Forbidden or For Bedding? by Julia James Page A

velvet touch, the merest grazing of his lips on hers, the most subliminal pressure of the tip of his finger moving in the delicate fronds of her hair at that most sensitive point on her nape. She felt her body start to weaken, her pulse quicken, and her conscious mind simply dissolve.
    Slowly, very, very slowly, his kiss deepened.
    And the last dissolving vestiges of her conscious mind left her.
    And then, some completely indeterminable amount of time later, by some quite unaccountable means which she could never afterwards explain, she dimly realised that she was no longer standing by the door, but was instead—quite mysteriously—in a room that was dominated by a vast brocaded bed. Onto the broad expanse of this bed she was being effortlessly lowered, and slowly, very slowly and expertly, being made love to by Guy de Rochemont.
    And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that she could do about it—because with every cell in her body she realised it was the most exquisite thing that had ever happened to her…
    Now, as she gazed out into the dimness of the hotel room, the night gone and day come again, her conscious mind came into residence after its extraordinary absence all through the long, dissolving night. She felt incredulity open within her.
    How had it happened? How had it possibly happened? Disbelief was still echoing through her. How could she be in bed with Guy de Rochement? It was impossible! Just impossible!
    Except that it wasn’t.
    It didn’t take the evidence of her eyes to tell her that.
    No, her whole body could bear testimony…
    Memory shimmered through her every cell. Memory of sensations so exquisite, so extraordinary that they, too, could surely not be real. Except they were…
    Hands—cool, fleeting—grazing along her bared arms. The tips of long fingers slow-running along the striations of her skin. Lips as soft as velvet playing over the contours of her body so that her whole being became a symphony of sensations—sensations that she had not known a body could experience. Light, questing fingertips exploring every curve, every secret sensual place, and lips tasting and arousing—oh, arousing! The swell of her breasts to coral peaks, which he savoured and engorged. Then his lips brushing down over her satin flesh. He had parted her loosening thighs and with a touch like silk prepared her for his possession.
    She felt her body flush with warmth evoked by the humid, arousing memories.
    How had it been possible to feel such sensation? Itwas beyond imagining! Beyond everything except experience. An experience that was completely beyond her comprehension.
    I never knew! Never dreamed it could be like that—never!
    Wonder soared through her, increasing her bemusement, her incomprehension of how this had come to be, her presence here. She knew with a frail, wavering fragment of her normal self that what she had done had been not only inexplicable, but total and complete folly—to have fallen into bed with Guy de Rochemont could be nothing else! Yet right now, as she lay cocooned at his side, there was nothing more she could do, than acknowledge these truths. She knew that if she had any vestige of sanity left she should leap from the bed, bundle herself into her clothes— his clothes—the clothes that he had first dressed her in then taken off her—and rush out of the hotel as fast as decorum could take her. Yet she could not do so. Not because it wasn’t the sane thing to do, but because her body seemed so strangely, uncommonly inert…languorous…
    That sense of wonder, mixed now with a strange new sense of extraordinary well-being, suffused her body and her mind, making her feel slumberous, supine. And now something else came over her—an overwhelming urge to turn her head, to see the man who had accomplished her presence at his side.
    Slowly she tilted her head, and as her eyes lit upon his face she felt something very