Craving Jamie

It was the most erotic undressing Beth had ever experienced. It electrified both her body and her mind to an acute awareness.

She could feel his breath, sense his heat even before he positioned his body against hers, the hard roll of his erection sliding up towards the pit of her back, his arms encircling her waist, palms pushing up over her nipples and subjecting them to a teasing, rotating motion that had every muscle in her body clenching.

“You seem quite transfixed by the view.” The mocking murmur was close to her ear.

Beth fought to remain clear-headed over the turmoil he was wreaking in her body. “Do you enjoy it or is it simply a status symbol to you?” she asked, reaching back to draw her fingernails over the rock-hard muscles of his thighs, wishing she could dig under his skin.

“I like climbing mountains,” he answered. “Getting to the peak.”

The sexual allusion to what he was doing to her was not lost on Beth, yet she sensed he spoke the truth about himself. Jamie must have climbed a hundred mountains on his way to becoming this man. She wondered if he saw this apartment as a place where he was finally unassailable from ever being dragged down again.

He cupped her breasts, possessing them fully for a moment before sliding his hands over her stomach, burrowing under the flimsy lace that still covered her most private part.

“But valleys have their points of interest, too,” he said, and with an expertise that was shockingly exciting, he parted her hidden cleft to a more accessible opening and began a stroking that aroused almost unbearably exquisite sensations.

She felt like hot putty melting under his touch. Her legs started to tremble. Desperate to maintain some self-control, Beth clutched at another question that had flitted through her mind. “Why did you choose the Brett Whitely painting?”

It distracted him momentarily, giving her a breather from the sweet torture. “It’s a scream of the soul,” he answered darkly and resumed his tactile concentration on the valley as he expounded further. “It’s in every one of us, golden girl. You feel it, too... the scream for all that’s unattainable.’

Yes. It was the scream that had brought her here with him. But what did he dream of? What did he crave? What was he missing in his life, this brave, new world he had conquered?

“That’s why you’re here, wanting this,” he went on, his voice a drum in her ears.

No. She wanted more than this, she thought. The unattainable. And sadness for what could never be with the Jamie who was lost to her surged into her heart, drowning it, even as her flesh cried out for its intense excitement to be appeased.

The low beat of his voice continued. “No matter what we do, how we live, what we have, most of the time we hide from our souls, repress the truth, pretend...” His finger teasing the rim of her vagina, slowly working inwards, her muscles convulsing. “But deep inside, deep inside, golden girl...we scream.”

The last word was hissed, loaded with sexual innuendo, and it was true of her physically—she was screaming for the fill of his flesh to ease the need he had incited. Yet her mind was floating above it, listening to the man he was revealing and revelling more in that intimacy than the other.

“You were going to show me everything,” she reminded him.

His touch stilled. He withdrew it to remove her last piece of clothing. “Let me take you on a tour,” he said, grasping her hand, drawing her into stepping out of her panties.

She had to force her tremulous legs to work, to follow him. His stimulation had left her feeling liquified, uncoordinated, aching for far more than he had given. Yet to concede any weakness would feed his satisfaction at the cost of hers. Keep him guessing, keep him working at getting the subjugation to his will that he obviously wanted, keep digging for what she wanted.

“Now on the opposite wall to the Brett Whitely is an Arthur Boyd,” he instructed, smiling indulgently.

His nonchalant air was an act of will. A quick glance showed his arousal had in no way abated. It also gave Beth the reassurance he was sheathed with protection. No risk of any unwelcome consequences from this one-night stand. Which was all it could be for both of them.

Again the sadness weighed heavily.

A meeting... a farewell.

“Stand here for the best view,” he directed, positioning her behind one of the black leather sofas directly across the room from the painting.

It was a high-backed lounge. She automatically rested her hands on it, needing the support of some solidity. He moved to her rear, as before, talking over her shoulder.

“The subject matter looks so simple, but the more you study this painting, the more you see in it.”

The colours were mostly dark greens and blues, a night scene, a small house on the top of a hill, below it a miniature white cow, seemingly heading down to a lake. She saw nothing else in the huge, sombre sweep of landscape. A white crescent moon—no stars—formed a tiny white curve in the sky.

Isolation, she thought. The painting brooded with isolation, little objects starkly overwhelmed by their much larger environment.

“There are hidden depths to it,” he murmured, sliding a hand around her hip, over her stomach. “Keep looking, golden girl. I want you to see them....” He bent, his arm pulling her to him, a knee parting her legs, a swift, smooth guidance and he was inside her, plunging hard and fast. “And feel them,” he said with throbbing satisfaction.

Beth clutched the sofa, instinctively anchoring herself as she gasped, yet almost instantly she was enthralled with the incredible feeling of him invading the passage he’d already prepared, soothing the frustrated nerve ends and filling the empty ache with the solid insertion of his manhood—big, strong, pulsing with power. It was marvellous, mind-blowing, body-shattering.

“Concentrate on the lake,” he advised, rhythmically setting her on a sea of sensation. “The reflections...”

So strange to view the dark picture of isolation while feeling the most intimate joining between a man and a woman. The lake was still, not the slightest shimmer of movement in its reflections. Inside her the rushing flow and ebb of a tide that crashed and swirled and sucked, a storming of shores that welcomed the pounding, loved it, revelled in it.

She wanted to let it flow through her, an experience to be savoured to the full. But there was still the compulsion to turn the tide on him, to reach for his innermost core, the heart and mind of the man who had once been Jamie. She forced herself to concentrate, to catch him while his guard was down, believing he’d taken all initiative from her.

“Does this painting...” Her voice was little more than a husky croak. She swallowed hard. “Reflect what you feel?” She pushed the words out, determined to commune with him on more than a physical level.

He buried himself as deeply as he could in her, paused. “What do you imagine I feel?” A raw edge to his voice.

She drew on her knowledge of Jamie. Was he still inside the man she held in such intimate possession? “The white cow, a lonely outcast, a long, cold night... Did you have a need for me?”

“Hardly an outcast.” Harsh. A slow withdrawal as he made a sardonic point. “When one is wanted by so many. And so much...” He rammed home his full length and paused again. “Even by a woman who’s only read about me.”

But he was wrong about her, and he sensed it somehow. There was a wondering note in his tone. She seized on the hint of vulnerability, riding the moment as hard as he was riding her, mental against physical.

“I think you want a full moon.” She rushed the words out, fiercely gathering her thoughts against the active chaos he stirred. “But what is pictured...is a thin crescent...a partial...and it will never grow into anything else.” She closed her eyes, swept up in the maelstrom of feeling, fighting the tide to put the last critical question. “Is that what makes you scream?”

“A full moon for lovers? Dream on, golden girl,” he said derisively and drummed any coherent thought out of her mind with a wild vigour that smashed every last thread of control, both hers and his, climaxing with explosive force and leaving them panting in paroxysms of intense release.

Spent, shuddering in reaction, he wrapped her in his arms and clamped her against him, their naked bodies slick with heat and almost excruciatingly sensitive to touch.

“Is my skin hot enough for you?” he growled. “I wouldn’t want you to feel cold...or lonely.”

She didn’t speak. Her head was spinning, her body churning with the knowledge of how it felt to be taken so comprehensively, as though she was branded inside and out by his possession.

“Maybe we should move to another painting,” he taunted. “Or have you been shown as much as you want?”

She hesitated. He had seized and still held a dominating position. And was arrogantly confident of keeping it. If she stayed, undoubtedly she would be committing herself to a night of saturation sex. But knowledge came in many forms. And touch—as he had just shown her—could reach many places.

“I’m not satisfied yet,” she answered resolutely.

And probably never will be, came the hollow thought. But the night was still young. He wouldn’t back down from the challenge implicit in her words, not a man who had to climb mountains and stand on top of them. If she could only touch him beyond the physical. She had barely scratched the surface of the inner man.

Jim Neilson was well and truly in the ring right now.

Would Jamie emerge before it was over?

CHAPTER FOUR

BETH stood under the shower in the guest bathroom of Jim Neilson’s penthouse apartment, trying to soothe aching muscles and revive herself for the long day ahead. Her mind dredged up the consoling thought that it hadn’t been a totally fruitless night. At least she’d had the experience of a red-hot lover once in her lifetime. Though she suspected the memory would be soured by the failure of her real quest.