A Shameful Consequence - By Carol Marinelli Page 0,12

this time, slipped in, and this time she accepted it, this time she explored the smooth, moist flesh and relished the taste of him. He fought now to hold her from him, for he wanted to pull her hips into him. But not yet, he told himself, for right now it could be different. They would have all night for this, all night to kiss, because there, in the world they had now created, there would be the promise of more tomorrow.

His tongue was delicious, but it made her greedy for more, she now wanted the press of his mouth as it had once been, she wanted more urgency and her mouth demanded more. Her hands, in reflex, moved from loose limbed by her side up to his shoulders, up past his neck and into his hair. She sucked on the taste of him, and he took her away, to a date they had never had, but seemed now to exist, to hot peppered calamari bought at the taverna and eaten on the beach. So real was her dream she could hear the ocean as he kissed her, her feet surely not in stilettos but resting on sand. After a moment he halted her, his breathing a touch ragged, his words husky when finally they came.

‘Now I have to take you home.’

‘I don’t want to go.’ She did not, not back to her father. She wanted her next date, wanted to find out what Nico would do, how she might tempt him.

‘Now,’ Nico said, ‘I’ve taken you for dinner … twice,’ he added, and gave her a smile, a smile he had never given another, an intimate smile, not for the game they were playing, more for the dream they were sharing. He looked at his bride, who was not his but felt it, then at a dress more complicated than even this skilled lover had encountered. His fingers plucked the row of tiny buttons that ran in a line down her spine and she wanted to tell him they were for show only, but the feel of his fingers, probing, exploring, had her mouth close in pleasure as his lips lowered to her neck and he kissed the sensitive flesh there.

He loved this.

More than ever before, he loved the slow exploration of a woman, her pliant and wanting in his arms as his fingers probed the thick satin, as his other hand cupped her waist and then explored it, and, oh, the triumph of locating a concealed zip.

‘You would stop me,’ Nico said, as there just beneath the hollow of her armpit he found the hidden prize and started to slowly pull down the zipper. ‘You would stop me, or wriggle, or warn me …’ he said, as slowly he slid it down.

‘Why would I stop you?’ Constantine said as his mouth kissed her neck deeper, as she felt the breeze of air on her torso, then the warmth of his hand slipping in. ‘Why would I stop you when it feels so sublime?’

And words should not have such an effect, but so blatantly pleasurable was her response he had to hold her back, for to press her into him now would end the dream in a matter of moments. He wanted her on the bed, he wanted so badly to be inside her, and yet he made himself wait. It was a long, hard wait that was threatened for a moment as he made light work of her strapless bra and a breast dropped heavy into his palm.

His warm hands caressed her, and indescribable was the pleasure—hands that were not hers on her body, moving in ways she would never have thought of, and then when she thought it could not be any better, when his thumb pressed into her aching nipple, when he stroked it till it felt as if he was stroking right inside her, when surely it could not be more pleasurable, the lips on her neck slid down. The lips that were the first ever to kiss her moved wet and warm to a nipple that hurt in anticipation, and the blow of air from his mouth should have cooled, but it produced a heat from a place where heat had never existed and he kissed her breast as expertly, as hungrily and deliciously as he had kissed her mouth. Her fingers pressed and knotted into his hair and she worried how she might stay standing, how she had lived a life without knowing