Bliss went through her, pure and exquisite, and she gave her mouth to him, let him taste and take her, explore and possess...
She felt her body sway towards his, her eyes flutter shut as she gave herself to what was happening.
Xandros was kissing her...
Kissing her in a way that made that earlier, brief, fleeting kiss seem nothing more than the merest promise of what a kiss could be...
Kissing her as she had never thought it possible for a kiss to be!
And she was melting into it, drowning in it, this the softest, most sensuous sensation in the entire universe, this the exquisite honeyed feathering of his mouth on hers.
It seemed to go on and on, and she was weak with it, faint with it...
And she wanted more...oh, so much more...
A low, helpless moan sounded in her throat, and as if with an instinct of their own her hands reached around him to draw his body to hers, to feel the hard, strong column of his back beneath her fingers—
At her touch he pulled away from her in sharp withdrawal, his mouth releasing hers abruptly, his hand moving away from the door.
Her eyes flew open.
He was looking down at her with an expression that was closed—shuttered, even—and she gazed at him in a helpless haze, lips still parted...
She saw him take a breath. A ragged inhalation. Saw him take a step backwards.
He shook his head. ‘This was a mistake,’ he said.
There was a blankness in his voice, and he took another breath, deeper than the first, his expression changing again.
‘It’s late. You should get some sleep. I must go.’ He reached past her to push her door open wider. ‘Go in, Rosalie,’ he said. His voice was firm and his mouth tightened. ‘You need to get to bed. We have to be with the registrar by eleven.’
She felt his hand on the small of her back. Broad and impersonal. Turning her towards her room.
She caught the edge of the door, instinctively resisting. Trying to turn back to him.
‘I...’
The pulse at her throat was throbbing, and there was a flush of heat across her cheeks. Her lips were still parted. Still yearning for his...
And as her eyes lifted to his she knew yearning filled them. A yearning she could not crush, or halt, or do anything about. For the blood was still beating in her veins, blinding her to everything but the kiss they had shared.
‘No.’
There was harshness in his voice. Rejection.
‘Rosalie—goodnight!’
He turned away, and then he was striding down the hushed and deserted corridor, his gait rapid, gaining the end in moments, turning towards the elevator, lost to her sight.
She felt emptiness, desolation, as she went into her room. He had kissed her in a way she had never known a kiss could be. A kiss to melt her to her very core. And then he had set her aside.
His rejection echoed in her head.
‘This was a mistake.’
A cry broke from her.
Xandros stood out on his apartment’s balcony, staring at the floodlit Acropolis, not seeing it. He was hearing his own words echo in his head.
‘This was a mistake.’
His hands tightened over the railing. Thee mou, one hell of a mistake! It had taken all his strength to push her inside—keeping himself on the outside—and to turn and walk away, with every step wanting to turn around and stride back to her, to step inside her room and—
No! Don’t go there! Not even in imagination! Least of all that...
He took a shuddering breath. He’d been a rash and reckless fool to walk her back to her room—he should have resisted the temptation. But he hadn’t wanted to say goodnight quite yet. Had wanted to prolong the evening with her. Prolong it in a much more intimate way...
No! He was heading down dangerous paths again.
He clenched his jaw, exerting control over himself just as he had since that evening he’d allowed himself the sweet pleasure of greeting her with that all too brief and fleeting kiss. It had taught him that any contact with her would be like a match to tinder. That he must control himself, deny himself, until he had her all to himself.
As he would tomorrow.
Tomorrow night...the start of their honeymoon. The start of their marriage, when she would be his...
That low purring started up in him, so familiar to him now whenever he thought of the breathtakingly alluring woman who would soon—oh, so achingly soon now—be his entirely...
And until then...
He turned away, clicking shut the balcony doors and striding into his bedroom, stripping off his tie as he did so, slipping his cufflinks.
His eyes glinted. Until then the traditional remedy for thwarted passion was going to be very necessary.
He headed for the en-suite bathroom. Time for a cold shower. A very cold one...
Rosalie gazed, enthralled, as the helicopter started its descent, feeling again the leap of pleasure she’d felt when Xandros had announced, just after their wedding that morning, that he was taking her to his private island for their honeymoon.
She hadn’t thought they would have a honeymoon at all—not in a marriage like theirs. But then she had realised that, just as he wanted her to wear the fabulous diamond engagement ring and also, since the simple brief ceremony that morning, which had passed in a blur of Greek with an English translation for herself in a room at the town hall, her new wedding ring, so a honeymoon would be expected as well. To show the world—show her father—that theirs was a proper marriage.
And she knew she could be glad that it was to be on Kallistris. On Xandros’s private island they wouldn’t be on view for anyone else to think it odd they weren’t all loved-up...
Her eyes shadowed momentarily but she banished her thoughts. Last night had been...difficult. The understatement rang hollow. But in the sleepless hours that had followed she had come to terms with it. She’d had to.
Xandros had kissed her—she’d all but begged him to, and mortification burned in her as she remembered what he’d said to her—and promptly regretted it. Well, she had learnt her lesson. From now on she would be only what he wanted her to be—bright, cheerful, friendly, appreciative, enthusiastic...
She ran out of adjectives to describe the way she would need to be with this man who had called kissing her a mistake, and went back to gazing, rapt, as the little island—the smallest of a small cluster set in the azure Aegean—loomed closer and closer. And then they had landed, setting down on a small helipad by the sea’s edge.
Xandros vaulted out, thanking the pilot, and Rosalie, glad she’d changed out of her tailored wedding outfit into cotton trousers and top at the hotel before setting off, jumped down lightly. Xandros, too, had changed out of his customary business suit into chinos and an open-necked shirt—looking just as drop-dead gorgeous as he always looked.