his free hand cupping a cognac glass. It was a large sofa, but it suddenly felt very, very small.
She took a tiny sip of the sweet, orange-scented fiery liquid—no more than a sip, for it was strong, she knew, and she’d already drunk wine at dinner. A supreme sense of self-consciousness filled her—but not like anything she’d ever known before. This was nothing like the embarrassingly awkward consciousness of her ungainly body, her unlovely appearance that she was so bitterly used to feeling.
No—this was utterly different.
A lioness—that’s what he called me last night!
And that was what she felt like—with her lithe body toned and honed, not an ounce of excess fat on it, yet rounded and womanly. She was supremely conscious of the way her hip was indenting the cushions of the sofa, the way the soft jersey of her dress was stretched over her breasts. Breasts that seemed fuller, somehow...heavier.
She felt the alcohol creaming in her bloodstream, heating it. Making her feel different...oh, so different. Free...bold...daring.
Daring enough to sit there with the devastating homage to manhood that was Max Vasilikos, whose lidded eyes were resting on her, whose sensual smile was playing around his mouth. His long lashes were veiling but not concealing the expression in his deep, dark eyes. That thrill came again in her...electricity crackled along her nerve fibres. She was no longer the person she had been—she was someone else now. Someone new.
Someone a man like Max could desire?
Because why else was he sitting there so close, so intimately, his eyes holding hers as if by a silken thread that was drawing her towards him, closer and closer yet? Why else—unless he desired her?
Wonder and hope welled up in her. Was this truly happening? All those long, lost years when she’d been trapped in despising her body, her face...were they really over? Was it possible that she could now reach out and take what was surely every woman’s right—could taste and enjoy the sensual pleasures of the flesh?
A memory pressed at her of her time at university, studying sports science, when all about her everyone had been pairing off, partying...and she had not dared. She’d felt excluded, forbidden from trying to join in. Had drawn back and hidden away, feeling herself unworthy—for who could want a woman like her? Men could only possibly want women like Chloe...who was the total opposite of herself.
I banished myself—did not dare to try and claim the place that every other woman was claiming.
But now—oh, now she did dare! She did dare to lean back into her end of the sofa, to relax and take a deep, easing breath.
And the absolute proof of her right to dare was the expression in Max Vasilikos’s eyes now, as he twined his gaze with hers. The dim light cast shadows, created an atmosphere that was as heady as the liqueur she was sipping. She felt relaxed, languorous. And yet that low electric current was humming all the time, fuelling the charge that was building up in her, circuit by circuit.
Desire quickened in her veins. Desire made her eyelids heavy. Her breathing was shallow, her awareness of the sheer, raw physicality of Max becoming heightened...super-aware, ultra-aware.
I want this! I want what is to happen. I want it with all my being. To taste what I have denied myself so long...what I have never dared to take...
Yearning filled her, fusing throughout her being.
He moved first.
Wordlessly he placed his cognac glass on the table. Wordlessly he reached to remove her glass from her hand and do likewise. Wordlessly he curved his hand around the nape of her neck. Silently, his heavy-lidded eyes lambent upon her he drew her lithe, pliant body towards him.
And as his mouth closed over hers in the sweet heat of his kiss there was only one conscious thought left in her head.
If Max Vasilikos desires me, then I am desirable indeed!
And then all conscious thought fell from her.
Now there was only sensation—sensation so strong, so overpowering, so arousing, so incredible, so blissful, so pleasurable, so fantastic that there was room for nothing else at all in her entire existence. His kiss was as skilled as it was consuming, unhurried—leisurely, even—as touch by touch, graze by graze, his mouth explored hers, slowly at first, skimming her lips, then deepening moment by expert moment, deepening until she was lost, yielding to what he was arousing in her, igniting in her, as each touch of his lips set new fires within her. Fires that he stoked, and stroked as his fingertips explored the nape of her neck, grazed the tender lobes of her ears, as his mouth moved to nuzzle at them softly, sweetly, arousingly.
She felt her breasts engorge and strain, and then a hand was cupping one, and a whole explosion of sensation ignited within her. A soft gasp sounded in her throat as he coaxed her cresting nipple to exquisite arousal. Her hand pressed against the hard-muscled wall of his chest, fingers splaying out, finding as if by instinct the shirt buttons, reaching between, within, slipping one and then another undone as if this were a skill that had been innate inside her all her life.
She heard him groan as her palm slid across the bare skin of his chest, slid down to where his belt snaked around his hips, eased along the rim of it. And he groaned again, his hand tightening on her breast, his mouth devouring hers now.
Excitement ripped through her, raw and intense. She pulled her mouth away, gazed at him, lips parted, eyes flaring, spearing her free hand into the hair that feathered at the base of his skull, shaping it with her fingers. There was an urgency in her now. A sense of power. She felt ripped, pumped, with adrenaline flowing in her, strong and purposeful. She knew what she wanted. Who she wanted.
A lioness seeking her mate...
His mouth curved into a smile. A smile of triumph. She knew it, gloried in it.
Their eyes twined together as they half lay upon the sofa that was suddenly much too small.
With a single fluid movement he got to his feet, scooping her up with him. She gave a cry that was half a gasp, for she knew just how much she weighed, even though it was muscled mass, not fat, but it didn’t faze him in the slightest. As if she were a feather he carried her through to his bedroom, lowered her down on the bed. But he didn’t come down beside her, remaining on his feet.
He wasn’t idle, though. He was shrugging off his unbuttoned shirt, ripping the tie from him, ripping everything from him. Her eyes widened—how could they not?—and then, belatedly, she started to work off her own dress.
A hand stayed her.
‘Oh, no,’ growled Max. ‘That’s for me to do.’
He drew her back to her feet, utterly shameless in his own nakedness, his own rampant arousal. And she, because of that, was shameless too, standing there in front of him, fully clothed, her hands reaching up to her head, pulling off the hairclip so that her tousled locks fell with a single sensuous shake of her head, rippling down her back.
She heard him growl in satisfaction, saw his eyes flaring in the near darkness, for the only light came from the dim lamp in the lounge beyond. It was all the light they needed, and now he was stepping towards her, his hands catching at the hem of her dress, drawing up the soft jersey material in a slow, unstoppable movement until he’d
