The Perfect Match Read online

  Never had she imagined that she could react like this to a man's touch, to his kiss, that she could want him so immediately and so overwhelmingly, that she could feel the urgent almost violent desire within him to tear aside the barriers of their clothing and know her utterly and completely and to share that desire, to know just how much he ached for the feel of her skin against his, beneath his, and how much she shared and returned that ache.

  She could hear him whispering beneath their shared hungry kisses how much he wanted her, how much he had longed for her in his life—unintelligible, dis-jointed words that ran together from a raw trickle of sound into a sensual flood.

  How long they stood there, kissing, touching...

  wanting, Chrissie had no idea; she only knew that when he finally released her, she was trembling so much she could hardly stand up, that her mouth felt swollen and bruised, that his mouth looked...

  looked...

  She swallowed as she looked at him and he reached reassuringly for her hand, then held it tenderly in the firm, warm grip of his own. "Coup defoudre, I believe the French call it.'

  'They would,' Chrissie replied shakily. She ached to be back in his arms. She ached all over for him, she admitted, inside and out, and it was nothing like the aches and pains she had been suffering because of her hard physical work cleaning up the cottage, nothing at all.

  God, but he wanted her, Guy recognised. He wanted her so much that he didn't know how he was managing to keep his hands off her. He had never considered himself to be a highly sexed man, but right now...

  'I've never experienced anything like this before,'

  Chrissie confessed.

  'Good,' Guy told her tautly, adding rawly, 'I think I'd want to kill any other man who might have—'

  Chrissie stopped him, shaking her head, but she knew what he meant. She felt equally savage and un-characteristically jealous of any other woman who might have had the same effect on him as she quite obviously had had.

  She took a deep breath and forced herself to try to come back down to normality, but it was almost impossible. 'I want you so much,' she admitted shakily.

  Then Guy was bridging the small gap between them and taking her back in his arms.

  For several long minutes, the only sound was that of their increasingly passionate kisses and strained breathing. Chrissie had no idea which of them it was who lifted Guy's hand to her breast; she only knew that the sensation of his holding her, touching her there, made her whole body jerk in a frenzy of physical need, a sensation like a jolt of electricity running straight from her breast to her womb, convulsing her whole body with a deep-rooted, aching need.

  'Please don't, please don't,' she whispered huskily, even though she was the one who arched back against him, guiding his hand whilst he rubbed the tip of his thumb over and over her T-shirt-covered nipple until she was pleading frantically with him to soothe her aching flesh with the healing suckle of his mouth.

  Chrissie had never pleaded with a man to make love to her before or imagined she might want to, but this whole situation was a world apart from anything she had experienced before, completely foreign terri-tory to her, a place where the old rules, the old guide-lines, meant nothing and where the only things she had to guide her were her own senses and needs and his.

  When Guy tugged up her T-shirt in response to her frenzied pleas and fastened his mouth on the hard, swollen tip of her breast, Chrissie almost felt she might faint from the intensity of her pleasure.

  She could hear his soft murmurs as he caressed her and could feel the need in his body. She ached to touch him, to explore him, to know him, and suddenly the fierce suckling of his mouth against her breast wasn't enough to satisfy the urgent clamour of her physical response to him. Only one thing, one person, could satisfy and silence that.

  Her hands trembling, she lifted them to cup his face and gently ease him away from her body. As he looked into her eyes, she dropped her hands and held one of them out to him and started to walk towards the stairs.

  Her hand felt small and delicate, almost lost within the grip of his as he let her lead him, but as they started to mount the stairs, she felt him pull back slightly from her.

  'You don't have to do this, you know,' she heard him telling her rustily.

  Silently Chrissie searched his face before telling him with quiet dignity, 'Yes, I do, but if you would rather not...'

  Her honest directness made Guy's heart ache for her. She was so trusting, so giving, so...so perfect.

  'You shouldn't need to ask,' he told her huskily, adding with a rueful, self-derogatory laugh as he looked briefly down at his own body, 'The answer is, I'm afraid to say, rather too obvious.'

  Chrissie couldn't help it. She followed his gaze, her eyes widening in betrayal of her female response to the evidence of his male desire for her. A tiny kick of pleasure pushed up her heart rate and the temptation to reach out and run her fingertips exploratively along the hard ridge of his arousal was one she had to fight hard to resist, but her body language had already given her away and Guy's visual reciprocal inspection of her was every bit as revealing of his own need.

  For the first time in her life, Chrissie suddenly knew what it meant to feel sexually proud of her body, to know within the most inner core of herself that when she stood naked before Guy, it would be with pride and in the knowledge that her body, her femininity, her womanliness, would fill him with silent awe, with reverence, with arousal and need. As his nakedness would her.

  She could feel his hand trembling slightly as she led the way to the small empty bedroom she was using.

  Just for a second and only for a second as she opened the door and led him inside, she regretted the bareness of the scrubbed walls and floor, the plainness of the inflatable mattress with its simple white covering of bed linen she had brought from home. What, after all, did they need with the gaudy trappings of romance, with satin sheets and four-poster beds, rich brocades and thick carpets? They had all the richness, all the luxury, all the sensuality, they would need in one another.

  Guy surveyed the plain bare room in silence. It smelled of fresh air and cleanliness and something far less easy to pigeon-hole—a scent, a perfume, an essence, which he recognised was hers.

  'You're actually staying here?' he commented, frowning slightly as he did so. The house was in one of the poorer parts of town, and whilst Haslewich was, generally speaking, a safe enough place to live and safer than most, there had been several incidents lately of youths brawling in the streets in this part of town and it was only a couple of streets away trouble had erupted recently with youngsters apparently buying drugs outside a local nightclub.

  'It seemed to be the most sensible thing to do,'

  Chrissie told him.

  Was he perhaps put out by the starkness of the room and its setting or did he perhaps think that she was being too forward and usurping his role? He wasn't to know, after all, how unique this whole situation was for her, how unique her desire for him and her responsiveness to him were, how unique he was.

  'If you'd rather...' she began hesitantly, but Guy didn't let her finish.

  He gathered her up in his arms as he told her softly,

  'No. this is perfect... you are perfect. This is how love should be, not contrived or forced, achievable only with the right backcloth, the right props, the right setting, but simply instinctive and natural, wholesome and clean. We don't need any of the trappings of seduction, because this isn't seduction. And besides, no setting however beautiful could anywhere near match your beauty or the beauty of what we're going to share, to create.'

  Chrissie felt her eyes start to fill with emotional tears. It was almost as though he could read her mind, as though he shared her thoughts, as though the two of them were so much in harmony that they were already almost a part of one another.

  Unsteadily she lifted her hand to his face, touching her fingertips to his mouth, trembling as she explored the difference between the slightly rough flesh above h
is lip where he shaved with the sensual smoothness of his mouth.

  'Chrissie.'

  Slowly, one by one, he sucked her fingers into his mouth as he looked deep into her eyes.

  As she looked equally intensely back at him, Chrissie had no awareness of the soft keening sound of pleasure she gave in response to the sensation caused by the sensually rhythmic movement of his mouth and tongue as they caressed her fingers.

  Deep within her body, she could feel herself starting to ache and melt, to experience feelings and needs as old as humankind itself. Her body suddenly felt as though it were weighted down with heavy, inhibiting armour, her clothes a chafing restriction against which her skin and her senses rebelled.

  In the past, sexual intimacy for Chrissie had always been a fairly passive activity with the man taking the lead. She had certainly never envisaged a situation where she might do as she was doing now and start to tug impatiently at her own irritatingly unyielding clothes in her yearning hunger to experience a man's hands on her body. But then, this was different...this was... Her small moans of frustration gave way to voluptuous sighs of pleasure as Guy started to help her remove her recalcitrant garments.

  It shocked her a little at first to recognise when she finally stood naked before him that the unfamiliar scent of her body was the scent of her arousal, her desire for him, but if she found the realisation unexpected and slightly shocking, Guy, it seemed, viewed it in a totally different way and had no inhibitions about telling and showing her.

  As he nuzzled the hollow between her breasts, he told her appreciatively, 'You smell so good. Just like a woman should.'

  'I...there is a shower,' she began to suggest, but as though he guessed what she was thinking, Guy smiled slowly at her, then shook his head and told her firmly,

  'No. Don't you know how erotic it is...how erotic you are... how much the scent of you makes me want to touch you, taste you, explore and know every inch of you?'

  For the first time since that initial contact when they had looked into one another's eyes and known, Chrissie felt slightly flustered and uncertain.

  'I don't want you all washed and antiseptic,' Guy added meaningfully. 'I want you the way you are now. A woman, warm and aroused, wanting me and scented by... tasting of that wan ting... and I want you to want me in the same way,' he finished rawly.

  'I do,' Chrissie whispered back, and she knew as she said it that it was true and that already she ached for the scent of him in her nostrils, the taste of him on her mouth.

  Once again her eyes gave her away and Guy muttered hoarsely to her, 'You know what I mean, don't you?'

  The only thing she needed to do was simply to nod her head and watch in trembling anticipation as he swiftly removed his own clothes. His body was taut and athletic, all clean lines and strong muscles. The sight of the soft, dark body hair that lay in silken whirls against his skin seized her body with a pang of female appreciation and made her curl her toes in sensual response to such masculinity.

  Again in direct contradiction to her previous and admittedly rather prosaic and mundane sexual experience, she discovered that with Guy she actually wanted to look at his body, to explore it visually with an open-eyed female curiosity, not just to know its differentness but, she suspected with a small sense of shock, to inspect and judge its male ability to satisfy the hunger that she knew she wasn't going to be able to control for much longer.

  She hadn't realised quite how long she had been studying him or quite how hard she was frowning until she heard Guy asking her with rueful light-heartedness, 'Do I pass?'

  Thoroughly mortified, Chrissie started to look away, nodding her head as self-consciousness began to overwhelm her, but Guy simply laughed and hugged her reassuringly.

  'It's all right,' he told her warmly. 'You have every right to look and judge. There mustn't be any barriers between us, Chrissie, or any inhibitions or murky areas that can't be touched. That isn't what you and I are about. Of course you want to look at me. Just as I want to look at you. After all, doesn't half the pleasure in enjoying a meal come from its visual presentation, and doesn't that presentation stimulate and increase our appetite for it, just as looking at you is stimulating my appetite for you?' he asked her softly.

  And then, before she could make any response, he bent his head to kiss her.

  Gently at first, almost too gently, Chrissie decided, she started to press herself closer to him whilst she tried to prolong and deepen each kiss like a fish chas-ing a lure, not realising that she was the one being lured until Guy's arms snapped tightly round her and then the tongue she had been trying yearningly to caress and coax with hers was suddenly no longer teasingly tempting her into his but instead thrusting powerfully and sensually within her own, causing her whole body to jerk against Guy's in a shudder of pleasure she was completely unable to control.

  Not, or so it seemed from Guy's approving reaction, that he wanted her to control it, or anything else, She recognised as his hands swept her body and cupped her buttocks, pulling her tightly against him whilst he murmured against her mouth how much he wanted her, how much he ached for her.

  No more than she wanted and ached for him, Chrissie knew, but she wasn't aware of having whispered the words against his mouth until Guy picked her up in his arms and carried her across to the bed.

  As he placed her on it, she could feel the warmth of his breath against the skin of her midriff. Shakily she closed her eyes as she felt herself starting to quiver and then tensed as she felt Guy's mouth brush lightly against her body, his tongue tracing round her navel.

  Once and then again, a thousand tiny darts of sensual pleasure exploded inside her like the seeds of a puff-ball exploding in the summer sunshine, the sensation at one and the same time so delicate and yet so powerful that it shocked her into speechless wonder.

  'Is it good?' she heard Guy questioning her thickly.

  'Do you like that?'

  Like it? The only reaction Chrissie could manage was a soft groan followed by a sharply indrawn breath as his mouth started to move downwards across her stomach towards her hip-bone in a series of caresses so light that they barely seemed to graze the surface of her skin and yet so sensually erotic that what lay beneath that skin was already reacting to them with a rhythmic urgency that couldn't be ignored.

  Not even the sensation of his hand gently and protectively covering her sex could detract from the effect the delicate, tender exploration of his mouth was having on her body.

  Which, she decided later, had to be the reason why she finally opened her eyes and saw Guy kneeling between her thighs, his whole concentration focused on the feminine heart of her as he slid his hands beneath her and gently tilted her body upwards so that he could have complete and total access to her intimacy. She felt no sense of inhibition or false modesty, no need to cover herself or push him away, but instead a strong awareness of the lightness, the perfection of his intimate, loving possession of her as his tongue probed the moist mystery of her body whilst she lay still and watchful, her breathing shallow but steady until he found what he was seeking and started to caress it with increasingly sensual strokes. Then her body trembled and jerked wildly in response to him, so wildly that she could feel the hard grip of his fingers biting possessively into her flesh as he continued to hold her beneath his mouth whilst she writhed and arched frantically beneath him, not sure if she wanted to pull away and bring her sweet torture to an end or arch up greedily against him and demand even more of the shocking pleasure he was giving her.

  Her body, though, was perfectly sure of what it wanted, needed, craved, and the high female sound of arousal that sobbed from her throat made sure that Guy knew, as well.

  'No. No more, please don't,' Chrissie panted deliri-ously as the hot quivers of pleasure darted through her body, convulsing her womb with tiny warning spasms of what lay ahead of her, making her shiver in a mixture of awe that she could feel such intense pleasure and a self-protective fear of the inevitable loss of self-control, of
self that would come with it.

  It was Guy who now controlled her body and her reactions and not her.

  'Stop,' she begged him, adding unintentionally,

  'I'm afraid...'

  'Of what?' Guy asked her rawly. 'This?' He watched her face as she trembled against his touch.

  'It's all so overpowering, so...so unfamiliar to me,'

  Chrissie admitted unwillingly. 'I don't...I haven't...'

  'You've given yourself physically before,' Guy guessed for her, 'but not like this, not totally, completely, physically, emotionally and mentally, the way it is now between us. I feel just as afraid,' he told her simply, 'afraid of not matching up to your expecta-tions, of disappointing you, of spoiling what we have been given.'

  'You couldn't do that,' Chrissie told him softly, and as she said it she knew it was true and she knew something else, as well. 'I want you, Guy,' she told him emotionally, reaching out towards him, her body trembling as she met the burning look of physical desire in his eyes.

  Unable to stop herself, she reached out and touched the tip of his erect manhood with her fingertips and then ran them slowly and a little hesitantly along the shaft.

  Now it was his turn to tremble and groan, the sound emerging from deep within his chest as he closed his eyes and told her thickly, 'God, that feels so good, too good.' He suddenly tensed and groaned again, then bent his head and cupped her breast with his hand, drawing her nipple into his mouth and sucking fiercely cm it, not just to give her pleasure, Chrissie recognised with a sharp kick of female power, but also because it was what he wanted. He needed to feel the soft warmth of her breast within his mouth, to draw on it and from it in just the same way that she now ached to feel him within her.

  'Now, now, please, Guy, now,' she pleaded, whispering the impassioned words between the frantic kisses, her earlier fear of losing control completely forgotten, overwhelmed by a far more urgent and important need—the need to complete the cycle they had both set in motion, to be fulfilled, to be—