The sensation pushed her beyond that pale thing called desire to something utterly mindless, painfully hedonistic, inhumanly raw. Laura licked at the thick, amber column of his throat, just because she needed to taste him, and he groaned, the sound hoarse and broken. So she followed the need, let it rule her, sucking and licking and biting at his neck until a slight bruise bloomed beneath his skin.
“Jesus,” he whispered, his expression almost pained, his fingers never faltering. “Keep doing that. Laura. Laura.” She licked a path up to his jaw, sucking and dragging her teeth along his stubbled skin, and his hand tightened in her hair as if he might restrain her. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. She felt the weight of his touch, his contained strength, and underneath it all, his adoration.
He pushed his hips up against hers, even with his hand trapped between their bodies, as if he couldn’t help it. “You’re gonna make me come,” he rasped out. “Laura. Stop.”
She hesitated. “Stop, stop?”
“No,” he groaned, rising up to catch her mouth with his. “No.” This time, there was no gentleness, no careful, tentative kisses—but she still felt just as revered when he licked into her, wild and reckless, as she had when he’d grazed her lips softly. His tongue thrust against hers as his fingers sped up inside her, and she felt that uncontrollable fluttering as her core tightened and her breaths became gasping sobs and—
Oh. Oh oh oh this…
She felt everything all at once, more than should be humanly possible, and heard him whispering “I have you,” and was grateful he’d said it because she felt like she was lost in an ocean of bliss that might never end. As if she’d eaten fairy fruit and was trapped in the kind of pure pleasure that simply couldn’t be good for her.
But it felt good, so good, the definition of fucking good, to cry out and stiffen and collapse against him. And after a second, when her breathing slowed and her swirling pleasure stilled enough to think, she realised that she wasn’t even lying down, exactly—he was holding her up, taking all of her weight so that the swell of her belly didn’t have to. Fuck. She’d forgotten about that.
She’d forgotten about that.
Oh, shit. Oh, shit.
Laura returned to earth with a sickening thud, her teeth and bones jarred, her afterglow snuffed out before it had a chance to breathe.
And he knew, of course. Instantly, he knew.
“Laura?” Samir looked up with so much softness in his gaze, so much care. She recognised it. He used to look at her like that before, when neither of them had fully understood what it meant.
What the fuck had she done?
“I’m sorry,” she choked out, her voice so strangled the words were barely intelligible.
But he heard. She knew he heard, because for a moment his expression was heartbreaking. Then that soul-deep sadness disappeared so fast, she might have imagined it. He frowned, an arrow forming between those sharp brows, his impossibly thick lashes sweeping down as he looked away. His eyelashes always had been ridiculous. His whole fucking face was ridiculous. He was beautiful. Maybe that was why she’d lost all her good sense. Only, really, she knew it wasn’t. She knew exactly why her control had gone walkabout, and it wasn’t because Samir was too handsome to function.
It was because, even now, in this terrible, tense moment, he had the fucking temerity to help her up. To help her clamber off him—off the bloody kitchen table!—as if she weren’t ashamed enough. He was a wonderful, brilliant bastard, and all of a sudden, she couldn’t stand him.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, on her own two feet this time. Laura pulled up the neckline of her T-shirt, and rearranged her skirt, and wondered if she could subtly slide her knickers back into place or if she’d have to leave them wonky under her clothes.
“Sorry for what?” he asked, cutting through her frantically mundane thoughts.
“For—I—I shouldn’t have…” She cleared her throat. Pulled herself together. “That was a mistake. Obviously. That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Ah,” he said. Just, Ah.
And then he was silent. Which, of course, made her say a thousand things she shouldn’t. “Samir, I can’t just—I have responsibilities now. Important responsibilities. And I came here to figure out how to do this—how to be a mother—without complications. And sleeping with you, or whatever this is, it can’t go anywhere—”