Falling for the Lawyer - By Anna Clifton Page 0,50

anxious denial but his body pressed closer to hers, now shaking uncontrollably. She watched his hard, poised mouth, willing it to meet hers as she swallowed, her lips parting involuntarily as his thumb trailed across their shape in a gentle, yet proprietary gesture.

“You’ve completely done my head in, you know that don’t you?” he murmured, his voice hoarse and unrecognizable as his other hand slid up her bare back and underneath her bikini strap, a look of deep satisfaction shining in his eyes as he watched her helpless quiver at his touch.

“We can’t do this, JP! I don’t want this.”

“Perhaps you want this then.”

His mouth brushed against hers very lightly before he drew away to watch her reaction. And evidently satisfied with what he saw he caught and released her mouth again, and then over and over, tantalising her without pity.

And right then Alex knew that JP knew she’d never, ever been kissed like that before; not with such provocative ease, tempting her further and further into a black hole of sweet, heady need for what he could make her feel that night, if she would only give in to what was happening between them, once and for all.

But she wouldn’t do that. Her mind reached out to Simon and their years of commitment that had nothing to do with the tempest of feeling and sensation engulfing her that night. But JP was watching her with such fierce intensity again she couldn’t hold a thought for more than a split second; each one was drifting away as quickly as it had arrived as she watched an unrelenting and hypnotic pinprick of light emerge from his dark eyes.

Finally his gaze dropped, moving remorselessly across her figure before his hands lifted to cradle her face, tilting it purposefully towards his. And with a barely audible groan his mouth seized hers, demanding that her own yield and succumb to his immediately. In the next moment their mouths were searching each other’s and in mindless, disembodied response Alex heard a moan rise up from deep within herself as she responded with uncontained fervour. On and on it went, an exquisite journey of discovery as their tongues met and he sighed helplessly into her mouth as Alex revelled in the power she knew she held over him.

But she was equally lost within his power too, for heat was raging in waves across her skin, plummeting like a fireball of need and desire into her lower stomach and thighs as his hips pinned her against the wall and shifted restlessly against hers. And with their mouths clinging together, his hands buried themselves in her hair as hers crept stealthily beneath his shirt to explore the depression below his broad chest muscles and the ridges of his flat, hard stomach. In the next moment she’d found the button and zipper of his jeans and was unfastening them as swiftly and decisively as if she had unfastened them a hundred times before.

And it was then Alex knew JP had found a woman within her she’d never known existed before. A woman she feared and yet understood. A woman he knew was his soul mate.

JP tore his lips from hers and cradled her head in his hands.

“Wait, Alex,” JP panted, his chest heaving with tormented desire. “I don’t want to go on with this unless you can tell me it’s over with him once and for all.”

But then they both jumped violently. Alex’s home phone was ringing out into the night like a jarring peal of accusation. They stared at each other as mutual acknowledgement seeped through their expressions: Simon.

“Don’t answer it!” JP’s hips pinned her against the wall with fresh purpose.

Alex squirmed uselessly to be free of his weight. “Please, let me go,” she begged. “It’s Simon. If I don’t answer he’ll know something is wrong between us. I can’t do that to him.”

“Something is wrong,” JP snarled. “You’re in love with me, Alex, not him. Choose between us—now.”

Was she being ripped in two? God help her but it felt like that. On the other end of the phone was a man who for years had loved the compliant, perfect Alex she’d offered up to him and the world. But in her arms was the man who saw her just as she was, complex and so very imperfect, yet he wanted her body and soul. It was then she knew that her choice was not about JP or Simon, it was about choosing herself—once and for all.

“Let me