Intuitively she suspected that this was not his permanent home, and then she closed her mind to such thoughts because Joss was removing the satin coat that was part of his costume and coming towards her.

It struck her then vaguely that Ralph and Jane might be missing her, but she dismissed the knowledge. She was an adult, capable of making her own decisions in life. Perhaps after their discussion, Jane might even guess what she was doing. But was it purely because of David that she was here tonight with Joss? Sarah knew it was not; even without David she would still be here. Tonight was something she was embracing for herself, because intuitively she knew that not to do so was to deprive herself in a way she would regret for the rest of her life.

Even without the wig which had been part of his costume, standing there with the falls of lace at his wrists startlingly white against the tan of his skin, slowly opening the laces that fastened the front of his shirt, he still looked very much as though he had actually come from that bygone age.

"Sarah." He said her name unsteadily, his voice thick and hot. A convulsive wave of desire clutched at her stomach, her heart pounding at a dizzying speed. Ridiculous to have reached the grand old age of twenty-five and never experienced these sensations before.

He was standing completely motionless looking at her and beneath the low, tightly cut neckline of her costume Sarah felt her b.r.e.a.s.t.s swell and ache. She looked at his hands, imagining them against her skin, bemused by the unexpected flood of heat storming over her. She lifted her eyes from Joss's hands to his face. A tiny nerve flickered betrayingly beneath his skin, his eyes reflecting the heat she could feel beating through her own body.

She watched, completely unable to move as he stripped off his shirt with economical, almost savage movements that left his torso bare, his skin gleaming warm gold in the muted light from the lamp. His shoulders were broad with hard muscles, his chest deep, narrowing towards his waist.

Her attention concentrated totally upon him Sarah marvelled at the male perfection of his body, a need to caress and explore it exploding achingly inside her. She took a step towards him, stumbling a little; she heard him curse as he fumbled with the fastenings of his satin knee breeches. The light caught the silken play of the muscles beneath his skin, shadowing the darker areas of his body where fine silky hair covered his flesh.

He sat down on the bed to remove his shoes and stockings and for the first time a quiver of apprehension touched Sarah's senses as she realised the total masculinity of him. He stood up, tall, much taller than she was herself, very little of his physique concealed by the briefs he still wore.

"Come here..."

The words, spoken softly with a husky, raw note of need, banished her apprehension and she vent to him, smiling a little wryly at the contrast hey must present--Joss practically nude, herself till clothed in her voluminous skirts. And then he remembered the mult.i.tude of tiny fastenings hat secured it.

Turning her back to him she said lightly, "I'm if raid I'm going to need some help getting his off."

She shuddered as she felt his fingers touch her kin, pushing aside her hair. And then his mouth ouched the vulnerable spot at the back of her neck and tiny shivers of delight rippled through svery tiny nerve ending in her body.

With a maddening lack of haste, or so it . eemed. Joss unfastened each tiny hook and eye, )ausing to caress each inch of skin he revealed with the heat of his mouth.

The sensation of the fabric gradually giving way under his fingers alternating with the ares sing warmth of his mouth against her body was the most erotic thing she had ever ixperienced.

When he reached her waist, the top of her dress fell away, revealing the full curves of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and, as his hands slid round her body to cup them, ? arah arched convulsively back against him, sighing her pleasure in the delight the slow movement of his fingers against her nipples was arousing within her.

"Sarah!" She heard the urgency in his voice as he muttered her name against her ear, her eyes opening and widening in sudden shock as she caught sight of their reflections in a mirror on the opposite wall.

In the shadowy half light the picture they presented was one of erotic intimacy; Joss's hands dark against her pale b.r.e.a.s.t.s, their unceasing movement and her body's response to it bringing to life within her a pagan physical desire she had never thought to know. Her body arched back against Joss. His dark head bent to her shoulder, and she shuddered beneath the pressure of his teeth against her sensitive skin, aching to reach out and touch him, wanting to feel the heat of his body, which was burning against her again, envelop every part of her.

His hands dropped from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to her waist, his head lifting as he, too, studied their reflections. She looked . wanton, Sarah thought, searching for the right word to describe to herself the physical s.e.xuality of her own appearance. Her hair was tumbling on to her shoulders, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s full, her nipples hard and darkly coloured.

Even the way she was leaning back against Joss was suggestive of a careless abandonment. Joss made a sound deep in his throat, something between a purr and a groan, and then he turned her into his arms, kissing her with a fierce pressure, his fingers moving swiftly over the remaining fastenings on her dress. She felt it fall i Tee of her body, and drew away from his kiss to step free of it.

The simple act of doing so seemed to unleash something wild and elemental in Joss. He sat iown on the bed, pulling her on to his lap, his mouth hot on the tiny pulse that danced at the ? ase of her throat.

Beneath the pressure of it she reached back against his arm, stifling the small sob of tormented pleasure that rose to her lips as she felt the heat of Joss's mouth against her weast. This was no tentative, explorative lover's aress, she acknowledged mutely, opening her yes to gaze down at the darkness of his hair ga inst her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as his mouth fastened over ier swollen nipple and sucked fiercely on the ender skin.

Wave after wave of a pleasure as fierce as sheet lightning enveloped her body her fingers lurched wildly at Joss's shoulder as the weight ?

f his head against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s arched her further lack over his arm.

She could feel the maddened hud of his heartbeat against her body, the soft noans of delight she had been subduing in her hr oat exploding into a sharp cry as she felt the ormenting graze of his teeth against her skin.

When he released her breast he was breathing leavily, his free hand possessing the moist, u-oused flesh so recently deserted by his mouth, he skilled movement of his thumb and finger ga inst the aching peak of her breast making larah catch her breath and moan a husky plea to be released from the torment he was inflicting upon her.

"Sarah, Sarah, feel what you do to me." He muttered the words with fierce half incoherency into her throat, tumbling her off his lap and on to the bed, joining her there, to pull her into his arms and hold her against the fierce throbbing of his body.

Instinctively Sarah reached out to touch him, tormented by the barrier of his briefs, impeding the impatient stroke of her fingers along the dark hair line of his body, only dimly registering his impa.s.sioned shudder against her, until he said thickly, "No ... no.. not yet...1 want to enjoy every inch of you...1 want this to be a night neither of us will ever forget..."

He had already achieved that, Sarah thought achingly, instinctively pressing her body against his as he removed her fingers from his flat stomach.

Her low moan of deprivation was entirely involuntary, stilling the movements of his body, and eventually her own, as Sarah opened tightly closed eyes to find him watching her with an intensity that blazed like fox fire from his eyes.

"From the moment I set eyes on you, I wanted to see you like this," he told her thickly.

"Your eyes wild with wanting ... your body open and aching for mine."

His mouth touched her lips, silencing the protest she was going to make and it was impossible to resist the temptation to slide her fingers into his hair, to mould the hard bones of "his skull and let herself be submerged in the endless depths of pleasure he was offering her.

His mouth stroked her throat, lightly, cares singly following the path of his hands, and as though a completely different person had taken over her body, Sarah arched and twisted meltingly beneath the skilled commands of his hands. His mouth touched her breast, where her nipple still ached from his earlier caresses. His tongue touched the sensitive flesh, lightly, rhythmically, tormentingly, until she cried out his name and slid her hands to his shoulders, arching her body upwards and shuddering in frantic pleasure as she felt his response to her need and totally abandoned herself to the fierce tug of his mouth against her breast.

She was so enraptured by the sensations he was arousing that it was several seconds before she realised that his hands were still caressing her body, stroking delicately along her inner thighs.

A warm heat built up inside her, the restless, eager movements of her body causing him to release her breast and mutter thickly against her ear.

"You're so d.a.m.n responsive, you're making it impossible for me to hold on to any self-control." He moved against her as he spoke and she could feel the truth of what he was saying in the fierce thrust of his body against her own.

A wave of desire and need so strong that it overwhelmed everything else surged through her. Nipping him sharply with her teeth and feeling the convulsive clenching of his shoulder muscles beneath her mouth Sarah placed her lips against his ear.

Everything that she had lived by--had been before tonight was gone--as though she had been re-born a completely new person. With an openness the old Sarah could never have displayed, she whispered, "I want you to make love to me...1 want to feel you all around me.. inside me. I want to..."

She let the words die beneath his mouth, revelling in the fierce masculine domination of his kiss. She felt him move while he was still kissing her and then sighed against his mouth her pleasure in the rough heaviness of his thighs against her own, their weight parting hers and making her shudder with awareness of the unfettered maleness of him against her.

"Sarah.. lovely.. lovely Sarah." He was moaning her name like a litany against her skin, his hands fiercely possessive as they touched every part of her, his mouth hot as she felt the control slip from him as his body imposed upon them both demands as old as time.

His hand touched the moist centre of her body and she felt a leap of pleasure and antic.i.p.ation. He touched her again, stroking and caressing and she moaned a faint protest at this further torment, a wild fever of urgency suddenly consuming her, her hands caressing his body as freely as he had caressed hers, her senses revelling in the unmistakable surge of desire that flooded through him as she touched him intimately, her mouth registering the fierce beat of the pulse at the base of his throat as he moaned and arched beneath her touch, protesting at her feminine dominance and yet unable to resist submitting to the pleasure of it.

"Sarah." She felt the shuddering tension that racked his body as he pulled away from her, and looked down into her face. There was something in his eyes that puzzled her; made her feel faintly wary and tense.

"What is it?" Her mouth had gone dry, tension flaring along her nerve paths.

"Just this." He moved and his body entered hers with piercing sweetness. She held her breath, her eyes widening with the unexpectedly sweet shock of just what pleasure could be and heard him saying thickly.

"That's what I wanted to see. That you feel what I feel; that I'm not alone in feeling what I do."

He moved again and she felt the slow, building thrust of his body within her own, her body automatically making him welcome, arching into the sensation of him moving within her, her hips lifting, her legs locking around his body.

She heard him moan her name as his body started to shudder with fierce pleasure, his mouth searching for and finding her own, the abrasive pressure of his chest against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s heighten E ing the intense state of rapture. Dimly she was aware of some far-off, lancing pain, but the need driving her was all powerful, and even as she registered Joss's shocked recoil she was clinging fiercely to him, her body urging his to finish that which it had begun; to appease the need for fulfilment possessing them both and to give her the indescribable satisfaction of those spasms of pleasure which made her wrench her mouth from his to cry out in wonder that there could be such a sensation and then to murmur her delight at the knowledge that he, too, had touched those same heights.

As she gradually floated down from the clouds, a sleepiness she couldn't fight off engulfed her. Dimly she was aware of Joss calling her name, urgently, even impatiently, but she was too sleepy to respond. It was like floating downwards on the thickest and softest of down feathers . far too delicious to resist. Sarah opened her eyes muzzily. She was having the strangest dream.

She was a child again, sharing Jane's bed, as she had often done when she had suffered from childish nightmares. Jane's arm had been wrapped comfortingly round her. Sarah blinked and tensed as the dream became reality. There was an arm wrapped around her but it certainly wasn't Jane's!

With an appalling clarity she remembered everything that had happened.

The lamp was still on and by its illumination she could see Joss's sleeping features.

Joss! She swallowed painfully. What on earth had she done? Biting her lip she remembered the questioning sharpness in his voice just before she had fallen asleep. He had known that she was a virgin. Dear heavens, she had to leave before he woke up. How on earth had she ever behaved in such a rash and totally alien way?