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She shook her head, a smile on her face that hid the hurt in her heart. “Not at all.”
“Ah, I can see it now. Little Claudia waking up, rubbing her eyes and seeing a mountain of presents.”
She stifled a sigh. He thought her selfish because she had done everything in her power to create that impression. Apparently he believed it was a product of her upbringing, rather than the defense mechanism it was. “My mother and father didn’t really do much for Christmas,” she hedged.
He frowned. “No?”
“No. Dad was often on tour.” Her smile was dismissive. “It was a great time to sell books.” She shrugged. “And mum never felt there was much point making a fuss for the two of us.”
She tried to keep the edge of rejection from her voice and suspected she hadn’t quite managed. She didn’t dare look at him, lest she see sympathy on his face. Sympathy that would bring to a halt the plans they’d made earlier.
“So I kind of found my Christmas obsession all on my own.” She blinked up at him, but he was looking straight ahead, his expression unreadable.
The hotel doors swished open and they were in the warmth of the sumptuous foyer, crossing it with an increasing sense of urgency that was mutual.
The lift doors opened after the smallest delay and they were alone. Claudia wanted to kiss him. She wanted to push her body against his, and invite him to take her then and there. She needed to feel him.
She didn’t.
She had no idea how he’d even respond to her if she did that.
The lift drew to a stop on the seventh floor and the doors pinged open. Claudia expelled a breath.
“Phew. I thought for a moment you might be planning a very tacky elevator seduction.”
He angled his head to hers, a sardonic look of amusement on his face. “It did cross my mind, believe me.”
Pleasure kicked inside of her. “What stopped you?”
He laughed, and caught her by the arms, pushing her back against the wall. And he kissed her. A kiss that was life and death all at once. A kiss that was dizzying and made her insides shake and ache and tormented her with its perfection. He kissed her until she could barely breathe and her blood was pounding in her ears and her skin was lifted with goosebumps.
“What stopped me?” He scooped down and picked her up, lifting her over his shoulder. “The fact that if I’d kissed you I wouldn’t have been able to stop.”
A shiver ran down her spine and every single cell in her body reverberated at a new, urgent frequency, full of wanting and longing and need. His hand was wrapped around her legs, and his fingers crept beneath her skirt, holding the soft flesh behind her knees. She made a low grumbling noise of impatience.
“I know.”
He slid the key out of his pocket and ran it across the magnetic panel, then shouldered the door inwards.
“You can put me down now,” she laughed softly.
He didn’t answer. His stride was long as he powered through the suite, to the bedroom that he had claimed. Or, rather, the bedroom that was left after she’d claimed hers.
He placed her on the ground with a gentleness that was at odds with the fact he’d just pushed her against a wall, holding her in place with his body, and kissed her until she saw stars.
A muscle throbbed in the base of his jaw. “Unlike you, I have experience with this,” he said, and Claudia’s eyes clouded over. She didn’t want to think of the myriad women he’d been with before her. Nor how experienced they were – how perfectly able to give pleasure to Stavros.
Her own inadequacies flashed before her like a blinding light.
“I keep telling myself to take it slowly with you. To savour this. To teach you. To show you.” He stepped behind her and his fingers pressed to the gold zipper of her dress, drawing it lower painstakingly slowly, exposing her flesh with every gentle movement. “But I feel like I am the hormonally charged school boy I used to be.”
Relief twisted her gut and a smile played on her lips. “Worried you might not live up to your virile image?”
“Worried I will not be able to give you what you deserve.”
Her heart twisted and she forced herself to be bold. She spun around to face him, the movement dislodging her dress, sliding it lower down her body, exposing her neat breasts. But he wasn’t looking at her body. His eyes were glued to hers.
“I’m not looking for anything beyond tonight,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about what I deserve. This is all that we are. And that’s fine by me.”
