CHAPTER FOUR

      IN AND OUT. In and out. I breathe slowly, trying to calm my racing pulse, my raging nervous system, but still my body is part electrical current, part hurricane.

      ‘Okay,’ I murmur softly, more to myself than anything else. I’m processing it. Or trying to.

       What just happened?

      He pushes up onto one elbow so that he can look down into my eyes and I spy the galaxy in his.

      ‘Okay.’ He grins. ‘That was...’

      ‘Perfect,’ I supply, lazily tracing a drop of sweat as it runs down his chest. He leans forward to kiss my fingertip and his dick, still strong inside me, makes me groan anew.

      So far as exorcisms go, I think we might have nailed it.

      ‘Yeah.’ He nods. ‘It was.’

      He kisses me again, but this time it’s slow. Gentle. A kiss of curiosity that I welcome. Damn it. I’m back at those paths, looking at each of them, wondering, wondering, and uncertainty is making my knees weak.

      Do I want his curiosity? Do I welcome it? Or does it speak too strongly of wanting other things than this bed, this man, this night?

      ‘Are you hungry?’

      ‘Hungry?’ I blink, the question not at all what I expected.

      He nods against my lips, then braces his forehead against mine. ‘Yeah. You know, that thing people get? It generally involves needing food. Eating. Maybe conversation.’

      ‘I’m familiar with the concept.’

      My own little divot forges between my brows and his eyes lift to it. His grins, and that makes me smile, erasing the similarity.

      He rolls his hips luxuriantly, slowly throbbing warmth through me, and desire surges like a wave at high tide, rolling inwards towards the shore. I lift my hips to meet it, to welcome it.

      ‘Room Service,’ he murmurs. ‘Definitely Room Service.’

      Still inside me, he stretches, reaching for the phone on the bedside table, and my whole body stretches with his, reluctant to relinquish even a hint of connection.

      He brings his mouth back to mine, the phone hooked casually under one ear.

      ‘Ethan Ash,’ he says, and my eyes lift to his, surprised until I realise he’s speaking to someone else.

      That surprise, though, is nothing compared to what shoots through me when he pulls out of me, leaving me instantly bereft, before inserting a finger deep into my core. I can’t help the moan that escapes my mouth. It falls out like a waterfall, slumberous and urgent at the same time.

      His finger swirls around already-over-sensitised nerve-endings and I arch my back as he brings his mouth to my breast at the same time.

      ‘Two crab linguine. Some fruit.’

      ‘A peach,’ I whisper.

      ‘A peach,’ he repeats, then drags his mouth across my chest, his stubbled jaw making the raw, aching, sensitive flesh tremble beneath him.

      His mouth is an instant relief. And as he rolls my nipple with his tongue he speaks into the phone. The words are husky against me. I feel his voice a baritone on my skin. And he feels me inside.feels my heart and my core.

      ‘Definitely champagne. Lots of champagne.’ He draws his lips lower, to my navel, and then, still with the phone under his chin, to my clit.

      ‘Oh, my God!’ I squawk as his tongue finds the cluster of nerves and flicks it punishingly.

      ‘Ice cream,’ he adds, his fingers curling around my ankles and pushing my legs apart on the bed.

      There is a tiny part of me that is embarrassed by this intimacy—but only a tiny part. The rest of me is way up on cloud nine, wondering if any woman has ever felt this good. If any person has ever known this pleasure.

      I presume he’s done ordering, because he drops the phone to the ground. The cord is still stretched across the bed but I don’t ask him to hang up. Nor do I attempt to do so. I’m not moving, and I’m not going to encourage him to do anything that might bring an end to this sweet, sensual invasion.

      ‘A peach, huh?’ he murmurs against me.

      I dig my nails into the bed, trying to breathe, trying not to fall apart.

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘A favourite?’

      ‘Mmm, yes...’ I don’t think I’m talking about fruit any more.

      ‘You taste fucking amazing.’

      Even that doesn’t embarrass me. I groan in response, reaching above me for a pillow, which I drag down, holding it over my face as I cry out and he continues to run his tongue over me with the kind of skill that should win him a gold medal. Seriously. If oral sex were a competitive sport then this guy could hang up his microphone. He’s that good.

      His hands lift up, finding my breasts, and he knows what I love already. He’s learned fast. He tweaks my nipples and palms the roundness of my flesh, and his mouth lifts me up and carries me away until I can stand it no longer, and I give in to the euphoric relief that has been building and bursting.

      I feel it drop over me and whimper into the pillow. Which is no help, actually, because it smells intoxicatingly like him. So like him that I want to take it with me. Uh-oh. Another road opens up before me. I resolutely shut all paths out and surrender to the sensations of this. This very, very, very delightful everything.

      He slows down as he feels me come apart, still touching me, tasting me, but no longer driving me to insane heights. I have exploded and now I am recovering. I am trying to catch my breath. He stays close and I’m comforted by his closeness—until he pulls back and stands in one fluid moment.

      He’s still wearing the condom—but not for long. He rolls it off and wraps it in a tissue, tossing it carelessly into a wastepaper basket before reaching for the phone and replacing it on the cradle. Then, hands on hips, gloriously naked, he stares down at me, where I’m hiding behind an organic Italian cotton pillow.

      ‘Alicia?’

      I can’t speak. Maybe not ever again. It is quite possible that he’s erased my voice, like some kind of kinky Little Mermaid scenario.

      ‘Come