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‘Marcus…’ Eloise planted her hands on his chest with the intention of holding him away. Immediately she knew it was a mistake; the hot heat of his skin beneath her palms was an enticement to stroke, to linger, to explore the muscular contours.
‘I love the way you say my name,’ he declared throatily. His dark head lowered and his carnal mouth found her parted lips.
The instant their mouths met, Eloise sank beneath a hot hungry surge of passion. It shouldn’t be like this, but it was what she’d just agreed their arrangement should be, and her treacherous body felt otherwise. She surrendered instantly to the drugging pleasure of his sensuous mouth and the heated caress of his hands, and within seconds constructive thought became impossible.
His hands wrenched down the top of her strapless dress again, and with a groan Marcus lifted her and suckled an erect rosy nipple. It was a torment, a sweet torment that sent quivering need lancing through her body, and a shocked cry escaped her convulsed throat.
Somehow she was on her back on the sofa, with Marcus on top of her. He skated a hand over her burgeoning breast, his dark eyes blazing down at her, as his long fingers toyed with her sensitised flesh until she was utterly possessed by the power of sensation. Her hands clasped his broad, tanned shoulders, her fingers trailed with tactile delight over the satin-smooth skin to tangle in the soft curling chest hair, scratching a hard male nipple.
With a low groan Marcus’s dark head dipped, and his mouth was on her breast again, but this time his tongue and teeth sent her shuddering into spasm after spasm of mindless pleasure. She twisted urgently beneath him, possessed by a need, a hunger so intense she was lost to all else.
Sinking back on his knees, Marcus grated, ‘I want you now,’ and a large hand skimmed the fabric of her gown down over her hips and legs, and tossed it to the ground. ‘Damn it, I can’t wait!’ His eyes black pools of desire in the taut planes of his face, he stared down at her. His long elegant fingers grasped the tiny black lace briefs, her only covering, and drew them from her body.
Naked beneath him, Eloise didn’t care. He was hot and hard and very male, and she was amazed at her own pleasure in simply looking. But looking was not enough; she wanted him naked as herself. Involuntarily, she reached out her hand and fumbled with the fastening of his trousers. He did it for her…
With a low laugh, a husky sound of primitive pleasure, Marcus covered her mouth with rough drugging kisses, as he dispensed with the remainder of his clothes.
He reared over her, naked, and without warning, in an explosion of renewed passion, he kissed his way down her sensitised body, mouth, breasts, stomach, and finally settled at the juncture of her thighs.
She arched off the sofa like an arrow from a bow, shuddering uncontrollably; never had she experienced such intimacy. She tangled her fingers in the night-black hair of his head, and urged him back up to her.
‘You drive me mad.’ Marcus growled when he drew level with her passion-glazed face.
He took her swollen mouth with a raw, savage hunger that sent her over the edge into a wild writhing wanton in his arms. She rubbed her aching breasts against his chest. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her fingers digging into his flesh. His hands swept down her body in one long, heated caress and then he lifted her, curling her legs around his lean waist, and surged into her in one mighty thrust.
Stilling for a moment, he shuddered against her, his molten black eyes almost angry burning into hers. ‘You do this to me,’ he rasped, and thrust again.
Eloise felt him move with every pore and cell in her body, smooth and slow, then fast and rough, driving her ever higher until she was consumed by the mighty primeval rhythm of his huge body, the explosive force of his virility urging her to the ultimate peak of excitement. She sank her teeth into his shoulder, as she soared over the edge into a clenching quivering climax at the same time as he did.
Pinned beneath him, and shivering in the aftermath of passion, Eloise tried to get her tumultuous emotions under some kind of control. But all she could think of was the blessed weight of his hot, damp body, his heartbeat thumping against her breast, the heavy sound of his laboured breathing, a symphony to her ears. Her hands stroked down his broad back, loving the sensation of sweat-slicked skin beneath her fingers, loving him… No… She must not confuse great sex with anything else, ever again. She meant nothing to him, and when he abruptly rolled off her and stood up, she told herself she was glad, burying the memory of the afterglow of pleasure they had shared the first time they had made love in the deepest recess of her mind. She wanted nothing from Marcus, no emotional involvement of any kind, she ruled in her head.
She glanced up at Marcus and was suddenly extremely conscious of her naked state, but it was obvious he didn’t feel as awkward as she did. With casual ease he picked up his trousers and stepped into them, zipped the fly, and just as casually bent and picked up her dress and dropped it on her.
‘Cover yourself. You don’t want to catch cold.’
Catch cold? He had to be joking! She had burned for him, and even now simply looking at him brought warmth to her face she could not hide.
But he wasn’t joking. His dark eyes raked over her in analytical scrutiny, and he concluded. ‘You’re incredibly beautiful, incredibly sexy, but with no morals. Still, two out of three isn’t bad,’ he offered with a husky laugh. ‘There is a bed next door.’ A smile curved his sexy mouth, his dark eyes gleaming with renewed desire. ‘Let’s use it.’
‘Let’s not.’ Eloise pulled her dress over her head and stood up, smoothing the fabric over her slender hips. His amusement and obvious contempt for her as an individual was enough to re-enforce her no emotional involvement rule. Marcus hated her, and yet she had fallen into his arms like a ripe plum, and loved every second, she admitted honestly. But she had no intention of following his every command like some concubine; her pride would not let her.
Why, why Marcus? How was it Marcus could turn her into a weak, needy woman, when other men, even men she knew well and respected, left her cold? It had to be her own traumatic past. Plus, she dryly admitted, his undoubted sexual expertise had made her a victim to her own body’s uncontrollable desire for the man, and she didn’t want to be. She was no man’s victim.
With that thought uppermost in her mind, she raked her hands through the tumbled mass of her hair and, discovering a couple of hair pins, she twisted her hair into a knot at her nape, fixed with the pins. Making a determined effort to appear sophisticated, she straightened up and directed a cool glance at Marcus.
‘I have to leave. I have a breakfast meeting with Katy and Harry and, as we agreed, it’s better they know nothing about…’ Was it an affair? Business. She struggled with the wording, the colour rising in her cheeks. ‘Our arrangement,’ she finally settled on.
‘Our arrangement,’ Marcus drawled with a sardonic arch of one dark brow. She was doing it again, blushing… The little witch actually thought he was going to sneak around like some illicit lover. Well, she was in for a rude awakening.
‘I think the word you are looking for is affair, Eloise, and as for keeping it a secret—’ he gave her a chilling half-smile ‘—forget it. You and I are partners in every way, and I will attend the breakfast meeting with you.’
The horrible part was, Eloise knew she could not stop him. Her gaze slid over his half naked body, igniting a familiar flare of heat deep inside her, and she tried to dampen it down. ‘With your investment in KHE, that is your prerogative.’ She endeavoured to keep the conversation impersonal. But how could her voice sound so matter-of-fact, when inside she was a mass of confusing emotions? she wondered.
‘Yes, and don’t you forget it.’ Black eyes glittered over her taut figure. ‘We are going to have a very public affair, Eloise. As I told you before, I’m not taking the chance of you finding some other wealthy fool to bail you out.’
Eloise looked at him, incredulous and inexplicably hurt. ‘You imagine I would do that?’
‘I know so.’ He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘And I see no reason to take an unnecessary risk. You will be publicly labelled Kouvaris’s woman.’ Broad shoulders lifted in a casual shrug. ‘I have yet to meet a man brave enough to cross me.’ His firm lips curved at the corners in a cynical smile. ‘Or foolish enough.’
