In a fluid movement he leant back from her and pulled off his shirt, springing upright to remove his trousers. Her heart racing, a languorous weakness gripping her limbs, she lay back against the pillows, watching him. His chinos hit the rug. She was madly curious, and she couldn’t stop looking. He was as confident in his own naked skin as he was in a business suit. And that sleek self-assurance was as sexy as the appeal of his strong, hard body. He discarded his boxers and strolled back to the bed. The bold length of his virile masculinity made her gulp.
Enjoying the wide-eyed visual appraisal she was trying so hard and unsuccessfully to hide, Giannis dealt her a wolfish grin. ‘Do I meet your expectations?’
‘Who am I supposed to compare you to?’ Maddie riposted, hot-cheeked.
The aggressive strength of will that powered the continual expansion of his massive business empire hardened his lean strong face. ‘No other man. You belong with me now.’
‘Women don’t belong to men in this century.’
‘Would you feel right doing this with someone else?’ Giannis enquired, sliding deft hands below her hips and tugging her kaftan off.
She was caught between dismay at that concept and self-consciousness at her nudity. ‘No, of course not. But—’
‘You take my point so beautifully, glikia mou.’ Giannis leant hungrily over her to taste her luscious mouth.
He used his tongue to make a darting foray between her lips, and a snaking spasm of response clenched low in her pelvis. He buried his expert mouth in the hollow beneath her collarbone before lowering his head to let his teeth graze her distended nipples. A low gasp broke from her. Her skin dampened. A delicious yearning was drumming up the honeyed heat at the secret heart of her. Her fingers curved round a smooth brown shoulder, and when he slid up level with her again she explored the solid muscular wall of his chest, traced the silky furrow of hair that led down to his straining sex.
‘Show me what you like,’ she whispered unevenly.
Giannis told her in the most succinct terms, and took great pleasure in offering guidance. She devoted herself to the new learning experience with an innocent enthusiasm that forced him to conclude the exercise much faster than he had anticipated. Groaning as he fought to reinstate control, he kissed her with devouring hunger. ‘You almost pushed me over the edge, pedhi mou.’
Making love to him had heightened her desire, and her level of frustration. She quivered in the shelter of his arms, madly aware of the tingling burn of emptiness between her slender thighs. When he sought out the damp heat of that tender triangle, she gritted her teeth to hold back a cry. Her longing was so intense she pressed her face into his shoulder, drinking in the achingly familiar scent of his skin. He shifted, parting her legs to stroke the delicate pink softness of her lush femininity. He rubbed the little pearl of sensation and she moaned and shivered. As the tormenting heat rose, her hips shifted back and forth on the mattress. Paying no heed to her protests, he employed his mouth with skilful eroticism on her squirming body.
‘Giannis…please…’
‘If you can still talk, you’re not enjoying yourself enough.’
That intimacy was a sweet torment which drove her out of her mind with delight. Wild waves of desperate hunger controlled her. The pressure in her pelvis built and built. She was so hot she was melting, and at the instant where irresistible sensation became sensual torture a shattering climax convulsed her and she abandoned herself to the ecstasy.
Giannis wasted no time in rearranging her limp body and forging a bold passage into her sensitised flesh. He took her with ruthless precision, and she cried out in feverish response. He deepened his penetration, tipping her back at an angle demanding that she take all of him. Frantic excitement enveloped her. His every powerful movement sent ripples of delirious pleasure coursing through her responsive body. He pounded into her with sure, fast strokes. What she had not known could happen again took her a second time, and the frenzied rise of her passionate response swept her to another electrifying orgasm.
‘You enthral me, pedhi mou.’ Giannis rolled back from her and gently straightened her out. He carried her nerveless fingers to his mouth and kissed them. ‘That was wonderful.’
Every muscle ached. Her body almost hurt in the aftermath of that huge, demanding flood of pleasure. The air-conditioning was chilling the perspiration from her body and she shivered.
‘Cold?’ Giannis questioned
‘Silly, isn’t it?’ Maddie muttered.
Giannis didn’t like this constraint. It wasn’t what he had anticipated from her. He had thought that she might well fall in love with him. He had half expected her to cling to him with naïve affection, and he had braced himself to tolerate being hugged. But not only had she made no such move, she was also disturbingly quiet. Perhaps she felt unappreciated? he reasoned. As it was his experience that his lovers always expected gifts, he thought that it was now time to show her the designer wardrobe he had ordered for her.
‘I’ll get you something to put on.’ Giannis sprang off the bed.
‘I didn’t bring a wrap.’ Maddie wished she dared suggest that greater proximity would soon warm her up again—he put out sufficient body heat to power an apartment block. In truth, a terrible uncertainty was threatening to claim her again. Now that their one-night stand had turned into an affair, she realised that she didn’t know how to go about conducting one. She wanted reassurance that what they had wasn’t a casual thing, on his terms, but she knew she was being too needy, looking for too much too soon. There was no way she could risk such questions.
Giannis strolled into the dressing room and rolled back the doors. ‘Come here…I want to show you something.’
Maddie lifted his discarded shirt and held it against her in an effort to cover the expanse of her own bare skin. Wondering what the heck he could want to show her, she came to an awkward halt in the doorway.
‘All the clothes in here are yours.’
Her delicate brows pleated in confusion. ‘How can they be mine?’
Giannis shrugged. ‘This is my gift to you. Staff will be standing by tomorrow, to alter anything that doesn’t fit.’
Stunned by what he was telling her, Maddie tugged open a drawer and skated a doubtful fingertip over silk and lace lingerie. How dared he buy her underwear? Her small white teeth gritted. She stared at the garments hanging in the closet, noting a very famous designer label and sliding the items along the rail to examine another couple, before drawing back her hands as though she had been stung by a wasp. Mortified colour had washed into her cheeks.
‘I can’t believe that you think it’s okay to do something like this,’ she told him tightly, threading her arms into the sleeves of his shirt, because she now felt foolish naked. ‘I may not own any fancy clothes, but that doesn’t mean I want you to buy them for me!’
‘My only motivation was to please you.’
‘Did you pick them out personally?’ she asked abruptly.
In the act of pulling out a pair of jeans from the other side of the dressing room, Giannis tensed, recalling another débâcle when he had sent Nemos to her door to organise lunch. ‘No.’
‘Did you describe what you wanted?’
‘I may have mentioned a favourite colour or two.’
‘Mine or yours?’
‘I don’t know yours,’ he was forced to admit, his handsome mouth taut with impatience. He zipped the jeans. What was her problem? Why couldn’t she be grateful, as so many other women had been before her? Why was she so outrageously difficult to please?
‘Which really says it all, doesn’t it?’ Maddie snapped. ‘You don’t know my favourite colours and you don’t really care either. You want to dress me up like a fashion doll for your benefit, not mine.’
His dark golden eyes simmered. ‘That is untrue.’
‘If you don’t like me as I am, tough!’ Maddie flung at him, her generous mouth curling with pained defiance. ‘And at least have the sensitivity to appreciate that spending thousands and thousands of pounds on someone like me, just because you’ve slept with them, gives a very insulting message!’
That concluding crack made Giannis furious. Slashing his hands through the air in a striking gesture of exasperation, he strode back into the bedroom. ‘So we’re back to the missing sensitivity gene?’
‘I do not need to be reminded that you’re richer than sin.’