tongues explore, the kiss thrills down me; he is kissing me harder and better than I have ever been kissed; I can feel
spikes of tingling excitement rippling through me.
Then he pulls back for a moment, and I can see his long-lashed and narrowed blue eyes
glittering in the lamplight—so close to mine. I can smell his bodywash and the fine
topnote of cologne, and sweet summer sweat, and it is him, him, him.
“I’m sorry, X . . .” he says. “Just can’t help it. What you do to me—”
“Again.”
This time I grab him and now we are a drunken couple, holding on to each other on a divine dance floor,
on a doomed and pitching cruise ship, stumbling slightly backward, almost laughing,
utterly serious, kissing fiercely. His lips are hard on mine again, and this time
his firm male hands slip desirously down my back.
I am in a black summer dress and the cotton is thin. Marc is grasping my behind, hard
and ardent, clenching me there as his other hand cups my neck, and we kiss, thirstily,
again, and again. Then his hand slips around my waist, like a dance partner, swirling
me, swinging me on his strength, then coming back and nuzzling my warm neck with his
warmer lips. And murmuring . . .
“You smell of strawberries, X, wine and strawberries.”
He releases me, still holding my waist, but lacing my white fingers with his darker
ones. I sense a surge of something deeper than sex, but also sex, very much sex.
“Upstairs,” he says. “ Now .”
He chooses. I want to be chosen. My hands are trembling, my knees are trembling as
I fumble at the door, then at last it swings open and he chases me up the stairs,
half laughing, half growling, like some fine animal coming for me, hunting me down,
racing up the stairs, and reaching for my giggles. But I disappear into the apartment,
and for a second I am alone, but then I shriek with fear—only slightly faked—as he
lunges at me desirously once again, chasing me into the kitchen. Then we are standing
by the fridge and he is pulling off his shirt.
The kitchen is half dark. The only light is from the street lamps and the Mediterranean
moon, slanting silvery whiteness through the window.
His shirt is off, and the moonlight traces, like a black-and-white photographer, the
muscles of his chest and his stomach, the hard yet tender rib cage, the taut stomach.
His chest is broader than I expected, the musculature a little more defined, even.
He is taller and stronger than I am and I experience a tiny, delicate frisson of fear,
mixed with abject want, wanting of him, as he flings his shirt to the floor and stalks closer.
We kiss again, and once more. I am reaching up on tiptoes to kiss his soft lips, once,
then twice, delicate and fluttering, entirely sensuous. My tongue is slipping in and
out of his lips. What am I doing?
“Enough, X—the bed.”
Swiftly and easily, he picks me up, like a groom lifting his bride over a threshold.
Then he carries me into the bedroom and throws me onto the bed, and the bed slats
creak like they are going to break. And I really don’t give a damn .
Marc Roscarrick looms over me, bare-chested—a tall, dark shadow high above.
“Stay like that,” he says. “Just like that.”
I am lying on the bed, arms flung back—but I can’t stay like this; I want him too
much, so I am fiercely kicking off my sandals, and when I am barefoot he grabs my
slender ankle and kisses my white instep, kissing me there with little nibbles of
desire. The sensation is divine. It sends the sparks of hot excitement racing through
me yet again. But then he drops my ankle, and he pauses for an unbearable moment,
an intoxicating moment, and he looks at me in the half-light.
“Do you want me to wear something?”
The moment dances into stillness. Well, do I? Do I want him to wear a condom?
For God’s sake, NO. I don’t want him to wear anything , I want him naked, naked as me, and naked inside me.
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