A Perfect Night Read online

  '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.

  Seb's body was, she recognised dizzily, a feast for each and every one of her previously starved senses.

  Sight, sound, scent, touch...taste... She wanted to satisfy them all, to positively gorge herself on what she was being offered.

  Vaguely Katie was aware that she ought to be shocked by what she was feeling, by how she was acting. Her whole behaviour was so totally unlike her, her needs were so unfamiliar to her, but there was no space, no time, no will within her to listen to any unwanted warning voices. This was the real her. She felt as though she was a chrysalis shedding its restrictive coat to emerge for the first time with the freedom to be as she really was.

  As Seb placed her on the bed she reached up and kissed his shoulder, closing her eyes in open apprecia-tion as she breathed in the heated aroused scent of his body, tasted it on her tongue.

  'You feel so good,' she whispered huskily to him, the words tumbling from her lips in the brief spaces of time she could allow in her eager oral exploration of his body.

  'You smell so good... You taste so good...'

  Her words seemed to snap the final cords binding Seb's self-control. Katie heard him groan, a low exciting growl of sound that sent actual physical shock waves of sensation racing over her own skin and then he was holding her, lifting her, positioning her so that every part of her body was open to the intimate caress of his hands and mouth. The sensation of him touching her, caressing her, leaving her with the moist heat of his tongue, send-ing wave after wave of arousal crashing down over her until she was drowning in her own longing and need for his full possession.

  There was no time for her to feel apprehension or even hesitation, only a growing vortex of need that drew her into the maelstrom of its tumultuous heart, the only sound she could hear the thud of Seb's heartbeat and the sobbing cry of her own piercing longing.

  There was no sense of shock or pain, only the intensity of her own longing, her own urgency. That, and her awed comprehension of how perfectly they fit together, of how dizzyingly strong her own sensual reaction to him was. He moved and she moved with him, their bodies in perfect harmony, creating between them a rhythm that echoed the life force of the universe itself, so completely at one with one another, so perfectly complementing one another that Katie felt as though she was being buoyed up, swept along, carried by a force as pure and spiritual as it was sensual and earthly.

  What was happening for her was so sublimely perfect that she felt as though not just her body, but her mind, her heart, her whole being had entered another dimension. Awash with the waves of sensation that had crashed through her, carrying her over that final barrier and safely into the calm place that was the other side of the chasm she had crossed, she reached out to Seb, touching his throat with questing fingers, the smile she gave him beneath her suddenly too heavy eyelids, soft and womanly, full of knowledge and fulfilment.

  Seb though wasn't returning her smile. His eyes were dark and unreadable, his face set and something close to anger breaking through the quietly controlled pitch of his voice as he demanded,

  'Why didn't you tell me...warn me?'

  Self-consciously, Katie looked away from him, her euphoria disappearing at the cold disapproval of his voice.

  'It was your first time, wasn't it?' Seb was demanding sharply as she looked away from him unable to hold or endure the searching look he was focusing on her.

  There wasn't any point in denying the truth, not when he had so obviously realised.

  'Yes. It was,' Katie agreed calmly.

  She heard Seb curse under his breath and winced at the anger she could hear.

  'You should have told me, and...'

  '...and what?' Katie found the courage to question, her own lips only trembling very slightly as she twisted them into a wry smile. 'You'd have stopped?'

  She saw from the dark surge of colour burning up under his skin that Seb knew what she meant. He had been as incapable of stopping as she had been of drawing his attention to her virginity.

  'Why should I have told you?' she asked him and then looking at him she said simply, 'It...it couldn't have been any...any better and I...'

  Seb cursed again.

  'You were a virgin,' he reminded her furiously, 'and I...'

  'You made love to me as though I were a woman and not a girl,' Katie suggested. Pride darkened her eyes, her head lifting as she spoke to him.

  'Perhaps I didn't tell you because I wanted to be treated as a woman...an equal...'

  'No...you're lying,' Seb denied sharply. 'No woman of your intelligence and your age waits so long without having a purpose, a reason for doing so, and certainly a woman like you would never allow such an important rite of passage to be... No... you must have been waiting for something or someone...'

  He was so close to the truth that Katie held her
breath praying inwardly that Seb wouldn't inadvertently stumble on it and realise...

  Realise what? That she had dreamed up for herself a totally false image of her own sexuality? That she had spent years fantasising about a sexual experience and a man so far removed from the reality of what her body had told her tonight it really wanted, that the enormity of the gulf between what she had believed she had wanted and what in fact she really had wanted was so huge that even now she could barely grasp how wrong she had been?

  The person she had believed she was before tonight could never have felt, wanted, needed, enjoyed what she had just experienced with Seb. By rights she knew she ought to feel, at best self-conscious and at worst down-right ashamed of what she had done and why she had done it, and certainly it was something she couldn't envisage ever discussing even with someone so close to her as her twin.

  How on earth would Louise react if she were to tell her that she had been so overwhelmed by her own sexual longings that she had practically begged Seb, a man she knew she didn't love, but who in that mad moment of intensity she had wanted with an urgency and despera-tion far stronger than anything she had ever previously experienced, to take her, possess her, fill and complete her?

  She had, she recognised on a shocking surge of self-realisation, wanted exactly what had happened and worse, she had wanted it to be with Seb who she knew didn't love her and who she knew was just about as different from Gareth as it was possible for a man to be.

  'Why?' Seb was asking her tersely. 'Why now? Why me?'

  He reached out, taking hold of her by her shoulders, dragging her upright to face him before she could stop him.

  '"What's going on, Katie? I arrive home to discover that you and I are supposedly having a relationship, that we are effectively already a couple, although you and I both know that that just isn't so...or rather it wasn't,'

  he corrected himself grimly.

  'That was an accident,' Katie told him immediately.

  'I never...' She stopped, biting her lip and then wincing as the touch of her teeth against its tenderness reminded her of the intimacy of the kisses they had shared. Her face flushed a soft rosy pink as she tried to wriggle free of him and another part of her body reminded her even more insistently of just how intimate that intimacy had been.