The Innocent Behind the Scandal (The Marchetti Dynasty 2)

That had unleashed another wave of desire.

He took her hand and said, with a rough edge to his voice, ‘Stop biting your lip. It’s mine to bite.’

Instantly her cheeks went pink. She released the plump flesh, moist from her teeth and tongue. She was a novice with the wiles of a siren. An erotic combination that Maks couldn’t resist and had no intention of resisting until he was well and truly sated.

* * *

Zoe had never exposed so much flesh before. Acres and acres of pale skin. But the dress... It was like a dress straight out of a fantasy she’d always had but had never acknowledged before.

Never allowed herself to acknowledge.

She’d always believed she wasn’t ‘girly’, deliberately avoiding dresses or anything too flouncy, but after a few days with Maks Marchetti Zoe’s inner girly girl was unleashed and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

The dress was an exquisite confection of pink silk and tulle. It had a deep vee to her waist in the front, and two slim straps criss-crossing over her back, holding the dress up. A thick waistband encircled her waist, and a layer of sheer tulle fell to the floor over the silk underskirt, all in the same dusky pink colour. And when she moved the dress sparkled from the thousands of tiny sequin stars sewn into the fabric by hand.

The designer had brought accessories, and friends to do Zoe’s hair and make-up, and she was even further out of her comfort zone now, with her hair pulled back into a rough chignon. For the first time she wasn’t as acutely aware of her scars as she normally was. Even though they weighed nothing, they were a part of her and they’d always felt like a burden. Something she had to carry.

There was a delicate silver chain around her neck that hung down into the deep vee of the dress, between her breasts. And that was it. Simple. Understated. Elegant. She hoped.

There was a knock on her door and her heart thumped. She picked up the clutch bag from a nearby table and opened the door.

Maks was wearing a white tuxedo jacket and shirt with a black bow tie. The snowy white made his skin look darker. Zoe’s mouth dried. That dark grey gaze swept up and down, resting on her chest before moving up. His eyes were wide, his expression arrested.

Immediately Zoe’s fledgling sense of confidence threatened to crumble. ‘What is it? It’s not appropriate, is it? It shows too much...’

Maks let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. ‘You could say that.’

Then he must have seen something on Zoe’s face. He put out a hand. ‘No, it’s fine. You’ll probably be more covered up than most people there. It’s just...you’re more than beautiful, Zoe. You’re breathtaking.’

‘Oh...’ She felt her confidence slowly return, along with shyness. She touched her hair self-consciously. ‘They put it up...’

Maks reached out and touched her jaw with a featherlight touch. ‘I told you...you don’t have to hide.’

This was too huge for Zoe to analyse right at that moment—that a man like Maks Marchetti should be the one who was seeing all the way into her and not turning away in disgust or disdain.

She picked up the short blazer-style jacket to accompany the dress and said, ‘I’m ready.’

* * *

As the elevator descended to ground level, Maks thought to himself that he was glad one of them was ready, because as soon as she’d opened her door and he’d seen that dress he’d wanted to walk her right back into the room, strip it off her body and bury himself inside her until the rush of blood in his brain cooled down enough for him to think straight again.

* * *

A short while later Zoe flinched minutely under the barrage of flashbulbs and shouts directed at her and Maks. Before, at the ballet, he’d ignored them and gone straight into the venue, but here he was stopping for a minute to let them get pictures.

She could feel his tension. He resented it. She thought of what he’d experienced at the hands of the media when he’d been younger. They’d fed off his and his sister’s pain. No wonder he despised them and their invasion of his privacy.

When they were inside the building—an old disused warehouse on the outskirts of the city—Zoe looked up at Maks. His jaw was tight.

‘Maks... Maks.’

He looked at her. Blankly for a second. As if he’d forgotten she was there. It made a shiver go down Zoe’s back.

‘You can let go of my hand.’

Something flared back to life in Maks’s eyes and immediately he released her hand. ‘Sorry.’

She shook her head. ‘Why did you stop for the photographers just now?’