept away on a wave of lust so intense he’d been determined to have her.

Hearing the trickle of running water coming from behind the bathroom door, he slid out of bed and stripped off the stained bed sheet, feeling thoroughly disgusted with himself.

He’d lost control, let instinct and lust take over—something he’d worked really hard never to do again—and had sex with a woman he hadn’t bothered to find out a damn thing about. He knew her name, that she had studied anthropology and that she had written a script she wanted him to look at, which had to be why she’d been so keen to meet him.

Lobbing the soiled linen into the laundry basket, he grabbed a fresh sheet out of the drawer and wrestled it on while riding out the dull flush on his cheeks.

He’d admired her honesty and her forthright manner when she’d told him their meeting hadn’t been accidental. And been hopelessly turned on by her refreshingly artless approach to sex and then blinded by her quick and instinctive response to his caresses. So much so that he hadn’t stopped to question her.

He let out a calming breath.

Stop beating yourself up. You’re not exactly an expert on virgins
.

Despite his varied and extensive experience, he’d never been any woman’s first lover before. How could he have known her innocence wasn’t
faked? That the sheen of grateful tears in her eyes when he’d stroked her to orgasm was a sign of her inexperience and not, as he’d assumed like a conceited jerk, his superstar abilities in the sack?

He hadn’t forced her. She’d been willing. More than willing. And while the possibility that she might be younger than he’d thought bothered him, surely she couldn’t be a teenager. She’d been far too intellectually astute and not nearly self-absorbed enough for that.

All of which meant he was off the hook. He slung the duvet back onto the bed, but as he settled under it to wait for her return the tight feeling in his chest refused to go away.

Maybe he didn’t need to feel responsible. But unfortunately he did, because while he’d had one of the most mind-blowing orgasms of his life, he’d hurt her.

His eyes narrowed, trained on the bathroom door. Which brought them to another burning question. Why hadn’t she said anything? Before letting him barrel into her like that? He’d seen the shocked look on her face when he’d been putting on the condom. He was a fairly big guy, and for all her lush curves she was a small woman, but even so if she’d said something, anything, he would at least have attempted to get a stranglehold on his desire and use some degree of finesse.

A sick feeling settled in his stomach. Had she wanted him to hurt her?

The horrible suspicion that she might have been intending to use her virginity to give her some leverage tomorrow, when she showed him her script, sprang into his head. And was thankfully almost as quickly quashed. If she were that devious, wouldn’t she have mentioned her virginity straight afterwards? Made a bigger deal of it? And her seduction techniques were hardly practised. Just the opposite in fact. Plus, how could she have known he would find her refreshingly untutored reaction to him such a major turn-on? Hell. He wouldn’t have suspected he’d find it a turn-on himself until tonight.

He forced himself to relax back against the headboard and folded his arms over his chest, the insistent beat of his heart punctuating the seconds ticking by as he waited for her to reappear.

One thing he did know: when Miss Eva the sexy anthropologist finally ventured out of his bathroom, she was going to have a whole lot of explaining to do.

CHAPTER FIVE

C
ONCENTRATING
on the two deep grooves bisecting her brow in the bathroom mirror, Eva forced her fingers to release their death grip on the sink.

Hiding out in Nick Delisantro’s bathroom for the rest of the night is not an option
.

The metallic tinkle of rain hit the fire escape outside and she shifted her attention to the partially open window. Then sighed, stifling the urge to leap onto the vanity unit, wedge herself through the small gap and run off into the night.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she whispered to her pale reflection.

Apart from the fact that she was stark naked under Nick’s oversized robe, her bag was still on the kitchen counter and it was the middle of the night, she was in a strange city in a strange country and it was pouring with rain. If she didn’t die of hypothermia, she’d probably get arrested. So running away was not an option either. The frown on her forehead deepened.

Plus she had an important appointment with Nick tomorrow, which she couldn’t duck out of. As difficult as it was going to be to assume any kind of professional etiquette after sleeping with him, he’d probably throw her out on her ear if she showed up after doing a vanishing act in the middle of the night.