hurt for no other reason than a need to reassure his own ego.
But she was still the warm and pliant woman probably lying fast asleep in his bed now, he then added, with yet another kind of smile as he left the room and closed the door behind him. Then, with a walk that was almost unwavering, he rid himself of his glass and went to join her.
The bedroom was in darkness, the bed a mere shadow on the other side of the room. Making as little noise as possible, he stepped into the bathroom, silently closed the door to spend a few minutes trying to shower off the effects of the whisky, before going back into the bedroom and over to the bed.
He meant to surprise her awake with some serious kisses in some very serious places. She would be sulking, of course, but he could deal with that. She would fight him too, he would expect nothing less. And he would grovel a little because she deserved to have him grovel—before he drowned himself in the sweetest pleasure ever created for a man to share with a woman.
Then he stopped and frowned when he found himself staring down at the smooth neatness of an untouched bed.
CHAPTER FIVE
ASHAFT of alarm went streaking down his backbone and massed deep in his abdomen. He spun, sharp eyes piercing the darkness to scan the room for a sign of her shadowy figure—curled in a chair, maybe, or standing by the window.
She wasn’t there. The alarm leapt up to attack his heartbeat. She wouldn’t, he told himself. She couldn’t have quietly dressed and left him while he’d been busy drowning his sorrows—could she?
No, he wouldn’t have it. He might have behaved like a rotten bastard, but Antonia would never just walk out and leave!
But then there was Kranst waiting on the sidelines, he remembered, and started moving, unsure, so damned unsure of himself that the uncertainty was actually making his legs feel hollow with fright!
It was the whisky, Marco told himself. But he was still going to kill her when he found her for scaring him like this, he vowed, as he began striding round the apartment opening doors and closing them until he came to the locked door belonging to one of the spare bedrooms.
Relief shuddered through him, followed by a shaft of white-hot fury at her whole attitude. Stubbornly forgetting his own bad behaviour. he banged hard on the door. ‘If you don’t unlock this door I’ll break it down!’ he shouted threateningly.
And kept on banging until the door flew open.
Antonia was already walking away from it even as it swung back on itself. Her hair rippled about her naked shoulders and his body almost screamed as it responded to the carelessly sensual sway of hers. And it was the turn of the red silk wrap to lie in a discarded blot on the floor.
‘Don’t ever lock me out of a room in my own home again,’ he ground out as he strode forward.
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she replied in a voice meant to freeze a man’s nether parts.
A willingness to grovel was forgotten—ousted by a much more satisfying desire to remind her just who called the tune around here.
Arriving at the bed, she prepared to climb back into it. In two long strides he stopped her, by the economical act of scooping her off her feet. Her protesting shriek was ignored, as were her wriggling attempts to get herself free. Without a single word from his tightly clamped lips, he turned and began carrying her out of this bedroom and down the hall to his bedroom.
‘You are such a primitive underneath the layers of breeding,’ she sliced at him disgustedly.
He stopped dead and kissed her—so hot and so hard she was gasping for breath by the time he lifted his head again.
‘Is that primitive enough?’ he asked, not in the least bit insulted she’d called him that. In fact he liked the whole scenario, since he was feeling very primitively aroused right now.
Marco shut the door behind them with a very satisfyingly primitive kick. The bed waited. He dumped her on its pale blue cover, then followed with the long hard length of his body in a very primitive manontopofwoman pinning down.
Her angry eyes shot amber bright warnings at him. Her beautiful hair streamed out above her head, and her clenched fists made a puny but determined effort to do him some damage. ‘Get off me,’ she insisted. ‘You’re just a big brute—and you taste of whisky!’
‘And you taste of champagne and woman—my woman,’ Marco growled back, enjoying this new primitive role that allowed him the rare luxury to completely dominate.
Her breasts heaved against the solid wall of his chest and her slender hips writhed delightfully beneath the pressure of his. She felt the rise of his passion and spat her utter contempt at him, while the mocking arch of his eyebrows asked her who was to blame.
She hit back with more than her fists, ‘Stefan was right about you,’ she lashed. ‘You are a—’
Ducking between the flailing fists, he stopped the words with his mouth. Discussing Kranst was not going to happen in his bed! he grimly determined, and kept on kissing her until her hands stopped punching and began to anxiously knead his shoulders instead.
Triumph sizzled through his system; the red-hot heat of desire spun through his blood. He made love to her as if there was no tomorrow and, because there was still the heat of an angry fear burning behind the passion, he drove her to the edge more than once before ruthlessly drawing back again.
‘I hate it when you do this to me,’ she sobbed in frustration.
‘You would hate it more if I didn’t do it at all,’ he threw back.
Her breath broke on a whimper because she knew he was right. The helpless little sound did things to him no woman could ever begin to understand. He thrust into her with the force of absolute possession.
‘You belong to me. Just remember that next time you feel like wrapping yourself around another man.’
If he’d expected her to respond at all, it was not the way she did. With the slick roll of her body he suddenly found he was the one pinned down and she the one most definitely on top. For the next few minutes he experienced what it was like to be utterly seduced by a woman hell-bent on making him embarrass himself.
It didn’t happen. He was no one’s easy victim. But Antonia in this mood was irresistible. She was the true sensualist born to pleasure man. She kissed him and stroked him and rode him towards heaven. And when his body began to tighten and his heart began to pound, she gave him back a taste of his own medicine by pulling away to rise up and stand over him.
Feet planted either side of his body, hands resting in the delicious groove of her slender waist, and her wonderful long golden hair spiralling around the face of an absolute wanton, she asked, ‘And who do you belong to, Marco?’
The little minx. The beautiful, outrageous little minx! he thought, and, with a laugh of appreciation, he jackknifed into a sitting position, clamped his hands to her hips—and gave his mouth the pleasure of bringing her to heel again.
The battle progressed to a different level. She gasped and protested and tugged at handfuls of his hair in an effort to dislodge him, and eventually lost the ability to stand. She was groaning and trembling but still
