CHAPTER TEN
ROSALIE STILLED. His words echoed, lifting her from the pool of sensual oblivion in which she had been drowning with his kiss.
Confusion filled her. ‘I...I don’t understand.’ The words fell from her, summing up the whirlpool of confusion inside her.
How could this be happening—how?
Xandros’s brow furrowed as he drew back from her a little. ‘Don’t understand what?’
Then his brow cleared, a smile starting to play about his mouth, and she could see even in the dim lamplight those deep flecks of gold in his eyes that somehow made her feel breathless all over again.
‘Isn’t it very simple?’ he asked.
‘But...’ She swallowed. ‘You said it was a mistake. Last night... That kiss... At my room in the hotel—’
He stared down at her. Then a wry, rueful laugh broke from him. ‘Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to walk away from your room last night?’ he asked, and she could hear the husk beneath the rueful tone. ‘That was why kissing you was a mistake!’
He took a ragged breath.
‘Do you have any idea how hard it has been to keep my hands off you this entire time? That first evening at the hotel...at least we were in public—but when you came to my apartment, looked into my bedroom at my bed...’
Greek words broke from him, and then he was back to English.
‘I’ve been in torment! Waiting to have you here all to myself...’
She gazed up at him, taking in his words. Taking in the implication of them. Something was soaring in her, taking flight, lifting her up and up and up...
‘But now... Ah, now...’ he went on, and his voice was husky again, with a sensual twist to it that set in motion inside her a vibration that seemed to be in every cell of her body. ‘Now the time is right. Now,’ he said, ‘the time is perfect...’
He brushed his lips to hers again, softly, fleetingly. Arousingly. She gave herself to it, gave herself to him, to all that he was drawing from her, arousing in her—to the sense of wonder filling her, the wonderful, wondrous release of all that she had been trying so hard to keep in check, to stamp out of herself...
And now—like a fantasy made real, a dream come true—she did not have to! Because she had been so wrong about him! The truth was wonderful, glorious, like the blaze of desire that she could see in his eyes, pouring into hers now as his mouth lifted from her.
He wants me! He wants me as I have come to want him! And he can have everything he wants of me—everything...
She could feel her heart start to slug in slow, heavy beats, a throbbing deep inside her. Her senses were dizzy, hyperaware and yet dazed and dreamlike. The wine sang in her blood, but she was not intoxicated...not by wine.
He kissed her again, and now she was kissing him back, opening her mouth to his, letting him feast upon her as she did on him. She was taking his mouth with hers and then his mouth was lifting from hers again. And as he gazed down at her his dark eyes were pools of sensual desire that sent a thrill through her, a heady quickening of her pulse that was like nothing she had ever felt or known in all her life.
His hand was moving along her hair like a soft caress, the tips of his fingers touching her cheek, drawing along the contour of her cheekbone, tracing her jaw, lingering over her mouth, shaping it with his touch. His eyes poured over her and she could see those gold flecks, the lush, smoky lashes dipping down as he explored her parting lips yet again with his delicate, sensual touch.
His fingers trailed own the exposed column of her throat, slowly, deliberately. Oh, it was so achingly arousing. She could only gaze up at him, feeling every sense come vividly alive, twisting her fingers to catch at the soft pillow beneath her head.
His hand smoothed lower and her breath caught. Though he said not a word she knew what he intended—oh, she knew with an ache inside her...
‘So very, very beautiful...’
The husk i
n his voice was a rasp now, and as he murmured the words his hand rounded over the sweet swell of her breast. Beneath his palm, through the thin material of her dress, the lacy fabric of her bra, her breast engorged, its peak flowering at his enfolding touch.
A groan broke from her, soft and low, and he gave an answering laugh, moving his mouth to take the place of his moulding palm. Another groan broke from her at this renewed and oh, so exquisitely delicious onslaught on her body. And even as his lips teased her through the thin fabric of her garments his hand was sliding the strap of the dress from her shoulder, taking with it her bra strap as well.
She was hardly conscious of it, her whole focus only on the sensations he was arousing in her with his sensuous ministrations to her peaking breast. Only when his hand cupped her did she realise, with a startled little intake of breath, that her breast was now exposed to his view—and to his touch.
Oh, his touch...!
Wonder filled her, and a sense of amazement, and along with that a growing, irresistible sense of arousal, of a sensual sexual excitement that was firing within her like a slow-burning flame that suffused her whole body, making a sudden restlessness fill her, so that every nerve ending seemed hyper-aroused and she was ultra aware of her own body...ultra aware of a growing, insistent need...a need for the blissful, arousing touch of his hands, his mouth, to intensify, to be everywhere, to stroke and caress and explore...