Innocent 'til Proven Otherwise

He crowded in close to her, backing her up until she bumped against the door. Her perfume seemed to thicken as the heat between them intensified. He could hear her breath shorten and knew his had followed suit. His whole body had tightened in anticipation.

Everything was tense.

Everything was hard.

Everywhere.

He placed a hand either side of her head and watched her watch him. Watched her olive eyes darken a shade or two as he picked up that errant curl, stretched it out and let it go.

It sprang back, flopping once again across her eye.

‘Cute curl,’ he said, dropping a kiss on her eyebrow, the curl brushing his lips.

He ran his index finger down the straight neat line of her nose to where it tilted up slightly at the end. ‘Cute nose.’ And he dropped a kiss there too.

He moved his palm down to cup her jaw, tracing the outline of her lips, feeling it right down to his groin as they parted on a soft whimper. ‘Very. Cute. Mouth,’ he whispered.

Ali waited for the inevitable kiss, practically drowning in a fog of desire. She felt as if he’d been stroking her insides instead of dropping chaste kisses, nibbling around her edges. And she needed more. It was as if he’d drugged her and she was craving that next hit.

Max took his time stroking her lips, sweeping his thumb across the glossy cushions. Her breath was warm against the pad of his thumb, the beat of her pulse was wild beneath his palm and her throat moved convulsively as she swallowed. Each sweep intensified his longing but he was determined to hold back.

He knew when he let go and kissed her, really kissed her, there would be no holding back.

No more gentle.

No more slowly.

No more easy.

It had been a long time. And his appetite was back.

Ali had reached screaming point. How could a simple brush to her mouth be felt everywhere? How could it bead her nipples to unbearable hardness? How could it undulate through muscles so deep inside she didn’t even know she had them until now? How could it pool liquid heat in places that it hadn’t even touched?

‘Cute, cute, cute,’ Max whispered.

Ali groaned. ‘Shut up and kiss me properly.’

And then she took matters into her own hands, standing on tippy-toes and dragging his face towards her, closing the maddening distance.

Max inhaled as their lips met, sucking in her heat and her breath and her sweet, sweet perfume and it was like rocket fuel through his already charged bloodstream.

He exploded.

He ground her against the door, pinning her with his mouth and his hands and his hard, hard body. Demanding entrance into her mouth with his tongue and sweeping inside like a conquering general. She tasted like rum and strawberries and his hunger intensified. Angling her head back, he plundered every moist morsel of it.

She moaned beneath his onslaught, clutched his shoulders, pulled him in deeper and he gave her more. His hands slid to her hips, gripping them hard then releasing only to grip them again, pulling her harder, closer, nearer each time. His erection strained against the maddening friction, getting harder, more demanding.

His lips left hers to explore all the soft, sweet places of her neck and she moaned again. He’d forgotten how soft women were. How they fitted to a man’s body, how they yielded against all the hard angles and planes and moulded just right.

Her fingernails dug into his back and she gasped, ‘Max,’ as he laved the frantic pulse in the hollow of her throat.

He claimed her mouth again revelling in her noises. He’d missed those mysterious womanly noises. The gasps and the whimpers. The little sighs and moans and the desperate, unintelligible urgings that came from deep inside when you hit a sweet spot and they did-not-want-you-to-stop.

She opened for him wide, matching the fervour of his mouth with her own and it was a very potent mix. Heady and sexual and dirty.

Good, dirty.

It had been a long, long time since he’d felt this good. Since he’d last kissed a woman he didn’t really know. And he’d been more than fine with that. He’d been happily married, perfectly content. But that was then and this was now and Ali was shifting against him with reckless abandon that felt good everywhere.

For the first time in a long time he felt good.

Everywhere.

And he was going to damn well take what was on offer.

Pete had been right. He did need this.

Ali could barely breathe from the lust slugging her system, thickening in her veins like molten lava, beading like liquid mercury. She was dizzy and light-headed but strangely heavy-limbed all at once.

His tongue was stroking against hers—prodding and probing and lapping against her mouth as if it had been crafted especially for him from the world’s sweetest chocolate. She could taste beer and opened to him to taste some more.

His hands were clamped on her hips, scorching his palm prints into her flesh like a brand and his groin was pressed so intimately against her she already knew what it was going to feel like to have him inside her.

She’d forgotten how great this was. How kisses could last for hours. How the taste of someone new could be so endlessly fascinating you just couldn’t stop. How the need to touch them, taste them, became an overriding imperative. How being intimate with a man could make you feel loose and yet tight in all the right spots.

She realised it was probably the first time in a year she’d gone this long without thinking about Tom.

If this was moving-on sex then she was a convert.

She thrust her hips against his hard belly again and rubbed herself against the even harder ridge that was driving her mad. She wanted to touch it. Feel its steel and its heat and its purpose. Wanted to touch all of him. To see him naked. To press her lips to every inch of his flesh.

To make him moan.

To make him come.

To make him beg for more.

‘I need to see you,’ Max groaned into her neck as he pulled her blouse out of the waistband of her skirt.

And she knew exactly how he felt. She wanted more. Needed more. More than passionate kisses and fully-clothed fumblings. She needed to see his flesh. Familiarise herself with his skin. Surround herself with the aroma of pure male animal. Inhale the very essence of him.

She followed suit, pulling his shirt-tails out of his trousers and fumbling like a two-year-old with his buttons as he licked heat along her collarbone. It rendered her fingers totally useless and her eyes rolled back as his tongue dipped lower, tracing the full curve of one breast.

How long had it been since a man had taken the time to seduce her so thoroughly? Tom had certainly never been this thorough. And those few teenage fumblings had been exciting at the time but had most definitely lacked the finesse that oozed from Max’s fingertips like some kind of sexual magician.

Or was that genius?

A fingertip whispered against her nipple and she almost fainted from the pleasure. She gripped his shirt for fear of falling and moaned her pleasure—again.