He could feel her full breasts pressing against the cotton of his shirtfront, feel her nipples start to peak, feel desire flare through her, fuelled by the wine in her blood, the champagne in her veins, the music in her head.
Hunger for her leapt in him, seared through him. He knew his body was surging, engorging, knew that desire and need and all that could burn like an inferno between a man and a woman was igniting within him now. Knew that in seconds the conflagration would take hold—unstoppable, unquenchable.
With a groan, he let her go, wrenching his mouth from hers, pulling his hands away, stepping back from her.
There was a dazed expression on her face, the bewilderment of loss in her eyes—her huge, widened eyes—and their pupils were flaring with desire, arousal...
He shook his head. Held up his hands. Stepped further back.
‘Goodnight!’ he said.
His voice was shaken, he could hear it, and he could feel the heat in his body still, the fullness still there, but he had to beat it back, subdue it. Whatever primal hunger was possessing him, he had to defeat it. To indulge himself now, when far too much wine and champagne was coursing through her, would be unforgivable.
For a second a stricken look was there in her eyes—a look that somehow pierced him like a stiletto blade in his throat—and then, like the sun coming out from a cloud, dazzling in its brightness, she smiled. Her face lit up once more.
‘Goodnight!’ she breathed. ‘Oh, goodnight!’
He backed to the door. He did not want to do this. Did not want to leave. But he had to. Had to get back to his room—had to get that cold shower sluicing down over his body...had to!
As he reached the door she lifted her hand from one side of her bodice, dangerously exposing yet more of her sweet, succulent flesh, a final torment for him, and then, with another dazzling smile, an insouciant, joyous ges
ture, she kissed her fingers and blew the kiss to him.
‘Thank you!’
They were the last words he heard before he got out through the door and pulled it shut, to keep him safe.
Safe from the only thing in the world he wanted to do right now...
Go right back in and sweep her into his arms.
* * *
Ellen was asleep, but someone was making her wake up. A hand was on her shoulder, gently shaking her. She shrugged it off, nestled back down into her pillows, but the hand returned. Someone said something to her, but she didn’t know what. It was foreign. Greek?
Greek!
She bolted upright, only just having the presence of mind to clutch her bedclothes to her, her eyes flaring open. Max Vasilikos, freshly showered—she could tell from the damp hair feathering his forehead and the towelling robe that emphasised the Mediterranean tan of his skin—was sitting on her bed.
‘How are you feeling?’ he enquired. His voice was urbane, equable—and amused.
She pushed her hair out of her face. It seemed to her to be softer than it usually was, and finer, and less heavy. She blinked, looking around her, dragging her gaze past the figure of the man sitting at the foot of the bed, with his dark eyes resting on her speculatively and a curve at his sculpted mouth that suddenly made her very, very aware of her state of dishevelment.
‘Um—fine,’ she got out.
Was she fine? she wondered. She blinked. Yes, she did seem to be OK. Memory came rushing back, tumbling into her head like a series of snapshots. The ball—that fantastic, gorgeous, wonderful ball! Chatting away to all those people over dinner. Dancing with Max.
Kissing Max...
Colour flared in her cheeks as memory flooded her, intense and vivid.
He kissed me! Max Vasilikos—the man who made me beautiful and waltzed the night away with me!
Max saw the colour flare and knew what she was thinking. It was what he was only too conscious of himself. His night had not been peaceful. It had been disturbed by dreams. Dreams in which there had been no need to tear himself away from the woman he’d been kissing.
No—don’t think about it now! Not when he was sitting on her bed and she was only a metre away from him, her naked body shielded only by the sheet she was clutching to her, her lush hair tumbling wantonly around her shoulders, her smeared mascara making her eyes smoky and deep...
He got to his feet, stepping away from the bed. Well away. ‘I’ve ordered brunch,’ he told her. ‘So have a wake-up shower and come on through.’