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The throb of the boat’s engine beneath her feet seemed to echo the thrumming of her heart as Joshua threw off the rest of his clothes with an enchanting, almost boyish eagerness. But there was nothing boyish about him when he pulled her back into his arms.
The wide double bunk was built into one corner of the cabin on a pedestal of drawers, its smooth, satiny, dark blue cover glowing under the strip of lights concealed in the bottom row of bookshelves on the wall above the bed, but when Joshua sat down on the edge and tried to draw her down on top of him, Regan resisted.
She sank to her knees between his legs, onto the thick, soft carpet, running her hands up the strong column of his thighs, gliding her thumbs into the sensitive patches of hairless skin on either side of his groin.
When she bent her head, he stilled, his hands cupping her shoulders. ‘Regan—’
Her eyes lifted to his. ‘I want to make love to you.’ And, as his gaze moved hungrily down over her nude, submissive pose she reminded him huskily, ‘The way you did to me…’
His nostrils flared as she closed her mouth over him and proceeded to pleasure him to the brink of madness with her soft tongue and throaty little sounds of seductive enjoyment. His back stiffened, the tendons in his neck cording as he arched his throat and gritted his teeth, fighting the approaching explosion in order to increase the deliciously excruciating torment of unsatisfied desire. He plunged his hands into her hair, guiding her beautifully eager mouth, and when he could bear it no more his iron muscles knotted and convulsed, and a harsh, guttural cry of groaning completion was torn from his heaving chest.
Only then did she allow him to pull her beside him on the rumpled cover and cuddle her up to his naked length.
‘You’re the incredibly generous lover…’ he murmured, propping himself up on one elbow so that he might gauge her reaction to his languorous caresses. ‘For all you know you might have just ruined your chances of being thoroughly bedded…’
She gave a small gurgle of sultry delight. ‘I doubt it, if your previous performances are anything to go by…’ Her breath ended on a little hiccup as his touch feathered dangerously low on her concave belly.
‘Your husband didn’t satisfy you in bed, did he?’ He traced his way back up to her aroused breasts and bent over to softly moisten a rosy nipple.
She shivered. ‘I thought he did…’ she said huskily, ‘…until you…Then I knew. With him it never felt—I didn’t—I never…’
His eyes were moon-silver as he combed her hair across the pillow. ‘You never had an orgasm…’ She blushed at his tone of gloating satisfaction and his soft laugh was tinged with triumphant pride. ‘You were so delightfully frantic that first time—as if you didn’t quite realise what was happening to you—but afterwards you were wildly uninhibited, and so eager to experiment I could hardly fail to oblige…’
He nuzzled at her mouth, deliberately abrading her cheeks with his soft whiskers, kissing her, stroking her until she was moving ceaselessly, restlessly, rubbing herself against him, becoming increasingly excited as she felt him hardening against her belly, and then he was reaching for her, rolling her under him.
‘Miracle-worker…’ he growled sexily as he pushed her thighs apart, settling himself firmly against the juncture of her body.
She felt the blunt force of him testing her readiness and suddenly stiffened. ‘Are you—? Joshua, you’re not wearing any protection—’
He froze and looked down at himself, stunned, then into the yearning violet eyes that were suddenly drenched with unexpressed sorrow.
‘It isn’t safe,’ she told him shakily. ‘I haven’t used the pill since Michael died. He—he never wanted me to have his baby,’ she whispered. She couldn’t stop the words spilling out: how Cindy had confessed that Michael had thought her too brash, too poorly educated, too overtly sexy with her bleached hair and big breasts, to be groomed into a proper corporate wife, whereas Regan had been tailor-made for his ambitions. How, to please Michael, Regan had continued with her law studies, even when she’d realised she wasn’t cut out to be a lawyer; how she’d increased the hours of her part-time job in order to help them afford the big, up-market house in a swanky suburb that he had insisted was essential to his image; how she had acted as his hostess whenever he’d wanted to show off his stable home life, and nobly respected his long hours of work and frequent absences from home.
‘But whatever I did to please him, it never seemed to be enough. And I couldn’t even make him want our child,’ she said bleakly. ‘He let her get pregnant, but he stood over me every morning until I’d taken my pill, to make sure I couldn’t conceive…’
‘Ah, Regan…’ He drank from her trembling lips and rolled his forehead against hers. ‘He was a worthless cheat. Controlling your fertility was just another way for him to exert his domination over a wife whom he knew was his moral and intellectual superior. Don’t be sad—be glad that your babies won’t carry his genes.’ He shaped her breast and stroked the tender peak. ‘One day you’ll suckle a baby at your breast, and I know you’ll make a wonderful mother…’
But not with him…
He rolled off the bed and was back again before she could recover from his shattering words, donning the protection with deft movements that ensured she had little time to think before he was gathering her up again and moving smoothly between her thighs.
Sensing that only passion could banish her lingering tristess, he braced himself over her on locked arms and plunged inside her, each powerful, explosive thrust of his thighs and buttocks forcing her further up the bed. His pace didn’t falter, the added tension in her tautly straining torso and her spreadeagled limbs exciting him to even more reckless heights. In the air-conditioned coolness the sweat glinted on his chest, forming droplets that pearled in the thick mat of hair and trickled down his rippling belly to add to the steamy moisture that slicked their thighs where their bodies met.
His face was hard and glazed, his eyes locked with hers, all his attention focused on her approaching climax as she jerked and shuddered under his rampant assault, uttering heated little whimpers and moans of encouragement that fed his lust to see her come totally apart before his own orgasm destroyed the last of his control.
Regan’s vision began to fade around the edges, her mind disengaging as her senses drastically overloaded, unable to process the escalating bombardment of pleasure. Her eyes purpled as she rushed towards the abyss of ecstasy, exulting in Joshua’s fiercely unrelenting possession, thrilling to the intrusion of his hard body, the hugeness of him filling her, loving her to the hilt, and the incredible feeling of swelling tightness that grew and grew until it exploded and she screamed with the agony of blissful release.
Then Joshua was wrenching and groaning and pouring himself into her, and their bodies eased into the sweet aftermath of mutual fulfilment that to Regan felt like the settling of her soul, like coming home…
She rolled over onto her side at the edge of the bed, facing away from him, trying to control the unruly emotions that threatened to spill out of her mouth. She stared, dry-eyed, across the cabin, trying to close herself off from the press of feelings, reaching inwards for the courage to accept what she couldn’t change. Joshua wouldn’t want tears and tantrums—he probably got enough of those from Carolyn. He would want her to be cool and sophisticated. He might even, God forbid, want them to remain friends…
‘I’m sorry…’ She heard the bittersweet remorse in his voice as she felt a finger slowly trace the bony centre line of her back from her nape to the hollow at the base of her spine.
‘I’m not!’ She widened her eyes fiercely, refusing to regret a moment of her glorious physical outpouring of love.
‘No, not for what we’ve just done…’ His finger stroked up again. ‘But for the fact that I can’t offer you any more than this…’ She felt his lips against the wing of her should-erblade. ‘If I were a different sort of man and you were a different sort of woman we could remain lovers, but we both have too much pride and self-respect to sacrifice honour to a self-serving lie…’
She remembered that he had quoted her Shakespeare about her being a pearl, and now another quotation floated into her mind that summed up her understanding of Joshua Wade…‘Mine honour is my life; both grow in one; Take honour from me, and my life is done.’ She could not love him half so much if he were not a man of such unflinching principle.
