Mediterranean Tycoons - JACQUELINE BAIRD

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all, any woman with me as her lover wouldn’t look twice at Ted,’ he said with a husky chuckle, his slumberous dark eyes holding hers.

      Eloise couldn’t help it; even when she was angry, he had the ability with a word, a look, a touch to make her change her mind. Her lips twitched. ‘You arrogant devil!’ She shook her head but he looked deep into her green eyes and saw the humour she couldn’t quite hide.

      ‘But you like me,’ he murmured teasingly, and suddenly Marcus, who had never considered if a woman liked him or not, found he was waiting, his heart pounding for her answer.

      ‘Yes, you could say that,’ she responded with a husky chuckle of her own, and then very gently, almost reverently, he bent his head and kissed her, and she kissed him back in helpless surrender.

      He gently pulled her dress off her shoulders, his dark gaze flicking over her pouting breasts, raising her in his arms, slowly with the tip of his tongue he circled the areolae of one hard nipple.

      ‘Oh, yes,’ she sighed, immediately thrown back into a whirlpool of sensations. ‘Please.’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ Marcus parroted, his mouth enclosing the rigid tip and slowly licking her aching flesh, teasing with tongue and teeth until her back arched, and she was burning with the heady heat of passion and desperate need for continuance.

      He slipped his arms beneath her, lifting her high so he could capture her mouth with his in a long drugging kiss as he carried her into the bedroom. He slid her down the long length of his body, letting her feel the pulsing ache of his arousal as he eased her out of her dress in one smooth movement.

      He was wearing too many clothes. A low groan of frustration escaped her and she pushed her hands beneath his jacket up and around his back, dragging his head down to her, finding his mouth with her own.

      Airborne again, Marcus laid her down on the bed, and in seconds joined her naked. A deep erotic sigh of pleasure escaped her, as the black hair of his chest rubbed against her turgid nipples.

      Long fingers traced the length of her body, the indentation of her waist, the silky softness of her flat belly, and she trembled. She gripped his shoulders quivering with need. But he played with her mouth, licking and nibbling, then thrusting with his tongue, and all the time his long fingers slowly stroked the curve of her hip, the smooth skin of her inner thigh, but frustratingly refraining from touching her where she longed to be touched.

      ‘Marcus,’ she panted, her small hands sliding down to cover his, lost to everything but her own need.

      ‘Tell me what you want,’ Marcus rasped in a dark undertone, his breath fanning her cheek, his night-black eyes searching emerald. ‘Perhaps this?’

      Her whole body jerked as his seeking fingers parted the velvet folds of flesh to touch the hot, moist, pulsing point of pleasure, sending convulsive shivers lancing through her.

      Her hands roamed feverishly over his shoulders and skated down his back, around his broad chest to trace the silky black line down over his taut stomach, driven by a purely female primeval need to possess and be possessed, to claim him as her own. Her slender fingers found him, curving around the satin-coated steel length of him with shivering excitement, stroking him, made bold by her need.

      She felt his great body shudder, and briefly she felt an incredible sense of power. But a heartbeat later she could not think at all as his mouth caught hers in a savagely hungry kiss. Involuntarily her fingers tightened around him.

      With a guttural groan, Marcus raised his head. ‘You do it,’ he spelt out roughly, his night-black eyes clashing with her dazed green. Shuddering on the edge in a passion-induced dream, she did…

      Eloise awoke early the next morning and yawned widely. She stretched languorously and was instantly aware of the warm male body beside her. Slowly turning her head, her green eyes widened on the sleeping figure of Marcus.

      He lay on his back, one arm trailing across the top of her pillow, the other flung across the other side of the bed. The sheet was draped low across his hips, his broad hair-roughened chest rising slowly and evenly in sleep.

      She glanced up at his face. With his eyes closed, and a day’s growth of beard darkening his firm jaw, he looked less than his perfect self, younger and somehow vulnerable.

      Heat coloured her cheeks as she recalled last night, and her own part in it. She had actually touched him intimately with hands and mouth, something she had never imagined doing, and yet with Marcus she wanted to. It was unbelievable…

      He was amazing. They had made love with a passion a hunger that lasted for hours until, sated and exhausted, she had fallen into a dreamless sleep. Her love-swollen lips curved in a smile of pure female satisfaction. Hardly surprising he was still asleep, she thought, her fascinated gaze sliding over his naked torso.

      Even with her body aching in muscles she never knew she had, she couldn’t keep her eyes off his gorgeous bronzed body, and recalling how it felt to be thoroughly possessed by him made her shudder with remembered pleasure. Unable to resist, she reached out her hand and gently smoothed the soft black hair from the centre of his chest down to the narrow strip that disappeared beneath the sheet.

      ‘Hmm. That’s nice,’ Marcus murmured, moving and pressing a kiss on the top of her head.

      ‘I thought you were asleep.’ Eloise blushed scarlet and lay back, feeling almost happy. Marcus had said last night he believed her about Ted. A giant step forward—surely it couldn’t be long before he believed she was innocent of all he had accused her of?

      ‘I was, until you assaulted me.’ Marcus grinned and sat up, pulling her up with him. The dark eyes that met hers danced with wicked humour, and she smiled back.

      ‘Me?’ she questioned in mock indignation.

      ‘Yes,’ Marcus answered, and after kissing her thoroughly he rolled off the bed. ‘I’ll make breakfast, you start packing. We’re going to Greece.’

      ‘You’re kidding, of course,’ she exclaimed, her eyes skimming over his lithe body and wondering how a naked man could still manage to portray such stunning arrogance.

      ‘I couldn’t possibly leave London at the moment,’ she said easily, thinking of all the new designs she was involved with for their expanding business, and Katy’s light workload because of her preoccupation with Benjamin. Which was only as it should be, Eloise thought, her mind wandering into the realms of fantasy, imagining what a baby with Marcus as a father would look like.

      The thought brought her up cold, all the colour leaching from her face… She looked at him as he turned back to face her, and watched the humour vanish, and his face grow cool and distant.

      His dark knowing eyes rested on her pale face. ‘You can and you will, Eloise. You have far too many distractions in London.’ He knew he sounded harsh, but he couldn’t help it; she had looked at him, white-faced and horrified, and it gave him a peculiar feeling in the area of his heart again.

      How could he have gone from wanting, needing and believing her to this hard-faced tyrant, Eloise wondered, within minutes of waking up? A night of passion meant nothing to Marcus, and his complete lack of emotion simply confirmed what she already knew.

      But she lived here, Eloise reminded herself firmly. She worked here. He had to be crazy. She couldn’t drop everything and swan off to Greece at his say-so…

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

      ‘I would be ridiculous if I left you here alone again. On Rykos, when I am not around, my family and friends will take care of you.’ Marcus knew from experience how difficult it was to have a sex life on the tiny island without everyone knowing about it, and he was a man… For Eloise, branded as his woman, it would be impossible. No man would go near her, and that suited him just fine.

      ‘I do not need taking care of,’ she fumed. Where did he get off ordering her around? Well, she wasn’t putting up with it any more and she was damn well going to tell him so, but before she could open her mouth

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