Undertaking Love Page 0,77

louche perfection in the gilt afternoon sun.

‘Angel Gabriel.’ She whispered, and trailed her fingernails down his chest as he rolled the condom on. It was Gabe’s turn to strain for more as she moved over him, used him shamelessly to stroke her own pleasure back up to boiling point. His chest heaved, and his coal dark eyes begged her to finish what she’d started.

He hadn’t made her wait, and she repaid the favour with pleasure.

Marla had had sex with other men, but none of them had prepared her for her first time with Gabe. He filled her to the hilt and then some, and for a few seconds, it was all she could do to just hold still in the moment and remember to breathe. He was heartbreak beautiful; his dark lashes on his cheek, his teeth sunk into his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. He opened his eyes and looked up at her through lust-heavy lids, and Marla had to close her own eyes against the raw emotions she saw there.

‘Marla …’ Her name was a caress on his lips as he levered himself up to kiss her. She hadn’t anticipated his move, and she gasped with pleasure when he held her close and slipped a hand down between their bodies to draw slow circles on her clitoris with his thumb. His tongue traced the same slow circles in her mouth. He gave, and he kept on giving, slow, languorous strokes until her orgasm shimmered through her veins. Marla wrapped herself around him and clung on vice-tight as, thrust by beautiful thrust, Gabe let go of his grip on control too. He pumped harder, breathed faster, and kissed her with abandon as he emptied himself inside her.

Trembling-limbed, Marla laid her damp cheek against Gabe’s chest, content in the cradle of his arms. He kissed her neck. Stroked her hair. Stilled inside her, his heart against hers.

Marla glanced at the bedside clock for the tenth time in as many minutes.

There were thirty-three minutes of her birthday left.

Thirty-three guilt free minutes with her Marmite man, and then he had to leave. She couldn’t bring herself to regret it, because it had been the sexiest sex she’d ever had. In fact, it was probably the sexiest sex anyone had ever had.

Her tiny shower cubicle had neither seen nor heard the likes of it before. She flushed just thinking about the things he’d murmured in her ear as he’d pushed her towards a violent orgasm. His accent turned even the dirtiest of words into music, and wow, did Gabe know how to use it to devastating effect.

He’d shared his gentle side too, right here in her bed. Marla closed her eyes and sighed at the memory of his weight over hers, the way he’d moved inside her with infinite tenderness, his fingers meshed with hers, his mouth slow on her lips. He’d built her orgasm until it glittered through her fingertips and her toes, snaked along her limbs in an unstoppable wave that gathered momentum until it broke and threatened to drag her right under. He’d kissed away the unexpected tears that spilled from her eyes, and rested his forehead on hers as his own release shuddered through him like a freight train. Marla had clutched him to her, rocked core deep by the protective urge that filled her as she tangled her fingers in his dark curls, as she held him until his breathing slowed from a desperate gasp to steady in her ear.

Twenty-one minutes. She’d allow herself just five more, and then she’d wake him.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Gabe sat on the bench in his tiny back garden some eight hours later and watched the pink sun creep up over the fields beyond. He’d spent most of the night trying to make sense of Marla’s warped logic, but so he’d far he’d failed miserably.

For him, yesterday had only affirmed what he already knew.

He loved Marla.

Wholly, completely, with all of his heart.

He’d learned the difference between sex and making love last night, and despite what she’d said to the contrary, he knew she’d felt it too.

He’d tasted it in her tears. He’d heard it in her moans.

She was lying to herself, and to him.

He shook his head as her words clanged around in there. Their knife-sharp edges took chunks out of him, new cuts over old.

He’d been her birthday treat to herself. That was exactly how she’d put it.

He didn’t know whether to feel flattered or used.

A one off indulgence, she’d said.

Fun, and