The Married Mistress

‘Kiss you—’

It was raw and thick, hopelessly roughened at the edges.

‘Oh, lady…’

She didn’t know who moved first, whether his dark head came down hard and fast or her own lifted to his as swiftly. She only knew that in the space of a swift, thudding heartbeat, their mouths had met and clashed and crushed so fiercely that she almost expected to see sparks fly up into the air from their joining.

All the loneliness, all the yearning, all the misery of the past six months was in that kiss. All the memory of the long, empty days and the cruel, bleak nights swelled up inside her, rose, and spilled out fiercely like red-hot lava erupting from a volcano and surging, wild and unstoppable, down the slopes of the mountain.

They snatched at each other’s mouths, nipped, bit, came apart to draw in deep, ragged breaths, then rushed together again, unable to stay apart. It was like a fight for survival more than any sort of caress. Like a wild, primal mating ritual that had nothing of the civilised or of courtship in it, only raging need, uncontrollable craving, the desperation of having lost once and the terrible fear that it could happen all over again.

‘I want you,’ Damon muttered harshly against her mouth. ‘Want you—want you…’

His command of language seeming to desert him, he broke into Greek, alternating the words of his native tongue with his suddenly roughened and disjointed English in a raw and incoherent litany of desire.

And Sarah could do nothing but nod again and again, her own mouth only capable of forming the word ‘yes’, repeated with the gathering intensity of a growing thunder storm, a counterpoint to his harsh declaration.

‘Yes, Damon, yes, yes, yes…’

This was all she would ever have of Damon, was the phrase that ran through Sarah’s head. If she could only have today and this elemental, primitive passion that had flared between them, then she would take it and welcome it and enjoy it for as long as she was able.

No, enjoy was not the right word. It came nowhere close to describing this starving hunger, this aching, desperate need.

This feeling was as essential to her as each raw, painful breath she dragged into her burning lungs between each hungry kiss. Without it she could never live, only exist. And yet at the same time she felt each moment of contact, each desperate caress, as torment in her soul, ripping and shredding, increasing the emptiness in her heart in the same second that it appeased the hunger in her body.

‘I want you too, Damon. I’m desperate for you…desperate…’

Her hands spoke for her when she could no longer string two coherent words together. Grabbing at the soft white cloth of his polo shirt, she wrenched it free of the waistband of his trousers, roughly pushing it aside so that her greedy hands could have free access to the bronzed skin she sought, her fingers almost scrabbling his clothing out of the way in her rush to touch him.

‘Sarah—sweetheart—angel…’

There was a shaken, rough note of laughter threading through Damon’s vain attempt at a protest, and the hands he brought up to try and catch at hers, to still them, or at the very least to slow their frantic, urgent movements, were as unsteady as his words.

‘There’s no need to rush—we have all day, the night…’

But even as he spoke, his own actions denied the muttered restraint, the urge to caution.

His movements mirroring Sarah’s, he pushed her blouse up and away from her skirt. The ominous wrenching, tearing sound told of the fact that he had completely forgotten that hers was not a stretchy T-shirt, and a second later there were several soft thuds as broken buttons flipped away and bounced on the dressing table, the window sill, the floor.