She stopped breathing.
His face was taut, his eyes blazing, and he held the garter aloft like a trophy.
“Mine,” he said hoarsely. “Every perfect bit of you is mine.”
She didn’t even have time to gasp before his lips landed on hers, hard and ravenous.
Stretching onto tiptoe, Pandora wrapped her arms around his neck, the impact of his chest against her rousing a wildness she’d never known, and she kissed him back as though she were starved, all the while pressing herself closer.
“Slowly, wife of mine, slowly,” he panted, his big hands going to her hips, holding her off.
“I—”she punctuated it with a kiss “—can’t—” another kiss “—wait.”
“Ah, Christos.”
His hands cupped her buttocks, lifting her, the priceless dress ruching up around the tops of her thighs, pulling her close until … until … she could feel his hardness through the fabric. With a rough mutter he hoisted her higher, and her feet dangled off the ground. Zac lurched forward.
“Zac! You’ll drop me.” Hurriedly, she hooked her legs around his hips, her feet tangling with the soft silk folds of the dress as she clung on for dear life.
She landed on the bed with Zac sprawled on top of her. Breathlessly she stared up into hot green eyes.
“I can’t wait—not another minute.” His body moved against hers, restless and insistent.
She could feel his heat, his hardness, could sense that he was hanging on to his control by a fine thread. “The dress—we’ll ruin it.”
“Forget the dress!”
“I can’t. The dressmaker kept eulogising about it being a piece of living history. I’d feel so guilty—”
“Shh. Roll over, then. Let me get the damned thing off,” he growled and shrugged off his shirt.
In a brief second Pandora took in his naked chest gleaming in the soft golden light of the bedside lamps, the curve of his chest muscles, the lean tapered strength of his hard stomach and groaned.
And promptly nearly died of embarrassment.
Balling her fists against her mouth so that no more humiliating sounds would escape, she rolled onto her stomach so that he wouldn’t see her face, wouldn’t see the desire, the wanting … and then cringed as the skirts of the irreplaceable dress caught around her legs. “Oh, no.”
“I’ll set you loose.” There was laughter in his voice now.
“It’s not about me—”
“It’s about the damned dress, I know.” A hint of very real masculine frustration mingled with the humour.
How could she explain that she’d hate to be responsible for tearing or damaging 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.