The Good, the Bad and the Wild

He cradled her cheek, still lodged impossibly deep. ‘Are you sure? You’re so tight.’

‘It’ll be all right in a minute,’ she said and prayed that it would be.

‘Relax,’ he murmured. ‘You’re tense.’ He stroked his hand down, pressed his thumb to the punch of her pulse. He didn’t move, didn’t thrust. And slowly the pain receded. To be replaced by an impossible pressure. He smiled down at her, and she wondered if he somehow knew.

‘Let’s see if we can go for better than all right,’ he said, then lifted her hips.

She sucked in a sharp, ragged breath as he settled deeper still. She gave a low groan, grateful when the pain didn’t return, even though the pressure increased. His forearm strained beside her head, the muscles of his bicep bunching and releasing, as he held his weight off her. Then he drew his other hand down. Delving into the curls at her core with expert fingers, he exposed the swollen nub and flicked it with his thumb. She jerked, thrusting against him, the sudden rub of intense sensation both exquisite and shocking.

He continued to play, continued to circle and rub and flick until slowly, gradually, the swell of pleasure built again, unstoppable, unrelenting this time. The pressure then turned to a new exquisite pain as he began to move at last, rubbing some spot so deep inside, the pleasure intensified. She moaned, gripping his bicep to anchor herself and moved too, meeting the expert thrust of his hips with her own untutored movements.

She heard his harsh grunts against her ear. Felt him swell to even greater proportions, the fullness of his penis triggering a brutal, pulsing series of contractions that rolled over her. Then shattered, shooting her into oblivion.

Feeling, sensation, sanity returned in tiny incremental bits and pieces. The ragged pants of his breathing rasping in her ear, the musty scent of sex and sweat overlaying the clean fresh scent of rainwater and him, the muscled shelf of his shoulder resting on her collarbone, the large, but softening column of his erection still impaling tender flesh.

‘Damn.’ His low murmur cut through the silence. ‘That was good.’ He sounded as dazed, as disorientated as she.

He lifted off her, pulled out gently. She flinched, a groan escaping as her swollen flesh released him, the soreness a cruel reminder of the initial pain. She rolled away from him, and shifted across the bed.

As incredible as that had been, she felt fragile and wary. She’d never imagined, never realised, sex would be anything like that. The heady romances she’d read certainly hadn’t prepared her for something so brutal, so basic, the elemental nature of it nothing short of animalistic.

‘Hang on a minute.’ One muscled forearm banded around her waist, drawing her back into his chest. ‘Where are you off to?’ His lips nuzzled her neck.

‘I need to…’ Get away from you, she heard her mind shout, shocked by the renewed blast of arousal as his thumb played lazily with her nipple. She hurt, all over. She couldn’t possibly want to do it again. But still the molten heat between her thighs gushed back.

She lay motionless, clamped down on the need to struggle out of his grip. She didn’t want him to figure out the truth, that their coupling had been a life-altering experience for her.

She couldn’t bear for him to know now that she’d been a virgin. It would make this far too intimate. And it was intimate enough already. She’d assumed this would be anonymous sex, only to discover that the intimacy of the act meant there was probably no such thing.

‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said.

‘All right.’ His hand stroked her belly in an oddly possessive manner. ‘There’s an en suite over there.’ His chin touched her shoulder as he nodded towards a door in the opposite wall. ‘I’ll keep the bed warm,’ he murmured, his hand skimming down her buttocks before he released her.

The proprietary words reverberated in her head as she shot across the room naked.

She couldn’t have been? Could she?

Nick frowned at the moonlight reflecting off the polished wood of the bathroom door, the niggling suspicion slowly but surely clawing its way through the sweet, heady buzz of afterglow.