experience. The softness of his shirt brushed her nipples and he groaned, giving them a delicate squeeze between his finger and thumb. Just enough to sharpen her hunger, to send needles of desire bursting into each breast. She heard herself moan, felt her pelvis contract and hated herself for being so easily controlled.
‘What are you?’ murmured Leo. ‘Who are you? Witch or angel? A false, heartless woman with an ego larger than Napoleon’s, or perhaps—’
‘I’m no angel. But I’m innocent,’ she protested, reeling under the torment of his fingers. Her breasts felt tight and hot, the flesh glowing for him. Beneath her frantic hands, his shirt moved over his satin skin and she had to force herself not to rip the buttons open and lay her mouth on his breast. Now she had to keep her head and defend herself all over again. To her husband. Or lose him for ever.
Taking a deep breath, she said jerkily, ‘I—I warned you when we married that the media would tell l-lies about me and...’
She lost the thread of her sentence. Her head turned from side to side in pleasure as Leo forced his thigh between her long, silk-clad legs and she couldn’t resist making a small, squirming movement because it might help to hold her need till she’d explained. And then, she thought hazily, they could make love freely, without hate and suspicion.
‘Oh, Leo!’ she whispered, knowing what he was going to do.
His hands were sliding down her hips. They reached the edge of her skirt and slowly, watching her, his velvety gaze flicking from her softly parted lips to her drowsy eyes, he wriggled it up till it was around her waist. Now there was only silk between her hot hunger and his linen-clad knee.
Leo’s jaw tightened when he looked down at the length of her exposed legs. Black Lacroix stockings topped with a deep band of Calais lace. Dove-grey satin briefs. ‘Hell!’ he growled thickly. ‘How could any man not be tempted by you?’
‘I—I freeze them off,’ she rasped, incapable of breathing steadily.
‘Irresistible,’ he said, smouldering grey eyes and brutally tentative fingers hypnotised by the gap above her stocking-tops.
Her pelvis pushed forward a little in demand before she could stop the movement and he smiled in triumph. Ginny closed her eyes in despair because he still didn’t believe that she had been faithful to him. His mouth brushed hers, making her tremble. His palms rotated on her nipples, warm, merciless, till they thrust in shameful dark peaks, elongating painfully, begging for the moistness of his mouth.
Panting, driven crazy, she abandoned all restraint and began to unpick his buttons, feverishly fumbling with them as if she were drunk. ‘Make love to me,’ she said urgently, lifting her beautiful, flawless face.
Leo’s mouth hovered a millimetre above hers. ‘You are the most desirable woman in the world,’ he husked. ‘Envied by millions, coveted by millions.’ Something dark came into his expression. ‘However, for the time being,’ he whispered into her parted lips, their breath mingling, ‘you can consider yourself exclusively mine.’
She wanted to be exclusively his for hours. Leo prided himself on long, sensual lovemaking sessions. Unconsciously, she gave a luxurious stretch of her body. ‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘Yes, please, Leo.’
‘I’ve wanted to make love to you since the moment you walked in. I’m more than ready.’ He took her hand and placed it on his groin. She groaned to feel him so hard, to feel the leap of heat against her trembling fingers.
‘Leo,’ she whispered. ‘Make love to me properly. Long and slow. As you used to. Please, darling. Please.’
Desperate to persuade him, she stood on tiptoe and slid her hands to his head, pressing it down and kissing him with all her heart and soul. With a wriggle of her hips, she gyrated on the thigh that was thrust between her legs and moved her breasts across his chest—partly to assuage her own demands and partly to entice him to indulge in hours of pleasure with her.
‘Witch!’ he growled throatily. His hands ran down her body possessively. ‘I don’t know whether to hate you or despise you or—’
‘Love me,’ she whispered, twining her fingers in his hair. ‘Please, Leo. Love me.’
With a muttered groan that came from deep inside him, he bore her down to the polished wood floor as if he could no longer bear to hold back, stretching her arms over her head and covering her with his hard body. She felt his mouth on hers, fierce and uncompromising, angry, perhaps, because he wanted her so badly when he thought that she was worthless as a wife. And at the back of her mind she prayed that their lovemaking would bring them close, that the anger would subside and they could start to unravel the tangled threads of their unstitched marriage.
The onslaught of his mouth, teeth, tongue and hands and her frantic attempts to ease her despair with physical energy alone caused them to tumble and roll across the floor, her back sliding on the slippery wood, and Ginny became swamped in a whirl of sensation—the feel of silkwood and the smell of polish on her naked back, the pressure of Leo’s muscular arms around her and the wonderful sweetness of his mouth, tugging gently at her breast.
Lost in deep passion and an uncontrollable hunger, grabbing, clutching, kissing, they slid into a table. Something crashed to the ftoor—a lamp, an ornament; she wasn’t sure what—but Leo ignored everything, intent on possessing her, sweetly caressing every inch of her body as if to drive away any memory she might have of other men.
Equally driven, she gave up trying to undo his buttons and pulled the edges of his shirt with both hands, burying her face in his chest. She wanted him naked, to feel his body against hers, because only then would she dare to believe that they could shut out the threat from all outsiders and prove to one another that they were still in love.
He was as helpless, as frantic as she. Finally his naked body met hers and she let out a long, loud groan of relief. At last he was inside her, stroking her with a fiercely restrained gentleness. Overjoyed, she forced her eyes to flutter open, her lush mouth smiling with pleasure. Ginny arched her body in demand. ‘Love me.’
Her mouth teased his, urging it to soften into a sensual curve. And because she wanted him to desire her more than ever and to remember this moment for a long, long time she used all the arts she’d ever learnt from him, writhing sinuously, clutching his buttocks and thus increasing his unbearably slow and deliberate thrust.
She wanted to make him desperate for her. To love her—her. With a siren’s lure in her eyes, she slid her tongue out and licked the sweat over the curving arcs of his chest, teasing the nipples till he gave a satisfying groan and she felt his rhythm increase to a pitch where she couldn’t think any more, was only capable now of reacting like an animal, wildly driving her body against his, countering his thrust with equally hard, demanding jerks of her own body, drawing in her pelvis to hold him tighter and devouring him with her mouth as he devoured her, as if they’d starved for months and wanted to fill themselves to satiation.
Ginny flung her arms around Leo violently, bearing him over in a wild and uncontrollable tumble that had them both fighting to hold their bodies linked and to maintain the beautiful, shuddering rhythm, while she emptied all her passion into her body, kissing Leo with a fervour born of desperation and urgency.
He was so strong, so beautiful. They had been so in love and she wanted that back—the wonderful moments they’d shared together, the quiet evenings by the firelight, the walks in the park. A groan broke from her parted lips and she bit into his shoulder to stem her distress that their love had been threatened. He gasped and kissed her so hard that she felt the deep pressure of his teeth on her lips.
And then her body began to sing as it had never sung before, every nerve taut and stretched, all the bitter-sweet pain rising with the crescendo of Leo’s fierce movement, the beautiful satin strength within her offering the wonderful promise of a release from all her distress and tension.
‘Ginny,’ he rasped thickly into her hair. ‘Ginny, Ginny!’
She sobbed, groaned loudly, not caring who heard—oblivious of everything but the