a priceless heirloom?
Then she forgot all about the dress. Zac’s hands had slipped through the slit he’d already unbuttoned, were on her skin. Smoothing, caressing.
“Nghh,” she moaned. “I thought you were supposed to be undoing the buttons.”
“This is much more fun, agapi mou.”
She leaped at the brush of his lips behind her knees. “Zac!”
He trailed a row of kisses along her tender, sensitised skin. Stopped. She waited, her heart pounding, tensing for what might happen next.
She heard a rustle of silk, felt the sleek, slick wetness of his tongue on the back of her smooth thigh. She gasped, then buried her mouth in the bed coverlet, willing herself to be silent, not to moan like a wanton.
He was pulling at the fabric caught under her. She lifted her hips. He tugged again and muttered something succinct in Greek.
“I am going to have to undo these buttons. Every damned one … without a buttonhook.” He muttered an expletive, then laughed. “This time I’ll start at the top. It will be easier on my restraint.”
Thank God.
Pandora raised her face from the coverlet and rested her chin on folded arms. The breath whooshed out of her as his thighs straddled her and his weight settled astride her.
“Am I too heavy?”
“No.”
His fingers brushed her nape and she went rigid.
“First button.” There was resignation in his voice now. “Seventy-five, you said? And I doubt I’ve undone even half. Ai mi! How long is this going to take?”
“Perhaps we can make small talk?”
“Small talk?” He gave a snort of disgust.
Pandora bit back a smile. “Like, about the weather.”
“Yes, let’s talk about the weather. It’s so hot that I can barely breathe, and tonight I’m even hotter, despite the air conditioner in here. Shall I describe exactly how hot I am?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “My skin is so hot that it’s tight.”
At his harshly bitten out words Pandora had a searing visual of his chest just before she’d turned over and hidden her face. The sheen on the bronzed skin, the curve of his nude chest muscles. Jeez, she’d wanted to touch him. His skin would have been sleek and warm to her touch ….
“What else?” she gasped.
“I am throbbing with something—a hunger—that I have never felt in my life before. I’m thirty-one years old and I feel like a damned boy. A boy who wants to grab … and squeeze … and possess. Hell, I’m not hot—I’m on goddamn fire.”
Pandora couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response to Zac’s raw outburst. But she could feel. She could feel the rub of Zac’s fingers as he loosed the tiny buttons, could feel the winnow of air against her naked skin as he peeled back the gown. She could hear the faint hum of the air-conditioning and his harsh breathing in the sudden silence of the vast bedroom.
“Okay, that’s the weather taken care of. Any more small talk you fancy making?”
She stared blindly ahead, her body burning with arousal at the fierce onslaught of his erotic, highly charged words.
“Damn! I’ve shocked you, haven’t I? Shocked you with the reality of my desires for you. Sometimes I forget how young and—”
“Zac—”
“—how innocent you are. All those years in a girls’ boarding school, then helping your father, working in his business … I should be shot.” He’d stopped fiddling with the buttons. “I told myself I’d take it slow, told myself I’d—”
“Zac.”
This time he heard her and broke off.
Unable to see his face, she drew a deep breath. This was difficult, more difficult than she’d ever anticipated. “I wasn’t always at school or with my father. I visited with friends—”
“Your father told me,” he interrupted. “Vacations with school friends, carefully vetted—that’s hardly experience.”
“I’m not a total innocent.”
“What are you saying?” There was a fine shake of tension in the thighs clamped around her hips. She baulked. It was too late for this discussion, a discussion that she’d thought totally irrelevant in today’s day and age. They were married, for goodness’ sake. What difference would it make?
She put it all out of her mind and said throatily, “That I want you.”
He gave a growl. His hands were back on the dress, tugging, fevered with impatience. “Damn these buttons! Pandora, my wife, I want you, too—more than I can tell you.”
“So show me, don’t tell me.”
“I thought you wanted small talk.” He gave a soft, husky laugh. “Perhaps we can talk about flesh …” He lifted more fabric from her back. “Or skin.” A finger slid into the indent of her spine, along the length of the shallow groove. “Shall I tell you how soft your skin is?”
An exquisite sensation rippled down … down … pooling in her abdomen, sliding lower. Pandora shuddered and flexed her toes, anything to slow the pleasure that threatened to consume her. “Talk’s cheap,” she gurgled, struggling for air.
“So you want action?” And then his lips were there placing openmouthed kisses in the hollow of her spine. And his tongue …
Jeez, his tongue! She bit the back of her hand, determined not to let the moans escape. The maddening caresses eased. And she breathed again. The dress gave some more, his hands were working quickly now. Frenzied.
“At last.”
She felt the cool air on her exposed buttocks as he peeled the fabric away, heard his gasp.
“What is this? Is it meant to drive me out of my skull with desire?” His voice was hoarse, his Greek accent pronounced. “Because, I swear to you, it’s succeeding.”
As his fingers hooked under the tiny bits of white Lycra that made up the minuscule thong she wore, the tremors started again. Stronger this time. Tremors that he must feel. She pictured what he saw: a Y made up of three laces of Lycra. Then there was the narrow triangle of delicate white lace in front that he couldn’t see.
She struggled to find her voice. “That’s the something new.”
“What?” He sounded shell-shocked.
“Something old, something new. Remember? The rhyme I told you about? I thought the dress could do double duty and pass as something old as well as something borrowed.”
“Forget the dress.” He tugged
