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Polly could barely believe what she was hearing—not from Marcus.
‘I don’t want…’ she began huskily, but Marcus wouldn’t allow her to finish.
‘Yes, you do want,’ he corrected her savagely, ‘and I want, Polly; I want very, very much.’
And whilst she was still reeling from the shock of his frank admission he was bending his head and pushing aside her robe so that his mouth could cover the quivering peak of her nipple and draw on it with such fierce sweetness that the whole of her body turned liquid with longing.
It was different now than it had been the first time. Her body knew him now—knew him, wanted him, craved him as its lover, remembering and responding to every touch he gave her, every breath he took.
She tried to resist, to summon all her mental powers of logic, reason and self-protection, but such puny weapons were no match for the ferocity of her love-borne desire.
Every charged breath she drew seemed to tell Marcus of her weakness and her longing. His mouth left her breast to cover her lips, sealing her off from the outside world and any means of defending herself, creating such an aura of intimacy around them that it seemed to Polly almost as though she was sharing the air he breathed, as though the blood pumping through her veins came from his heart, so fiercely strong was its beat against her body. She seemed to have no will-power of her own. It was as though in his possession of her mouth he had stolen that away from her, just as his hands were stealing away the covering of her body.
But it wasn’t her robe that was making that slithering, urgent sound of impatient removal, she recognised, as she opened her eyes to see Marcus tugging off his own clothes, letting them fall where they stood.
‘You look as though you’ve been on holiday,’ she told him dizzily, unable to stop herself from reaching out to touch the warm tan of his skin.
‘All those years of working in the Middle East,’ Marcus responded gruffly.
‘My skin’s so pale,’ Polly complained, with a small sigh. ‘I used to hate it when I was young. I looked so…’
‘You looked wonderful,’ Marcus told her harshly, stunning her into bemused silence. ‘Soft and frail, so feminine that…’
Beneath the hand she had placed tentatively against his chest Polly could feel the increased surge of his heartbeat. It was beating frantically fast as though he was under some kind of strain, as though his emotions…
But Marcus felt nothing for her emotionally. Marcus loved Suzi…Marcus…
‘Oh, Polly, Polly,’ she heard him groaning as he wrapped his arms around her, holding her so tightly that it almost hurt her to breathe.
Her breasts ached where he had nuzzled her nipples, longing for the return of his hot, suckling mouth to their tender, aroused crests, but that was nothing to the ache she could feel pulsing deep within her body.
If she had longed for Marcus down through the years of her widowhood, it had been the longing of a woman ignorant, innocent of the strength of her own female sexuality; but now all that had changed. Now she knew; now she wanted him so fiercely, so immediately that she was shocked herself by the intensity of her wanting.
Her eyes widened with shock as her brain registered the boldness of her body, urging her to reach out to touch Marcus, unable to resist the impulse to explore the sinewy strength of his bare arm, her breath catching in her throat as she saw the way the muscles contracted beneath his skin and heard his betraying indrawn breath when his stomach muscles tensed and his…
Now her eyes really were wide open with shock. Surely it was not just because she had reached out to stroke him that his body…the most potently male part of him…had swelled and hardened so intensely?
‘It’s because of the way you stroked my arm; it felt as soft and silkily sensitive as though you had brushed your lips against me intimately,’ Marcus explained rawly to her, as though she had actually asked the question that was burning in her mind.
‘No,’ Polly denied immediately, her face flushing.
‘No, what?’ Marcus asked her thickly. ‘No, you wouldn’t ever touch me so intimately? But you did, Polly; the night we spent together, you reached out for me in the darkness and you…’
‘No. No, not that; I didn’t mean that,’ Polly protested frantically, not wanting him to remind her of just how impetuously, just how passionately and wildly she had behaved. ‘I…I meant…’
‘What did you mean?’ Marcus demanded softly. He was drawing her closer to him now, his hand stroking down over her naked back, his breath warm against the top of her head.
‘I meant, no, I didn’t believe that just because…that you…could…would…’
