CHAPTER NINE
THEY WERE JUST over halfway back to the city when Keira happened to glance in the passenger-side wing mirror and notice the stormclouds that were rapidly darkening the sky behind them, piling on top of one another in a leaden grey and densely packed mass.
Jay had obviously seen them too, because he depressed the accelerator and told her crisply, ‘Looks like we could be in for a downpour.’
‘I thought the monsoon season was over,’ Keira told him. The clouds were toppling over one another now, spilling out to cover the sky in a billowing rolling wall that was moving speedily towards them.
‘It is,’ Jay agreed. ‘This is obviously a freak storm of some sort. It can happen. Hold on,’ he warned her, as he pressed the accelerator even further and the car surged forward at a speed that sent them bouncing over the poor-quality road.
‘I wouldn’t normally want to travel at this speed on a road like this, but I’d rather not be caught out here in the open if the storm catches up with us. If a deluge starts this road could all too easily be turned into a river.’
Keira nodded her head, recognising the truth of what he was saying.
The sky was almost purple-black behind them now, and the branches of the scrubby sparse trees were bending and twisting in the ferocity of the wind that was pushing the storm towards them. Flocks of birds rose from the trees, wheeling and screeching before turning to flee. Eerily electric yellow-white lightning flashed behind them, followed by crashes of thunder that made Keira wince and cling to her seat.
She no longer wanted to look in the wing mirror, but of course she couldn’t stop herself from doing so. The storm was catching up with them.
‘Watch out.’
Jay swung the car to avoid hitting a cow that had strayed into the road, throwing Keira hard against both her seat belt and the arm he had flung across to protect her. Her own immediate instinct was to hold tightly to his arm, as much for comfort as anything else.
‘Sorry about that.’
His voice was clipped, and Keira could feel him tensing his arm, ready to pull away from her as though he was keen to break their physical contact. Just as she should be.
‘I’m just glad you managed to avoid the cow,’ Keira told him shakily, trying to make some effort at normal conversation to distract herself from the dangerous direction of her thoughts. She released him, and then had to fight not to grab hold of him again as another bolt of lightning lit up the bruised tungsten-dark sky.
Large fat drops of rain hammered down on the car’s roof and hit the windscreen, mingling with the dust to turn it into muddy rivulets.
‘I’m going to have to slow down,’ Jay warned her. ‘Otherwise we’ll risk aquaplaning off the road.’
Keira nodded her head. She was grateful to him for keeping her informed of what he was doing and why, but she didn’t want to distract him from his driving by talking to him.
Not that she could talk to him now and be heard—not over the noise of the thunder and the rain that was engulfing them.
Sheet lightning illuminated a torrent of rain so powerful that it was as though they were driving under a waterfall. In the car’s headlights Keira could see the muddy froth of boiling water where the road used to be.
Jay had cut the car’s speed, but Keira could still feel the dangerous suck and pull of the flooding water as it seethed beneath their tyres, threatening to wash them off the road.
Strangely, she didn’t feel as afraid as she knew she should. Because she was with Jay? Keira glanced briefly towards him. He was staring ahead, concentrating on his driving, his hands on the steering wheel careful and controlled rather than white-knuckled with anxiety. Somehow she knew that Jay would not let the storm beat him.
‘Ralapur’s up ahead,’ Jay told her, and sure enough, as Keira peered through the windscreen, she could see here and there the glimmer of lights.
Jay picked up speed again, leaving the storm behind, and they came to the new Tarmac road—commissioned and paid for, she had learned, by Jay’s brother, who was proving to be a forward-thinking and caring figurehead. The Tarmac gleamed wet under the drum of the rain, but at least it was free of any surface water.
By the time they reached the city car park the rain had actually almost stopped, but the storm was obviously following them.
‘If you want to stay here whilst I go and get you a raincoat and an umbrella—?’ Jay offered, as he switched off the engine.
Keira shook her head. ‘No, I’ll come with you,’ she told him. She’d rather risk getting a bit wet and having the safety of his presence than remaining dry and staying in the car on her own.
‘Come on, then.’
They were only yards from the square in front of the palace when the storm caught up with them, drenching them with a deluge of rainfall that soaked them through to the skin, hammering down so hard that Keira felt as though she could hardly breathe.
When Jay took hold of her hand, shouting to her above the noise of the rain, ‘We’ll go this way—it’s quicker!’ as he half-pulled her down a narrow passageway and through a high gate in the wall that took them into his own private courtyard, she didn’t have the breath to object, even if she had wanted to do so. Far easier and safer to simply let Jay lead her up the flight of stone stairs that led from his courtyard to his door, which he opened speedily, pushing Keira inside ahead of him, and then slammed closed behind them, enclosing them both in the welcome dry protection of the room beyond it.
The thought occurred to Keira that not once during the storm had she felt anything less than complete faith in Jay, and complete trust in his judgement as he had made decisions she knew she would not have had the confidence to make. But what she would remember most of all about the storm was the warmth of his hand holding hers. It was pointless telling herself that the sense of intimacy she had felt and the joy it had brought her were completely out of proportion to his actions, and therefore a warning sign of how dangerously out of her depth she was getting. It was too late. She suspected that somehow, somewhere along the journey from their first meeting to being here in this room, she had fallen in love with him.
Out of breath and soaking wet, Keira pushed her realisation aside and looked round the room. A bedroom. Jay’s bedroom? Her heart lurched and crashed into her ribs—and not out of fear, she recognized, as Jay strode across the room to switch on the lights.
She was shivering now, and not just because of her body’s reaction to the intimacy of their surroundings. Her wet clothes were plastered to her body, just as Jay’s were plastered to his. Jay’s shirt was clinging to his torso, so sodden that it had become virtually opaque. Her heart was skittering around inside her ribcage now, her mouth was dry and a dangerous and unwanted pulse was aching deep inside her. Keira dragged her gaze away from its hungry focus on Jay and made herself study her surroundings instead.
A large modern bed dominated the room, with crisp white bedlinen turned down over a richly embroidered silk coverlet. Art Deco lamps with Tiffany shades threw soft shadows across the dark silk-rug-covered floor, repeating the 1930s theme of the women’s quarters and reminding Keira that it had been a habit of the fabulously wealthy Maharajas of that era to build themselves new palaces, decorated and furnished in the fashion of the times.
Outside the sky had turned dark, and the only sound was that of the rain hammering down. Keira lifted her hand to brush her wet hair out of her eyes and then nearly jumped out of her skin as suddenly there was a flash of lightning so intense it seared the sky, followed almost immediately by the most deafening crash of thunder. As she cried out, more in shock than fear, the lights went out, plunging the room and the city beyond it into darkness.
Keira took a step forward and then came to an abrupt halt as she collided with Jay. His fingers curled round her upper arms—to steady her or to hold her off? She didn’t know. All she did know was that the mere act of him touching her was setting off a storm of its own inside her body that she knew she would not be able to contain. Desire zig-zagged through her like the lightning outside, burning from nerve-ending to nerve-ending, leaving her a mass of aching, volatile need. Her heart crashed into her ribs. The threat of her longing was causing her far more fear than what was happening outside. Instinctively and immediately Keira tried to protect herself, but it was too late. Her body had other ideas. As she had done before she leaned towards him, the stifled urgent sound of her breathing tattooing onto the silence a sensuality that spoke openly of her desire.
Jay heard the message and recognised it. He should turn her down. But in the electric tension of the darkened room her quickened breathing was suddenly a conduit for the desire he had been fighting to keep at bay from the moment he had first seen her. It ran like fire over gunpowder along his veins and through his senses, blowing apart his control over not just his reactions, but over something he had thought no woman could ever influence—his emotions.
Rejection burned into need; need—that was all, Jay told himself fiercely. The feeling growing within him that she had some kind of unique magnetic pull on his senses was just his imagination.
Ignoring the warnings his brain was trying to give him, he reached for Keira, demanding softly, ‘What is it? What do you want? Tell me.’
The ragged catch in her breath quickened his own arousal. He could feel her trembling, smell the scent of her skin, hear the ache in her low moan of longing.
‘Is it this?’
He had drawn her to him with one strong, sinuous movement that brought her up tightly against his body.
‘Tell me,’ he repeated. ‘Tell me that you want me.’
This was madness—a madness she would regret. Yet somehow she no longer cared.
‘I want you,’ Keira whispered. And as though the admission had released her from all constraint, she could feel the wild, wanton rush of her own hot desire as it stormed through her body, overpowering everything that stood in its way. ‘I want you,’ she repeated unsteadily, but more loudly. ‘I want you...’
‘How? How do you want me? Tell me. Show me. Show me your desire. Show me the way you want me to please you. Talk to me in words and tell me your pleasure.’
What he was asking of her was impossible, but that didn’t stop his words from exciting her almost unbearably.
Their bodies gave off a mutual heat of need through the wet fabric of their clothes. She could smell it, feel it, and breathing it in was like breathing in something headily intoxicating.
Thunder roared overhead, and lightning spat and forked— and Keira’s heartbeat went into overdrive.
She registered the rise and fall of Jay’s chest with a small shuddering breath. In the dim light his eyes shone molten like mercury, his gaze quicksilver, loaded with promise and danger.
The hot, almost feral scent of Jay’s arousal mingling with that of his skin charged a feeling within her so sharp it was almost a pain, and longing leached from her blood into her flesh.
She should not be feeling like this, but it was too late to tell herself that now.
She was torn between her longing for him and her fear because she did so; torn between arousal and animosity, between the intensity of her need to drive him over the edge that would result in him possessing her and the equal intensity of her need to escape from that darkness within herself.
Almost as though he sensed the battle taking place inside her, Jay tightened his hold on her, warning her without words that it was too late now for her to try to escape.
Keira shivered and made a small sound of protest against her own arousal, whispering, ‘No...’
‘Yes.’ Jay overruled her. ‘Yes.’
His mouth was explosively demanding on her own, but Keira didn’t care. His passion was overwhelming her half-hearted attempt at dutiful resistance, and she was more than glad to let it. She had to respond to him. There was no other choice, and nor did she wish for one. This was what she had been yearning and aching for. This was what she had been born for.
The storm had engulfed them both, and Keira was swamped by it. In the warm darkness of the room the sounds of their increasingly aroused breathing, of hands against flesh, shaping, touching, caressing, of mouth against mouth, of tongues twining and seeking, were an erotic counterpoint to the uneven thud of their heartbeats.
Layer upon layer the passion built between them, with each breath, each unsteady pulse-beat taking her higher, Keira recognised. And Jay’s touch fed its heat as his hands shaped her body and his mouth commanded her response.
Outside the storm still raged ignored—until a fiercely bright bolt of lightning flashed outside, briefly filling the room with a brilliant white light.
Keira tensed, dragging her mouth away from Jay’s to look uncertainly towards the window. Jay’s gaze fastened on the rise and fall of Keira’s breasts. The rapid movement of her chest dragged the wet fabric of her blouse against her skin, so that he could see her flesh beneath it. Keira wasn’t looking at the window now. She was looking at him, her nipples dark and hard and straining as tightly against the wet silk of her bra as his erection was straining against his trousers.
The brilliance of the lightning faded, but the accuracy with which Jay found the place where the aureole of her nipple met the curve of her breast caused Keira to gasp out loud, her nipple hardening under the erotic touch of his thumb and forefinger.
‘Look at me,’ Jay commanded. He wanted to see her desire for him as well as feel it. He wanted to watch whilst the touch of his hands brought her pleasure. He wanted to see in her eyes what could not be hidden or denied by any verbal rejection.
In the shadowy semi-light Keira gave herself over to the flood of pleasure storming through her, her eyes liquid gold with arousal and her lips stung soft and swollen from his kisses as she looked up at Jay.
Just the heat engendered by the way Jay was looking back at her should surely have been enough to melt the clothes from her flesh, leaving her naked and open to his touch in all the ways she wanted it to be, Keira thought helplessly.
The lightning might have faded, softening the room back into darkness, but its brief life had lasted long enough for Jay to be able to reach unerringly for the buttons on Keira’s blouse.
He heard her whimper, then felt her shudder when he tugged the wet fabric away from her skin, allowing her to sway closer to him, her naked breasts openly ready for the possession of his hands.
Could this really be her? Moaning, wantonly arching her back, pushing her body hungrily and rhythmically against Jay’s touch? Keira wondered dizzily. Fierce spasms of pleasure surged through her, urging her to demand more. The caress of his hands on her breasts was making her ache unbearably for the touch of his lips against them, for the stroke of his tongue, the possessive, sensual suckling of her flesh that she knew would ignite a need in her that would change her for ever. Just thinking about it was making the pulse deep inside her grow, wanting the stroke of his fingers.
‘Does this pleasure you? Do you want more?’
She was beyond speech—beyond anything other than giving herself over to him completely.
Keira didn’t know whether or not she had spoken, but she did know that a message had been given and understood. And now they were both tugging at one another’s clothes, interspersing their actions with kisses and caresses and, in her case, soft, fevered, delighted little moans of pleasure as she discovered some new bit of him to touch.
Who could have known that rain-wet flesh could feel so erotic, or that such an intensity of urgency could possess her?
Jay’s hands were shaping her naked body, stroking down to her thighs and then up over her. His fingertips, spanning the smoothness of her bottom and then lifting her so that he could press her into his arousal, had her raking her nails down the length of his upper arm, whilst she sobbed her sexual heat into the wet flesh of his throat.
Had she parted her own thighs in open willingness, soliciting his long and deliberately erotic exploration of her intimate flesh, or had Jay parted them himself?
Keira had no idea, and she cared even less. She couldn’t think or exist beyond the sensual stroke of his fingertip backwards and forwards over her clitoris.
Possessed by the desire that had materialised as quickly as the storm, Keira tugged and tore at Jay’s clothes, shuddering with blatant sexual pleasure at each touch of his hands on her naked rain-sleek skin, moaning her delight and inciting more intimacy as each touch fuelled her hunger for more.
Here in this room, filled with the heat they themselves had generated, it felt almost as though the storm had ripped from her all her inhibitions.
Jay wasn’t touching her any more; he wasn’t giving her that almost too intense pleasure, and its loss was making her tremble and ache. But before Keira could voice her loss Jay was picking her up and carrying her to the wide bed.
Keira clung to him as he lowered her onto the mattress, pressing passionate kisses on his throat and then his chest, her golden eyes brilliant with what it meant to be the woman he had aroused within her.
The storm had laid bare her feelings, both physical and emotional. She couldn’t hide from them any more She had fallen in love with Jay.
He pushed her back on the bed and then kissed her mouth, slowly and deeply, until her senses swam and her nipples stiffened achingly into the palms of his hands. She welcomed the heat of his mouth as he kissed his way along the curve of her breast to circle first one nipple and then the other with the tip of his tongue.
The pulse deep inside her turned into a thudding, knowing, gnawing ache that leapt to the touch of Jay’s fingers and responded rhythmically to their caress.
He moved back down the bed, circling her slim ankle with his hand and lifting her leg so that he could string kisses from the inside of her ankle bone all the way along her leg to her knee, and then beyond, up over her thigh, whilst she trembled violently with a pleasure her body could not contain.
The thunder and lightning was inside her, possessing her, tossing her from one peak of pleasure to the next. Somehow her feet were on his shoulders. Somehow her body lay open to him to explore and enjoy as he wished. Keira gasped as his fingertips stroked through the parted wetness of the inner lips of her sex and her clitoris over and over again, slowly, then faster, moving over her and within her, taking her up so high, so fast, that she could barely draw breath between her shocked gasp of recognition and the sob of pleasure that convulsed her throat muscles at exactly the same time as Jay’s caresses convulsed her body into the sharp intense spasm of her orgasm.
The pleasure, so swift and savage, clung to her in an aftermath of intense sweetness and emotional sensitivity that left her trembling, and Jay looked down at her. Her body felt weightless and boneless, and yet at the same time so heavy with exhaustion that she couldn’t move. Overcome by her emotions, Keira reached for Jay’s hand and pressed it fervently to her lips in an age-old gesture of intense love.
She was good—even better than he had expected. Taking her pleasure with a direct simplicity that had acted on him like a powerful aphrodisiac. He wanted to see that pleasure again. He wanted to watch whilst he gave it to her and she took it. He wanted her legs wrapped around him whilst he took her, stroking slowly and deeply into her, until she begged him to move faster and deeper, until she took him with her to that place she had just been... But, unexpectedly, she was practically falling asleep as he held her.
Frowning, Jay lowered her onto the bed and watched as her eyes closed.
* * *
It was the sound of running water that woke Keira—that, and a sense of loss because even in sleep she had known that Jay had left her.
The room was still dark, although the storm had gone. A shaft of oblong light from the half-open bathroom door coupled with the sound of the shower told her where Jay had gone.
She got up out of bed and padded naked towards the bathroom. Black marble covered the floor, its richness reflected in the ornately panelled mirrored walls. One half of the bathroom was almost filled with a large rectangular bath, sunk into the floor and reached via a set of marble steps. The other side of the room had been turned into the equivalent of a modern wet room, separated from the bathing area by a vanity unit and a glass screen. Jay was standing beneath the shower in the wet-room area, with his back to her.
Soapsuds and water glistened on his skin. Keira’s heart and body contracted on a surge of love for him. She watched him for as long as she could bear to be apart from him, and then ran to him.
Jay turned as she reached the shower, looking at her and then taking her in his arms, kissing her slowly and sweetly, and then less slowly as she pressed herself closer to him.
Keira scooped some of the lather off his body and rubbed it against her own, watching the way the colour of his eyes burned from grey to silver as he poured shower gel into his palm and then slowly applied it to her body.
Ten minutes later, when the foam had disappeared along with the shower water, Keira knew that the desire Jay’s touch had aroused in her was nowhere close to disappearing. Quite the opposite.
Slowly and wonderingly she reached out to touch him, running her fingertips along his breastbone and then down his body, through the soft dark hair that thickened around the base of his hardness.
Her chest rose and then fell sharply as her senses responded to the intimacy of her exploration, and uncertainly she stroked delicately along the rigid shaft.
Jay shuddered. What Keira was doing to him was sheer torment, and she must know it. He wanted to be enclosed by her, to be held firm, to feel her body embracing and caressing him. He wanted to take her and hold her and thrust deep into her. He wanted to feel her body’s desire for his. He wanted to lose himself in her. He wanted...
Keira could feel the heavy, uneven thud of Jay’s heartbeat, could taste the unique hot salt of his skin. ‘I want you,’ she told him, breathing the words out against his skin, the raw uneven huskiness of her voice matching the unsteadiness of her heartbeat. ‘Make love to me, Jay.’
Her hands flat against the hard muscles of his six-pack, she placed a line of kisses down his body, her lips moving lower until finally she placed a kiss of love and longing against the smooth, rigid hardness of the flesh that pulsed beneath the hold of her hand.
At last she had done it—had begged him as he had sworn that she would. His pride was appeased. And only just in time, Jay acknowledged. He wasn’t prepared to admit even to himself just how very few seconds more he would have lasted before his desire for her overwhelmed him and he had been the one begging her.
Now Jay couldn’t wait any longer. He swept her up into his arms and carried her back to the bed.
His desire to finish what they had begun drove through the barriers he normally imposed on himself, so that his lovemaking wasn’t confined to the mere physical skill he normally used to ensure his partner’s pleasure whilst he himself remained emotionally detached. That detachment was replaced with something he could neither control nor reject, that swept and burned through him, taking possession of him.
Keira herself was lost—totally and completely. All that mattered was Jay and what she was feeling. There was no room for anything else. Together they filled her senses and her thoughts. His lovemaking had taken her to the heights already tonight. Now he was showing her that there were heights beyond those heights—unimaginable peak after peak of such exquisite sensual pleasures that they burned her senses like a brand. Jay’s brand, she thought dizzily.
Keira was oblivious to the rustle of foil as Jay fought to control himself long enough to practise safe sex, knowing only that he had moved away from her. Wantonly she urged him back to her, with soft pleas interspersed with hungry kisses and caresses.
The return of the hard weight of him between her thighs made her shudder and arch up against him, her hands gripping his shoulders as he moved against her, thrusting slowly into her.
How could there be such an intensity of pleasure? It was driving her forward to meet it, to meet him, as he filled her body, possessing it—possessing her. It grew and sharpened, and an urgent, compelling need rushed through her, refusing to be checked, matching its pace to Jay’s deepening thrusts.
The world—no, the universe, his universe, Jay acknowledged, had become the feel of Keira’s flesh enclosing him, the feel of being with her and within her. This was all that mattered—the only thing that mattered. He thrust deeper, and felt the barrier that barred his way. The barrier? She was a virgin? How could she possibly be a virgin? Disbelief, followed by anger, followed by outrage, burned through him.
Why had Jay gone so still? That wasn’t what she wanted. Keira moved eagerly against him, covering his mouth with her own, showing him with the hot, urgent thrust of her tongue just what she did want.
Caught totally off guard by his discovery, and by the way it changed the dynamics of what was happening, Jay wanted to withdraw from Keira. But both her body and his own were conspiring to prevent him from doing so. Her flesh clung wantonly to his, enclosing and possessing him in its soft moist heat, overwhelming what his brain wanted his body to do. His body had very different ideas. He moved, intending to pull back, but Keira moved with him, and within the space of one sharp indrawn breath it was too late for him to stop—too late for him to do anything but submit to the demands of their shared desire.
This time the pleasure was different, Keira recognized: deeper, stronger, its convulsions tightening around Jay’s flesh and holding him there until her orgasm became his, and his hers. Until she was stormed, swept, elevated to a place beyond any place she had ever thought could exist, to a depth of intensity that shocked her as much as it pleasured her.