Free Those Wicked Pleasures by Roberta Latow Page B

and remained silent, each trying to regain some equilibrium. Impossible and
coup de foudre
kept going through her mind. She tried to block them out and recall what it felt like to be in love with Sam. The absent Sam. Safe, loving, sexy, a friend and lover completely devoted to her – yet she couldn’t even conjure up a picture of him. She had known him always, he was one of their own, and as if in a puff of smoke he vanished from her life, dispelled by another man’s touch and seductive glance.
    Jamal. She had always been drawn to his handsome looks, the dark hair, the bronze skin, the sensuous lips, the large brown eyes, so dark as to seem black. Those eyes that smiled and contained such disquietingly smouldering sexual promise. How many times had she teased him about the not-quite-perfect nose? And how many childish crushes had she and her girlfriends had on David’s friend. Started and then abandoned for a puppy,a boat, a tennis tournament. But now! This was no child’s crush, not even an adolescent one. This was the sexual attraction of a young woman for a man.
    She felt a shiver of fear, but he was too quick for her and dispelled that warning. He drew her slowly into his arms. ‘It’s I who should be shivering. It’s I who should be frightened.’ He placed his hand under her chin, tilted it and gazed into her eyes. He studied her face. She had known him for so many years, but the way he was with her now, it was as if they were strangers. She felt her senses spiralling out of control, falling for this handsome unknown man.
    She actually felt weak when he placed his lips upon hers, ran his tongue so sensuously between them. Her own remained closed. He traced them with his moist tongue and then kissed them with such tenderness that she had to stifle a whimper. Another kiss and another, on the side of her neck, on the lobe of her ear, on her shoulder. Then he raised her hand and placed it over his mouth and kissed the palm, and again, and then he licked it. She was struggling to find something to say. Anything. A tease, a flirt, anything to stop that feeling of falling, of being drawn to him, of wanting him.
    He did not let her hand go when he stepped back from her. He reached in his pocket to withdraw a handkerchief, then delicately removed a tiny smudge of pink from her upper lip. He stroked her hair and rearranged a lock of it. She could not be unaware of the passion in his eyes, the emotion in his face, nor the way he swallowed hard before he said, ‘You want me as much as I want you. Tell me I’m not wrong about that, Lara.’
    She found it difficult and confusing coping with her attraction to Jamal. To confess her desire to be made love to by him was impossible. If only her plans with Sam had not been thwarted, she would be safe in his arms at thisvery minute. Any further thought of safety and Sam and love completely vanished when Jamal placed his hands on her waist and rocked her gently into his arms. Naively, she closed her eyes, hoping to hide the excitement she felt when he caressed the swell of her breasts beneath the silk taffeta. It was in vain.
    An accomplished seducer of women, Jamal knew she was hopelessly attracted to him sexually. And that spurred him on. ‘How lovely, you’re naked under all this silk.’ She said nothing, but the blush of pink on her face told him he was right.
    ‘All naked. Not just your breasts?’ he asked. There was something about the look in her eyes that touched him deeply. A look of both innocence and carnal desire. He felt an overwhelming hunger to take her sexually, not only for his own pleasure but for hers as well. He recognised in her a far greater sexual passion than he had thought her capable of at her young, inexperienced age. Who had primed her for this? Certainly not Sam.
    Jamal knew about their sexual encounter. He had been in the far corner of the room, in a high-backed wing chair, its back to the doors where Sam and Lara had been standing. Peeping around