Although she was breathing in short, frantic gasps she did not feel she was gaining anything from it.
But all of that raw-edged patience fled when she touched him. Her restless fingers brushed against him by accident at first, then not by accident when she discovered the thick velvet beauty of his long, swollen length. He captured her wrist and drew her hand away, shuddering as he did so, and cursing softly as he pushed her flat then rolled on top of her, overwhelming every inch of her slender frame with his stronger, harder more powerful body.
He let her feel his weight, the sweat-slicked heated tremors of his pleasure. Her breasts were crushed against hair-roughened hot skin, their distended tips so sensitised she could barely stand the aggressive rasp. When he let go of her wrist, she wrapped her arm around his shoulders, not thinking of anything else but the aching need for more of what he was making her feel.
His mouth did not leave her mouth, not once, keeping her so sunk down in the swirling mists it did not occur to her what was going to come next until it was too late. He settled his hips between her spread thighs and she felt for the first time the probe of his manhood nudge against the tender heart of her sex just a short, blinding second before he drove inside, forging his route like a conquering warrior claiming his prize.
It was too late for her to warn him as the screaming shock of sudden agony split through her like forked lightning, arching her spine and clenching her muscles on a high-pitched, pained cry.
Anton froze like a man turned to marble. He stared down at her as she flicked open her eyes. Bright, spearing sparks of vivid blue attacked his shock like piercing pin-pricks. He had never felt so totally shattered about anything in his entire life.
‘No,’ he ground out unsteadily.
Zoe couldn’t say anything; she was feeling so very shattered herself. His full pulsing length was buried inside her, no thought to hold back any of it, no compromise at all. And her muscles were working along him like some hot, bloody torment.
‘You cannot be,’ he ground into her shock-whitened face.
‘I hate you,’ she choked, then she cried out again for a completely different reason when he tried to withdraw. ‘Don’t you dare—don’t you dare!’ she gasped then. ‘Oh God,’ she groaned when he stilled instantly, severe tension scoring his face. ‘I hate you,’ she moaned out a second time. ‘You did not deserve this but I want you—I want you!’
Reaching up, he pushed her damp, tangled hair away from her face. His fingers were trembling, Zoe noticed. Remorse glittered in the heavy darkness of his eyes. But when he made a gentle move with his hips it wasn’t pain that made Zoe writhe and quiver, and the remorse in him turned into desire as he set a hot, sensual rhythm that lost her in layer upon layer of erotic excitement. Her eyes clung to his with an intensity which heightened the whole experience. He kept kissing the increasingly more helpless gasps from her lips.
‘Anton,’ she kept on breathing his name and each time she said it his rhythm grew fiercer, as if hearing her chant his name fed his fire.
When she felt herself reaching a vital pinnacle between this moment and what was about to happen, he buried his fingers in her hair and gave her the full, devouring force of his kiss. She tipped, she cried out, she clung to his shoulders as she tumbled, she fell apart beneath him and all around him, and finally experienced the dizzy pleasure of feeling him fall apart with her.
The flowing river of release she was floating down barely lasted a minute before he was ruining it, grating out a word in Greek that made her jerk in startled dismay. Her eyes flew open. She found him glaring down at her, the next second he was levering himself up and throwing himself to his feet by the bed.
Totally gloriously magnificent in his nakedness, he stood like he’d been turned into a bronze statue, the potency of his sex still a powerful thing to behold, which surprised Zoe; she had no previous experience to call upon to know if this was normal.
Curling up onto her side, she waited in the pulsing silence for what she knew was coming next. She should have told him. She’d known that even while she could use the excuse that the passion had just taken her over. She’d kept quiet, though for reasons she was not ready quite to face yet. And her body was still busy indulging in the aftermath, the pounding beat of her heart refusing to ease. Down between her thighs, the new pulse point he had encouraged was still busy beating out a soft tattoo of lingering pleasure, the muscles inside her emitting tender little aches and quivers as they took their time settling back into their usual place.
But the beat of his anger rode over everything. It bounded off the walls and the tense stillness of his naked frame. He wasn’t looking at her—he hadn’t looked at her properly since they had tumbled into that totally mutual high-octane orgasm. He was staring at nothing, as far as she could see.
‘I knew what I was doing,’ she said; better late than never, she supposed.
The sound of her voice sprang him out from behind the locked door holding him so still. With a flaring blast of energy, he spun around, spied his boxers lying on the floor and bent to snatch them up. His anger crackled in every sharp movement as he dragged them on up his long legs then the taut contours of his golden flanks.
‘If you did, then I am ashamed of you,’ he incised so cleanly she was surprised the words didn’t draw blood.
IN THE process of dragging out the crumpled sheet from beneath her naked body so she could cover herself with it, Zoe went still.
He was ashamed of her?
‘It is not your place to be ashamed of me.’ Yanking out the sheet she pinned it tight across her breasts. ‘You are my captor not the keeper of my morals. Look after your own morals, Anton, since they have more sins to answer than mine do.’
‘I can’t believe I fell for this,’ he muttered, having turned himself back into a statue again.
‘Fell for what?’ Pulling herself up against the pillows, Zoe stared at him in growing anger.
‘You and your clever bit of reverse psychology,’ he enlightened her. ‘You accused me of being a manipulating gold-digger, when all the time you’ve been busy plotting how best to protect your own interests!’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Zoe told him. ‘Where,’ she demanded, ‘In what just happened between us, was I protecting my own interests?’
‘You were a virgin.’
Flushing to the roots of her tumbled hair, she peeled out sarcastically, ‘Oh, thanks for reminding me. I forgot.’ ‘You are Theo Kanellis’s granddaughter.’
‘Just another unfortunate truth I would much rather not be reminded of.’
‘If you wanted to stick a knife through my relationship with Theo, you could not have come up with a better way of doing it.’
‘That’s one Machiavellian conversation you’ve got going with yourself there,’ said Zoe, picking up a spare pillow from the bed and hugging it tightly to her front. ‘Tell me, how does it work that me having sex with you sticks a knife in your relationship with Theo?’
‘You were a virgin.’
‘Will you stop saying that?’ Zoe launched at him, trembling in disgust.
At last he turned to look at her, his proud dark head thrown back. His nostrils flared as he took in some air, contempt spilling from his polished jet eyes onto her hot embarrassed face. ‘You were a virgin!’ he repeated like it was the vilest swearword. ‘Now I will have to marry you