Very slowly his fingers moved, inching their way towards her right breast, pausing, venturing further, pausing again. Helena smiled, daring him. Further, further, until his fingertips reached one nipple, already reacting, and teased it until it grew harder still.
‘Do you want me?’ he asked softly.
‘Do you think I do?’
‘Little tease. Answer me.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t tell me a man as experienced as you needs to ask.’
He shifted his hand to the other breast.
‘A woman can say one thing with her body and another with her lips,’ he remarked. ‘She does it deliberately to confuse a man.’
‘Then, since my lips can’t be trusted, you don’t need to hear from them,’ she pointed out.
It was hard to speak through her rapid breathing, but she was enjoying this too much to let it go.
‘True, I have another use for them,’ he said before his mouth came down on hers.
His kiss was long and had a soft urgency that thrilled her. She yearned against him, inviting him to go on, but he seemed reluctant to do that, touching her softly with his mouth, then retreating at once, refusing to deepen the kiss with his tongue.
She felt his lips against her neck, just below her ear, where he knew she was especially sensitive, and shivered with delight. The sensation moved slowly down her neck to the little hollow at the base of her throat. There he lingered, now using the tip of his tongue to torment her deliciously.
‘Aaaa-aaah!’ The soft cry broke from her. ‘Don’t stop.’
‘I’m not going to stop,’ he whispered against her skin. ‘I’m going to kiss you all over. Then perhaps I’ll stop-or perhaps I won’t.’
She could almost hear him smiling as he spoke, and her own smile seemed to rise from deep within her.
Now he’d moved on to one breast, concentrating intently as he kissed it, now here, now there, now with his lips, then with his tongue. A fire was glowing within her, mounting slowly until she feared that she would climax too soon, but he never let that happen, always drawing back just before she was overwhelmed, then renewing the soft assault. It was a kind of torture, but one that left her dizzy with exquisite delight.
‘Don’t make me wait too long,’ she gasped.
‘Be patient,’ he commanded.
‘I can’t be patient.’
‘Then I must make you.’
He drew back to survey her with a slightly mocking smile on his lips.
‘You devil,’ she whispered, reaching for him and trying to pull him over her.
It was useless. He resisted her easily, while the amused pleasure in his eyes made her wonder if he really was a devil.
Desperate with frustration, she reached down, seeking him, finding him hard and ready. But he thwarted her, seizing her hand, then finding her other hand and drawing them both up above her head, holding them down on the pillow while she writhed helplessly.
‘Let me go,’ she said, outraged.
‘No, I feel safer like this. Who knows what damage you might do me if I let you go?’
‘I know what I’d like to do,’ she growled.
‘Don’t be in such a hurry,’ he murmured. ‘The best is yet to come.’
He freed her hands but before she could fight him he flipped her over onto her stomach, and began work again on the back of her neck. Here too she was especially sensitive and tremors of pleasure went through her, driving her previous annoyance away to a far place where she would think about it later. Maybe.
‘Grrr!’ she murmured.
‘Shall I stop?’
‘You do and you’re dead.’
He laughed, and his breath whispered along her spine, making her gasp. Now her whole back seemed defenceless so that every kiss was a soft attack for which she was completely unprepared. There was no protection against what he was doing to her, demonstrating his power to drive her wild with caresses that teased, hinted, promised, but never fulfilled.
Protest was useless. She was his as long as he could melt her in the heat of frustrated desire, and he knew exactly what he was doing, drifting slowly down her spine until he reached her waist. And there, like any good general who knew that the battle was going his way, he brought in reinforcements. Without removing his lips from her spine he increased the assault with his hands, moving them over the flare of her hips, her behind, tracing soft lines that criss-crossed each other.
She thought of those hands, so large and powerful. Who would have dreamed that the fingers could be so sensitive? They moved here and there, never anywhere for long, yet seeming to be everywhere at once.
‘Let me turn over,’ she demanded.
‘When I’m ready.’
She thumped the pillow.
He gave a rich laugh, observing lazily, ‘That’s been said to me before but never under these-precise- circumstances.’
She would have died rather than let him know how glad she was to hear this. Instead she peered at him over her shoulder, with narrowed eyes. He understood her message, grinned and pulled back. Seizing her chance, Helena writhed over onto her back, grabbed him fiercely and pulled him over her. Now he came easily, sliding between her parted legs and thrusting deep inside.
She drove back against him fiercely, feeling her desperation explode in the fulfilment she found at last. She’d wanted this until she was half out of her mind, and that, of course, was what he’d meant to happen.
He’d won again and she didn’t care,
Let him win. Let him have everything as long as she could hold him inside her and feel that he was hers. While that was true she cared about nothing else.
Helena had half expected to find herself alone when she awoke, thinking that Salvatore would retreat from intimacy as soon as he had what he wanted. Yet he surprised her by being there, sitting on the bed, his eyes fixed on her, a thoughtful look on his face.
True, he looked away quickly, as though caught off guard, but she’d seen his expression before he could hide it, and she reached up her hand to touch his arm, making him look back.
‘You’re awake early,’ he said. ‘It’s barely dawn.’
‘Well, I can always go back to sleep,’ she murmured in a sated, luxurious voice.
Smiling, he drew back the sheet, surveying her nakedness.
‘If I let you,’ he said.
The words might sound commanding but instinct told her otherwise. His desire for her was undiminished, just as she’d meant it to be. That meant the honours were even.
She saw him looking down on her with a half-smile and waited with beating heart for what he would say next.
But his cell-phone shrilled, smashing the atmosphere.
‘Why didn’t I think to turn it off?’ he groaned, but added at once, ‘Because you gave me something else to think of.’
They smiled at each other, but his smile faded as soon as he answered.
‘What? But how can they-? I made it perfectly clear-To hell with them, I can’t come now-’ Then he groaned. ‘All right, I suppose I’ll have to-’
Helena slid off the bed and searched for her clothes. The magic time was over, but she had known it, against all the odds, and it would come again. That was enough for now.
When the call ended Salvatore was scowling.
‘Damnation! I should have turned the phone off and left it off for days.’
‘Days? Were we going to be here for days?’ she enquired.
His scowl gave way to a wry smile. ‘Who knows what might have happened?’
‘Who knows indeed? But not now.’
