A Perfect Night (14 page)

She closed her eyes and then opened them again as she heard Seb saying softly,

'On your way to bed. Well, how very appropriate...in view of our...relationship...'

So he
had
heard. Not that she had doubted it, the very tone of his voice had told her that he knew.

Katie took a deep breath. There was nothing else for it. She was going to
have
to face him.

'I... I can explain,' she whispered into the intercom.

'But not now...tomorrow...'

'Now!' Seb returned implacably. 'Unless of course you want me to telephone your parents and inform them that their daughter is a...'

'No... No...now, then...' Katie agreed, momentarily forgetting that all she was wearing was a damp towel as she hurriedly activated the button to unlock the front door.

She froze as Seb walked in. There was a faint dark shadow along his jaw and he looked every bit as angry as he had sounded, but when he saw her, instead of unleashing the torrent of angry questions she had expected, he checked and looked at her very deliberately and lengthily.

Her face burned as Katie suddenly realised how he must be seeing her, her hair bunched up on top of her head, her body still damp from her bath, her only covering her soft cream towel.

'I... I'll just go and get dressed,' she heard herself stammering as her body reacted instantly and uncontrollably to the way he was looking at her, as instandy and uncontrollably as it had done when he had kissed her, touched her. Not that the heat burning her skin now had anything to do with her earlier apprehension or self-consciousness.

Mesmerised Katie stared right back into his eyes, her breathing suddenly laboured and shallow. A shocking surge of sexual heat shot through her veins. It must be the anxiety of the last few days that was having such a dangerous effect on her she told herself weakly. It must be because of that that she was experiencing this extraordinary reaction to Seb... that she was...

Dizzily she blinked but without being able to break the intensity of his burning stare. What was happening to her? Why was she feeling her whole body trembling, aching with a need that seemed to have been conjured up out of nowhere, like a whirlwind, a tornado, ready to wreak total destruction on her?

'I... I can explain,' she told him huskily, and she didn't know herself whether she meant she could explain why everyone thought they were a couple or that she could explain why she was feeling the way she was, but instead of agreeing Seb simply walked towards her, telling her softly,

'Don't bother. I've changed my mind. It isn't an
explanation
I want...'

'It...it isn't...?'

Wide-eyed, Katie watched him, knowing instinctively what was going to happen but totally unable to respond in the way she knew she ought to be doing to her own danger. Instead of shock or fear or anger, what she was actually feeling was a roller-coaster surge of frantic excitement, of having stepped outside her normal cautious carefulness.

'No, it isn't...' Seb confirmed.

He was a hand span away from her now and as she walked back from him, her eyes never leaving his face, he followed her until she was backed up against the wall.

'Seb,' she protested shakily.

He had placed his palms flat against the wall either side of her, effectively imprisoning her.

'Apparently, it's common knowledge in Haslewich that you and I are...together,' he told her softly and qui-edy, spacing out every word so that she could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin, '...that we are...lovers...'

'No!' Katie protested. 'No...!'

'Yes,' Seb insisted. 'And since that's what supposedly we are—'

And then he lowered his head and kissed her with a mixture of passion and desire and infused anger that left her mute and helpless, his mouth burning hers as he refused to end the kiss, punishing her, savaging her with its angry heat.

And yet, beneath that anger, some age-old female wisdom told Katie that there was something else, relaying the information to her along all the most sensitive pathways of her body, tiny trickles of knowledge, awareness and emotion that together became a swift unstoppable flood of powerfully female response, as though independently of her brain, her senses knew
exactly
what to do, how to use Seb's passion to burn away his anger, leaving in its place a pure and almost unbearably intense fiery passion.

She had, Katie recognised dizzily, as her lips parted beneath the thrust of Seb's tongue, aroused him to the point where his need was a white-hot driven urgency blinding him to reality and tempting her, tormenting her, to give in to her own body's wild inner clamouring to respond to him with an equal lack of inhibition. After all, she was as human as any other woman, wasn't she?

She was just as capable of experiencing sensual desire and longing, just as capable of needing to satisfy the ache deep down inside her own body, which was rapidly becoming an overriding, overwhelming, out of control force; a tumultuous flood of fiery, bitter-sweet urgency sweeping aside all obstacles in its path, all logic and reason, all thoughts that warned her that what was happening, that what she was contemplating, must not be allowed to happen.

What, after all, was she holding back for? Why was she denying herself the sexual fulfilment that other women of her age took for granted. Why was she ma-rooning herself on an isolated island of inexperience and self-conscious ignorance. Because she loved Gareth?

Was she then to remain as she was all her life? Was she to remain untouched, unfulfilled...unknown by any man and unknowing of her own sexuality? Tonight, with Seb, she could experience all that she had previously denied herself. Tonight, with Seb, she could become fully a woman and fulfil her destiny. With Seb she could...

As her mind registered the dangers of her thoughts it rejected them instantly and totally, but her body seemed to have divorced itself completely from her brain, following a path of its own choosing, recklessly taking control. Her tongue touched Seb's, delicately sparring with it, a sharp shudder of reaction galvanising her body as Seb instantly responded to her silent encouragement. His hands left the wall and cupped her shoulders, his body hard against the softness of her own and so intimately close to it that she could feel, not just the fierce pounding of his heart but the far more intimate beat of his body pulse as well.

As though someone else had directed their move-ments, her arms reached out towards him, wrapping themselves around him while his hands moved urgently down over her body coming to rest against the round curves of her buttocks as he pulled her off the wall and even tighter into his intimate embrace.

Neither of them spoke. There was no need. Both of them knew what was happening, what was going to happen, and where the passage of arms between them to which Seb's passionate kiss was merely a prelude was leading.

When Seb shifted her body slightly in his arms, dragging his mouth from hers so that he could caress the soft flesh of her throat and then the curve of her naked shoulder, Katie made no move to stop him, and no move either to do anything to conceal from him the openly visible shudders of reaction coursing through her body.

Her eyes open, silently she witnessed every touch of his hands, his mouth on her body, her expression registering every nuance of reaction and response she was feeling.

The heat of what was happening made her feel as though it was burning her up; as though she was being consumed, broken down, into the basic components of her essential self. And while a part of her was shocked by what was happening and by what she was doing, another recklessly urged her on.

There was a moment when, looking deep into her eyes, Seb slowly stood back from her, before reaching out to remove the towel from her body. She knew she should stop him, when she was helplessly and painfully aware of how very different this, her own first experience of male desire, would be from the tenderness and gentle joy her twin must have known with Gareth, a moment when she shivered and hesitated, but then some deep fierce inner force urged her on, drove her past that barrier. She was
not
Louise, and Gareth would
never
love her. She would
never
experience the gentle, tender warmth of his possession and so, instead, she must take this darker, deeper and far more dangerous pathway to sexual fulfilment.

Seb was still watching her as though waiting for her to do or say something. Katie looked at him. She had crossed her Rubicon and made up her mind. Very calmly she unfastened the towel herself and let it drop to the floor, her gaze on Seb's.

For a second she thought he wasn't going to move.

His eyes met and held hers without the involuntary betraying drop to her naked body she had expected, and then she saw the muscle twitch spasmodically in his jaw and that gave her the courage to let her gaze move very deliberately from his face to his body and to the tell-tale straining of the fabric of his trousers across his groin.

As though that one tiny glance had electrified him, Seb moved, closing the distance between them and sweeping her up in his arms.

The light from the two bedside lamps Katie had switched on before having her bath bathed the bedroom in a soft warm glow. The antique quilt Olivia had given her as a moving-in present lay across the foot of the bed, the heavy ivory damask curtains which had come from home covered the windows, enclosing the room and making it feel almost cocoon-like.

Katie had expected Seb to carry her over to the bed and immediately place her on it but instead, just short of it, he lowered her to her feet, gathering her up against the hard heat of his own body and then, bending his head to kiss her slowly at first and then, as his passion ignited, with a white-hot heat that made Katie feel as though the air surrounding them could self-combust. But even more shocking than Seb's fierce passion was her own response to it.

A long time ago in another life, another Katie would have been totally shocked at the wantonness—the
eagerness
with which
this
Katie pressed her naked body against Seb's fully clothed one, opening her mouth to his kiss just as fiercely and passionately eager for Seb to take die moistness, sweetness of her mouth, as Seb was to devour it. Their tongues met, meshed, stroked, caressed, tangling and entwining as erotically as they both knew their bodies would soon be doing, gliding against one another. Flesh to flesh, soft and smooth, hard and hot, each seeking out and fitting every curve and plane of the other.

In the distance Katie could hear a soft keening sound rising and falling as rhythmically as each thrust of Seb's tongue against her own, but she had no idea that she was the one making that sound. All she did know was that this was what she had been bom for, this was something so fierce, so elemental, so necessary to her that she had no idea how she had ever lived without knowing it.

Seb had lifted one hand to cup her head while the other...

She shuddered deeply as it swept, stroked over her naked skin leaving in its wake a trail, a starburst of tiny fiery darts of aching pleasure, imposing on her body's memory a yearning, a hunger, to be touched that way again, and again...and again...

She wasn't even aware of speaking her need out loud until she felt Seb's hands sweep her body a second and a third time, both hands this time caressing her from the rounded ball of her shoulders right the way down to the equally rounded curve of her bottom and then back up again, the pads of his thumbs exquisitely abrasive against the sensitivity of her nipples.

This was what she had been made for, her whole body seemed to be singing with wild wanton pleasure as though somehow he had unearthed from deep within her a hitherto unknown chord of such strong sensuality and passion that the beat, the throb of it, was so powerful that it made her feel dizzy and faint.

Just to have Seb's thumbs brush lightly against her tight hard nipples exploded a sensation inside her like a flash fire, shocking, elemental, hot, out of control, an aching quivering life-force over which she had absolutely no control, a need, an urge, that made her want to reach for his hands and hold them against her breasts to reach for his mouth and...

Sensations exploded deep in the pit of her belly and Katie was lost. She no longer recognised the woman she had become or the emotions and desires she was experiencing. What had happened to her longing for a quiet, gentle, tender lover, a man who would treat her as though she was as fragile as delicate porcelain, who would woo her with gentle words and the lightest of careful touches? What had happened to that inner fear which had always made her recoil, even from the thought of a sexual role for herself that wasn't completely passive and restrained? Never had she imagined herself being capable of such sexual hunger, such sensual womanly aggression.

She closed her eyes on a deep shudder of intense reaction as Seb, without needing her to say what she wanted, cupped her breasts and then lowered his head towards them.

Even the warmth of his breath against her skin was enough to make her tremble wildly in response and when he opened his mouth and started to circle the hard point of her nipple with the tip of his tongue Katie thought she was going to faint with the violence of her own reactions. Frantically she wound her fingers through Seb's hair, urging him closer and closer to her breast moaning out loud, begging for him to end her torment and take the whole of her erect pulsating nipple into his mouth and slowly suck the tormenting ache of desire from it.

And yet, when he did so, instead of satisfying her and stilling that hunger, it only seemed to increase it, feed it, stoke it so that her hands were tugging at the fasten-ings on his shirt, almost tearing the buttons from their button holes in her need to experience the reality of his flesh beneath her own fingertips.

Distantly she was aware of Seb helping her, of him removing his clothes at the same time as he continued to caress her, but the mechanics of what he was doing were lost on her as she whimpered in pleasure at the discovery of his naked flesh against the hands touching it, touching him with the blind hunger, the need of a starving person facing the most sumptuous banquet imaginable.