Australian Affairs: Claimed: Dr Chandler's Sleeping Beauty / Countering His Claim / Australia's Maverick Millionaire. Margaret Way
push away from her scalp. The skin on her arms went up in goosebumps and her stomach pitched and tilted as he closed the distance between them with a single step.
His hooded gaze zeroed in on her mouth as he planted a hand on the wall beside her head. ‘This is the part where you’re supposed to ask me what the hell I think I’m doing,’ he said in a gravel-rough tone.
‘I am?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But since you missed your cue maybe we can jump ahead to the next bit.’
Kitty’s heart flapped like a shredded truck tyre on tarmac. ‘What’s the next bit?’ she asked in a soft whisper.
His warm minty breath caressed her parted lips as he inched closer and closer. ‘Why don’t I show you?’ he said, and then he sealed her mouth with his.
KITTY felt a shockwave ripple through her body when his lips made that first contact with hers. His lips moved against hers in a slow, sensual manner, tasting, teasing and tempting her into a heated response that made the base of her spine melt like butter and every hair on her head tremble with delight. His kiss was soft and experimental, a tantalising assault on her senses that made her skin tauten all over in fiery response.
He threaded his hands through her hair, his fingers splaying over her tingling scalp as he scorched the seam of her mouth with the bold stroke of his tongue.
She opened to him and the world exploded in a burst of colour and leaping flares of searing heat. His tongue tangled with hers in a sexy dance that made her heart race and her belly flip and then flop.
This was no tame boy-next-door kiss. This was a man’s kiss—the kiss of a full-blooded man who wanted sex and wanted it now.
Kitty felt the ridge of hard male desire against her quivering belly. She felt the instinctual, primal tug of her flesh towards it. She shifted her body against his, her heart skipping a beat when she heard the deep sound of male approval come from his throat.
Her breasts were jammed up against the hard plane of his chest. She had never been so aware of them before. They swelled and strained behind the lace cage of her bra, hungry for more intimate contact.
She shivered when his hands went to her hips, holding her closer to the cradle of his pelvis. Every delicious male inch of him was imprinted on her flesh. She felt the pounding roar of his blood through his clothes. It echoed the rampant need that was surging inside her.
His mouth continued its fiery exchange with hers, his tongue calling hers into a brazen tango that mimicked the need charging through his body as well as her own.
He shifted one of his hands from her hips to the small of her back, the subtle pressure sending her senses into a crazy spin. Desire licked along her flesh like a trail of racing flames, her need as insistent as a tribal drumbeat deep inside her body.
His hand on her hip moved upwards in a slow-moving caress that stopped just below her right breast. She felt her nerves tighten in awareness. The tingling and twitching of her flesh was almost unbearable. She pressed herself against him in a silent signal of female want, a desperate plea for him to satisfy the deepest yearnings of her body.
Kitty kissed him back with brazen hunger. Her lips nibbled and nipped at his. Her tongue swirled and circled and swept against his in a sensual combat that made her spine turn to liquid. He fought back with another deep groan of approval and pulled her even closer to the rampant need of his body.
She fisted a hand in his shirt and he plunged deeper into her mouth, his strongly muscled thighs moving against hers to nudge her back against the wall. The body-to-body contact fuelled her desire to an unmanageable level. She pushed herself up on tiptoe so she could feel more of his hard heat against her feminine need. Her insides melted and pulsed with longing. Desire was like a runaway train. It was flashing past every station, siding or level crossing of caution and common sense she had erected in her brain.
Jake lifted his mouth off hers and looked down at her, his expression darkly satirical. ‘Well, I guess that clears up that little detail,’ he said.
Kitty blinked herself out of her sensual daze and stepped out of his hold. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, feeling gauche and flustered. ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ she said.
His mouth kicked up in a wry smile. ‘You’re not the shy, uptight type after all, are you?’
Kitty pressed her lips together for a moment. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you you’re a very good kisser.’
‘You pack a pretty awesome punch yourself, Dr Cargill,’ he said.
She tried to act casual about it, affecting a pose of indifference that belied the turmoil she felt inside. ‘Do you still want coffee?’
He reached out and passed one of his bent knuckles over the curve of her cheek in a light caress, his eyes so dark she couldn’t tell where his pupils began and ended. ‘You don’t really think I came in here for coffee, do you?’ he asked.
Kitty swept the tip of her tongue over her kiss-swollen lips, her heart skipping all over the place. ‘I guess not…’
He held her gaze captive for a long heart-stopping moment. ‘I want you.’
The blunt statement shocked and yet thrilled her. Charles had waited years before asking her to sleep with him. ‘But for how long?’ she asked.
‘That’s not a question anyone can answer specifically,’ he said. ‘Relationships run their course. Some last days, others weeks, others years.’
She toyed with a button on his shirt rather than meet his gaze. ‘Yours don’t last years, though, do they?’ she said.
It seemed a long time before he answered. ‘I’m not promising anything long-term, Kitty. You’re only here until the end of April. It wouldn’t be fair to pretend this could turn into an affair of a lifetime.’
Kitty raised her eyes to his. ‘Because you don’t want to fall in love.’
‘You don’t have to be in love with someone to have great sex,’ he said. ‘Aren’t your parents proof of that?’
Her shoulders went down on a little sigh as she moved away. ‘I’m not like my parents,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear to live the way they do. I don’t want to play musical beds with faceless strangers. I want security. I want love. I want marriage and babies and happy ever after.’
He gave a cynical crack of laughter. ‘You want a fairytale that doesn’t exist in the real world. Fifty percent of marriages end up in divorce. The other fifty live snappily ever after.’
She threw him an exasperated look. ‘There’s no point arguing with you. I can see you’ve collated enough evidence to support your cynical take on things. But there are plenty of relationships that last the distance. I see them all the time in A&E. Old couples who’ve spent a whole lifetime loving each other. I want that. I want to be with someone for my whole life—not a month here or there or a measly week or two.’
‘Then I’m not your man,’ he said, his expression stony, his voice even harder. ‘I’m happy to have a bit of fun, but don’t expect anything else from me.’
Kitty held that steely blue gaze. ‘I feel sorry for men like you, Jake. You have plenty of fun now, but what about later? What about when you’re old and sick and no one wants you any more?’
A muscle flexed in his jaw. ‘I’ll take my chances.’
‘You’ll end up lonely and alone,’ she said. ‘You’ll have no shared memories of the phases of life you’ve journeyed through. No children to share your genes. No grandchild—’
‘Look,’ he said, cutting her short. ‘I get