her cheek, to cup her chin. His deep blue eyes, filled with longing and need, searched the depths of hers. She met his gaze, her eyes wide with acquiescence and embraced the inevitable.
The soft light from the bedside table illuminating the planes of his strong face was replaced by the harsh night lights of the city flashing dramatically across his high cheekbones and the firm chin as the cab hurtled them back to David’s apartment.
He held her as if afraid she might spring from him at any moment, but Amanda clung to Marc just as tenaciously. Neither of them spoke as the yellow streak surged its way through the dark pre-dawn cityscape.
Not once did she question her decision.
She only knew what she was about to do was going to change the course of her life.
Chapter 11
AMANDA waited as Marc forced a chair back against the doorknob and then wedged the coffee table against the chair, barricading them safely in the apartment.
He turned, bent his powerful body and scooped her into his arms. Standing in the middle of the wrecked room, legs wide, feet solidly planted, Amanda clung to his neck, her acquiescent body curled against his beating heart.
She had dreamed of this moment, of being held in his strong embrace, protected from all harm, ready to enter into his life, to be a part of him.
And the dreams were feeble compared to the reality of his flesh and blood, hot with desire, trembling with the same anticipation that coursed through her throbbing veins and filled her being with his presence.
Even yet, neither spoke. There was no way Amanda could articulate how her body and her soul felt at this moment. How it seemed that all the actions of her life had led to this particular place and this particular time with this particular man.
She was Egyptian, French, ancient Greek, all women to all the men that this man holding her tight had created in his art poses, and by creating had made her a part of his imagination and his reality.
Marc carried her into the bedroom and placed her gently on the bed. He stepped back to admire his treasure. Amanda cringed. He was still all men, but she was certainly not all women, nor even one desirable one at that moment. Her dark hair plastered to her head, the disheveled locks had been kept in place by a shove here, a quick tuck there.
Her lightweight cotton shirt stuck to her damp skin. Her bra felt constricting and tight, shoving her in all the wrong places, making her feel crumpled and misshapen.
He had showered. He had thrown on fresh clothes. He looked like something out of the Hampton’s issue of Gentleman’s Quarterly. While she felt like…
His gray-blue eyes shone in the early morning light as he looked down at her, devouring her. Dawn was breaking, sending splinters of gold slipping through the shuttered windows and rebounding fiery in the deep recesses of his eyes. His determined jaw glowed. She imagined him naked, moist and shining in full, warm sunlight. He began to unbutton his shirt.
“No!” The sound of Amanda’s voice shocked them both. His fingers froze at the V that had opened revealing his breastbone, the center of his smooth, sculpted chest. She could hear the pounding of his heart in the silence that followed her cry.
The bed rattled as she scrambled upright to kneel and reach for him. She gently pushed his hands aside and began to unfasten the buttons herself. His eyes lowered to follow her actions, impossibly long lashes shadowing his high cheekbones. His lips curled luxuriously, sinfully. He allowed her to undress him.
She tossed the shirt aside and lay her cheek against his naked chest, feeling the blood rushing through her warming face heated to an even greater incandescence by the heat rising from him. Her hands moved over his upper body, imprinting the rise and fall of his musculature into her exploring palms.
He gasped with pleasure, his chest swelling quickly with the intake of breath, and she was startled at the force that erupted under her cheek.
The thought skittered through her brain like a flash of summer lightning far in the distance. Could she possibly contain this primal energy that she was about to unleash, that she was desperate to allow to take full possession of her being? The rumble of distant thunder from the splintering thought rolled nearer and nearer and she knew the answer as well as she knew the forces of nature.
Her head rolled over on his chest, her hair veiling the landscape of his body. She closed her lips over the nub, flicking her tongue quickly over the tiny prong.
With a roar of unleashed pleasure, Marc threw her into the bed. He was everywhere at once, covering her with kisses, his hands tugging at her shirt, her shoes, her jeans, even as he struggled out of the rest of his own clothes.
He growled and muttered and breathed fire as his eyes gorged themselves with each uncovered portion of her body. A quick inspection, a stroke, a kiss, the sweeping of his searing eyes over his new acquisition and he hurried on, flinging clothes away from them until they both were naked, she clutching at the disheveled sheets underneath her as she lay beneath him, he hovering over her, his rampant erection a bolt of reality that nailed Amanda to this electrifying moment in time.
He rolled on the condom proudly, his eyes glinting, his lip curled as he purposefully settled the ring at the base of his powerful stalk of manhood.
This was no ancient Greek focused on some distant goal, no stricken Rodin sculpture bearing the weight of the world. This was here, now: Marc Parkerson and Amanda Catherine Emerson. Every inch of her was aware of his immediate, radiating presence.
He knelt over her, on one knee, anxious, his mouth slack with awe as he stroked her, testing the reality of her flesh. His hands sculpted the roundness of her breasts and hovered above her nipples, swelling her chest with tantalizing anticipation. He stroked the flat plane of her abdomen, drilling teasingly into her bellybutton as she giggled before he excitedly progressed, shaping the roundness of her lower belly. He straddled her legs, his tensed, bulging thighs on each side, to stroke both hands down her body, circling the outside roundness and smoothing gently up her inner thighs toward her center.
Amanda flowed with moistness. Streams of electrified nerve endings streaked in from her extremities to gather in her middle like a shaft of pure absorbing radiance. The cool morning light illuminating the bedroom warmed with each passing second as brighter and brighter streaks of spring sunshine forced themselves into the room, seeking out Marc’s body, highlighting his shape, making his musculature glow. Her eyes danced over him. A bulging vein, a slight discoloration of skin, a mole, the way his biceps flowed into the pit of his arm before blooming into the powerful plateau of his chest. She categorized the man’s flesh, reveled in his singularity. He was Marc… alone.
He dropped his head and the center of Amanda’s being exploded. Heat flooded into heat. She gasped and writhed. She had never experienced such delicate torture.
His hands cupped her breasts, pressing urgently into the soft flesh as she clawed at his hair and he brought her to the peak of anticipation, until her nails dug into his shoulders and dragged him higher on her trembling torso, the motion pleading for his body to enter hers.
His rough cheek pressed against hers. His chest flattened her breasts, his hips moved awkwardly, seeking. She reached to guide him and suddenly felt a plunging into the center of her being that reached into depths that she had never known before.
He was a revelation inside her. Exploring, delighting, searching, finding. Animal sounds of pure rapture rumbled through him. Elemental instincts. She pulled him into her, melding their bodies, his powerful buttocks alive with energy under her kneading fingers.
Choices of what to enjoy most crackled chaotically through her until Amanda was caught up in the rhythm of his thrusts, her shallow breaths dancing over their coupled bodies, a counterpart to the deep resonance of his near
