Defying Drakon

She moistened her lips before speaking, her cheeks feeling warm as she saw the hungry way his gaze followed the tip of her tongue as it swept over that pouting softness. ‘So you booked separate rooms for us at the hotel, did you?’ she asked.

It was only as Drakon breathed in deeply that he realised he had not been breathing at all for the last minute or so. ‘I requested a suite with two bedrooms.’

Gemini chuckled. ‘Hedging your bets, Drakon?’

Had he been? Had he hoped that the evening would be so successful, so enjoyable, that he and Gemini would spend the night together?

Certainly not consciously. ‘I doubt that there will be a four-poster bed in either of them,’ he told her apologetically.

‘Probably not, no,’ she agreed quietly.

‘Or rose petals to perfume the room,’ he added gruffly.

‘I’m sure I won’t notice with the light off,’ Gemini murmured.

The fact that Drakon had bothered to remember her romantic fantasies was enough for now. More than enough to sustain her tingling awareness as they walked the short distance to an exclusive hotel.

That awareness had been elevated to an almost overwhelming swell of anticipation by the time they had booked in and Drakon had used a keycard to allow them to enter the sitting room of a suite on the top floor.

‘No.’ Gemini moved to stop his hand as he would have reached out and turned on the light. The moonlight streaming into the room through the two floor-to-ceiling windows provided the necessary illumination as she stepped into his arms. ‘Make love to me, Drakon,’ she whispered, her face lifting invitingly to his as her arms moved about his waist.

Drakon’s hands moved up to cradle each side of her face as he gazed down at her hungrily. The softness of her creamy cheeks felt like velvet against his palms as he committed the perfection of her face to memory, to be taken out at some later date to please or torment him.

‘You are so overwhelmingly beautiful, Gemini, inside as well as out,’ he muttered, and the rasp of their breath was the only sound in the room as his head lowered and his lips at last laid claim to hers.

Their passion, their need for each other, was like a dam bursting, and the kiss that had started so gently quickly became something else as they took eagerly, hungrily, from each other, and gave back just as much in return. Lips devoured, teeth gently bit, and tongues duelled in devouring demand.

Drakon groaned as he felt himself spiralling quickly out of control. Gemini’s fingers became entangled in the hair at his nape as they continued to kiss hungrily. His skin felt hot and feverish, his shaft a hard and pulsing ache as he pressed into the heated softness between her thighs, wanting—oh, God, how he wanted her. It was suddenly all too much…

‘Drakon?’ Gemini’s eyes were huge bewildered pools of dark green as he suddenly wrenched his mouth away from hers and put her firmly away from him.

He breathed in raggedly before looking down at her from between lowered lids. ‘As I pointed out earlier, we do not have the four-poster bed or the perfume of rose petals that you said were required for your seduction,’ he reminded her distantly.

‘My seduction?’ she repeated painfully.

Drakon’s mouth compressed but he didn’t reply.

She clasped shaking hands in an attempt to steady them. ‘I don’t understand…’ Minutes ago, seconds ago, he had seemed on the point of devouring her—and goodness knew she had been more than willing. The passion between them had been so intense they had seemed in danger of going up in flames.

He dropped his gaze. ‘For us to go to bed together now would be wrong on levels I cannot begin to explain.’

‘For whom?’ Gemini prompted shrewdly. ‘Is it that you don’t want the so-called responsibility of taking my innocence? That you maybe even think, in my naivety, I might imagine myself to be in love with you?’ she pressed.

Drakon stood unmoving as her words rained down like daggers entering his flesh. ‘It is a possibility, is it not?’

‘No!’ she gave a shocked gasp. ‘No, Drakon, it isn’t a possibility!’ She stepped back, her gaze anguished as the heat of tears drenched those sea-green depths. ‘You—’ She broke off as the sound of his mobile phone intruded into the tension. ‘You should answer that. It might be one of the women from the opera earlier, wanting to meet up with you. An experienced woman!’ she spat.

‘Possibly,’ he said coolly.

Gemini gave him one last fulminating glare before turning on her heel and hurrying across the room to enter one of the two bedrooms and slam the door behind her.

Leaving Drakon alone in the moonlight as each and every one of those daggers pierced deeply into a part of him he had believed until tonight to be invincible…

CHAPTER TWELVE

GEMINI felt emotionally exhausted by the time the chauffeur-driven limousine drew to a halt beside the pavement outside her shop at twelve o’clock the following day. She hadn’t slept at all the pre

vious night, listening as Drakon talked briefly on the telephone before she heard the sound of the other bedroom door softly closing—evidence that he obviously wasn’t taking her up on her suggestion that he go out again.