‘Are you out of your mind?’ she breathed, with a shake of her dark head. ‘I want this, too, Xanthos. So badly.’
Her honesty was flattering and, again, surprising. In his experience, women usually held back their true feelings until they were hopeful they might be reciprocated. But Bianca Forrester had broken the mould. He frowned. Did she imagine this was going to end in a hail of confetti in County Hall, with flowers in her hair and a shiny gold band on her finger?
But maybe he was guilty of patronising her. She was a woman in her mid-twenties and a successful lawyer—not some guileless young innocent unused to the wicked ways of the world. They were stranded in an unknown country after sharing a dramatic experience, and then being shown the kindness of strangers on the most unashamedly emotional night of the year. What could be a more perfect ending to a roller coaster of a day and a lucky escape than a long night of delicious sex?
‘You and me both. Very badly,’ he echoed. The pragmatic interchange reminded him to get up and delve around in his suitcase, because he always used protection. He thought how wanton she looked, lying waiting for him in the moonlight, her black-stockinged legs bent and drawing him irrevocably towards her. He bent his head and kissed her until she was writhing with longing. ‘You are exquisite,’ he whispered.
‘Am I?’
He could hear the uncertainty in her voice and that surprised him, too. ‘Utterly.’
‘Oh,’ she breathed.
His fingertip lightly feathered the silken flesh at her thigh. ‘Is that good?’
‘You know it is,’ she said thickly.
He licked her neck, her shoulders and her upper arms, tasting the salty perfume of her flesh. He licked the pouting tips of her breasts and took one into his mouth as he positioned himself over her, her warm thighs parting eagerly beneath his questing fingers. And when at last he pushed into her slick heat, it was...
He grew still.
Was it because he was so aroused that she felt so unbelievablytight?
‘Bianca?’ he ground out, every sinew in his body tensing with fierce control.
‘Yes,’ she whispered back.
But he heard the slight break underpinning her reply and knew instantly what had caused it.
‘Bianca—’
‘Please don’t stop,’ she urged him softly. ‘Not now. Please keep doing exactly what you’re doing.’
Stop? It would have been easier to command his own heart to cease beating, than to have held back from that next delicious thrust. ‘You mean, like this?’ he questioned unevenly.
‘Y-yes. Ex-exactly like that,’ Bianca whispered back as a wave of delicious heat flooded through her. And as he filled her, she couldn’t hold back the thought that maybe she had been born to have Xanthos Antoniou inside her like this. Would it be insane to admit that somehow he made her feel complete, for the first time in her life? A sense of exhilaration accompanied her soaring joy as he thrust deeper inside her and, weirdly, she seemed to know exactly how to respond. It felt instinctive to wrap her legs around his back and tilt her hips to accommodate his hard rhythm. And didn’t his ragged sighs of appreciation thrill her even more, letting her know how much she was pleasuring him? She had never felt so uninhibited, nor so in touch with a side of herself she’d always kept buried and, willingly, she let go. Of thought. Of control. Of everything. So free did she feel that her orgasm startled her. One minute she was opening her lips to the urgent plunge of his tongue and the next she was gasping as her body contracted ecstatically around him.
She could feel his urgency as he slid his palms beneath her buttocks, making those last few thrusts like a man possessed, before giving a shuddered moan which seemed to split the night. For a while he didn’t move. He just stayed on top of her while the pulsing of his body grew quieter. Reaching down, he pushed a strand of hair away from her hot cheek, and though there was only moonlight to see by, it couldn’t disguise the question in his narrowed gaze.
But Bianca didn’t want to spoil what had just happened with some forensic question-and-answer session about why he was the first. She didn’t want him thinking it was anything more special than simple sexual chemistry.
Because it wasn’t.
Willing the crashing of her heart to subside, she curved her lips into a smile and attempted to take charge of the conversation. To take back control. ‘Wow,’ she said softly. ‘That was amazing.’
For a moment there was a silence punctured only by the sound of their laboured breathing.
‘You know, I am rarely surprised by a woman, Bianca,’ he said eventually. ‘But it seems you have broken the mould.’
‘Isn’t Christmas supposed to be about surprises?’ she questioned glibly.
But he didn’t take the hint and shut up.
‘You certainly are a total mind-blowing contradiction to the woman you appear to be,’ he mused. ‘An apparently sophisticated career woman in her mid-twenties, who sends out the very definite message that she’s modern and liberal—who turns out to be a blushing virgin.’
She huffed out a sigh and, despite her best endeavours, started wondering whether some kind of explanation was inevitable. Maybe it was, but she made one last attempt to deflect it. ‘I don’t remember blushing.’
‘You certainly are now,’ he offered drily.