His mouth was just a hairsbreadth from hers now. She could feel his warm breath, and then his tongue ran across her lips like liquid silver, icy and warm at the same time. His hand started to run slowly up, under her nightdress again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to kiss him back, Charlotte desperately reasoned with herself, even as her body began to tremble with desire.

Alex raised his mouth and looked deeply into her eyes. “Please, darling,” he whispered, and Charlotte’s resistance fell into a hundred splintered pieces. She wound her arms around his neck and raised her mouth to his, her lips already slightly parted, evocative of surrender. And Alex instantly took the implicit invitation, jerking her against his hard chest, driving his tongue into her mouth. His hand slipped naturally to cup the tantalizing weight of her breasts. And when he heard her sharp gasp, it filled his heart with pleasure. His Charlotte was back—more than back. By now he was stretched out beside her and when he began removing the studs from his shirt, Charlotte tremblingly ran her hands over his chest, her fingertips lingering on his nipples. Little jolts of fire ran up her limbs when his eyes widened with obvious pleasure. When she experimentally lowered her head and put her tongue on his chest, he moaned out loud and Charlotte’s belly ignited into a fevered, flaming ocean.

Some time later they were both naked, their bodies glowing in reflected firelight, flushed skin meeting flushed skin, frenzied kiss following kiss. Alex’s hands wandered all over Charlotte’s body, igniting every inch. But it wasn’t until Alex poised himself over her, bracing himself on his forearms, and began deliberately, tormentingly rubbing himself against her that Charlotte felt herself truly losing control. She shut her eyes tight, not even opening them when Alex’s tongue teasingly ran across her eyelids. Alex was concentrating, thinking dimly of holding himself under strict control and making it up to Charlotte. He didn’t notice that her closed eyes signaled distress. He pushed into her a little way. Then he withdrew and circled her again, luring, calling. Charlotte’s hips involuntarily lifted, pressing against him. Despite herself, her eyes flew open and she wreathed her arms around his neck, silently pleading for what she could not bring herself to say. And still Alex teased … breaching her a little farther, pulling back until she was ready to scream. And then, just when Charlotte was about to explode with longing and frustration, Alex drove into her forcefully. Charlotte’s mind went blank and she cried out; and Alex—who had been counseling himself sternly about not losing control—immediately lost all control. He rammed into her again and again, evoking fluttering cries from his wife.