Chapter Ten
ATHENA WOKE TO the heavenly sensation of being cocooned in Draco’s arms. For the longest time she stayed exactly where she was, savouring the feel of her face nuzzled in his naked chest and their limbs being entwined.
Sighing, she stretched a leg and pressed a gentle kiss to the warm skin beneath her mouth. The fine hair covering his chest tickled her nose.
The arm hooked around her waist tightened. Her heart thumped, and her eyes fluttered open. Dusky early morning light cast his bronze chest in a sepia hue.
The thumping of her heart increased as she felt movement against her abdomen. For a long moment she forgot how to breathe, suddenly attuned to his heart beating strongly beneath her ear and the weight of his growing arousal pressing low in her belly. Draco was as naked as she was…
Suddenly needing air, she lifted her face from its snug confines…and found herself locked in Draco’s piercing stare.
His strong throat moved but he didn’t speak. Neither of them spoke. Athena couldn’t. Her throat was too full of her swollen, pumping heart. Without any thought, she extended her neck and brought her face to his. His eyes closed and then opened, jaw tightening, breaths deepening.
Breathing him in, she crept her hand from the warmth of his back and slid it up his chest, so lost in the piercing blue she could only dimly marvel at the smoothness of his skin and how similar and yet so very different the texture was to hers.
Higher her hand slid, over broad shoulders powerful even in stillness, cupping the base of his neck and pressing her palm where a pulse was violently beating.
Feeling as if she’d fallen into a dream, she closed her eyes and stretched her neck the last fraction needed to bring their mouths together.
Their kiss was featherlight, a barely-there whisper. The hand splayed on her back, so big it covered almost the whole width, drew upward, fingers making an unhurried trail up her spine that sent a trail of electricity zinging through her veins.
Fingers now splaying in her hair, his lips, so firm and so in control, moved in an undemanding invitation for her to move with them. She met his invitation by sliding her fingers into his hair and tentatively sliding her tongue between his lips.
She felt rather than heard his distant groan before he deepened the fusion of their mouths and his tongue met hers in an unhurried erotic dance she felt like fire in every atom of her body.
With a tenderness that broke her thumping heart, he rolled her onto her back so their legs were still entwined…
the rough hairs on his bristled deliciously against the smoothness of hers…
and his chest covered hers, crushing her aching breasts, and lifted his face to gaze into her eyes.
‘Any time you want me to stop, you must promise to tell me,’ he said huskily.
Dragging her fingers through his hair, she gave a shaky smile and whispered, ‘I promise.’ But she wouldn’t.
Sick excitement was growing, her heart racing so hard and fast it had blurred to a distant roar, but beneath the nervous fear of the unknown lay a deep certainty that if she were to walk away she would regret it for the rest of her life.
‘I want this,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I want you, Draco. All of you.’
His throat moved, hooded eyes closing before fixing back onto hers. ‘I have protection in my robe, but…’ He breathed deeply. ‘Are you protected?’
‘I’m on the pill.’ Her stepmother, assuming she was sexually active, had put her on it when she was sixteen. She’d stayed on it only because she liked the way it regulated her periods.
He pressed his nose to hers without breaking the lock of their stares. ‘You must never trust any man who says this but I have never had unprotected sex before.’
She smiled, both at his seriousness and his contradiction. ‘I trust you, Draco. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.’
He matched the smile, his whole gorgeous, rugged face lighting with it. ‘And I must trust you, too, to even suggest this.’
If she’d thought her heart was swollen before…
And then the smile faded. ‘I’m afraid of hurting you.’
‘You won’t.’ She pressed her mouth to his and gently coaxed his lips apart before breathing into him, ‘Make love to me, Draco.’
His next kiss was tender and lingering. Closing her eyes, she sank into it…sank into him. Sank into her trust of him.
She tasted divine, Draco thought dimly as he slid his mouth down the arch of her graceful neck.
A taste and scent made entirely for him.
So soft, too, her skin like butter, and his fingers glided down her sides with the sensation that she was the first woman they’d ever touched, and in his head the dawning, almost overwhelming comprehension that her virginity wasn’t just an abstract entity but something very real, that this was her first time, that his were the first fingers to glide down her buttery skin.
When he took one of her breasts, so much fuller than he’d imagined, into his mouth, the knowledge he was the first man to have done this to her, the first man to hear her soft moan of pleasure…
The sound of that moan didn’t just dive into his loins but into his chest.
He lifted his head to look at her…he could look at her for ever.
‘You’re perfect, Athena. Never let anyone tell you differently.
’ And then he took her other breast in his mouth, encircling her nipple with long strokes of his tongue, bringing it to a peak, slowly laving and sucking and licking, alert to all her responses, her moans, the hitches of her breath, the elongation of her neck.
As if time were an infinite resource, he gently explored the rest of her exquisiteness, making love to her with his hands and his mouth, all the way down to her pretty toes.
Foreplay had always been an enjoyable transaction, but ultimately just a transaction, the payment of the starter for the enjoyment of the main course. Nothing felt transactional about this.
Transcendent…
The word floated into his mind as he tenderly kissed his way up her succulent inner thighs before gently parting them. For the first time, he sensed a tension in her and looked up.
She met his stare. Her beautiful face was flushed, her jaw tight.
‘Do you want me to stop?’
She expelled a ragged breath and shook her head.
He gazed at her a beat longer before softly smiling. ‘Close your eyes, my sweet, and just feel.’
Swallowing, she rested her head back on the pillow and reached a hand for him. Threading his fingers through hers, he breathed in the musky scent of her desire before putting his mouth to the most intimate part of her.
If Draco hadn’t been holding her hand Athena thought she might have bolted out of pure fear at the intimacy of what he was doing to her.
But he was holding her hand, and having his fingers laced through hers grounded her, reminded her it was Draco doing all these wonderful things to her, and so she closed her eyes and let him carry her away to a brand-new realm.
He opened her like a flower in bloom, touching and kissing her in a place she’d never even touched herself, fear wrapping her desire so tightly that until Draco had come into her life she’d thought it missing, had been glad of it.
But it had been in her all along, waiting for Draco to unwrap it, and now heat was pulsing deep in her pelvis, the strokes of his tongue building sensation upon sensation, pulling her towards a shimmering precipice that…
Sensing she was on the brink of orgasm, Draco pulled away, denying them both the rapture of her climaxing in his mouth.
Next time, he silently promised her as he kissed his way back up her belly and between her breasts and grazed his mouth up her neck.
For this, her first time, he needed her to be as ready for him as she could be.
He positioned himself between her legs and kissed her gently.
Her eyes were a darker, deeper shade of green than he’d ever seen before, almost liquid in her desire, her breathing ragged.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he murmured as he gently parted her thighs. ‘Raise your bottom for me.’
Wordlessly, her eyes not leaving his, she did as he asked while he took hold of his arousal and positioned it at the entrance of her slick, swollen heat.
Her eyes widened and her breath hitched.
‘Trust me, my sweet,’ he whispered, covering her mouth with his. ‘I’ll take care of you, I promise.’
Propped on an elbow to keep himself steady and in control, he kissed her sweet mouth as slowly, slowly, he fed his way inside her.
Draco knew he was bigger than most men, knew for this to work and to become an experience Athena would treasure for the rest of her life that he had to take his time, but, God, the sensation of being bare for the first time in his life intensified everything.
He could feel everything, every stretch of her tight muscles as they adjusted to his slow filling of her, and all the while he kissed her with the same sensuality that he was taking her, slow burn kisses that deepened with every deceptively lazy stroke of their tongues.
So deeply concentrated was he on making it as comfortable and good for her as it could be that he knew the exact moment he pushed through the final barrier a semi-beat before he heard the short suck of her breath.
He stilled a moment, giving her time to adjust, only continuing his slow inch inside her when her lips parted against his and her arms wrapped around him in silent encouragement.
Other than the fleeting moment of discomfort, the pleasure consuming Athena was beyond anything she could have dreamed, and she opened herself up to him, heart, body and soul, until their groins were fused as tightly as their mouths and he was fully in her and on her, as close as two people could ever be, and her body was throbbing and it was all so breathtakingly wonderful that she could cry from the heady beauty of it.