them crossing a few boundaries they’d never attempted to cross before in their quest to get the better of the other.
By the time he was back where he belonged—on top and deep inside her—he had lost the will to pull back again. Hot, bathed in sweat and no longer on this planet, they rode the fiery dragon with a focused compulsion that blocked out everything else.
He climaxed first—she was so damned determined to make him do that. But she followed a half-second later, urging him on with the convulsing tug of her muscles towards the kind of prolonged orgasm that laid them both to waste for long minutes afterwards.
Yes! he thought with a deep satisfaction as he lay heavy on her, fighting for breath. This was it, the elixir of life, and to hell with the covetous Kranst. To hell with his disapproving mother! he added fiercely to that—he couldn’t bring himself to repeat the dismissive curse regarding his father, but inside he was aware that the need to hold on to what he had here was beginning to overshadow everything else.
Lying there beneath him, almost completely engulfed in his body and his scent and the glorious weight of his utter satiation, Antonia wondered ruefully if she would ever find the energy to move again. Her bones felt like liquid and certain muscles were trembling in the aftermath of something pretty spectacular, even for them.
What she couldn’t understand was how it could be like that after what had gone before it. She should have been repulsed by his touch. She should have lain like a stone beneath him. But she hadn’t—she hadn’t…
Weak, you’re weak, she derided herself miserably, and made a move to remind him that she was still here, just in case he’d forgotten while he basked in sexual bliss.
With a kiss to her brow, he acknowledged her presence, then relieved her of his weight by rolling them onto their sides so he could wrap her against him.
‘You move me like no other woman,’ he murmured huskily.
Did he think that was a compliment? she asked herself. Because it wasn’t. She had no wish to be tagged and sorted according to performance. In fact, if she had the energy she would take serious offence and get up and leave!
But she didn’t have the energy. And, in truth, lying here against him in the soft darkness of the summer night, with one of his hands gently stroked the curve of her hip while the other absently grazed over her left shoulder, she could think of no other place she would rather be.
Weak, she repeated. It was her biggest problem. She needed to be with him though she didn’t want to need. He was arrogant, self-motivated, insensitive and…
Her sigh warmed his throat. Dipping his dark head, he caught the sigh with the kind of kiss that squeezed the heart dry. When it was over she reached up to touch his lips with her fingertips, unable to believe that a mouth could be so tender and not feel something deeper than desire for her.
‘I wish I’d never met you sometimes,’ she quietly confided.
‘Only sometimes?’ he threw back.
Tipping her head, she expected to find him smiling. But he looked quite sombre as he gazed down at her through swirling smoke-blue eyes set between kohl-black lashes in a polished bronze framework no gifted sculptor could improve upon.
‘Do you want me to apologise for my earlier behaviour?’ he asked her. Huskily spoken, sincerely meant. No, she thought sadly. I want you to love me. Then had to swallow the lump of tears in her throat as she gave a shake of her head. ‘I just want you to promise never to do that to me again,’ she replied.
Smoke-blue eyes darkened with repentance. ‘On my life,’ he vowed, and sealed it with a kiss, then repeated it again and again until both the vow and the kiss became yet another seduction.
It was his way, a willingly humble side to his proud character, which had the power to demolish her resistance far more easily than the ruthlessness he had meted out before.
Her fingers began trailing tender caresses across hairpeppered, muscle-hard, satin-tight flesh. He was built to worship, she thought mistily. Built to make any woman melt with desire. It was she who deepened those soft penitent kisses into one long sensual banquet. She who slid onto her back and drew him over her, then slowly relaxed her thighs so he would settle between. In a wonderful intimacy that had her long legs tangling with his and her body arching to a sensual rhythm, they indulged in a different kind of kiss.
His mouth left hers to taste other parts of her, and she sighed in pleasure as it closed on her breast. Fingers trailed into his hair, stretched out to glide down the satin smoothness of his back. He shuddered in response and drew on her nipple until she felt the needle-sharp pleasure reach deep down into her very core.
As quickly as that, it all began again. No tormenting this time, no battle of wills. In only seconds he was feeding his powerful arms beneath her so he could lift her into closer contact with the pulsing length of his sex.
Dragging his mouth from her breast, he requested, ‘May I?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she invited, aware that they were both more than ready for this.
This time he came into her with the gentle force of a man who was very mindful of his own power. She willingly accepted him, and wasn’t surprised to hear them both utter those exquisite sighs of pleasure because, quick though this was, they were perfectly in tune.
Can I walk away from him? Antonia found herself questioning as not just her senses but her whole world began to quicken. Can he really want this to end?
As if he could sense that her mind had strayed, Marco was suddenly rearing up and over her. His eyes were like two dark circles of passion, his mouth warm and moist and hungry for hers. ‘This is special,’ he said roughly. ‘And it is ours.’
‘Sometimes it feels as if you hate me,’ she whispered.
‘No, never,’ he denied, and crushed her mouth beneath his and crushed all thoughts from her head by other means.
The next morning, the light brush of his lips on her cheek awoke her. Opening her eyes, she smiled sleepily at him.
Clean-shaven and smelling deliciously vital, he was already dressed for his busy day in a dark grey suit and pale blue shirt that did sensational things to his golden features.
‘Get up, get dressed and come and join me for breakfast,’ he invited. ‘I have a surprise for you.’
‘A surprise?’ she repeated, yawning while stretching.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured, and it was the sexiest murmur Antonia had ever heard in her entire life.
It brought an invitation to her eyes and a hand reaching up for him. ‘Show me now,’ she commanded in a tone which was demanding something else entirely.
He caught the hand, kissed it, then firmly replaced it back on the bed. ‘Not on your life.’ He grinned. ‘You have to come downstairs looking prim for this surprise.’
And with that thoroughly intriguing statement he turned and strode out of the room. Antonia watched him go with a smile in her eyes, quietly amazed at how a night of loving could turn their relationship around. The man was an enigma of complicated mood codes: one minute looking as if he wished to see the back of her, the next almost dying with pleasure in her arms. Now he wanted to please her with surprises—though
