to what he’s going to do to me any moment now. When he’s finished kissing me, his hands stray lower and I thrust my hips forward as his cock hardens between my thighs. He lifts my hips up and steers me over his erection.
‘Why don’t you take a seat?’ He lowers me down on to him without any more warning, forcing me to take the whole length in one fell swoop. I whimper a little at being speared with so little preparation but then my muscles ease to accommodate him and he thickens even more inside me.
‘Good?’
‘Uh-huh.’ I almost pass out with pleasure.
He smiles at me. ‘I aim to please.’
‘No …’ I pant. ‘You don’t.’
‘In this case, I do.’
I have to support myself by gripping his thighs while he circles his hips, stretching my inner muscles to the limit. My fingers dig into his thighs in discomfort and pleasure. He pushes upwards, lifts me so I’m sliding up and down his cock, wetter by the second, thrilling at the full, tight feeling of having him inside me.
Our eyes are intent on each other and his voice is hoarse. ‘Fuck, but this is so good. You drive me insane.’
‘I … do … try.’
He drives up hard, lifting me higher. The thrusts are harder and faster now and I have to grip his legs tight to hang on. The friction of his erection stokes my own climax and I close my eyes as he drives into me. When his muscles go rigid I’m held almost in mid-air, every muscle taut, taken to my limit in every way. I literally ache with desire and the nerve endings have me almost delirious. Just as he’s coming down, my own orgasm tears through me while he’s still rigid inside me.
Afterwards, we lie, naked, glistening with oil, in a tangle of bedsheets and towels, the world a million miles away. I try to stay awake, and relive the intimacy we shared earlier today and tonight, but after the sex and the emotion of the past few days, my hold on consciousness is slipping …
‘
No
!
’
I awake with a jolt that feels like I just avoided being run down by a truck.
Next to me, Alexander is face up, his eyes screwedshut, murmuring random words. ‘Sorry … not my fault … blame me.’
I’ve seen him in the grip of these nightmares before but the anguish etched on his features still shocks me. There’s such intensity in the way he speaks and looks, it makes the blood chill in my veins.
I also don’t know how to stop the agony he’s clearly going through. I slide out of my side of the bed and stand a few feet away from him, because he’s started to thrash at the covers and I don’t want to be in the path of his arm swinging down. It’s obvious he feels guilty about something, but whether it’s the accident that killed his mother or the bad feeling between him and his father I don’t know. If I even mention the nightmares when he’s awake, he slams me down.
I hug my body while he cries out again.
‘I didn’t mean it!’
Are those footsteps outside in the corridor? Have Robert and Helen heard him? I don’t think that’s possible because their flat is at the other end of Falconbury and it has to be the middle of the night.
I exhale, slowing my breathing, because Alexander seems to have slipped back to sleep, although his lips still move in a silent, desperate plea. I tiptoe closer to the nightstand by his side of the bed and pick up his watch, an old-fashioned, wind-up piece. Its hands tell me it’s three-fifteen and I know it to be accurate to the second. I wonder if it was passed down to Alexander by a grandfather or a gift from his father.
‘Jesus!’
Alexander lashes out, and his eyes are open. He has my wrist in his fingers with a grip like iron.
‘Alexander. Let go, you’re hurting me.’
‘It wasn’t my fault. I’m sorry.’
My wrist feels like it’s in a vice and the way he’s looking through me, not at me, I know he’s not conscious.
I try to wrest my hand from his but his grip tightens.
‘Shh,’ I whisper, my pulse racing and my wrist burning.
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