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Carrie put the flowers on a worktop and immediately busied herself opening cupboards and drawers, ostensibly to find a vase but more to keep her attention diverted from him and the terrifying things happening inside her.
‘I had a meeting.’ He opened a high cupboard and took down a crystal vase. ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’
She took it from him with a small smile of thanks and almost dropped it when their fingers brushed.
A shock of electricity skipped over her skin and danced into her veins, and she hurriedly turned her back to him as she muttered her thanks.
Just breathe.
First she filled the vase with water and added the sachet of feed to it.
Breathe.
She’d spotted scissors earlier when she’d made herself coffee, and she grabbed them out of the drawer and cut the pretty cellophane wrapping around the roses, then took the first rose—thankfully the thorns had been removed—and cut an inch of the base off and put it in the vase. She grabbed another, certain she remembered her mother doing something else when she was given roses but her brain was overloaded, trying to focus on the task at hand while tuning out the huge figure standing so close to her.
She could feel his eyes on her.
As she reached for another rose, a warm hand pressed into her lower back while another wrapped around her reaching wrist.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Her blood had thickened to a sludge that pulsed through every crevice in her body.
Andreas felt the pulse in Carrie’s wrist beat madly against his thumb, the only movement on her still frame.
Theos, he wanted her so badly it had become a constant ache he carried everywhere with him.
He’d been so damned angry with her and her stubborn refusal to take her blinkers off when it came to him.
When he’d dropped her at the villa he’d had half a mind to check himself into a hotel for the night but then he’d left his meeting hours later and a woman in a soft-top convertible had driven past him, roof down. She’d had chestnut hair almost identical in colour to Carrie’s. His chest had contracted so tightly in that moment he’d had to fight for breath.
Why should he care what Carrie thought of him? he’d told himself as he’d dragged air into his lungs. She was only going to be in his life for a short period. All that mattered was that she marry him and kill the rumours before they properly started.
But even as he was thinking all that he’d found himself walking into a florist and asking for their largest bunch of roses.
He’d never bought flowers for a woman before.
It had been the look in Carrie’s eyes as he’d passed the flowers to her that had driven the last of his anger out. There had been a vulnerability in those eyes he’d never seen in her before.
He leaned forward to breathe in her cloud of hair, the silky strands tickling his nose, and heard a jagged inhalation.
His need for her, the compulsion to touch her, the yearn to taste her… He had never wanted a woman more.
He breathed the fragrant scent of her hair in again then cupped her cheeks in his hands, his body almost touching hers, close enough to feel the tiny quivers vibrating through her.
Stark, frozen hazel eyes stared into his, her trembling lips parted but no sound coming out.
‘I’m going to kiss you,’ he said huskily. ‘I’m going to kiss you until you tell me to stop.’ Then, caressing her cheeks with his fingers, he pressed his lips to hers…
At first she remained stock still, not even breathing, her body like soft concrete. Slipping his hands round to spear her hair and cradle her head in much the same way she had cradled his what now felt like a lifetime ago, he moulded his mouth a little more firmly to hers, gently coaxing her into a response he knew she was fighting with everything she had.
Stubbornly, she continued to resist, her body still rigid, her soft plump lips refusing to move with his. But she didn’t push him away or tell him to stop.
Emboldened, he gently moved his mouth over hers and ran a hand down the length of her back.
He felt her give the tiniest of shivers.
Then she took the tiniest of breaths.
And she still didn’t push him away or tell him to stop.
He pressed himself a little closer, trapping her against the worktop.
She gasped into his mouth then quickly closed her own again but made no effort to break away from his kiss.
And still she didn’t push him away or tell him to stop.
His mouth still covering hers, Andreas brushed his hands lightly down her sides and clasped her hips, then in one movement broke the kiss to lift her onto the worktop. Her hands sprang to life and grabbed his arms as if to steady herself.
Her eyes fluttered open.
For a moment that passed like an age, they stared into each other’s eyes, Carrie’s hooded gaze pulsing dazed desire at him. The hands holding his biceps like a vice loosened but she didn’t let go.
