Face pink, and uneasy now, Maxie levered herself up on one elbow. ‘What are you trying to imply?’
‘You’re about to find out.’ Disorientatingly, his bold black eyes flamed with amusement as he began unbuttoning his shirt.
‘Is that a threat?’ Maxie said breathlessly.
‘Is that fear or hope I hear?’ With a soft, unbearably sexy laugh, Angelos dispensed with his shirt and gazed down mockingly into very wide blue eyes. ‘Your face...the expression is priceless!’
Maxie veiled her scrutiny, her fair complexion reddening.
Angelos strolled across the room, indolent now that he had her exactly where he wanted her, fully in control. ‘As for me thinking about sex all the time...don’t you know men? I’ve been celibate for many weeks. I’ve wanted you for an incredibly long time. I’m not used to waiting and fighting every step of the way for what I want. When you have everything, what you cannot have naturally assumes huge importance—’
‘And when you finally get it, I suppose it means next to nothing?’ Maxie slotted in tightly.
Angelos elevated a slanting ebony brow ‘Lighten up,’ he advised, not even pretending not to comprehend her meaning. ‘Only time will decide that. I live in the present and so should you, pethi mou.’
He undressed with fluid ease. She watched him. Ever since that night at the cottage, his powerful image had been stamped into her brain like a Technicolor movie still. But she was still hopelessly enthralled, shaken by the extent to which she responded to his intensely physical allure. Yet she had never seen beauty in the male body until he came along. But from his wide brown shoulders, slim hips and long, powerful hair-roughened thighs, Angelos made her mouth run dry, her pulses race and her palms perspire.
‘You’ve been so quiet since that ceremony...and now you recline like a very beautiful stone statue on my bed.’ Angelos skimmed off his black briefs in one long, lazy movement. ‘If it wasn’t so ridiculous, I would think you were scared of me.’
Maxie managed to laugh but her throat was already constricting with nerves. He was so relaxed about his nudity, quite unconcerned that he was hugely aroused. And while common sense was telling her that of course God had fashioned men and women to fit, Maxie just could not begin to imagine how at that moment.
Angelos came down on the wide bed beside her. He scanned the sudden defensive upward tilt of her perfect profile, trailed a slow and appreciative hand through the lush tumble of golden strands of hair cascading off the pillows. He threw himself back and closed his hands round her slender forearms to bring her gently down to him. ‘And now my reward for waiting,’ he breathed with indolent satisfaction. ‘Nothing can disturb or part us here.’
Maxie gazed down into smouldering golden eyes full of expectancy. ‘Angelos...’
He reached up to run the tip of his tongue erotically along the tremulous line of her generous mouth. ‘You feel like ice. I’ll melt you,’ he promised huskily, deft fingers already engaged in releasing the catch on her bra.
Maxie trembled, feeling her whole body filled with delicious tension. She closed her eyes. He kissed her, and every time he kissed her it got just that little bit more tormenting, and she would open her lips wider, needing more pressure, more passion, begging for it as the floodtide of unstoppable hunger began to build and race through her veins.
He rolled her over and closed a hand over the pouting swell of one pale breast. Her taut body jumped as he smiled brilliantly down into her shaken eyes. ‘And yet you are so red-hot, responsive when I touch you. Every time that gives me a high,’ Angelos confessed thickly. ‘I love seeing you out of control.’
Threatened by that admission, Maxie shifted uneasily. ‘I don’t like that—’
‘You’ll have to learn to like it.’ Angelos bent his dark, arrogant head over a pink straining nipple and laved that achingly tender tip with his tongue, engulfing her in sensation that she now struggled instinctively to resist.
‘No...’ she gasped.
‘Don’t fight what I can make you feel...’ he urged hoarsely, employing expert fingers on her sensitive flesh, making her squirm in breathless, whimpering excitement.
Her body wasn’t her own any more, but by then she didn’t want it to be. With every atom of her being she craved those caresses. Wild sensation was addictive. She was hooked between one second and the next, her mind wiped clean of all thought. The hot wire of his seduction pulled tight as heat flared between her shifting thighs. She moaned his name low in her throat.
He took her mouth with a hot, sexual dominance then. He sealed her to the abrasively masculine angles of his hard, hungry body. She panted for breath when he released her swollen lips, sensually bemused eyes focusing on the brooding intensity of that darkly handsome face now curiously stilled above hers.