‘My grandfather, Aldo, would revel in that description,’ Tore laughed and he went back to kissing her while she worked, somewhat absentmindedly on his shirt buttons, loosening them, sliding them free, spreading her fingers across warm male flesh. He dug something out of his jacket and tossed it down beside the bed and she squinted, recognising that it was contraceptives and relieved that he was prepared.
Tore dragged the sleeves of her wrap down her arms with an imprecation. ‘You might as well be wearing a shroud,’ he complained, impervious to the fluttering attractions of the garment.
‘You’re impatient,’ she complained.
‘I feel like I’ve been wanting you for a lifetime,’ he breathed rawly, an uncertain note in that admission as he made it without consciously thinking it out. And then he immediately thought that he shouldn’t have said that because it made it sound like what they had was special and obviously being the kind of cold-hearted bastard he was, there was no such thing as any woman who was more special than the previous. Yet, the bite of craving her naked in his arms had persisted day and night. Acknowledging that made him feel antsy.
‘Sounds good. Nobody has ever wanted me that much,’ Violet confided, thinking wryly of her first and only lover, Damien.
Damien had needed a lot of encouragement to get that intimate with her and only the idea of going off to college still being a virgin had motivated him. Of course he hadn’t wanted herenough, she reasoned, and she hadn’t wanted him that way, either. They’d been best friends but a bad mix as sexual partners, she conceded because the sex that had followed had been a major disappointment to them both. And only months later, in his first weeks away from home, Damien had informed her that he was gay, which had explained a lot from her point of view. In truth, Violet had never before been able to luxuriate in the conviction that a man trulywantedher.
Tore ripped off his shirt and cast it aside, dealing with her robe in a similar fashion. He covered her breasts through the lace of her nightgown with big, gentle hands. ‘Just a glimpse of these drives me crazy,’ he growled. ‘If I was to see them in a bikini on the beach, I could be uncontrollable.’
‘How?’ Violet asked in honest wonderment. ‘It’s only flesh—’
‘Heavenlyflesh,’ Tore contradicted, tugging down the slip straps to bare his bounty and nuzzle against the firm mounds with his unshaven chin. His mouth landed on a pouting pink nipple and conversation ceased as that tugging turned into an incendiary burn between her thighs and gave Violet something else entirely to think about.
‘I love your breasts,’ he groaned.
‘Yes, got that message,’ she whispered in disconcertion, not at all certain what to do with such admiration when it had never come her way before. ‘And your bottom,’ he confessed, moulding the rounded generous globes with appreciative hands while he tugged her down the bed.
At that point, he shocked her, roaming to a place that wasn’t on her mental map of sex. She shifted, awkward, embarrassed, trying to close her thighs again.
Tore lifted his tousled silvery head and murmured. ‘I want this… I need to taste you… You won’t regret it.’
And in receipt of that sincerity, Violet’s objections were quelled because what did she really know after one less than successful experience? Insecurity made her loosen her hold on her trembling body.
He went there to that most private place and ravaged her flesh as though she were a feast he was celebrating. Shock held her fast and then the quivers of response and reaction began to hit her in waves. Every wave built up to the next and long before she knew what was happening to her, she was flying up into the sun and an explosion of unbelievable pleasure was blasting through her every limb and rendering her helpless. She flopped back into the pillows like a boneless rag doll.
Tore shifted over her and bent his tousled head to extract another deep, driving kiss filled with hunger. And panic claimed her then because she knew that she hadn’t been a partner in any sense of the word. She hadn’t touched him; she hadn’t touched any part of him. While he had given her pleasure, she hadn’t reciprocated and that awareness shamed her.
‘Tore…’ she began as he twisted away to don protection.
‘You’re amazing,’ he turned back to tell her in a ringing surge of unconcealed approval.
Long fingers fluttered at the sensitive heart of her, toying with the newly tender flesh, stoking her earlier arousal afresh and adding a new urgency to that need that she had never felt before. An ache began to build low in her belly. He slid over her and a fleeting memory of the pain once before made her tense in dismay.
‘You’re very tight,’ he breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘Are you a virgin?’
‘Of course not,’ she declared with confidence in that fact at least.
He eased into her degree by degree and she tried not to tense at the sting of his entrance. Even so, her body felt like one giant howl of craving that could only be sated by him sliding inside her. But it felt like there was far too much of him and that added a faint edge of panic to her anticipation. Keen to get over what she expected to be an anti-climax, she parted her thighs more and tilted up her hips to encourage him. Finally, he buried himself deep. An unexpected burning sensation made her flinch and then there was a sharp little pain that made her whimper in dismay.
Tore froze and gazed down at her, intense green eyes holding her fast. ‘Are you sure I’m not your first? I hurt you.’
‘Only a little. It’s been years,’ Violet admitted grudgingly. ‘Ignore it, don’t stop.’
His ebony brows pleated into a frown.
Violet was fearful of being categorized as a freak then and she shifted her hips up again in welcome, keen to push the encounter to its usual denouement. He shifted his hips, rolled them and the strangest sensation of pleasure feathered through her lower body. She closed her eyes, giving herself up to that sensation, wanting so badly to feel what she knew some other women felt.
‘I can still stop,’ Tore breathed in a raw undertone.
‘No!’she answered fiercely, convinced that she was doing absolutely the right thing and ridding them both of that dangerous curiosity that was making life difficult.
He tugged her thighs up even higher and surged deeper still. The unfamiliar sensations came in a ripple that washed through her and then centred low in her belly like a little spark that was catching eager to burst into a flame. And she discovered that once the discomfort and the stress had gone, she liked what she was feeling. The weight of him over her, the provocative slide of his male body over hers, the piercing pleasure starting to pool like warm honey low in her body.
A frisson of excitement rippled through her. ‘Don’t stop,’ she warned him.
