very hard to put your needs first.’
Tia lifted her hands and let them skim down over his warm torso, revelling in the strength of the muscular body beneath his shirt. Her fingers drifted lower, discovering the bold outline of him, stroking and caressing with newfound assurance. ‘I think you’re going to be a terrific husband,’ she told him, smiling as he arched his hips into her hand. ‘But if we’re going to be true equals I’ve got a lot to learn too.’
‘You can practise on me whenever you like,’ Max admitted, peeling off his jacket and wrenching at his shirt with flattering impatience.
As the ropes of muscle across his abdomen flexed, Tia unbuckled his belt and unzipped him. Max breathed in starkly, savouring the fact that she constantly took him by surprise. Her hand stroked the length of him and she bent her head, her tongue flicking out to taste him. By the time the warm, wet heat of her mouth engulfed him, Max was almost unbearably full and hard, the grinding pulse of driving hunger gripping him in a vice. Watching her pleasure him excited him beyond bearing and, long before she could tease him to a climax, he reached down and forcefully pulled her up to him, lifting her to plunge his tongue deep into her sweet, intoxicating mouth and feel the answering leap of response vibrate through both of them.
‘Max... I—’ Tia began.
‘Another time,’ Max growled, settling her down on the edge of the table by the window, pushing up her skirt and stepping between her spread thighs. ‘This is what I’ve been dreaming of all day.’
And with that grated confession, Max tilted her back, hurriedly donned a condom and thrust into her hard and deep and strong. The table creaked in complaint but Tia’s body was hot and slick with arousal and her tender flesh yielded to him.
‘Dannazione,’ he groaned feverishly. ‘You are so tight.’
Tia jerked, her head falling back, blue eyes shaken by his fire as she jerked under him with a helpless moan of sensual pleasure. He was aggressive, dominating in a way he had not been the first time, and the welling of sensation deep within her throbbed with a wild hunger that thrilled her, excitement climbing as his movements became rougher and more demanding. Little internal tremors shimmied through her, bands of tension tightening within her pelvis until her body clenched convulsively around him at the height of her excitement. Wave after glorious wave washed over her as orgasmic aftershocks took her by storm. A low guttural sound was wrenched from him as he too reached completion.
In the aftermath, her body was weighted and limp. Max carried her over to the bed and laid her down, tilting her to unzip her dress and pull it off, unclipping her bra as an afterthought. As he vanished into what was obviously a bathroom, Tia released a happy sigh of contentment. Max had just shown her the hunger, passion and impatience that revealed his need for her. No, there had been nothing lukewarm about that encounter, she reflected with satisfaction, struggling to muster the energy to get up and go and wash.
‘Have to take off my make-up,’ she mumbled as he stepped out of the shower naked and dripping to reach for a towel.
Tia showered, her feminine core still pulsing from the intensity of the release he had given her and the no less energising discovery that sex could take place on a table as well as a bed and be fast and glorious as well as slow and wonderful.
She padded back to the bed and climbed in, snuggling up to Max without hesitation, one arm wrapping round his broad chest. ‘So tell me why this Doug would have wanted to destroy your reputation,’ she murmured, curiosity flickering afresh. ‘I need to learn all the ins and outs of this family...and the secrets if there are any.’
Max tensed and released his breath in a hiss as he sat up and, in so doing, freed himself from her hold. ‘All families have secrets.’
‘But this relates to you and we’re married,’ Tia reminded him unnecessarily.
Max gritted his teeth, belatedly recalling why he never stayed the night with a woman, never risked getting cosy with one, never shared late-night chat sessions. Unfortunately, he acknowledged grimly, there was no escape from a wife occupying the same bed...
‘DOUG AND I attended the same boarding school as teenagers,’ Max divulged reluctantly. ‘I didn’t know him then the way I do now. I trusted him as a friend. It didn’t occur to me that he already saw me as competition and thought Andrew took too much interest in me. In my own eyes I was the housekeeper’s nephew and I didn’t ever expect to be anything more. I was staff, Doug was family.’
Tia rested her tousled head back on the pillows and reached for a bronzed masculine hand, lacing her fingers into his without any help from him. ‘Go on...’
Max retrieved his hand. ‘Doug’s family lived nearby and he was a frequent visitor. His mother was on her second marriage and he had a stepsister, a very pretty redhead called Alice. We were only seventeen. Doug brought Alice here repeatedly that summer and I fell in love with her. Only a few weeks after I began seeing her she announced that she was pregnant and that I was the father of her child,’ he revealed grittily. ‘I was surprised because I had only slept with her on one occasion and I had been...careful.’
Tia sat up to study him in consternation. ‘And?’ she pressed.
‘There was a huge family row. Doug’s stepfather stormed over here and tried to beat me up, and then in the midst of all that, with Alice’s mother and my aunt screaming in the background and Andrew calling for order, Alice took fright and finally told the truth. The baby was Doug’s. She and Doug had been having sex for months and when she realised she was pregnant she panicked because they had been expressly warned by their parents that they were expected to think of each other as brother and sister. Together, she and Doug decided that I should be set up to take the blame, which is why she slept with me in the first place...’
‘And you loved her,’ Tia muttered unevenly, her nails digging into the palms of her hands to enable her to listen to the tawdry tale without making tactless comments. Max had been the fall guy in a nasty set-up, his conviction betrayed by a boy he had believed to be his friend and a girl whom he had learned to care about.
‘Yes, but I got over it,’ Max completed with a brisk lack of sentiment that did not impress her in the slightest. ‘However, Doug’s mother and stepfather’s marriage broke down because of that pregnancy and, sadly, Alice miscarried a few weeks later, so everyone lost out.’
‘At least she told the truth in the end,’ Tia sighed.
‘Can we please drop the subject now?’ Max murmured, his stunning heavily lashed dark eyes welded to her troubled gaze. ‘I was a boy and now I’m a man but I still don’t like remembering that hellish affair.’
Inside her chest, Tia’s heart ached for him and she reached for his hand again.
Max snaked his fingers free a second time. ‘You asked me and I told you. I don’t need or want your sympathy. It hit me hard at the time because Alice loving me felt special but afterwards I realised it had all been a giant fake. And afterwards, in front of everyone when she was trying to save face and impress Doug, she asked me how I could ever have thought that she could have had feelings for someone like me...’
‘Someone like you,’ Tia repeated with a frown, rolling over and curving another arm round him, needing to retain some kind of physical contact with him. She was outraged that, not only had the wretched girl
