‘Turn over,’ he said roughly. ‘And let me get this damned dress off.’
Had she thought that he’d been demonstrating self-control? Because suddenly it seemed to have deserted him as he peeled the dress from her body with shaking hands and threw it onto the ground. Her bra and panties followed, until she was as naked as he was.
And then she remembered.
How the hell could she have forgotten?
‘I’m not on the pill,’ she said.
His face darkened. ‘And why would you be, when we have not been sleeping together?’ he demanded arrogantly.
‘Because we haven’t been living together! We’re separated!’
‘But you are still my wife, Lex. You are still my wife!’
With a muttered curse he walked over to the closet and opened one of the drawers until he had found what he was looking for.
She watched as he tore open the foil, and as all their tumultuous history crowded into her mind Lexi thought maybe she should call a halt to this madness. But any remaining reason was soon silenced by desire. Her throat dried as she watched him stroking on the condom and it was much too late for a change of heart, because he was walking back towards the bed and the look on his face was making her melt with longing.
He returned to his previous position on the bed, with one thigh on either side of her. He bent his head and grazed his mouth over her nipples, teasing each tip into an exquisitely sensitised bud. Her hands flew to his head, her nails digging into his scalp as she lifted her hips towards his in wordless plea.
He slid his fingers down between her thighs, murmuring something indistinct when he felt just how wet she was. But Lexi saw the convulsive way he swallowed, as if he had a lump the size of a golf ball stuck in his throat. And that one small chink of vulnerability made her wrap her arms tightly around his neck.
‘Xenon,’ she breathed.
‘Lex,’ he gasped. ‘Oh, Lex.’
She moaned against his neck as he reached down to brush the tip of his erection against her waiting heat.
And never had anything seemed so symbolic as that first deep thrust, though he stilled when she cried out his name in a broken kind of way.
‘I am hurting you?’ he demanded.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It’s beautiful. Just beautiful.’
Her heartfelt words stirred him more than he would have anticipated, but then it had been a long time since he’d heard such tenderness in her voice. It wrapped itself around his heart like a velvet fist as he made love to her as if it were the very first time. It felt like sweet and exquisite torture as he tried not to come too quickly—when he wanted to come as soon as he’d entered her. He tried to think of other things. But he couldn’t.
Suddenly he was at the mercy of feelings so powerful that he almost lost control—he, who had never lost control in his life. Suddenly his head was bent and he was kissing her as if that kiss were the only thing sustaining him, as if it were as necessary to him as the very air which he breathed.
Her soft, pale thighs were tight around his back and he was lifting her up towards him, so that she was pinned almost effortlessly against his body while he thrust deep inside her.
He saw her head tip back just before that first low cry came from her lips. A sound once so familiar yet now so strange that he could have wept.
But then his own orgasm came to his rescue. It exploded like a truckload of dark fireworks going off in slow motion, before wrapping him in oblivion. And the last thing he could remember saying was her name.
CHAPTER NINE
FOR A MOMENT Lexi wondered why she felt so strange.
There was warmth and weight and an odd, aching feeling.
And a sound.
Her eyes fluttered open to see Xenon fast asleep beside her. The bed was huge but he was managing to take up most of it with his long limbs sprawled languidly over the ruffled sheets. Against the pristine whiteness of Egyptian cotton, his hair was as black as night and his olive skin looked like burnished gold.
She realised that the sound she’d heard had been his breathing—steady and slow—and the weight was one hair-roughened thigh imprisoning her own pale leg beneath. And the aching? She felt the sudden rush of colour flooding into her cheeks as she remembered.
Xenon making love to her.
Xenon lifting her up as if she’d been weightless and thrusting into her.
Xenon pinning her against the wall on her way back from retrieving her glasses from the sitting-room floor. A kiss which had turned into something more. She remembered the cool wall pressing against her back and one very hot, aroused man at her front.