The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights: 6 Book Romance Collection. Zara Stoneley
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with the cool metal of his belt buckle.
He stopped her, gently clasping her wrists.
He rolled her over onto her back until he was astride her. His mouth grazed her neck. “Figures of eight, you say?”
Oh yes!
He cupped her breasts. Rapture lapped at her center. He kissed her deeply and broke from her mouth to work his way down her throat and across her collarbone, plotting an unrelenting course towards her breasts. Every inch of her zinged with heat. Her nipples jutted as his mouth pleasured first one, then the other, slowly running his tongue over the hardened tips.
Ever so slowly he went lower, tracing the loop-de-loop of a figure eight around her midriff.
Her body arched into him as his mouth feathered her abdomen, moving down with the velvet caress of butterfly wings. A lava flow of hot sweetness pooled at her center. Her desire grew greater by the second, her body crying out for him, screaming for more. He went lower, proving her lacey thong was insubstantial when he ripped through it with his teeth, first the strip at her left hip, then the right. He flicked the torn black lace onto the floor before parting her thighs and going down on her, pressing his mouth to the soft fold and plunging gently with his tongue. Pops of sensation ricocheted through her like the first bright rockets of a firework display shooting into a night sky. She vocalized the ecstasy at her core with a guttural cry. The room spun. He teased her clitoris with skilled strokes, bringing her in waves to the pinnacle of desire until, with a final deft strike of his tongue, he drove her over the edge. The pleasure rush thrummed at her center, spreading out through her body like ripples from a pebble dropped in a pond.
She touched his shoulders, drew him back to her until his mouth met hers and she tasted her essence on his lips. “I want you. I need you. In me. Now.” The rasping command spelt out her want.
He palmed one breast. His mouth lowered and opened over the other, warm and wet. Half a day’s stubble growth grated against her skin, pushing her desperation to feel him inside her off the scale. She craved him like a drug. He persisted in keeping the jigsaw fit of hard meeting soft just outside her reach. His hand went between her legs. He played with her body, resisting her hot, moist sex, until she was so turned-on that she let out a cry of wanton need.
“I don’t want to hurt you. Or the baby.” He rasped out the words like a solemn vow.
“You won’t. You can’t.”
Urgently his hands undid his belt buckle. He littered his clothes on the floor and sheathed himself.
Finally – finally – he braced his body over hers, parted her thighs with his, and entered her, filling her up completely. He moved inside her with gentle strokes – strong, graceful. A living, breathing statue of muscular male beauty he yielded himself to her – purposeful, determined.
Totally in control.
She pulled him close against her, letting herself be absorbed by him, legs and arms entwined.
Sex with Alex, until now unimaginable, unattainable, and better than any craving she could dream up.
“You’re better than strawberries in champagne.”
“That’s good to know,” he groaned against her ear, breath hot. His mouth on hers silenced her before she could make any more food and alcohol-based comparisons. She wanted to tell him he was a magic potion, an elixir of love. Someone should bottle him.
His heavenly physique, holding her, moving inside her, fabulously in tune with the rhythm of her very being stopped her wandering mind in its tracks.
In that instant, perfectly joined, so that where he ended she began, and where he began she ended, their limbs locked in visceral harmony, she finally twigged that she’d been conning herself with the idea that she could pretend she had a super-crush on Jago to satisfy. She wasn’t having sex with a vampire. She’d surrendered herself body and soul to the only man she’d ever come close to falling in love with.
What if he’s The One?
The thought was much too heavy to bear. Feverishly her lips found his and she fought to lose herself in his kiss.
A fusion of sensation rocked both their bodies. Together, in perfect sync, they tipped each other into a dynamite orgasm. Locked together in release, despite her determination to hold on to nothing but the moment, an overwhelming tide of emotion engulfed her.
Afterwards, she lay on her back and stared up into the dark space, where she knew somewhere there was a ceiling. Pah. She aimed a cynical snarl at herself. So we came together with intuitively good timing. So what?
That didn’t make Alex The One. There was no such thing.
She rolled onto one side, her back to him. He ran the pads of his fingers lazily over her skin, drawing large loopy eights. She turned back to face him. He drew her close. And they made love again.
Much later Alex’s voice was the first to break the sated silence.
“Magenta,” he drawled. Her heart fluttered. “It’s official. I’m beaten. You’ve worn me out.” She laughed, licked her finger and marked up a point scored in the air. “What is it with you?”
“I’ll add you as a notch on my bedpost when I get home.” Her bravado was completely fake, but convincing enough for him to raise an eyebrow and quiz her.
“Are there many of those notches on your bedpost, Magenta?” The way he rumbled out her name made her heart quiver.
“No,” she answered truthfully. “Not really.” If there were, she thought ruefully, she wouldn’t have needed to go to the trouble of making a baby on her own. Admittedly, she’d been avoiding rejection. In any case, there’d been no one who’d made love to her like Alex just had. Certainly not Marcus. He’d been low on passion – at least where she was concerned. She’d been duped into believing that she was loved and safe and cared for when she’d been none of those things.
He gathered her onto his chest and she lay for a long time, one cheek flat against his skin, listening to the thud of his beating heart. She traced a lazy figure of eight on one smooth pec. “Don’t get big-headed. I mean it was great and all, but I think it’s more down to loopy pregnancy hormones than anything else.”
His face dropped in mock displeasure. “Ouch. And there was me thinking my technique might have improved over the years.”
She placed a kiss just below his collarbone and raised herself on one elbow to look him in the eyes. Their blue depths remained ever-cool. “It has,” she confirmed. “It so-o has.” She lowered her head and tracked her way over his body, softly moving her lips across his abdomen, following the line of dusky hair that arrowed downwards. “And so has mine,” she murmured as she sensed his officially done-in erection surge back into life.
She acknowledged with pure delight the low, deep groan of pleasure that escaped from his throat in that moment.
Much later, when the grey dawn light intruded through a chink in the curtains, Alex lay propped on one elbow, wide awake, watching Maggie sleep, and listening to her breathe. Earlier, when he’d held her close, joined so inextricably that his body had melded with hers, he’d felt her heart beating and been consumed by a sense of rightness.
And wrongness – for there wasn’t just one beating heart in her body. There were two. A mire of emotion, from which he couldn’t begin to extricate himself, swamped him. He admired her determination to have a family of her own. But could he get past the fact that he’d been gutted when he’d seen the positive test result? That was everything to do with how he felt about himself, and nothing to do with his feelings for Maggie.
She’d been a spectacular lover; fiery, sexy, responsive. Lying beside him she looked pale and beautiful in the dawn light. What if he could stay in her life and take care of her? There was no point in asking that question. It couldn’t happen. She’d misunderstood when he said that he didn’t want to hurt her or the baby. He knew enough biology to