Page 35 of The Couple Behind the Headlines

‘Aren’t you expecting guaranteed great sex?’ He leaned over, opened the drawer in his bedside table and reached for a condom.

‘Promises, promises.’ Imogen smiled and lifted herself onto her elbows as he ripped open the packet and rolled the condom on, gritting his teeth against the almost unbearable surge of desire.

His heart thudded and he stared down at her. ‘I make no promises other than this.’

‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘And this is all I want. Truly. You have no idea how much.’

However much she wanted him it couldn’t be a patch on how much he wanted her. Way beyond the point of trying to work o

ut whether she meant what she said, or what the intensity of his need might mean, Jack shifted his weight on top of her, crushed his mouth to hers and, letting out a rough muffled groan, pushed inside her.

He’d meant to go slowly, to give Imogen time to adjust to him. But going slowly was impossible when she was moaning and clutching at his shoulders and tilting her hips, and he couldn’t stop himself thrusting forwards and up and burying himself as deep inside her as he could.

‘Oh, wow,’ she breathed, and the desperation in her voice did something strange to his chest.

Every inch of him wanted to pound into her, possess her and make her his. It was primitive and urgent and he had to grind his teeth to stop himself from giving in. With agonising care, he began to move, sliding in and out of her, slowly and rhythmically as if to prove to himself that he knew how to keep himself under control.

But that was a joke, wasn’t it? Because as he thrust in and out of her slippery heat he heard the quickening of her breathing through the mind-blowing desire rocketing through him, and he felt his control unravelling. As pure need took over, his movements became harder, faster, wilder, her moans, her writhing and her panting destroying the remnants of his control and urging him on.

And then, just when he thought he couldn’t take any more tension, couldn’t stand any more agonising ecstasy, she exploded in his arms, shaking and quivering and gasping his name, and as she rippled around him it was more than he could bear. With a harsh cry he drove into her one last time and hurtled into white-hot oblivion.

CHAPTER TEN

FOR several long minutes there wasn’t a sound in the room except the harsh, then softening, pants of ragged breathing.

Reeling from the intensity of his climax, Jack focused on the slowing of his thundering heart until it was back to normal, then shifted and took his weight on his elbows. He felt Imogen shudder and clamp around him as a series of tiny aftershocks rippled through her.

‘Well, you certainly deliver,’ she said, gazing up at him with a quivery kind of smile. She lifted her head to plant a sizzling kiss on his mouth before sighing with languid satisfaction and flopping back against the pillows.

So did she, he thought, gazing down into her eyes, a glazed soft dark brown, and for a moment losing himself in their depths. Aftershocks of a different kind were racing around his head, because that had quite simply been astonishing. She’d been astonishing, and if there was one thing he’d realised it was that they weren’t finished. Not by a long shot.

‘I aim to please,’ he murmured, rolling off her and sitting on the edge of the bed to deal with the condom.

‘Oh, you do. And I’m definitely going to have to rethink my stance on dessert,’ said Imogen. She manoeuvred herself to her knees, pressed herself against his back and ran her hands over the muscles of his shoulders.

‘Dessert?’ he echoed, so distracted by the soft warmth of her wrapped around him that he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

‘Remember when you first suggested dinner?’

Jack winced. ‘How could I ever forget?’

‘You also suggested skipping it and heading straight to dessert.’

‘So I did.’ He twisted around and pressed her back and down. ‘As I recall you weren’t particularly impressed.’

‘I was very much impressed.’ She lay there, her hair tumbling over his pillows as she clutched the sheet to her chest and grinned up at him. ‘But I was trying desperately hard not to be.’

He shook his head. ‘What a lot of time we’ve wasted.’

‘It’s only been three days.’

So it had. Hard to believe when their bodies moved together as if they’d known each other for years.

‘Still too long,’ he murmured, attributing that disconcerting thought to extraordinary sexual compatibility, and then burying it. ‘Just think,’ he added, running a hand over her shoulder and slipping it beneath the sheet, ‘we could have been doing this since Tuesday.’

She batted her eyelashes up at him, a seductive smile curving her mouth and her eyes turning so dark they were almost black. ‘Then why are we talking when we should be making up for lost time?’

As his body hardened Jack lowered his head. ‘Beats me,’ he muttered, and set about making up for lost time the best way he knew.

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