He’d finished his pastries and was pushing his empty plate away from him, his gaze resting on her with half-closed eyes. She tried to drop her own gaze because she knew she should...must...but found she couldn’t. She tried not to be aware of how she could feel her pulse beating at her throat—but she couldn’t ignore it. It was impossible...just impossible.
He leaned forward suddenly, reaching out with his napkin in his hand. ‘You’ve got a pastry crumb caught on your lip,’ he said.
His voice was husky as he dabbed at the offending particle, his fingers just brushing the soft curve of her mouth.
She felt the pulse at her throat surge, her breath go still in her lungs. Her eyes held his, helpless to do anything else.
The candle was burning low in its glass case, starting to gutter, and the heady scent of the white flowers in the centrepiece—jasmine, Xandros had told her earlier, when she’d asked—caught at her senses.
He caught at her senses.
Xandros—the man she had married. Married that morning, making her his wife. A wife who was not a wife—not the way real wives were—for that was not why they had married. Not to sit here with him at this candlelit table, under fairy-lights that echoed the stars blazing in the heavens far above them, while soft waves lapped on the beach and a choir of cicadas chorused in the unseen vegetation beyond the little terrace. Not to see the eyes of the man she had married that morning resting on her with a gaze that was turning her slowly and unstoppably into liquid mush...
He was getting to his feet. She heard the scrape of his chair on the stone paving, and then he was beside her.
‘Shall we skip coffee?’ he said.
He was smiling down at her, a half-smile through half-closed eyes that were resting on her upturned face. The smile deepened, curving the edges of his mouth—his perfect, sculpted mouth—indenting lines around it that shadowed the planes of his face in the soft, low light. His eyes washed over her again, and in their depths she could see that dark gold seductive glint again. No hint of irony in it now...
She felt the breath leave her body.
‘There’s an age-old custom I want to try out,’ he said, and his voice was husky again.
She didn’t see it coming—was incapable of doing so. She could only give a breathless gasp as he scooped her bodily into his arms, striding with her into the villa.
He gave a laugh of triumph and possession. ‘Carrying my bride over the threshold!’
She could say nothing, do nothing, could only gasp again, her arm automatically hooking around his neck, feeling the strength of his shoulders, feeling her body cradled against his.
‘Xandros!’ she cried out, half in consternation, half in bewilderment.
She was utterly overcome.
Overcome by being in his arms, lifted by him, her body caught against his strong muscled torso, his grip encompassing her totally.
He strode along the short length of the corridor, swept her into a bedroom.
Not hers, but his.
He laid her down upon his bed, flicked on the bedside light, came down beside her. Propped himself up to gaze down at her.
She could not breathe...could not speak. Blood was drumming in her veins, her eyes, and she could only stare up at him, gaze helplessly. His eyes were pouring into hers, and now they were not half closed at all, but blazing with a gold that was not a glint but a molten pool.
‘I have been waiting for this moment all day,’ he said, and there was a rasp in his voice. ‘All day. Waiting...’ He took a ragged breath. ‘Waiting since I saw you sashay out of that restaurant in London before we flew out to Athens. And now, finally, my wait is over.’
His head lowered, his mouth dipping to hers. And she was lost. Lost utterly in a bliss she could not stop because it was him kissing her. Xandros kissing her with a slow, feathered touch that was deepening all the time, parting her lips, reaching within, purposeful, tasting, seeking...finding. Melding.
It was a kiss as devastating to her as the kiss he had given her last night at her hotel room doorway. A hundred times more devastating! A thousand—
She could not stop him. Did not want to. Wanted only to let her eyes flutter shut and give herself to the exquisite feathering of his lips on hers, the soft, persuasive caress of his mouth as he eased hers open, deepening the kiss.
Bliss took over—sheer, gorgeous, unalloyed, insistent bliss. Bliss that went on and on as his hands tightened on her, as his mouth drew from hers yet more response.
A sense of sweeping oblivion overcame her as everything, in the entire universe ceased to exist except this moment, now, this moment that went on and on.
Until, as if he were pulling away under the strongest duress, he lifted his mouth from hers. His gaze was a wash of desire that blazed from him like the sun.
‘Welcome to our wedding night,’ he said.