her very skin-cell seemed to spontaneously combust in the whoosh of passion that shockwaved through her. Her own excitement was as intoxicating as a drug and all the more dangerous because raw excitement in a man’s arms was new to her.
‘Theos mou,’ Sebasten groaned as he lifted his arrogant dark head. ‘You’re blowing me away…’
Bereft of his mouth on hers, Lizzie blinked in confusion. Only then conscious of the urgent tightness of her nipples and the pulsing ache between her thighs, she was surprised by the painful effect of both sensations. Her body didn’t feel like her own any more. Her body was sending out frantic signals that the only place it was happy was up against him.
Sebasten flipped her round, curved her back to him again and let his hands glance over the pointed invitation of her sweet breasts, feeling her jerk and shiver and gasp as though she was in the eye of a storm. He eyed the nearest sofa. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted her here, now, fast and hard to ease the nagging throb of his aroused sex. Sleazy, his mind told him while his defiant and fertile imagination threw up various explicit scenarios that threatened that conviction. No, he preferred to take her home to his own bed, where he could take his time, and he already knew once wouldn’t be enough.
On fire from sensation, Lizzie broke free of him and dragged in a great gulp of oxygen. It was an effort to walk in a straight line to the table where he had set her drink. Lifting it with a shaking hand, she tipped it to her swollen lips, needing to occupy herself while she came to terms with the amazing feelings gripping her. She wanted to know everything about him from the minute he was born. She wanted to know him as nobody else had ever known him and a crazy singing happiness filled her when she looked back at him over the rim of her glass.
‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ she whispered with an edgy laugh that screened her discomfiture.
‘I don’t want to hear about how it felt with anyone else.’ Burning golden eyes slammed into hers and he extended a commanding hand. ‘Let’s go…’
Lizzie moved and let him engulf her fingers in his. ‘Are you always this bossy?’
‘Where did you get that idea?’ Sebasten purred like a very large and amused jungle cat because she had just leapt to do as he asked without even thinking about it. But then women always did. In his entire adult life, Sebasten had never met a woman who was not eager to please him.
He swept her back down the stairs, past a welter of curious eyes and on towards the exit. Her nerves were jumping like electrified beans. She relived the bold caress of his sure hands over her breasts and her cheeks flooded with hot self-conscious colour. Not the sort of familiarity she normally allowed. What was she doing with him? Where on earth was he taking her? He thought she was beautiful. He wanted to be with her, she reminded herself with feverish determination. Nobody else did, not her father, who had cut her out of his life, not a single one of her friends.
On the wet pavement outside, a uniformed chauffeur extended an umbrella for their protection and hurried to open the door of a long, opulent silver limousine. Lizzie was impressed and she got in, refused to think about what she was doing and turned to look at Sebasten again. The dizzy sense of rightness that had engulfed her only minutes earlier returned. ‘Where were you born?’ she heard herself ask.
In the act of tugging her close, Sebasten grinned at what struck him as an essentially feminine and pointless question. ‘On an island the size of a postage stamp in the Aegean Sea…and you?’
‘In Devon,’ she confided, heart skipping a beat over that incredible smile of his. ‘My parents moved to London when I was a baby.’
‘How fascinating,’ Sebasten teased, lacing his fingers into her hair and kissing her. She drowned in the scent and the taste of him, head falling back on her shoulders as his tongue darted in an erotic sweep between her lips and made her gasp with helpless pleasure.
At some point, they left the limo, climbed steps, traversed a low-lit echoing hall, but true awareness only returned to Lizzie when she swayed giddily on the sweeping staircase she found herself on. His hands shot out to steady her. ‘Are you OK?’
‘These stupid shoes…’ Lizzie condemned in mortification and she kicked off her spike-heeled sandals where she stood as though her unsteady gait had been caused by them.
‘How much have you had to drink?’ Sebasten enquired with lethal timing, a dark frown-line forming between his ebony brows.
‘Hardly anything,’ Lizzie told him breathlessly while making a conscious effort not to slur her words. She was taut as a bowstring, suddenly terrified of receiving yet another rejection to add to the many she had already withstood.
As he received that assurance Sebasten’s tension evaporated and he swept her on into a massive, opulent room rejoicing in a very large and imposing bed. She was jolted by the sight of the bed and a rather belated stab of dismay made her question her own behaviour. She barely knew Sebasten and she was still a virgin. But then she had never been tempted until she met Connor and she had expected him to become her first lover. As the degrading memory of finding her boyfriend and her stepmother in bed together engulfed Lizzie afresh, she rebelled against her own moral conditioning. After all, hadn’t her old-fashioned principles let her down badly when it came to men? A more experienced woman would have been suspicious of Connor’s lack of lusty intent.
Eyes flaring like emerald-green stars on that bitter acknowledgement, Lizzie spun round and feasted her attention on Sebasten. He was gorgeous and tonight he was hers, all hers, absolutely nobody else’s. She had never met anyone like him before. He was so focused, so sure of himself that he drew her like a magnet and the heat of his appreciative appraisal warmed her like the sun after weeks of endless rain.
Lizzie tilted her head back, glossy marmalade hair tumbling back from her slanted cheekbones. ‘You can kiss me again,’ she informed him.
With an appreciative laugh, Sebasten claimed her parted lips in a long, drugging kiss that rocked her on her feet. Lifting her up into his arms with easy strength, he brought her down onto his bed. What was it about her that made her seem so different to other women? One minute she was quiet and mysterious, the next tossing an open challenge, glorious green eyes telegraphing pure invitation.
Lizzie surfaced from the mindless spell of her own response and stared up at him. ‘Are you as good at everything else as you are at kissing?’
Sebasten tossed his jacket on a chair, enjoying the wide, wondering look in her face as she watched him. ‘What do you think?’
That she could barely breathe when those shimmering dark golden eyes rested on her and her mouth ran dry as a bone when he unbuttoned his shirt. From his broad shoulders to his powerful, hair-roughened pectorals and flat, taut abdomen, he was all sleek, bronzed skin and rippling muscles.
‘That you’re very sexy,’ Lizzie confided helplessly.
‘We match…’ Sebasten strolled lithe as a hunting animal and barefoot towards the bed.
‘Do we?’ Her heart hammered behind her ribs. She felt like an infatuated teenager confronted without warning by her idol: butterflies in her tummy, brain empty, teeth almost chattering with nerves. Every lingering strand of caution was urging her to acknowledge her mistake and take flight but those prudent promptings fell into abeyance at the same instant as Sebasten rested shimmering dark golden eyes of appreciation on her.
‘Ne…’
‘No?’ Lizzie was confused.
‘Ne…is
