by Miranda Lee
His hands on her bare breasts brought Jessica to some kind of awareness of what was going on, but by then she was so excited, so driven, she didn't care. Maybe if he'd started being rough with her she might have snapped out of it. But he was all exquisite gentleness, his touch a tantalisingly tender torment. His hands cupped her breasts like they were spun gold, and he whispered to her his admiration of their beauty. He teased the nipples to an exquisite sensitivity, rotating his thumb pads over them in gentle circles, so unlike her previous lovers, who had been rough with her breasts in their impatience for their own pleasure, thereby giving her next to none.
There was such sweet magic in Sebastian's gentle hands as they adored her female shape. She moaned into the still night air under his soft caresses, groaning her dismay when he stopped.
But any dismay was quickly forgotten once he started peeling her skirt and her undies down over her hips. Anticipation of what was to come held her spellbound as he pushed her clothes past her hips to fall to her feet.
'Oh,' she gasped when he wrapped one arm solidly around her waist and hoisted her off her feet so her panties fell from her ankles to the floor. He kept her aloft, bending his back—and hers—while his free hand smoothed down over her quiveringly tense stomach. She tensed when his fingers slid towards the damp curls between her legs, fearful that she would explode straight away if he even so much as touched her there. She'd never felt so excited in all her life.
And she didn't want to let go. Not yet. Please, not yet.
But he seemed to know exactly where to touch and where not to, to tease without giving her release. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head against his shoulder and wallowed in his expert foreplay. He balanced her on a razor's edge for what felt like ages before he abruptly changed tactics and touched her directly on that bursting bud of exquisite sensitivity.
'No!' she cried out. 'No, I...'
Too late. She was already splintering apart, her flesh contracting wildly. He lowered her swiftly, still gasping, onto decidedly unsteady feet, his hands steadying her around the hips while she grasped the railing for support. She knew what he was going to do—and oh, how she wanted him to do it! She was wanting him even more than she had before. Her legs moved restlessly apart, and she thrust backward as her desire searched to meet his. She moaned as she felt him slide into her still throbbing body. She moaned again when her flesh gripped his with an intensity that was as foreign to her as it was fantastic. With a blind and suddenly wild urgency, she began rocking backwards and forwards.
'Oh!' she gasped, when astonishingly, she spilled into a second climax even more electric than the first, and far more satisfying. For she knew he'd be able to feel it and draw pleasure from it. She wanted him to feel pleasure in her, wanted him to join her.
Her back arched voluptuously and her bottom lifted to press ha"rd against him, seeking to engulf him totally.
'God, Jess,' he muttered.
His hands moved from her hips, not so gentle now, grazing roughly over her painfully erect nipples as they swept down the front of her bowed body and up again. They roved hotly from breast to throat to her face again, in her mouth before stroking over her hair and down her back.
As she spun back down to earth, she began to sag beneath him, but he gripped her hard around her waist again, holding her up while he surged deeply into her.
Jessica was stunned when she slowly began to meet each powerful thrust, at first as though by some reluctant instinct, then more eagerly, till she was lost in sensation, lost to everything but the rhythm of his flesh within hers. She forgot time and place. Her eyes remained shut, and she was swirling in an erotic sea where pleasure didn't end. It just ebbed and flowed, not so intense now, but just as sweet.
At last she heard him cry out, felt him shudder within her. She sighed his name with a satisfaction as deep as it was dazed. Her legs went to jelly when he withdrew, and she might have collapsed if he hadn't swept her exhausted body into his arms.
'Sebastian,' she murmured again, looping her limp arms around his neck and pressing her face against the heavily beating pulse in his throat. She'd never felt so content, or so loved.
She was already half asleep when he placed her in the cool of his bed and pulled the sheet over her. But she knew she didn't want it to end yet, this feeling of oneness, of completion.
'Don't leave me,' she mumbled when his hands began to slide out from under her.
He climbed in beside her.
'Kiss me,' she whispered, her arms searching for his neck again. He kissed her.
'Hold me.'
He held her and she sighed. He kept holding her and kissing her till she fell into a deep and dark oblivion.
Her last and very fleeting conscious thought was a stab of dismay that his loving attention was only an illusion. Sebastian didn't love her. He only lusted after her. Any attractive woman would have done. As he'd said, he'd been celibate too long...
Yet it was not of lust that Jessica dreamt in her sleep, but love. And it wasn't just any man loving her. It was Sebastian. They were married in her dream, married with a baby, married with many babies. There were babies all round her. Babies smiling. Babies gurgling. Babies. Babies. Babies.
CHAPTER TEN
JESSICA shot bolt upright in the bed, the word babies flying from her lips in a shocked gasp.
It took a couple of seconds for her eyes to focus in the darkened bedroom and see that the other side of the four-poster bed was empty. A movement across the gloom beyond the bed drew Jessica's eyes to the large silhouette of a man filling the doorway that led to the moonlit veranda.
'Is that you, Sebastian?' came her panicky demand.
The figure came into the room, looming larger as it approached. 'Who else?'
he drawled, and climbed into bed with her, giving Jessica a brief glimpse of a body as naked as her own. 'What is it? Bad dream wake you up?'
'In a way.' She lay back on the pillows and pulled the sheet modestly over her bare breasts, her embarrassment acute.
Talk about the morning after! Yet it was still the middle of the night. She groaned when she thought of all she'd allowed and all she'd enjoyed. Then moaned when she thought of her dream.
'What's wrong?' he asked, levering himself on his elbow to stare at her. Now that her eyes had grown accustomed to the light, she could see him quite clearly. His hair was no longer confined by the blue bandanna. It spilled in abandoned sensuality around his equally sensual face, bringing to mind all that he represented.
Nothing more than the pleasures of the flesh. There was no future with Sebastian. No hope of love, or commitment, or marriage. A baby by him would be a disaster! He might be the best lover in the world, but that would not make him a good father. He was thirty-eight years old, for pity's sake! If he'd wanted marriage and a family he would have had both by now.
'Sebastian,' she began, her voice betraying her panicky fear. His brows drew together and he reached out to lay the most gentle hand on her cheek. 'What is it, Jess?'
'Did you... I mean... I couldn't tell... but did you... protect me?'
His hand fell from her cheek and his eyes grew cold. He dropped onto the pillows and linked his arms behind his head. 'Of course,' he said in a bored tone. 'Do you take me for a fool? But perhaps it was me I was protecting the most.'
His implication stung her to the quick. 'Come now, Sebastian. You might have been celibate lately, but Aunt Lucy wasn't always indisposed. And who's to say you were her first lover? She'd been a merry widow for some time, after all.'
He moved so fast she was flat on her back with her wrists pinned savagely to the bed before she could blink. 'Talk like that about Lucy again,' he said angrily, his mouth only an inch from hers, 'and I'll—I'll...'
His defence of her aunt's character sparked a dark resentment within Jessica. Plus a stabbing jealousy. Perhaps he'd really loved her Aunt Lucy, whereas all he felt for her was lust.
Well, at least he felt that, she thought wildly. At least she co
uld stir his senses
... against his will, it seemed. He didn't like her but he'd wanted her, wanted her with a want that knew no pride. That was a heady thought, to have such power over a man.
Jessica savoured it, then acted on it. Without conscience or qualm. Her tongue seemed to snake out of her mouth all by itself and sweep in an erotic circle around his lips.
'Or you'll what?' she taunted huskily, lifting her head to take his bottom lip between her teeth and nip it, not at all gently.
He wrenched his head back, releasing her so that he could wipe the back of his hand across his mouth. When he saw blood on his skin, he glared at her with a fierce gaze that made her tremble with a mixture of fear and excitement.
'You little bitch,' he snarled. 'I'll make you pay for that.'
'Promises, promises,' she returned, aware she was being provocative in the extreme but unable to stop herself. All she wanted was for him to want her again. She would do anything to achieve that end. Anything. 'Tell me what you like,' she said huskily, running her tongue over her slightly swollen and quite parched lips. 'Tell me, Sebastian, and I'll do it...'
He glared at her expectant and quivering flesh for a long moment, then abruptly rose from the bed and stalked out of the room, banging the door with shuddering force behind him.
Jessica lay there, wide-eyed and stunned. He wasn't going to make love to her ever again. That was how he was going to make her pay. The thought brought despair to her heart, as well as her body. She could not bear to never again feel what she'd felt with him on that veranda. With a strangled sob, she leapt from the bed and went in search of him, vowing to say anything, do anything, to bring him back to bed with her. Her nakedness meant nothing to her as she ran from the room, calling to him. She found him in the living room across the hallway, drinking a glassful of what looked like straight whisky. He hadn't turned on the light, but the large windows let in enough moonlight for her to see him quite clearly. She gulped as her gaze abruptly encountered a full frontal view of his magnificent male body.
'So there you are,' she choked out from the doorway, and he slanted her a savage glance.
'Come to gloat, have you?'
'Gloat?'
He laughed and filled the glass anew from the whisky decanter on the sideboard. 'You played me for a sucker, Jess, and I, stupid fool that I was... I fell for it. Do you play these erotic games often? Does it turn you on to have each new lover think you've never been really satisfied before, thereby challenging them on to greater heights of passion? I should have known that a twenty-eight-year-old city girl who looks like you would have done it all by now.'
His tirade stopped just long enough for him to drain the glass with one long swallow.
'So what else turns you on?' he asked derisively as he whirled to fill the glass a third time, slopping some onto the lace runner. 'Believe me when I tell you I won't knock you back on any score. Let me get a bit more of this into myself and I'll be ripe and ready for anything. I just need to wipe that stupid idea from my head that what happened between us tonight was special.
'God, I must be going soft in the head! Maybe I have been on Norfolk Island too long. I need a dose of Sydney and some of its poisonously promiscuous women to get me back on track. Fancy thinking I could mean something to you, when in reality I was just another one-night stand!'
'No!' she denied hotly, tears welling up in her eyes. 'That's not true. Nothing you've said is true. I do not have one-night stands, and you are special to me, Sebastian. I've never experienced anything like what I experienced with you tonight. Never! I don't know what got into me just then. You... you seem to have released something in me., .something a little bit wild and wicked and yes, wanton. But it's only for you, Sebastian. Only for you...'
The tears were streaming down her face, dripping from her nose and running into her mouth. She had never felt as devastated as she had under his scorn. Or as despairing. His good opinion of her was suddenly more valued than his lovemaking.
'Please believe me, Sebastian,' she said, sobbing. 'I'm not what you think. I'm not.' Her head dropped into her hands and she wept floods of tears. His hands curving gently over her shaking shoulders sent her sagging against him in relief and joy. 'You believe me,' she cried as she hugged him. 'You believe me.. ?
He said nothing, however, and his lack of confirmation finally sank in. Eventually, Jessica lifted her tear-stained but dry-eyed face to his. 'You do believe me, don't you, Sebastian?'
His expression was disturbingly implacable.
She pulled out of his arms. 'You don't believe me,' she said, rather dazed.
'Does it matter? Tonight was a mistake. You and I... we are a mistake. It won't work. Believe me when I say what happened tonight won't happen again.'
'You don't mean that!'
'I'm trying to,' he said, hard blue eyes raking over her nude body with rueful regard.
She saw his vulnerability and took bold advantage of it, moving to wind her arms around his neck and press herself against him. 'I won't let you go,' she said with all her natural stubbornness and new-found sexuality. He held himself stiffly in her clinging embrace, but she could feel the effect she was having on him.
'What is it that you want of me, Jess?' he asked. 'Spell it out. And don't lie. I need to know the truth.'
'I... I want you to be my lover while I'm here,' she said truthfully. To want more was fantasy land.
'And when the month is over? What then?'
'What do you mean?'
'Will you be able to walk away from me and never look back? Never think of me or want me ever again?'
'I...I...'
'Swear to me now that you definitely won't fall in love with me!' he demanded fiercely, his hand grabbing her upper arms, his fingers digging into her flesh. 'That all you want from me is sex.'
She tried to say it. Her mouth actually opened, but she knew in her heart it would be a terrible lie. She was already half in love with him already.
'No,' she blurted, agonised by what she was admitting. 'I... I can't swear to that.'
A great shuddering sigh rushed from his lungs, and his bruising fingers gentled on her flesh. 'That's all right, then,' he said, and before she could blink, he swept her into his arms and kissed her.
'I've had my fill of hard bitches, Jess,' he told her. 'If I'm to have a woman in my bed for the next month, then I want it to be a real woman, with a real woman's heart and feelings. God, for a minute there I thought you were going to so swear, and where would that have left me?'
He laughed, a sound mixed with self-mocking and delight. 'With a whole month of torment, that's where! Now... now I can make love to you as I want to make love to you, with no holding back, no reservations. Beautiful Jess,'
he murmured, kissing her still startled mouth. 'Lovely Jess.' He kissed her again. 'Exquisite Jess.' And yet again.
Jessica was speechless as he carried her to his bed and laid her gently down.
'Tell me what you like, Jess,' he whispered. 'Tell me and I'll do it.'
Oh, God, she thought, and, sliding her shaking hands into his hair, she drew him down, first to her mouth, then to her breast.
He did her silent bidding, suckling at her erect nipple as though he were a hungry infant, greedy and demanding. Waves of pleasure flooded Jessica, tossing her this way and that. She moaned when he slid down her body to kiss and lick her stomach, then lower. Her legs seemed to open of their own accord, offering herself up to his lips with such trust she could hardly recognise herself.
And he did not betray that trust, showing her ecstasies she'd never known before. What fools her other lovers had been. What ignorant fools.
'No more.,' she said at last with limp happiness.
He merely laughed and gathered her to him again, showing her that she still had no judgment over when her pleasure was done. He smiled triumphantly when his powerful possession made her feel that pleasure again, smiled and told her she was the most sensual, most beautiful, most wonderful woma
n in the world.
Jessica had never felt so happy. Or so tired. Sighing, she closed her eyes and was asleep in no time. If she dreamt, her dreams did not disturb her this time. She slept on and on, through the night and past the dawn. She might have slept till noon... if it hadn't been for Evie arriving to make lunch. CHAPTER ELEVEN
'YOOHOO! Where is everyone? Anyone home?'
Jessica was instantly awake, recognition of the female voice hitting her simultaneously with the lateness of the hour. She wasn't sure exactly what time it was, but the sun was well up.
'Oh, my God,' she groaned. 'Evie!'
Sebastian's hand on her arm stopped her flight from the bed. 'She might as well know, Jess. There's no keeping it from her.'
Jessica stared at him as though he were mad, shrugged his hand off her arm and scrambled out of the bed. 'Don't you dare say a word,' she hissed, her heart beating madly. 'If you do, I'll kill you!'
He chuckled. 'If you do, it'll be Norfolk Island's first accredited murder.'
'Sebastian, don't joke,' she cried, embarrassment making her stomach curl. She could only imagine what Evie would think if she saw her with Sebastian like this, after they'd seemingly not even liked each other yesterday. 'Oh, my God, I just remembered my clothes. Will Evie see me if I creep out of here and round the back to my room via the veranda?' she whispered in desperation.
'Not if you're a quick creeper. She's sure to go into the kitchen first and make a cuppa. The kitchen window faces the front.'
'Thank God,' Jessica said with a ragged sigh.
'Aren't you going to kiss me before you go?' Sebastian said, smiling his amusement at her agitation.
'Don't be silly. Oh, all right.' But when she bent her mouth to his, he grabbed her and pulled her on top of him. She tried to smother her squeals as he tickled her mercilessly but feared she was very noisy in her struggles to free herself.
'I'll get you later,' she threatened as she pushed her hair from her face and stumbled across the room to the open doors. A warm breeze was wafting in, making her acutely aware of her nakedness.
