Anton watched her lift the boy onto her shoulder then straighten up. She was flushed and there was a slight tremor going on in the hand she used to support the baby’s back. Aware that he was feeling the heavy drag of desire on his body, he remained where he was, watching her as she began walking up and down while rubbing the boy’s back.
He wished he understood this sexual pull he felt for Zoe Kanellis. She should not be his type. He liked his women around his own age with a level of sexual sophistication that saved him having to question if it was good policy to lure them into his bed. But this woman pricked his conscience almost as much as she pricked him in other parts.
And what was she, besides being Theo’s granddaughter, that was? She was a twenty-two-year-old bright, beautiful and intelligent straight-A student with the kind of career prospects some would kill to have. She should be scrambling to take the world by storm, yet she’d thrown it all in to care for her brother without a single regret as far as he could tell.
That kind of decision-making required very level-headed maturity, which he admired in her. Or was that part of her the attraction? The novelty of meeting a woman who did not put her own needs before everything, and wasn’t selfish or vain, and was so unaware of her own charms that she could walk up and down in a pair of grey cotton pyjamas with a cartoon-character transfer printed on the camisole top?
Then again what those pyjamas did for her figure held a novel appeal in itself. The body inside them moved with a slow, sensual rhythm that highlighted each curve and lithe slender muscle.
‘You should go to bed,’ Zoe said, wishing he would just get up and go away now.
How did they do it? How did they go from sharing a frankly chilly conversation over a baby’s feeding bottle to this, this throbbing physical tension that controlled the very air she drew into her lungs?
She heard him stand up as she bent over the cot to gently place the sleeping baby down in it. As she did so, the tips of her breasts brushed against the rail and she let out a gasp because her nipples were so taut they stung sharply as they grazed the wooden bar.
Oh, please get me out of here! She closed her eyes and sent the prayer winging off into the ether. When eventually she straightened up and turned around, he was waiting for her by the door.
Why?
You know why, she told herself helplessly and started trembling as she made herself walk towards him. She kept her eyes lowered to the floor as she did. They stepped out of Toby’s room together. They crossed the landing to her door. It was still swinging open the way she had left it.
‘Goodnight, then,’ she mumbled, and hated it that the mumble sounded husky and thick.
‘One thing,’ he said, only pulling to a stop once his shoulder rested against the frame by her head. He was all height and bulk and raw sexuality. ‘I will be leaving here in the morning at first light.’
Zoe looked up, caught so off-guard by his announcement she left her expression exposed. It was mad, and she knew it, but she did not want him to go away and leave them.
Anton eased out a sigh. ‘It is right that I leave as I promised you I would do,’ he murmured. ‘Even kidnapping cheats know when it is time to start playing fair.’
He wasn’t really talking about what happened yesterday, he was talking about what was happening right here and now. Zoe nodded in agreement but couldn’t say anything. A tight band of tension had taken a grip on her throat. Desperate to get away from him before she did or said something really stupid, like begging him not to go, she went to brush past him but he lifted up a hand and stroked a finger down the middle of the cartoon character’s famous shape.
‘Lucky Snoopy,’ he husked.
Zoe sucked in a breath, a thick and trembling shudder of a breath, as all the feelings going haywire inside just lost their final fingernail-grip. Before she knew what she was doing, she had turned towards him again. One look was all that it took; one wide-eyed and helpless electric-blue look and she was raising her arms up to wind them around his shoulders, and leaning towards him, lifting her mouth up. Then she was kissing him like she had been waiting to do it for all of her life.
He actually fought her for a few seconds, lifting his hands up to clasp them around her wrists with the intention of breaking the link she had on him so he could push her away. Maybe she should have let him. Maybe she should have remembered that she didn’t even like him and that he was the enemy but she just clung more tightly and leaned into him.
A thick, soft, cursing groan vibrated in his throat. Then he was dropping his hands again so he could close his arms around her and it was Anton who coaxed her lips open wider to indulge in a kiss the likes of which Zoe had never received before.
It was a full, undiluted onslaught of his passionate sensuality that shocked her as much as it excited her.
Just like the heat coming from him, his hard, muscular firmness, the contained power in his arms holding her close. She’d gone from being desperate to see the back of him to so desperate to keep him right here she just clung on. She felt dizzily drunk and confused by so many different emotions but she kissed him back with every ounce of hungry desire that she had. When he speared a set of long fingers into her hair and tilted her head back, the move broke the grip she held on his nape, and her hands slithered around to his front, somehow managing to find their way inside his robe as they did.
His shudder of pleasure as her palms made contact with his skin thrilled her.
Then she wasn’t capable of thinking anything because his other hand had slipped beneath her top and was covering her breast. She started trembling, the full force of her attention locked onto those long fingers as they began to stroke and caress. A hot tide of desire swept down through her body. She gasped out feverishly when he grazed her nipple, already standing taut and stinging with the most delicious heat.
She moved restlessly against him, encouraging him with the unknowing instincts of a fledgling siren. The kiss was a drug she wanted to overdose on, as was the feel of his hands stroking slow circles of exploration across her back, her waist, her ribs, then back to her breasts. But, when he clasped her hips to ease her into even closer contact with his body, she felt the power of his arousal with a start of shock that was enough to prize her mouth free.
His eyes were as dark as she’d ever seen them, bands of heat firing across his taut cheeks. ‘You’re playing with fire, glikia mou,’ he warned very seriously.
She might have winced or blinked. In truth she no longer knew what she was doing. His lips were still parted, darker and fuller because of the blood pumping into them. She felt the beating pulse of her own swollen lips as she quivered out a small, trembling breath. And that long, hard shaft of male arousal still pressed against her abdomen, causing a wash of moisture to gather between her legs.
Legs that were threatening to break down beneath her. ‘So, do we stop?’ He tried again, the words arriving from somewhere so deep inside him the question was barely clear enough for her dizzy brain to grasp.
Stop … She picked up from what felt like a long way off. Stop, let him go, remember exactly who he is. Rolling her tongue across the pulsing warmth of her lips, she tried to find the strength to give the right answer but it just would not leave her aching throat. His eyes held her eyes, dark and deep and ever so slightly mocking, but she still found herself drowning in them, in the fierce edge of desire she could feel holding every one of his muscles taut. In the end he released a low sound like a laugh, then the muscles in his arms flexed. For a horrible second she thought he was going make the decision for her and put her away from him. In sheer panic, she parted her lips again and whispered, ‘I don’t want to stop.’
A single flame shot from his eyes and then he was reclaiming her mouth with a deep, sensual fervour that flung the whole thing onto a different level, and he was firing up so many senses it was all she could do just to hang on.