LITMIR.BIZ

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as her body reacted she was thinking over what he said, registering that her discreet clothing and apparent reluctance had heightened his desire for her and immediately wondering whether constant marital availability would swiftly convert his interest to boredom. He bent her back over his arm and closed his mouth over first one throbbing reddened peak and then the other, laving her sensitised flesh with his tongue and grazing the beaded peaks with his strong white teeth. She gasped out loud, her body catching fire and flaming as fast and hotly as bone-dry straw. Rational thoughts fled her head like fallen leaves blown by the wind.

      ‘I never thought I’d be so excited by my wedding night,’ Alexei confided huskily, setting her aside and springing up to begin carelessly shedding his clothes. ‘Congratulations, Billie. Experienced as I am, you make even sex feel fresh and new.’

      Awesomely conscious of the stinging sensitivity of her nipples and the lush heat at the heart of her, Billie was dry-mouthed and all of a quiver, while wondering if she would ever be able to match his cool…or, for that matter, his evident expectations. So many women had tried and failed to hold his attention. Why should she be any different? Even to lie there half naked without rushing to cover up her exposed flesh was a challenge for Billie. Impervious to such insecurities, Alexei cast off his shirt, revealing the tightly honed muscular magnificence of a torso sprinkled with dark whorls of hair, a narrow waist and a stomach as flat as a rock slab. Physically he was just pure perfection, she acknowledged, her gaze riveted by his sheer spellbinding masculine impact. He discarded his last garment and the very boldness of his towering erection washed colour over her face, for her memory—unlike his—had no missing gaps and she was recalling the velvet-sheathed-in-steel feel of him beneath her fingers and moving inside her. Something clenched deep in her stomach.

      He lay down beside her and pulled her back to him, crushing her mouth hungrily below his with a hot sexual urgency that thrilled her. He slid long fingers in a bold trail below her panties and groaned with earthy satisfaction, ‘You’re so wet and ready for me, khriso mou.’

      Feverishly aware of that betraying damp heat, she trembled beneath the confident touch of his hand, raising her knees to assist him as he skimmed off the final barrier between them. ‘I can’t help wanting you,’ she breathed shakily.

      ‘And isn’t that only as it should be?’ Alexei husked, golden eyes glittering over her with virile approval even as his fingers came into contact with a roughness to the skin of her lower stomach that surprised him. ‘What is this I feel?’

      Billie froze, belatedly realising that he had found her Caesarean scar. ‘Just a gynaecological thing—some surgery—I had,’ she answered as casually as she could.

      ‘You never mentioned it,’ Alexei commented.

      ‘Some things women like to keep to themselves.’

      He shifted his hand back to a more sensitive spot and every skin cell in her quiveringly appreciative body seemed to leap. She was feeling too much to feel comfortable because her responses were already breaching the boundaries of her self-control. The exquisite pleasure of his skilled exploration of the slick folds of tender tissue between her thighs was almost more than she could stand without crying out aloud. She twisted and she turned until he stilled her and then she gritted her teeth together, her slender neck extending while he delicately teased the tiny erect bud of her clitoris and right then her concept of what was unbearable was rewritten from inside out. Her hips shifted and jerked upwards in a pleading motion and he lowered his dark arrogant head to the distended rigidity of her nipples, sucking them into his mouth and toying erotically with her wildly responsive flesh.

      ‘Please…please now,’ she framed brokenly, tormented by the burning heat of an excitement too much to be borne.

      He came over her and into her in an almost simultaneous movement. With a sinuous shift of his hips he positioned his long powerful body and sank into her inner warmth with a low, melodious growl of sensual pleasure. For a split second, fear pierced the veil of her excitement and her inner muscles clenched hard round his swollen shaft. His golden eyes caught the momentary look of concern and unease she couldn’t hide and then his hands closed round her hips and he drove into her again with hard, sure sensual force as if he knew the intensity of her need. The feeling of pressure low in her belly increased until all she was conscious of was the remorseless intrusion of his strong body into hers and the ravishing irresistible force of a physical stimulation so extreme it came close to pain. Tingling sparks of her impending release shot through her stomach and she writhed and gasped, her body arching as the most intense orgasm gripped her and sent wild sensation flooding through her in an uncontrollable and explosive tide.

      The feeling of release from her earthly body was so powerful that for long moments after that climax Billie was in a daze. Only slowly did she regain awareness again, register the weightiness of her limbs, the heavy cocoon of sweet satisfaction that was reluctant to let her go, and even more slowly did she notice that Alexei had pulled away from her when she most wanted to cling to him. And then there was the silence…thrumming and taut as only a male as volatile as Alexei could make it. Her bright head swivelled on the pillow, green eyes very dark and wide flaring to Alexei.

      He looked levelly back at her and a lump of dismay formed in her throat, for she read the challenge in his appraisal. The silence lay like a claustrophobic blanket threatening to stifle her ability to breathe. A whoosh of alarm ran down her spine like a cold warning hand. ‘What’s wrong?’

      Thrusting the pillows back against the headboard, Alexei sat up. Brilliant golden eyes rested on her with all the extraordinary force of his fierce temperament. ‘I’m amazed you have the nerve to ask me that. You lied to me, and you know how I feel about lies.’

      Fear cut Billie as deep as a knife wound and a kind of panic raced like a wrecking ball through her more usually calm thoughts, creating mental havoc. Her blood ran cold, her skin turned clammy. ‘L-lies?’ she queried, playing desperately for time.

      ‘That certainly wasn’t the very first time you had sex. You weren’t a virgin before I married you, yet you were determined to make me believe that you were. What is that other than a lie?’

      He was disappointed, she assumed, realising just what a pit she had dug for herself to fall into. How could she tell him the truth without telling him the whole truth? The few hours of grace she had believed she still had had suddenly vanished, depriving her of any control over the situation.

      ‘Of course it would be downright hypocrisy for a guy of my experience to expect or demand a virgin bride in this day and age,’ Alexei drawled in glancing continuance. ‘I may have made a false assumption but you lied by omission. Lying by staying silent when you should have contradicted me is still a lie.’

      ‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ Billie framed uncertainly. ‘When you made that assumption I felt trapped by it—’

      ‘No, don’t make the mistake of trying to lay your dishonesty at my door,’ Alexei cautioned her, his lean handsome face hardening into grim lines at her response. ‘I also want to know who your first lover was: Damon Marios, your spineless first love?’

      The instant he flung that arrogant demand and that name at her she froze, wondering whether she really had to trail out all her secrets there and then, if there was no escape, no other way of deflecting him. And then she marvelled at her own reluctance to speak, her terror of breaking free of the cosy bridal bubble of happy-ever-afters and fantasy. ‘You’re not going to believe me when I do tell you who it was.’

      As he stared at her from below the dense dark screen of his luxuriant lashes Alexei’s handsome mouth took on a sardonic quirk. ‘Try me. At least you have the wit not to persist in the lie.’

      Billie no longer felt comfortable in the bed. She was no more comfortable under his intent scrutiny when she slid out naked from below the sheet to move a few steps away and reach for the light silk robe draped in readiness for her use over a chair. Enveloped within its concealing folds, the sash tightened round her waist with unsteady hands, she felt curiously more in control again.

      ‘How did you know? How did you guess?’ she suddenly

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