Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (10 page)

The wine had been even stronger than she had believed, she admitted. She wasn't drunk—far from it—but she certainly felt rather light-headed and a little giddy.

As she tugged back the curtain she gave a small, soft sigh of delight as she stared through the window.

It was still snowing—thick, whirling-dervish-like, thick white flakes, like those in a child's glass snowstorm. As she looked up into the darkening sky she could see the early evening stars and the thin sickle shape of the moon.

It was her childhood dream of a white Christmas come true. And to think that if she had returned to London as she had originally planned to do she would have missed it! Emotion caught her by the throat.

She dropped the curtain, turning back into the room, stopping as she saw Oliver watching her. She hadn't heard him come back in and unaccountably she could feel herself starting to tremble slightly.

‘What is it? What's wrong?' he asked her.

‘Nothing,' she denied. ‘It's just…' She gave a small shrug, closed her eyes and then opened them again as the darkness increased the heady effects of the wine. ‘It's just that all of this…is so…so perfect,' she told him huskily, gesturing to the room and then towards the window and the view that lay beyond it. ‘So…so magical… This house…the weather…the tree…church this morning…my stocking and…'

‘And…?' Oliver prompted softly.

He was looking at her very intently—so intently, in fact, that she felt as though she could drown in the dark intensity of his eyes, as though she was being compelled to…

‘And you,' she breathed, and as she said it she felt her heart slam fiercely against her chest wall, depriving her of breath,
whilst the silence between them seemed to pulse and quicken and to take on a life of its own.

‘I really shouldn't drink any more of this,' she heard herself whispering dizzily as she picked up her glass and took a nervous gulp, and then watched as Oliver walked softly towards her.

‘No, you really shouldn't,' he agreed as he reached her and took the glass from her unresisting fingers, and then he took her equally unresisting body in his arms and her quiescent mouth into the warm captivity of his.

‘We shouldn't be doing this,' she reproached him, mumbling the words against his mouth, her arms wrapped around him, her fingers burrowing into the thick darkness of his hair, her eyes luminous with the desire that was turning her whole body into molten liquid as she gazed up into his eyes.

‘Oh, yes, we should,' was his sensuously whispered response. ‘Oh, yes, we most definitely, assuredly should.' And then he was kissing her again. Not forcefully, but oh, so compellingly that it was impossible for her to resist him—impossible for her to want to resist him.

‘You've already kissed me once for Christmas,' Lisa reminded him unsteadily as he slowly lifted his mouth from hers and looked down at her.

‘This isn't for Christmas,' he whispered back as his hand slid under her hair, tilting her head back up towards him, sliding his other hand down her back, urging her closer to his own body.

Lisa could feel her heart hammering against her ribs as sensations that she had never experienced before—not with Henry and certainly not with the man who had been her first and only lover—flooded her body.

‘Then what is it for?' she forced herself to ask him huskily.

‘What do you think?' Oliver responded rawly. ‘I wanted you the first time I saw you—did you know that?'

‘How could you have done?' Lisa argued. ‘You were so furious with me, and—'

‘And even more furious with myself…with my body for the way it was reacting to you,' Oliver told her, adding rawly, ‘The same way it's reacting to you right now.'

Uncertainly Lisa searched his face. Everything was happening so quickly that she couldn't fully take it all in. If she had felt dizzy before, with the combination of the rich wine and the warm fire, that was nothing to the headiness affecting her now, clouding her ability to reason logically, making her heart thump dangerously, heavily as her body reacted to what was happening to her—to them.

‘I'll stop if you want me to,' she heard Oliver telling her hoarsely as he bent his head and gently nuzzled the soft, warm flesh of her throat. As she stifled the small, betraying sound she made when her body shuddered in shocked pleasure Lisa shook her head.

‘No. No. I don't want you to stop,' she admitted huskily.

‘Good,' Oliver told her thickly. ‘Because I don't want to either. What I want is you, Lisa… God, how I want you.'

‘I'm not used to this,' Lisa said shakily. ‘I don't—'

‘Do you think that I am…that I do?' he interrupted her almost roughly. ‘For God's sake, Lisa, have you any idea how long it is since I was this intimate with a woman…since I wanted to be this intimate with a woman? I'm not a teenager,' he half growled at her when she shook her head. ‘I don't normally… It's been a hell of a long time since anyone has affected me the way you do… One hell of a long time.'

Lisa was trembling as he took her back in his arms, but not because she was afraid. Oh, no, not because of anything like that.

At any other time the eagerness with which she met Oliver's
kiss would have shocked her, caused her to deny what she was experiencing, but now, for some reason, things were different—
he
was different. This was Christmas, after all—a special, magical time when special, magical things could happen.

As she felt the probing thrust of Oliver's tongue she reached out towards him, wrapping her arms around him, opening her mouth to him.

Somewhere outside this magical, firelit, pine-scented world where it seemed the most natural thing of all for her and Oliver to come together like this there existed another, different world. Lisa knew that, but right now…right now…

As she heard the rough deep sound of pleasure that Oliver made in his throat when he tasted the honeyed interior of her mouth Lisa gave up trying to think and behave logically. There was no point and, even more important, there was no need.

Instead, as she slid her fingers through the thick softness of Oliver's hair, she let her tongue meet his—slowly, hesitantly at first, such intimacy unfamiliar to her. The memories of her much younger, uncertain teenage explorations recalled sensations which bore no resemblance whatsoever to the sensations she was experiencing now as Oliver's tongue caressed hers, the weight of his body erotically masculine against the more slender femininity of her own as his hands caressed her back, her waist, before sliding down over her hips to cup the soft swell of her buttocks as he lifted her against him.

Lisa knew already that he was aroused, but until she felt the taut fullness of his erection against her own body she hadn't realised how physically and emotionally vulnerable and responsive she was to him. A sensation, a need that was totally outside her previous experience overtook her as she felt the liquid heat filling her own body, her hips lifting automatically, blindly seeking the sensual intimacy that her flesh craved.

‘So much for your low sex drive,' she heard Oliver muttering
thickly against her ear, before he added throatily, ‘You're one hell of a sexy lady, Lisa. Do you know that? Do you know what you're doing to me…? How you're making me feel…? How you've made me feel since you stood there in your flat in that damned suit, with your breasts…?'

Lisa heard him groan as his hand reached upwards towards her breast, sliding beneath the fabric that covered it to cup its soft, eager weight, his thumb-tip caressing the hard peak of her nipple.

‘Let me take this off,' he urged her, his hands removing her jacket, and then starting on the buttons of the waistcoat underneath it, his eyes dark with arousal as he looked deeply into hers. And then, without waiting for her to respond, his mouth curled in a small, sensual half-smile and he bent his head and kissed her briefly but very hard on her half-parted mouth. ‘I want to see you, Lisa—all of you. I want to touch you, hold you, taste you, and I want you to want to do the same as me.'

Lisa knew that he must have felt the racking, sensual shudder that convulsed her body even if he hadn't heard her immediate response to the mental image that his words had aroused, in the low groan she was not quite able to suppress.

‘You want that,' he pressed huskily. ‘You want me to undress for you. You want to see me…to touch me…' He was kissing her again now—slow, lingering kisses all over her face and throat—whilst his hands moved deftly, freeing her from her clothes. But it wasn't the thought of her own nakedness beneath his hands that was causing her breath to quicken and her heart to lurch frantically against her ribs, but rather the thought of his nakedness beneath hers.

What was happening to her? she wondered dazedly. Her, to whom the thought of a man's naked body was something which she normally found rather discomforting and not in the least erotic. What was happening that she should now be
so filled with desire that her whole body ached and pulsed with it at the mere thought of seeing Oliver's? The mere thought… Heaven knew what she would be like when that thought became a reality, when she was free to reach out and touch and taste him too.

Helplessly she closed her eyes, and then opened them again to find Oliver watching her. ‘
Is
that what you want, Lisa?' he asked her softly whilst his thumb-tip drew a sensual line of pleasure around her sensitised mouth. ‘Is that what you want—to see me…touch me…feel me…?'

Dry-mouthed, Lisa nodded. Her top was unfastened now, and she was vaguely aware of the half-exposed curves of her breasts gilded by the firelight, but her own semi-nudity seemed unimportant and irrelevant; her whole concentration was focused on Oliver, on the deft, steady movements of his hands as he unfastened the buttons on his shirt, his gaze never wavering from her as he started to remove it.

His chest was broad and sleekly muscled, tanned, with a dark arrowing of silky black hair down the centre, the sight of which made her muscles clench and her breath leak from her lungs in a rusty ache of sensory overload. His nipples, flat and dark, looked so different from her own.

As his hands reached for the fastening on his trousers, Lisa leaned forward, acting on impulse. The scent of him filled her nostrils, clouding her thought processes, drugging her…

As her lips closed around the small dark nub of flesh, she made a soft sound of feminine pleasure deep in her throat. Her tongue-tip circled his flesh, stroked it, explored the shape and texture of it before she finally returned to sucking gently on it.

‘Lisa.'

The shock of being wrenched away from him was like having her whole body plunged in icy-cold water after it had
been lapped in tropical warmth, the pain so great that it made her physically ache and cry out, her shocked gaze focusing in bewilderment on Oliver's, quick emotional tears filming her eyes as she wondered what it was she had done, why it was that he was being so cruelly brutal with her.

‘It's too much, too soon,' she heard him telling her harshly. ‘I can't… It's…'

Still half in shock she watched him as he shook his head.

‘You're turning me on too much,' he told her more gently, ‘and I can't…'

Lisa could feel the shock of it all the way through her body—the shock and an intensely feminine thrill that she could have such a powerful effect on him. As though he had guessed what she was feeling, she heard Oliver groan softly, and then he was reaching for her, holding her in his arms before she could evade them, kissing her now tightly closed eyelids, and then her mouth, and then he was telling her, ‘Another few seconds of that and right now I'd be inside you and without—' He broke off and then added, ‘That isn't how I want it to be for our first time together.'

Lisa moved instinctively against him, and then tensed as she felt the rough brush of his body hair against her naked breasts.

As she bent her head to look down at where her top had slid away from her Oliver's gaze followed hers, and then he bent his head, slowly easing her top completely away from her as he gradually kissed his way down her body, stopping only when he had reached the dark pink tautness of her nipple.

As he closed his mouth on it, repeating on her the caress she had given him, Lisa tensed in shock beneath the surge of pleasure that arced through her, arching her spine, locking her hands against his head, making her shudder as her body, beneath the weight of the flooding waves of pleasure that
pulsed through her, was activated by the now urgent suckle of his mouth on her breast.

Was this how
he
had felt when she had caressed him in the same way? No, it couldn't have been, she denied. She could feel what he was doing to her, right deep down within her body, her womb. She could feel… With a small, shocked gasp she started to push him away.

‘What is it?' she heard Oliver asking thickly as he released her nipple. He was breathing heavily and she could feel the warmth against her skin resensitising it, making her…

‘I…' Nothing, she had been about to respond, but instead she heard herself saying helplessly in an unfamiliar and huskily sensual voice, ‘I want you, Oliver… I want you.'

‘Not one half as much as I want you,' he responded tautly as she quickly removed the remainder of her clothes and his own, and then, like a mystical, almost myth-like personification of all that was male inspired by some Greek legend, and filling her receptive senses with that maleness, he knelt over her, his dark head bowed as he gently eased her back against the soft fabric of the sofa and made love to her with a sensuality that took her breath away.

It didn't matter that no man had ever touched her, caressed her, kissed her so intimately before or that she had never imagined wanting one to do so. Somehow, when it was Oliver's hands, Oliver's mouth that caressed her…