between his thighs.
“It doesn’t prove a thing, you know,” he’d informed her with quiet fury when, despite himself, he’d grown hard against her hand. “It’s a purely reflexive response—any woman could bring it about.”
“But I’m not just any woman, Max. I’m your wife,” she’d reminded him. “And I love you. Please let me show you how much.”
And before he had time to realize her intention, she’d let her mouth slide over the muscled planes of his chest to his belly and then, with a daring born wholly of desperation, closed her lips softly over the silken tip of his manhood.
His breathing had quickened. He’d knotted his fingers in her hair and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a groan. Sensing victory, she’d slipped out of his hold and the peignoir in one swift move, and aligned her naked body, inch for inch, against his.
She’d seen the corded tension in his neck, tasted the film of sweat on his upper lip when he’d grudgingly let her turn his face to meet hers and succumbed to the sweeping caress of her tongue over the seam of his mouth.
She’d known a glorious tremor of expectation when, unable to hold out any longer, he’d hauled her to sit astride him and braced her so that, with the merest surge of his hips, he was buried inside her, tight and powerful. She’d felt the muscled flex of his abdomen, the steely strength of his thighs. Seen the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
He’d spanned her waist, framed the curve of her hips, drawn a line from her navel to her pubic bone, and then farther still, until he found the one tiny spot in her body most vulnerable to his measured seduction.
Sensation had engulfed her and left her body vibrating, from the tips of her toes to her scalp. Such pleasure! Such exquisite torture! She’d yearned toward him, wanting to prolong the delight only he could bring, but encroaching passion had slammed down with such vengeance that neither of them had been able to withstand it.
Caught in a maelstrom of emotion sharpened to dazzling brilliance by the spasms ravaging her body, she’d sensed her eyes growing heavy, slumberous almost. But his had remained wide open. Unblinking. Unmoved. As though to say, You might wreak havoc with my body, but you’ll never sway my heart or mind.
“Satisfied?” he’d said, when it was over. And, with that brief, indifferent question, managed to degrade their union to something so cheap and unlovely that she’d cringed.
Twenty-four months should have been time enough to lessen the hurt. A sensible woman would have forgotten it altogether. But she’d never been sensible where Max was concerned and if the tears scalding her cheeks now weren’t proof enough of that, the dull, cold emptiness inside where once she’d known warmth and life and passion, should have been.
What would it take, she wondered, to cure her of Max Logan and heal the scars inflicted by her marriage? Would there ever come a time that she’d learn to love another man as she still loved him—and if so, would she love more wisely the next time?
Although dense silence greeted him when he stepped inside the penthouse, he knew at once that she was there. Quite apart from her suitcases still parked by the front door, and the scent of flowers everywhere, as well as a host of other clues that she’d made herself thoroughly at home, the atmosphere was different. Vibrant, electric, and unsettling as hell. A forewarning of trouble to come.
Dropping his briefcase on the desk in his office—one area, he was glad to see, that she hadn’t tried to camouflage into something out of a happy homemaker magazine—he made a quick circuit through the rooms on the main floor before climbing the stairs. The thick carpet masked his footsteps thoroughly enough that she was completely unaware of him coming to a halt at the entrance to the master suite.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he leaned against the door frame and watched her. She stood at the highboy dresser and appeared to be mopping her face with his golf shirt. But what struck him most forcibly was how thin she’d become. Not that she’d ever been fat or even close to it but, where once she’d been sweetly curved, she was now all sharp, elegant angles, at least from the rear. Her hips were narrow as a boy’s, her waist matchstick slender.
Though probably a prerequisite for all successful fashion models, it wasn’t a look that appealed to him. Even less did he like the air of fragility that went with this underfed version of the hellion he’d been coerced into marrying. It edged her too close to vulnerable, and once he started thinking along those lines, he was in trouble, as he very well knew from past experience.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d wipe your nose on something other than a piece of my clothing,” he said, relishing how his voice suddenly breaking the silence almost had her jumping out of her skin.
But when she spun around, the expression on her face made short work of his moment of malicious pleasure. He’d forgotten how truly beautiful she was. In particular, he’d forgotten the impact of her incredible eyes and, suddenly, he was the one struggling for composure as memories of the night they’d first met in her father’s house rushed back to haunt him.
“I’d like you to meet my daughter,” Zoltan Siklossy had said, as footsteps approached along the flagstone path that ran the width of the front of the rambling old mausoleum of a place.
Max had turned and been transfixed, the impact of the city skyline beyond the Danube forgotten. Backlit by the late May sunset, she’d appeared touched with gold all over, from her pale hair to her honey-tinted skin. Only her eyes had been different, a startlingly light aquamarine, one moment more green than blue, and the next, the other way around.
Fringed with long, curling lashes and glowing with the fire of priceless jewels, they’d inspected him. He’d stared back, mesmerized, and said the first thing that came to mind. “I didn’t know Magyars were blond. Somehow, I expected you’d all be dark.”
A stupid, thoughtless remark which showed him for the ignorant foreigner he was, but she hadn’t taken offence. Instead, she’d come forward and laughed as she took his hand. “Some of us are. But we Hungarians have a mixed ancestry and I, like many others in my country, favor our Finnish heritage.”
Though accented, her English was perfect, thanks, he later discovered, to an aunt who’d studied in London years before. Her laughter hung like music in the still, warm evening. Her hand remained in his, light and cool. “Welcome to Budapest, Mr. Logan,” she purred. “I hope you’ll allow me to introduce you to our beautiful city.”
“I’m counting on it,” he’d replied, bowled over by her easy self-assurance. Although she looked no more than eighteen, he believed her when she told him she was twenty-seven. Why not? After all, her parents were well into their seventies.
In fact, she’d been just twenty-two and the most conniving creature he’d ever met—not something likely to have changed, he reminded himself now, even if she did look about ready to keel over in a dead faint at being caught off guard.
“I’m not wiping my nose,” she whispered shakily, clutching the shirt to her breasts.
He strolled further into the room. “What were you doing, then? Sniffing to find evidence of another woman’s perfume? Checking for lipstick stains?”
Something flared in her eyes. Guilt? Shame? Anger? “Should I be? Do you entertain many women here, Max, now that I’m no longer underfoot all the time?”
“If I do, that’s certainly none of your business, my dear.”
“As
