Page 8 of Secrets of Cinderella's Awakening

rms to him.

Her soft curves accommodated his hard planes and sculpted limbs as if they’d been designed for that purpose. Was it always like this? she wondered dizzily as he moved over her. So...easy? His lips began to explore her skin, his tongue sliding over her as if he had all the time in the world ahead of him. He licked her nipples and belly and then the delicate skin between her thighs and she shivered. His fingers moved to reacquaint themselves with the slickness between her legs, feathering her with that dextrous touch which made her feel as if she were drowning in sweetness. Should she be doing something back? she wondered. Actively participate by touching him, even though her clumsy movements might give away the fact that he was with a novice?

But while she was plucking up the courage to curl her fingers around his rocky shaft, he dissolved all rational thought by kissing her again.

‘You taste salty,’ he murmured, against her lips.

‘So do you,’ she murmured back—and something about that small interchange felt as intimate as anything else they’d done and filled her with a newfound confidence, so that when he reached for the condom which lay on the sand beside them, Marnie felt nothing but eager for what was about to happen. She watched as he stroked on the protection, his starlit expression a study in concentration until he had sheathed himself, his lazy smile of complicity emphasising the closeness of the moment.

‘Now, where was I?’

He was right here. Holding her, and stroking her, and Marnie was touching him back and he was almost purring with pleasure. His fingers were tangled in her hair and his body was pressing down on hers so that she could feel the soft sand at her back. There was a sudden rapid escalation of need and a subtle shift in tension and her thighs parted eagerly as if some unseen force was choreographing her movements. She held her breath as he made that first deep thrust inside her, her quick cry the only indication that pain had momentarily eclipsed the pleasure.

But Leon must have heard it. Or felt it. Or something. Because he stilled inside her, and when she looked up into his face all she could see was confusion glinting from his narrowed eyes.

‘Please don’t stop,’ she whispered, and afterwards she would be ashamed at having said that. For pleading with him, almost.

But his answer took her by surprise.

‘I can’t stop,’ he said, almost bitterly, and began to move again.

She’d thought that this unmistakable disconnect would be enough to shatter the magic so that she would feel nothing—but she had been wrong. Because Leon immediately adapted to what he’d just discovered by moving inside her at a completely changed pace. At first, his thrusts were performed with almost exaggerated care, until her newly awakened body had adjusted itself to the rocky width of him and to what was happening to her. He took it slow. So very slow. Until she had completely relaxed.

‘Oh, Leon,’ she cried out.

Until that sweet urgency had flared up inside her again, building into such a pitch until she could hold it back no longer. And this time when she came, his body bucked in perfect time with hers.

But this time he did not kiss her quiet.

* * *

Leon rolled off Marnie’s soft body with a reluctance which unsettled him even more than what he had just discovered. He wanted to feel anger and indignation. He wanted to accuse her of misrepresentation. Yet all he could think about was the moment when he’d entered her—recalling that fleeting sensation of resistance before being encased in her molten tightness. He had wanted a novel experience, he reminded himself bitterly. Well, this one had certainly ticked all the right boxes. Or the wrong ones. He gazed up into the star-punctured vault of the black sky and even though he told himself he wasn’t in the least bit interested in her motivations, he found himself biting out a single word.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’ she questioned, her voice soft and replete.

He rolled onto his side to look at her and instantly regretted the action, for her cushioned flesh looked utterly inviting and he could detect the musky perfume of her sex on the air. Leon swallowed, hovering on the brink of unbearable temptation. He wanted to touch those peaking breasts again. He wanted to part those silken folds and plunge into her with the erection which was already growing rigid against his belly.

‘You were a virgin!’ he accused.

Her eyes fluttered open. ‘So what?’

‘Are you kidding me? Virgins don’t just have random sex on beaches with men they’ve just met.’

‘You mean, they should save it for their wedding night?’ Her laugh was tinged with a cynicism he recognised as something regularly found in his own repertoire. She sat up, her hair falling over her breasts. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Leon—you can wipe that look of horror from your face. I’m not about to start demanding you provide me with a gold ring and white dress!’

‘Because I’d say the white dress would be redundant by now, wouldn’t you?’ he drawled.

‘And a marriage would be a lot harder to walk away from than this!’

He watched as she scrambled to her feet with an innate sexiness which made him want to pull her back down again, but she cursed as she put her weight onto her injured foot and, instinctively, he frowned. ‘Careful with that foot.’

‘Just leave my damned foot out of it, will you?’

He wished he could. He wished he’d never heard her stricken scream. He wished he were a million miles away from here, but he felt a responsibility towards her—one he didn’t want, but which he would honour. It was the least he could do in the circumstances. Rising to his feet, he reached for his jeans. ‘You’d better get dressed,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll take you back.’

‘That won’t be necessary!’ Speaking through gritted teeth, she stepped into her bikini bottoms and hauled them up over her hips. ‘I certainly don’t need your grudging charity. Don’t worry about it. l can make my own way back.’

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