Shadows played across Tess’s closed eyelids as the sounds of the party faded completely from her hearing. Then there was the sound of a door closing behind them. But still he didn’t lift his mouth from hers and she didn’t open her eyes.
Awash with sensation, her sensory receptors were inundated with pleasure.
The solid feel of a bed beneath her told her he had brought her into a guest room. The feel of his more than solid body on top of hers told her he intended to stay. Her legs instinctively parted, making room for him against her most sensitive flesh. Wearing only their swimsuits, masculine hair covered limbs slid against feminine softness. The sensitive flesh of her inner thighs thrilled to the press of hard, sculpted muscles.
The hands she’d so desperately wanted to touch her were all over her skin, leaving a trail of hot desire in their wake.
She moaned and arched up toward him, pressing her womanhood against his hardness. She trembled. Intimate in a way she could not have imagined, though he was not inside her, she felt possessed.
Swollen and hotly lubricated tissues ached to be appeased with a more direct caress.
His mouth broke from hers to trail hot, openmouthed kisses down her neck and across the skin exposed above the line of her tankini top. “You are no shrimp, Tess” he said, referring to her comment earlier. “You are perfect.” He pressed his body into hers, sending further sensation sweeping through the core of her. “We are perfect together.”
She was breathing too hard to reply, her body on fire for more of his touch, her mind an inferno of erotic thoughts.
“Admit it, Tess. I do not overwhelm you. I excite you.” He said.
Did he need the words? Wasn’t her body’s response enough for him to see that she’d been spouting off earlier? He rocked into her in an exciting imitation of the mating act.
She arched her pelvis, every sliding contact between his hardness and her sensitized nerve endings sending jolt after jolt of pleasure zinging through her.
He lifted away from her, withdrawing his body from the direct contact she craved.
She gasped, trying to reconnect with his body, but strong hands held her to the bed.
“You have this with no other man. Your body wants me. Say it.” He said possessively.
“Yes,” she practically screamed. “You’re perfect for me.”
It wasn’t such an admission. He’d already said she was the perfect size for him, but still, she felt she’d given something away. Admitted to a need that made her vulnerable to him.
Her words had a profound impact on his self-control and without really knowing how it happened, she lost her bikini. He disposed of his black shorts. Then it really was his naked flesh moving against hers.
She cried out with the joy of it and then screamed when his mouth fit itself over one turgid nipple. He suckled and she flew apart, her body straining for a release it had never known.
“Please, Dash. I can’t stand this.” She said. She felt like she was going to die, so rapid was her heartbeat, so shallow her breathing. Her muscles locked in painful rigidity as she strained toward him and the pleasure his touches promised.
His hand fondled her intimately, as he had that night in Athens. “You belong to me, Tess.” He said, not understanding how he could want her to be his so badly, especially as he was blackmailed into this.
She stared up at him through vision hazed by passion. “Yes. But it goes both ways,” she managed to pant, needing him to know this was not a one-way street.
He growled his approval as he stroked her in a tortuous pattern against her pleasure spot. Within seconds she was shuddering under him in a fulfillment that both elated and terrified her. Her body truly did not belong to her in that space of time. He owned it with the gratification he gave her, the emotions that pleasure evoked in her.
“Oh Dash!” she moaned.
He reared up above her, his dark eyes burning with triumph and unslaked desire. Aligning his erect flesh with her pulsing wetness, his jaw went rigid with tension. “I could take you now. Tess! I want to take you now.” He said.
“Yes.” Oh, yes. Now. She wanted to receive him, to take him as primitively as his eyes told her he wanted it to be.
“But I won’t.” His voice was guttural with feeling, his face tight with strain and sweat beading his temple.
“You won’t?” she asked stupidly, finding his denial incomprehensible.
He was literally on the verge of joining their bodies. How could he stop now?
“I do not seduce virgins.” His words came out from between gritted teeth, each one a bullet of strained sound.
“But I want you, Dash.”
His forehead dropped against hers, the heat emanating from him baking in its intensity. “I want you also, Tess, but in a marriage bed.” He said.
Her eyes were squeezed shut, her body aching for his possession. “What are you saying?” she asked.
“Agree to marry me, Tess, or go home to your father. I cannot stand this torment of the body any longer.” He shivered above her, the tip of his shaft caressing sensitized and swollen flesh.
Then he threw himself on his back away from her, the evidence of his arousal testimony to his words. The fierce grip of his fingers on the bedspread proof of just how close to the edge of control he was.
But it was marriage or nothing. No. Not nothing. Not by a long stretch. He’d fulfilled her. Taken the edge off of her need, giving her the first sexual release of her life, but without marriage, he would take nothing for himself and would not give himself completely.
“Isn’t it the woman who is supposed to demand marriage?” she asked. It wasn’t just a weak attempt at humor. It was also an expression of how bewildering she found her current situation.
He didn’t answer.
She supposed he thought he’d said it all.
Maybe he had. She loved him. So much. She wanted him almost as much as she loved him. He wanted her too. She looked at his still erect flesh. A lot. He wanted her a lot.
He liked her too, had respected her enough to pursue her in the traditional way.
The question now was, was liking, respect and desire enough?