by Penny Jordan
Imogen discovered that she couldn’t drag her fascinated gaze away from it. And nor, it seemed, could she resist allowing that same gaze to skim helplessly over the flat muscular plane of Dracco’s belly with its dark arrowing of hair that disappeared beneath the soft whiteness of his towel. She found that, as badly as she wanted to swallow, for some reason she could not.
‘Imo.’
There was a smooth, liquid sensuality in the way Dracco mouthed her name, a spellbinding dark magic that somehow paralysed her so that she couldn’t move until his fingers curled round her wrist as he firmly tugged her towards him.
‘You smell of fresh air and sunshine,’ she heard him whisper against her hair. ‘And roses.’
‘You smell of...you,’ Imogen whispered helplessly back. Her eyes, already huge in the delicate triangle of her face, widened even further when she saw the look that leapt fiercely to life in Dracco’s own eyes. The look of a hunter, a male animal, aroused, dangerous, silently waiting to pounce.
‘Have you any idea just how provocative that remark is?’ he asked her with a soft savagery that made her whole body shudder.
As she shook her head he mouthed her denial for her, questioning, ‘No?’ His hand moved to hold the side of her neck, tipping it back, his thumb rimming the shape of her ear, sending a shower of pleasure darting over her skin. The warmth of his breath as he bent his head towards her scorched her senses. His fingers, stroking the delicate, sensitive flesh just beneath her hairline, made her tremble wildly without knowing why she should do so.
‘You don’t know just what it does to a man when you tell him that you can recognise his personal scent? Shall I tell you? Show you?’
He had closed the distance between them, enclosing her with his body, so that she could feel its heat—and more. Automatically she tensed against her awareness of his arousal, a virgin’s shocked reaction to a man’s sexuality, but beneath that reaction, running hot and wild, was a river of flooding sensation.
‘No.’ Her denial slid from her lips into the infinitesimal space between them, and was lost for ever as Dracco’s mouth brushed hers—the briefest of touches, and yet somehow so sensual and commanding that Imogen automatically felt her toes starting to curl.
‘More? You want more?’ she heard Dracco murmuring, even though she could have sworn she had said nothing. Perhaps it was her body that had given her away, her lips? ‘Like this, Imo?’ Dracco was asking her, his voice so soft and low that she had to strain to hear it, just as she was having to strain to reach out for the feel of his mouth against her own. ‘Your mouth should taste sweet and virginal and not all dark enchantment, the mouth of a sorceress no man can resist. Are you a sorceress, Imo?’
Dizzily Imogen tried to listen to what he was saying, but there was a sharp, fierce ache in her body. Beneath her thin top she could feel her breasts swelling, her nipples tight, hurting with the need to have Dracco touch them, stroke them, suck them.
She shuddered wildly, her eyes suddenly wantonly feral as her female instincts overwhelmed her. It was as though time had telescoped backwards, as though somehow she was feeling once again what she had felt as a teenager, only now she was feeling those desires and needs with all the authority and power of a truly mature woman.
Somehow, too, her body considered Dracco to be its mate, a mate from whom it had been parted for far too long! Denied far too long!
Urgently she wound her arms around Dracco’s body, holding him to her, her gaze smouldering passionately into his.
‘Do you want me?’ he asked her softly. ‘When, Imo?’ he demanded when her body shuddered in response. ‘Now?’
Imogen felt her body jolt against his as though it had received a charge of electricity. ‘Yes,’ she responded hoarsely. ‘Yes, now,’ she told him. ‘Now, Dracco!’ she repeated urgently, raising herself up on her tiptoes and pressing her mouth passionately against his.
For a second there was no response, and then Dracco opened his mouth on hers, the fierce drive of his tongue into the intimate sweetness she was willingly offering shattering all her teenage preconceptions about what such a kiss would be.
It was like drowning, dying, being turned inside-out, giving something of herself so intimate that she felt as though he was totally possessing her, and yet at the same time filling her with such an aching hunger that she felt as though she would die unless he satisfied it. And she knew only he, only Dracco alone, could satisfy her.
Beneath her hands she could feel the sleek, hard warmth of his bare skin, the breadth of his shoulders tapering down into the narrowness of his waist. The barrier of his towel frustrated her and beneath the increasingly demanding thrust of Dracco’s seeking tongue she made a small, angry sound of protest.
Immediately he released her, staring down into the desire-hazed darkness of her eyes with a gaze so green and luminous that it made her heart turn over.
‘What is it?’ he asked her rawly. ‘Too much—too soon?’
He was holding one of her hands in his own, and as she turned away, unable to answer his question, his fingers suddenly tightened almost painfully on hers, causing her to look quickly back at him.
‘This doesn’t say that you don’t want me, Imo,’ he told her, and her breath caught on a frantic gasp of mingled shock and pleasure as he ran his fingertip over the jutting outline of her breast, pausing deliberately to circle her nipple, erect and aroused beneath the fine fabric of her top.
Without waiting for her to answer him, he turned towards the master suite, firmly drawing her with him. Imogen didn’t try to resist. She didn’t want to resist.
The bedroom was dappled with evening sunlight; it shone through the voile curtaining, giving the peaceful cream comfort of the room a golden gleam.
As a new extension to the original house, this room did not share the air of sad shabbiness that had so struck at Imogen’s emotions when she had first walked into her childhood home. In her parents’ day this room had simply not existed, and Imogen acknowledged her sense of relief and release that this bedroom held no painful memories for her, and that she was coming to it as an adult woman.
‘This room suits you, Imo,’ Dracco was telling her quietly whilst his thumb ran lazily up and down the inside of her bare arm, the effect of his touch on her so devastatingly erotic that she found it almost impossible to focus on what he was saying.
‘Cream is your colour. Cream and gold.’ He leaned forward, his lips caressing the side of her neck, his fingers so swift and deft on the fastening of her top that she was barely aware of the fact that he had slid it off her shoulder until she felt the heat of his mouth caressing her there.
A hundred thousand fiery darts of pleasure thrilled over her skin. She heard the sound of her own low, aching moan filling the room; a counterpoint to the rapidly increasing rate of their breathing.
Dracco’s hands were sliding beneath her top, easing it off her body. A delicious shivery sensation shimmered over her skin.
‘Cream, and honey-gold,’ Imogen heard Dracco saying thickly as he freed her breasts from the confines of her bra and gently kneaded them, playing tenderly with the stiff peaks of her nipples in a way that made her writhe hotly in his embrace. She closed her eyes and bit into her bottom lip as she fought to suppress the raw moan of appreciative delight she could feel building up inside her.
‘Beautiful! You are so very beautiful, even more perfect than I knew. So perfect that I can hardly bear to look at you. Do you know what it does to me, Imo, seeing you like this?’ she could hear Dracco demanding as he looked down at her naked breasts and then back up into her eyes.
The expression she could see in the depths of those eyes both shocked and thrilled her.
Dracco wanted her. She could see it; feel it in his body; hear it in his voice.
That knowledge was all she needed to loosen the last faint threads of inhibiti
on binding her and set herself free to be the woman she had always known she could be—with Dracco.
As his hands came to her waist, so narrow that her trousers slid down from it to lie loosely on her hips, Imogen raised herself up on her tiptoes. She still wasn’t quite brave enough to look down at Dracco’s body. Miraculously his towel was still in place, but he had not made any attempt to disguise how aroused he was.
When she reached to wrap her arms around him Dracco held her slightly away from him. He whispered thickly, ‘Let me see all of you, Imo.’
Although his words made her tremble, she didn’t try to resist as he carefully removed her trousers, unzipping them to let them fall to the floor and then lifting her out of them, holding her right there against his own body. She was pressed deep into his hard masculinity, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, groin to groin, whilst he kissed her with a slow passion that burned and smouldered potently.
Imogen ached to open her legs and wrap them tightly around him, to lure and coax him by any means she could to take the gift she was so wantonly ready to give him. Just the thought of feeling him sliding powerfully into her was enough to make her shudder again wildly, her eyes stormily dark with longing.
How could she have lived so long without this, without him? It was a question she couldn’t even begin to answer.
Mutely she let him slide her down to the floor, his hands smoothing the flesh of her back, her waist, her buttocks, cupping the soft feminine cheeks, his fingers splayed over them.
Imogen could hear the frantic high-pitched sound of her sharp protest that he should arouse her so intensely and tormentingly without satisfying her, but it was something she heard from a distance, her whole being concentrated on the increasingly urgent necessity of feeling him, having him touch her with the full intimacy of a lover.
Her nails clawed his naked back, echoing the intensity of what she was feeling. Impatiently she tugged at the soft fabric of the towel covering his body.
Against her ear she could hear him asking, ‘Imo, are you sure this is what you want? Because if it isn’t and you don’t tell me now...’
How could he even ask her such a question? Couldn’t he tell? See? Feel?
‘I want you, Dracco,’ she told him. ‘I want you now.’
It was like nothing she had ever imagined, and so much—so much more than everything she had ever dared to hope for. Tears of emotion stung her eyes at the look on Dracco’s face as he studied her naked body, his gaze absorbed, hungry, fiercely hungry, in direct contrast to the tender touch of his hands.
When he kissed her breasts, each one in turn and then each nipple, slowly laving the aching peaks, she shivered in mute ecstasy. The slow trail of his tongue-tip down over her belly had the same effect on her skin as red wine might have had on her blood—a hot, sensual rush of pleasure that took control of her senses. To call the effect he was having on her mind-blowing fell so far short of the reality of what he was doing to her that it was almost an insult. When his tongue rimmed her navel, and dipped gently into it, she moaned out loud in bewildered pleasure.
Never in a thousand lifetimes had she imagined this kind of intimacy with him, and never had it even crossed her mind that she would be the one urging him on with her hands, with the hoarse cry of her voice and with the frantic writhing of her body. Through her half-closed eyes she could still see the full, powerful maleness of him. She ached to reach out and touch him, but the sensation of him gently parting the outer covering of her sex made her forget everything but her intense need for him.
Instincts she hadn’t known she possessed were driving her, possessing her now, insisting that the mere touch of his fingers was not enough, not what her body really needed, even though their careful touch was making her shudder from head to foot.
‘Dracco,’ she whispered, pleading.
Immediately he was beside her, looking deep into her eyes as he demanded hoarsely, ‘What is it? Do you want me to stop?’
‘No, it isn’t that,’ Imogen denied immediately. Helplessly her gaze, hot and fevered with longing, jolted over his body. ‘I want you, Dracco,’ she told him fiercely. ‘You... With me. Inside me.’
For a moment the triumphant blaze in his eyes shocked her. It was as though she had said something, given him something he had hungered for for a very long time. But it was too late to try to analyse what she thought she might have seen; Dracco was gathering her up in his arms, holding her, positioning her, moving over her and then finally and oh, so blissfully into her.
The high, wild sound of her cry of longing mingled with the harshly guttural groan of Dracco’s male growl of possession. Their bodies moved together in an urgent harmony that felt so right, so natural that it seemed to Imogen she had finally found a vitally important missing piece of her life and herself.
And then there was no room for thought, no room for anything other than absorbing the feel of Dracco’s body, the hot, musky scent of his skin, the physical reality of him here with her and within her as he drove them both to that place she knew she would die if she did not reach it.
But she did reach it, reached it and exploded in a million tiny pieces of piercingly intense release to lie exhausted in Dracco’s protective arms. She was dazed with satisfaction and an awed disbelief that it was possible to experience something so spectacularly wonderful as sleep claimed her.
CHAPTER SIX
IMOGEN OPENED HER eyes and stretched luxuriously. Dracco might not still be in the bed beside her but she could still smell his scent, feel the warm place where his body had been, feel the secret, special, place within herself where he had been.
Rolling over, she looked towards the window. It was a wonderful day. How could it not be? The revelations of the previous night still clung to her, filling her emotions with the same golden glow the sun brought through the window, its brightness softened into a mellow gilding by the voile curtains.
And so it was with her own feelings; they too were softened, gilded by the wondrous power of love, the love she had rediscovered in the breathless passages of the night when Dracco had held her, touching not just her body and her senses but also the deepest and most precious part of her.
They might not have spoken of love, but they had breathed it, shared it, given and bequeathed it to one another, surely? There was no way she could be mistaken about that.
She turned her head and studied the pillow next to her own, the pillow that still bore the imprint of Dracco’s head. It was a new and sweet thing for her, this soft heaviness within her body, this small ache of satisfaction and remembered pleasure.
She had so many plans for her future, their future; so many hopes. Joy trembled uncertainly within her. She didn’t want to question what she was feeling, nor to analyse the past. She didn’t, Imogen recognised, want anything to intrude on the special memories and pleasures she and Dracco had created together.
She and Dracco together...
And perhaps, just perhaps, memories weren’t all they had created!
A fierce quickening sensation gripped her body. A child.
‘I want your father’s grandchild,’ Dracco had told her. And now her body was telling her that it wanted Dracco’s child.
Somewhere outside the warmth of the bed, beyond the sunlight of the bedroom, lay certain sharply informed realities, but Imogen was in no mood to acknowledge them. What did they matter now? she taunted in silent mental recklessness. What, after last night, could matter more than what she and Dracco had shared? What she had discovered?
The love he had denied her as a girl had been there for her last night. She was sure of it.
The muslin voile curtains moved in the breeze, throwing small shadows across the room that were as ephemeral and as easily despatched as her unwanted doubts.
She loved Dracco. She couldn’t not love him and have shared with him, as she had done ye
sterday, that deepest and most intimate sense of herself. And he surely could not have touched her, aroused her, savoured and satisfied her in the way that he had if he had not cared about her? Loved her in return?
Love. It was such a small word to cover such an infinity of emotion. Did she even truthfully know what it was? She had gone from loving Dracco to hating him, and then last night... Imogen took a deep breath, willing herself to think logically and realistically, but it was no use. Every time she tried to do so all she could see was Dracco’s face, all she could feel was his touch, all she could hear was the immeasurably sweet sound of his breathing.
She was twenty-two and a woman, she reminded herself fiercely, and, even though physically she might have been a virgin, she was mature enough to know that sex, however good it might be, wasn’t love.
Her heart refused to acknowledge such unworthy thoughts. What she and Dracco had shared had gone way beyond mere sex. It wasn’t just one another’s bodies they had touched; they had touched one another’s hearts, one another’s souls. Whatever had happened to them individually in their lives before last night no longer mattered. Her whole body was quivering, singing in the sweet, intoxicating aftermath of love. All she really wanted was to be with Dracco! To drink in the reality of him, breathe in the scent of him.
Imogen smiled ruefully at her own giddiness. She and Dracco needed to talk, to face one another and their shared past.
She took another deep breath. Surely in the light of what had already happened between them they were both adult enough to discuss everything? Their future and their past?
It was time to get up, for her to face the day—and Dracco.
* * *
Her foot poised on the topmost stair, Imogen paused and looked down through the banister into the hallway towards the closed door to what had once been her father’s study and was now her husband’s. Her husband, Dracco! The melting, delicious warmth just thinking such a thought gave her was a revelation. Dracco. Her husband. The father of her child...their child. A sensation not unlike the delicate touch of a skilled musician on a treasured instrument trembled across her skin.
