she wanted him as much as he wanted her. And then he hauled her under him and crushed her ripe mouth under his and once again everything changed so fast that her head spun dizzily. She wondered what magic there was to his mouth on hers that made her crave more, her fingers skimming up his cheekbones into his silky cropped hair and holding him to her.
A kiss is only a kiss, she thought abstractedly, but it wasn’t with Xan, it was fireworks and wild passion and the delving, curling intimacy of his tongue flicking inside her mouth, setting off a chain reaction that arrowed through her body with a piercing, burning sweetness that made her hips rise helplessly off the mattress.
He touched her breasts and she ached and quivered, the swollen, straining buds of her nipples shockingly responsive to the tug of his fingers and then the warm wet torment of his mouth, his tongue, his teeth...and her back arched, a sliding liquidity and heat rising in her pelvis because every touch felt as amazing as the hot, hard, muscular weight of him pinning her to the bed. He shifted back a little, muttering something in Greek, pausing to kiss her again with a hungry ferocity that made her heart beat stronger and faster than ever, excitement building as he stroked her thigh, parted her legs, finally touching her where she craved being touched. And at that point, everything became increasingly hazy for Elvi because she was out of control and pushed to a fever pitch by the intense sensitivity of her own body. Skilled fingers rubbed, delicately explored the sleek, silky depths of her, little tremors pulling at her, little sounds wrenched from her parted lips, the excitement blazing over her and soaring through her like leaping flames.
Burning all over, she writhed, yearning for more but too out of her mind to even recognise what more entailed. Xan’s wide sensual mouth crashed down on hers again and it was as if she had stuck a finger in an electric socket because for an instant, with her heart hammering and her breath clawing for escape from her constricted lungs, that spellbinding kiss enthralled her. And then he slid over her, lifting her thighs, pinning them back. Somehow the weight of him and that intimate contact were what her body craved.
Xan plunged into her heated core with passionate force. Elvi jerked and twisted her head away at the fierce jolt of pain, no longer flying in a delicious play world of the physical, suddenly brought back down to earth with a crash. Tears stung her eyes and she closed them tight, sealing herself off in an instinctive need for privacy, recognising that what she had mindlessly craved felt more like a punishment than a pleasure. Mercifully the pain faded as fast as it had come and her tension disappeared with it. Different sensations began to coalesce within her as he changed his angle, tilted her up and an almost forgotten jab of excitement tightened like a band low in her belly.
And then he kissed her again, claiming her reddened lips with hungry need, and she reconnected with him, compelled by the convulsive little quivers travelling through her pelvis and the almost mystical push of elation beginning to grip her every nerve. Never had she been more aware of anything than the sleek, hard invasion of his body into hers, stretching her, rousing her with his dynamic drive. The peak of pleasure took her by surprise, throwing her up in a gasping breathless wave to the heights and then letting her fall, slowly, gently while the ripples of delight were still convulsing her.
Xan pulled back, convinced he had just enjoyed the best sex of his life and shocked by the wildness of it and the alarming awareness that he had lost control. And then two unexpected events drove all such ruminations from mind. He was about to head for the bathroom to dispose of the condom when he suddenly registered that he hadn’t used one, a reckless omission that nothing could excuse and which froze him in his tracks. In that interim instant of inaction and disbelief he noticed the blood on the sheet.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he noted jerkily. ‘Did I hurt you?’
Raw mortification assailed Elvi and she squirmed away from him, yanking the top sheet over the embarrassing proof of her inexperience. ‘No, it was my first time,’ she muttered tightly, her face suffusing with chagrined heat.
XAN COMPUTED THAT admission and he was so shocked by the revelation, he literally felt sick. His lethally accurate brain threw up the entirety of his dealings with Elvi Cartwright and shame engulfed him for the first time in his life because such a scenario, a sordid scenario in which he demanded sex from an innocent girl, appalled him. It had not once crossed his mind that at her age she could be literally untouched. No, not these days, when he was forever reading about young women treating sex as casually as young men and when he himself was offered sex as carelessly as a handshake at first meetings. He utterly recoiled from the image of himself as a violator of virgins. If he had known, he would have kept his distance, would never ever have suggested...
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that?’ Xan demanded rawly, sliding off the bed in one powerful movement. ‘Naturally I assumed that you had sexual experience—’
Shot from the heights of her first real orgasm to the depths of embarrassment and then held trapped there by the unexpectedly angry reaction of her first lover, Elvi wrapped herself in the sheet and raised her knees to her chin, linking her arms round her trembling legs. ‘But why would you assume that?’ she asked shakily.
Xan raked an unsteady hand through his tousled black hair. ‘Because that’s the norm at your age. If I’d known you were a virgin, I would never have touched you and I would never have offered you the arrangement that I did!’ he shot at her furiously.
Elvi was perplexed because Xan had not impressed her as a man with sincere moral principles and she shrugged a rounded shoulder in dismissal of that statement. ‘It’s a little late now for regrets,’ she pointed out. ‘I did warn you that I wasn’t really suitable for what you had in mind but you weren’t interested in hearing it.’
Xan was never interested in hearing anything that conflicted with his own needs and wants and he didn’t require a stinging reminder from her that he had made an inexcusable mistake. Dark colour laced his high cheekbones and, with gritted teeth, he spun and strode towards the bathroom, only to freeze again and turn lithely back to her.
‘Are you on the pill?’
Elvi shook her head. ‘Why would I have been?’
‘On any form of contraception?’ Xan persisted tautly.
‘No. I was planning to sort something out this week but the very tight timetable you imposed on me prevented me from doing anything in advance,’ she said shortly.
‘You should’ve told me you were a virgin!’ Xan lashed back at her with unconcealed censure.
‘Why?’ Elvi countered. ‘It was none of your business!’
‘It became my business when you were planning to have a sexual relationship with me,’ Xan contradicted with controlled savagery.
‘As you well know, you were the one who planned to have a sexual relationship with me and I had to move in here barely twelve hours after agreeing, so my planning anything didn’t come into it!’
Xan shuddered at the burn of being force-fed the truth on an unappetising plate. He and no one else had brought about this disaster. His arrogance, his ego had resulted in this mess and it was a lesson he had never expected to receive because for too many years he had been invincible, his every move lauded, his every deal a phenomenal success. It seemed he was not the man he had been raised to become, not the person he had believed himself to be. It was a pivotal moment for him, glancing round the spacious room where he had spent so many hours with forgettable women and inwardly cringing at how he had foolishly believed he had it made with that set-up, because that detached conveyor-belt system had now gone badly wrong for him. And he still didn’t know how to fix it...
Elvi’s clasped hands round her knees tightened, her knuckles showing white below her skin. She was a little ball of rigid tension in recognition of his. Presumably he was disappointed. That was why he was angry. Angry not with her, she sensed, but with himself for a poor choice of playmate.
‘I’m