The dark and husky admission sent Zoe backing off a couple of steps in an attempt to distance herself from what he had said. Why hadn’t she noticed before that the whole room was loaded with sexual tension? she asked herself suddenly, noticing it now and feeling it in the new rush of awareness that swept down her front.
‘Ours will be a full and fruitful marriage, kardia mou, not an empty showcase filled with coldness,’ he continued in the same husky tone. ‘How else does it have a chance at success?’
He was talking long-term here. Zoe blinked slowly then gave an adamantly negative shake of her head. ‘This will be a temporary arrangement lasting only until—until this current crisis with the stock markets goes away.’
‘You think?’
‘I know.’ She was staring into his eyes again—a dangerous thing to do, especially when that glow took them over, the one that set her heart racing when he slowly straightened up from the desk.
Too late, she realised that she’d just challenged his sexual ego. That the sun flowing against the side of his face as he moved was adding a worryingly hypnotic effect to his eyes. She couldn’t look away from them, couldn’t halt the tingling tremor which hit the tips of her now aching breasts and that other place low down between her thighs.
‘S-stay back,’ she stammered when he took a step in her direction.
‘Why?’ With devastating simplicity he pinned her to the spot with the question when she knew she should be running for her life. ‘You want me. Do you think I cannot read your body language? You have been wishing I would strip my clothes off since you walked in here. In fact, if I did start stripping, you would probably rush to help.’
‘Isn’t that just typically arrogant of you to think that?’ Zoe heaved in a deep breath while managing to take another couple of steps backwards. ‘Just—just because you were my first lover does not make me suddenly obsessed with s-sex!’
‘Your pupils have dilated; your cheeks are wearing a very informative soft pink glow.’ Reaching out with a hand, he touched one of her cheeks with a fingertip. Zoe pulled back her head so sharply she hurt the muscles in the back of her neck. ‘And you are trembling,’ he observed as he took another step closer. ‘I can hear the husk of arousal in your breathless voice. And the most intriguing thing is that you are still such a stranger to your own feelings you don’t even recognise the signals you’re giving off.’
Her cheeks had fired into flames now. Anxiously she continued to back off. He likes stalking you like a predator, a little voice inside her head warned her. Stay still, hold your ground, outface him.
She pulled to a stop. ‘Well, there speaks the man of experience,’ she traded bitterly. ‘But what else can I expect of a man who’s been sleeping around since he knew there was a difference between male and female?’
‘You expected a thirty-one-year-old virgin in your bed?’ He actually sounded incredulous.
‘Yes!’ Zoe flung at him hotly, ‘Why not? My mother was my father’s first lover! She was his! They spent twenty-three years together and never wanted or took other lovers! They were both very proud of that!’
‘Oh, what it’s like to live with perfection,’ he mocked derisively. ‘Did they fill your head with the same ideals, Zoe? Are you waiting for your perfect virgin lover to come along and sweep you into lifelong married bliss?’
Her cheeks burned all the hotter. ‘Well, I won’t find him in you, will I?’
His dark head went back. ‘Definitely not. You will find a well-rounded, very experienced man who has played the field long enough to be ready to give you his complete loyalty and the pleasure of his sexual experience.’
‘If I decide to have you, that is!’
His eyes narrowed. He’d walked out of the sunlight now so all she saw was the dark glow of yet more predator challenge framed by eyelashes as black as night.
‘Oh, you will have me,’ he told her softly. ‘Do you know why you will have me?’
‘If you don’t s-stop all of this I will …’
The gap between them suddenly closed like a door being slammed shut on her resistance. Zoe could feel herself giving in to him even as he started to lower his dark head.
‘No—please don’t.’ She uttered this one final stab at resistance but she stared at the sensual shape of his mouth as she said it.
‘Liar,’ he whispered, then teased her with the gentlest touch of his tongue to the corner of her mouth. When she shivered, he laughed softly and did it again. ‘Think about how it will feel to get naked with me,’ he urged. ‘Think about acquiring exclusive rights on all of this …’
‘This’ was his hands taking hold of her hips and drawing her against him. ‘This’ was the evidence of his desire for her pressing against her and liquidising the bones in her legs. He settled light, moist kisses across her lower lip, coaxing it to part from its upper partner. When she refused to let it, he raised his head up a little, just enough to scan whatever was happening in her eyes. What he saw written there made him smile. Then he took her. He took her by storm and with lethal precision, covering both of her lips and prising them apart with a heated delving of absolute possession that rendered her helpless, because desire was swimming up inside her like a tidal wave.
It wasn’t fair. Zoe whimpered out a strangled protest just before all the defensive tension locking her muscles snapped. On a low, anguished groan she slid her clenched fists up over his shoulders, stretched out her fingers, curled them into the firm flesh of his nape then moulded herself up against his hardness and heat. Her surrender was rewarded by the fire of his passion. He kissed her so deeply she lost touch with everything but the river of pleasure pouring through her blood. Every nerve-ending came alive with a sexual sparkle that dizzied her brain and made her cling to him all the more. The flat of his hand laid claim to the base of her spine to hold her tight to the power of his muscular frame.
Inside she melted like butter. By the time he let them both up for air again, she was a quivering mess of shell-shocked heat. His tie had gone awry and the buttons on his shirt had been wrenched open—by her; it must have been her that did it—exposing the breadth of his chest with whorls of black hair and sexily ridged muscles. And he was breathing fast. It was her one—her only—consolation to stand here in his arms and watch his chest move swiftly as he fought for breath.
‘Do yourself a favour,’ he ground out harshly. ‘And rethink your role as my wife.’
With that he stepped away from her. It was so ruthless a separation it left Zoe swaying where she stood. Then he swung his back to her and began to fasten up his shirt. A blinding kind of sensual confusion throbbed like an extra heart inside her chest, and even that came with a taunt because her breasts were so heavy and so tight they visibly palpitated against her white vest-top.
She felt she had only one course of action left open to her. She turned and walked as straight as she could, through the door and out of it without even trying to utter a single word.