‘I …’ The words just dried up when he stepped in closer. ‘You didn’t want me,’ she finally managed to squeeze out.
‘You chose which bed you wanted to sleep in. I merely respected your wishes.’
Had it really been that simple? Zoe didn’t think so. For when had he bothered to respect her wishes before their big showdown in her grandfather’s study?
‘And now you’ve chosen not to respect my wishes?’ Never one to go down without at least a token fight, she watched the glint of appreciation of that fact light his eyes and he smiled, revealing the edges of his even white teeth.
‘Let us agree to say that I knew what you wanted tonight because I want it too.’
And to validate his point he trailed those gentle fingers again, tracing the fine strap to her silk nightdress all the way over a stain-smooth shoulder to the creamy slope of her breast, where the skin was already blooming to the pleasure of his touch.
Lifting up her chin, she looked into his eyes again, his dark, beautiful eyes, then lifted her arms up around his neck. A sigh feathered the aching wall of her throat. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered.
It was a shockingly dangerous thing to confess because it left her so exposed and vulnerable. Yet she still reached up to go in search of his mouth. He let her. He let her feather soft kisses across his lips, while he trailed his fingers down the fine silk covering her body, tracing its slender shape. ‘No more fighting,’ he husked.
‘No more fighting,’ she agreed, and was rewarded when he took over her soft kisses and turned them into something slow and driving. It felt different, somehow, though she was way too seduced by it to want to work out what why that was. He did not need to draw her against him, because she tilted her head back and arched into him, so his hands only needed to hold her there, warm against him.
They remained like that, kissing in the moonlight coming in through the open window and in no hurry to move things on to the next place. It was just so good to let go of all the restraints they’d been using to hold each other at arm’s length all the week. When he did decide it was time to move them he did not pick her up and make a macho charge for his bedroom. He utilised a far more disturbing method, feeding her beneath an arm he rested across her shoulders and walking her there.
She was never going to fight this again—because she knew that she couldn’t. Anton Pallis—her lover, her husband—was in her blood and she wanted him to be there. If she’d dared, she would have whispered, ‘I love you,’ but that was one truth she managed to hold back.
He kissed her again when they stood beside the bed.
Still, slow and sensually alluring, he placed soft-clinging kisses on her face and her throat and eased the straps of her nightdress down her arms until the silky garment slithered sexily down her body to lie in a blush-pink pool at her feet. Drawing back just a little, Zoe lowered her gaze to concentrate on her fingers as they worked to untie the belt on his robe and part it. He did not attempt to help, the vibrations between them were humming as she fed the fabric off his wide shoulders and sent it the same way as her nightdress.
Naked at last—both of them. It felt just so good. When he eased her back against him she breathed out a sigh of pure contentment and pressed her parted lips to his. Her breasts were alive with pleasurable tremors, their distended tips loving the electric rasp against the hair on his chest. He moved against her, using a rhythm older than time, and so beautifully intimate and familiar to her now she even lifted her head up to smile at him.
‘You feel glorious,’ she told him softly.
‘You have just doubled the state of my prowess.’ He smiled too.
‘I know,’ she teased him then without any gap in between; slow and sensual lost out to urgent and hot.
He kept her standing there, though. He did not allow her to sink in a puddle of feelings onto the bed. He aroused her with his kisses and his hands and the proud thrust of his manhood. He brought her to the scintillating edge of her peak then took her over it in one purely masculine move which had him filling her up so he could experience the shimmer of her orgasm, her legs now wrapped around his waist and her fingernails scoring his back.
She loved it that he was trembling. She loved it that she could taste the ragged agony of his breathing inside her mouth and on her tongue. When he finally lowered them down onto the bed to conclude their flaming rise into ecstasy, she cried his name out and he robbed it from her lips with a growl.
The next morning Anton woke her up by dragging her out of the bed.
‘What did you do that for!’ Zoe snapped at him from the tumbled-haired and sleepy rubble she’d ended up at his feet.
‘A surprise,’ he announced, and without a single ounce of sympathy for her sleepy grumpiness he bent to lift her up then marched her into the bathroom. ‘You have ten minutes to make yourself presentable.’
Ten minutes to the dot, Zoe appeared out of the dressing room wearing shorts and a skimpy camisole-top. ‘This had better be a good surprise,’ she warned when she found him lounging on the bed waiting for her.
He’d barely let her sleep a wink last night. As far as passionate wedding-nights went, she suspected she’d been treated to the very best. But she was tired now, dull-witted and puffy-eyed, though not so puffy-eyed that she could not appreciate just how sexy he looked in a pair of old grey cut-offs and a white tee-shirt that moulded every impressive muscle—so she didn’t have to tax her brain to remember what he looked like without it.
Rolling off the bed, Anton grabbed her hand and trailed her out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
‘I haven’t even said good morning to Toby!’ she complained. ‘And I need a cup of tea.’
‘Later.’ he walked them right past the small dining-room and out into the bright morning sunlight.
At which point Zoe blinked herself so wide awake it was startling.
‘Oh my God,’ she gasped out.
Standing right in the middle of the garden was the very best surprise he could have come up with. Her eyes took fire with electric-blue delight.