Page 13 of His Best Mistake

“What things?”

“Good things.”

He lifted a hand and touched her cheek and it felt like a shower of sparks was detonating beneath her skin. She caught her breath, utterly at a loss to understand how a mere touch could have that effect, but then he ran his fingers down her face, spread them over the delicate skin of her throat, lingering a while over the wildly fluttering pulse at the base of her neck before sliding them back to her nape and drawing her forwards until their bodies were touching lightly. It was taking all of her willpower not to press more closely.

“Impossible,” she breathed, the protest fatalistically weak.

“Not impossible.”

“Only this afternoon you thought I was the Whore of Babylon.”

“I’ve apologised for that.”

“Your sister.”

“Not here.”

“Why me?”

“God knows. Why me?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Just once, Stella,” he murmured, drawing closer, turning her slightly and pressing her a bit more tightly against him, so she could feel every rock-hard inch of him. This time she didn’t even try to resist because her willpower – pathetic lump of uselessness that it was – appeared to have been eroded by the need and longing now swirling through her. “Just once.”

Just once?

She stared up at his mouth, so tantalisingly close, and she wanted to kiss him with a hunger that took her breath away. She was beginning to burn up. Her body felt like it was on fire. Her veins seemed to be oozing with molasses, the desire was so thick and sluggish and hot.

She could handle just once, surely. So she didn’t normally do one-night stands. Her self-esteem, which had been battered by everything that had happened lately, would certainly thank her for it. And she hated the knowledge that the last man she’d slept with was a lousy, lying, toerag who hadn’t even been that good in bed. How much better would it be to have a scorching encounter – and it would be scorching, she just knew it – with a seriously hot man to remember?

Her heart hammered. Heat pooled between her legs and she was slowly disintegrating with it. Up against a cascade of dangerous and exciting possibilities, doubt and confusion fled along with every drop of reason she possessed. Dizzy with lust, helpless to resist, Stella laid a hand on his chest and felt the leap of his heart beneath her palm. She murmured, “All right then, just once,” and it was like she’d flicked a switch.

In an instant the slow, smouldering burn of Jack’s gaze ignited and she gasped as he hauled her into his arms properly and slammed his mouth to hers. Their tongues touched, then tangled, and fire surged through her. Sparks shot the length of her body, making her shiver all over and any lucidity she may have been trying to cling to evaporated.

With the hand he’d clamped to the back of her neck he angled her head to deepen the kiss and she couldn’t help moaning. This was everything she’d hoped it would be, everything she’d longed for. Hot and demanding and, oh yes, he definitely knew what he was doing. The heat of him, the scent of him… She was melting. Going dizzy. Her legs turned to jelly and if he hadn’t been holding her she would have crumpled to the floor.

Just in case for some mad reason he decided to let her go, Stella whipped her arms round his neck and used his strength to press herself closer and kiss him harder. In response he held her tighter, and she could feel the stiff thick length of him pushing against her abdomen. It made her want to have him inside her, desperately, urgently, so she shifted her hips in invitation and Jack groaned.

He released her suddenly, but she didn’t have time to miss him because he was pushing her robe off with one hand and deftly undoing the buttons of her pyjama top with the other, his breathing as harsh and ragged as hers, and then somehow that was off too and now he was kissing her again only this time his hands were on the bare skin of her back and her naked, achingly sensitive breasts were pressed against his hair-roughened chest, and the friction was almost too much to bear.

She moaned deep in her throat, and he slid his hands down her back, over her bottom, wrapping them round the backs of her thighs and lifting her. Stella locked her ankles at the base of his spine, wriggling instinctively and frantically until his erection was pressing against just the right spot, at which point he broke off kissing her to growl a low, urgent ‘Fuck’, and then he was kicking the fallen clothes out of his way and carrying her across the floor to the worktop, away from the flickering light and into the shadows, with a strength that she would have admired had she been able to think straight. But she couldn’t because every step he took made her rub against him in the most intoxicating way, which stoked her desire and devastated what little remained of her control.

He deposited her on the counter and pushed her back. He thrust his hands beneath the waistband of her pyjama bottoms and as Stella lifted her hips he shoved them down and off. He looked at her for one long hot searing moment that sent her temperature soaring, then stepped back and briefly disappeared before returning to her, shedding his shorts and rolling on the condom he’d just retrieved from who knew where. And then he was parting her knees and moving in and bending over her, his eyes dark and wild, a muscle hammering in his jaw.

The strength of him, the heat and the scent of him hit every one of her senses; it was so thrilling, so exciting, she actually whimpered. Jack planted his hands on the counter either side of her head, and laid waste to her mouth again until she was shivering and moaning with need. As he dragged his mouth along her jaw, dropping hot kisses as he went until he reached the sensitive spot by her ear, he twisted slightly and a soft rush of air hit her exposed, feverish skin; but it provided no relief because a second later he put his hand on her shoulder and then moved it down, setting off little explosions beneath her skin until he reached her breast, where he stopped and cupped it.

He brushed his thumb over her nipple and she gasped at the strength of the arrows of heat that shot straight to the centre of her. He did it again and again and she bit her lip to stop herself from crying out, to prove to herself that she did have at least a shred of control over this, but then, suddenly, his mouth was there, hot and demanding on her swollen breast and aching nipple and she gave up pretending. Her self-control was history.

And she might as well go with it, she thought dazedly as he tugged gently with his teeth and she practically arched off the counter. She was in the hands of a master. She might never experience this kind of pleasure again.

As Jack continued to torment her breasts she thrust her fingers in his hair to hold him where she wanted him, but he wasn’t having any of it. Shifting, he took her wrists and pinned them above her head. He transferred them to one hand and the other he placed on the exposed skin of her abdomen, sliding it down, lower and lower and then, oh God, he reached the spot where she was hot and aching and desperate for his touch. She closed her eyes again, giving herself up to it, squirming and panting with need, and then finally, finally, his fingers were parting her and entering her slick heat.

She sighed in ecstasy as he stroked his fingers in and out of her relentlessly, sometimes gently and slowly, sometimes hard and fast, his thumb circling her clitoris with inexorable skill. The way he seemed to be able to read her body, her needs, was mind-blowing, and already she could feel the hot delicious tension building deep inside her. Already her mind was spinning off into God knew where and her breathing was turning all shallow and ragged and he wasn’t letting up. He was pushing harder and deeper, and then the swell of pleasure was rushing towards her, fast and unstoppable, and suddenly she was coming so hard she thought she might splinter apart.

“Oh God,” was all she could breathe over and over again as pleasure exploded inside her and lights flashed behind her eyelids.

Lost in a kaleidoscopic whirlpool of sensation Stella was only dimly aware of Jack pulling his fingers out of her, of him moving, but then he was thrusting into her, stretching her and filling her and pulsating deep inside her so deliciously she cried out against his mouth as it started all over again.

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