And I did not want you to resist me. ‘But you stopped it anyway,’ she whispered shakily.
‘Because it was wrong. Because it is not what we’re here for.’
‘You pompous swine,’ she said and turned to walk back to her room.
She didn’t get very far. He exploded so spectacularly it came as a shock. ‘What is it you actually want from me, Miss Herakleides?’ he roared at her furiously as he strode towards her. ‘I thought you wanted my help, so I gave it.’ His hands found her shoulders. ‘I thought you wanted my support with your lies, so I gave you that!’ Those hands spun her round to face the fury he was giving out. ‘You’re here. I’m here, living a lie that should never have been allowed to start in the first place!’ Cold steely eyes raked her face like cutthroat razors. ‘Now I can’t even honour that deal without you making me out to be some kind of rat!’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Yes, you did,’ he cut in thinly.
‘I thought—’
‘You don’t think, Eve, that’s your trouble!’
‘Will you stop shouting at me,’ she yelled back. ‘I wanted what I thought you wanted! My mistake. I apologise. Now let go of me!’
He did. She staggered. His hands came back to steady her. She released a pathetic little sob. He muttered something. She looked up at him. Like lightning striking a volcano, a whole ocean of molten emotion came boiling out.
‘He was there; he hurt me. You were the last person on earth I expected to understand! I liked it—your kindness, your caring, the strength that you let me lean on.’ Stop trembling! she told herself. ‘I liked the way you could be so stern with me, but make love to me with your eyes at the same time. You’re doing it now!’ she choked out shrilly. ‘You’re angry but you want me. I am not misreading the messages! How dare you imply that I am?’
It was a damning indictment. She was right, every word of it. Standing there, watching this beautiful woman shimmer with anger, hurt and a million other emotions beside, Ethan took it all full in the face and wondered what he was supposed to say or do now.
Then, he thought, oh to hell with it. He even released a short laugh because he knew what he was going to do with it. He was going to throw off his high moral stance and surrender to Eve—as he had been doing since this whole crazy thing had begun.
‘Don’t laugh at me,’ she protested unsteadily, hurt tears sparkling across dark green irises.
‘I’m not laughing at you,’ he denied. ‘I’m laughing at myself.’
‘Why?’
Ethan kissed those tear-washed eyes, ran his lips down her cute little nose and settled at the corner of her trembling mouth. ‘Because of this,’ he murmured huskily, and made his surrender, falling into it without allowing himself another sane thought.
‘If you’re playing games with me, I’ll—’
‘No game,’ he promised and, because they’d done enough talking, he moved his lips until they’d covered her own then gently parted them to receive the moist caress of his tongue.
It was different. Eve could feel it was different. Not just the kiss but the way he was holding her—not with anger nor that driving compulsion that had pulled their mouths together before. He was going to take what she had placed on such open offer, and for a fleeting, fleeting, moment Eve wondered if she had made a terrible mistake by making herself so easy for him. Then he lifted his head, and she saw the slightly awry smile he offered that told her he wasn’t thinking this was easy at all.
‘Beautiful Eve,’ he murmured and covered her mouth again, picked her up and carried her down the terrace, into her bedroom and over to the bed before he let her feet slide down to the floor.
Shy, she felt agonisingly shy suddenly, which was stupid after everything that had gone before. He cupped her face, felt the burn in her cheeks, brushed his thumbs across them gently and felt her small tremor as he tilted her head back enough to receive his next kiss.
Only, not just a kiss but a deep and desirous prelude to what was about to come. It was a warm and unhurried awakening of the senses that held her captivated and compliant, wanting to go only where he led her.
He noticed, of course he did. ‘A passive Eve?’ he mocked her gently.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Do you mind?’
‘No.’ But that awry smile was on his lips again. ‘Just so long as it doesn’t mean you’re having second thoughts and don’t know how to tell me.’
‘No second thoughts.’ And to prove it, she wound her arms around his neck and brought his mouth back to hers again, then mimicked his long seductive kiss.
He led her through an erotic undressing by drawing the zip of her dress down her spine with caressing expertise that took her breath away. His fingers trailed feather-light over exposed skin, sun-kissed shoulders, slender backbone, the shockingly sensitised concaved arch at the nape of back. She moved against him and could tell that he liked that. It emboldened her into pressing the bowl of her hips even closer to what was happening to him.
He released a sigh; it shook with feeling. Eve matched that too, and he caught the sound on his tongue then fed it back to her, while his hands drifted up her arms until they reached her hands still locked around his neck. Drawing them downwards he encouraged her dress to slither down her body, then laid her hands against his shirt front. ‘Undress me,’ he urged.
It was the calling song of a mating bird. Shy though she still felt, Eve complied, while the caress of his hands and his mouth urged her on. Did he know? she wondered mistily. Could he tell she’d never done this before, and was that why he was taking it all so slow and easy?