wide shoulders to his lean hips and strong thighs. The thrusting, potent proof of his arousal made damp heat rise at the heart of her.
‘I promise to drive you out of your mind with pleasure,’ Xan breathed with raw sensuality.
Sliding down the bed and parting her thighs to feast on her with his mouth, he took her entirely by surprise. She gasped, yanked unavailingly at his black hair, and then finally surrendered to wild sensation. He teased her with his skill, and her frantic tension grew and grew while the hollow ache between her legs became unbearable. She tossed and she turned and then she writhed, lost in the excitement until she soared to a glorious peak and the world splintered into a multicoloured shower of fireworks.
Xan grinned down at her bemused face and sank into her with one powerful thrust. His groan of sheer unalloyed pleasure made her feel even hotter. This time her body craved him and she was much more relaxed and there wasn’t even a hint of discomfort, only the wonderful rolling tide of exquisite sensation as his every movement sent smouldering pleasure winging through her.
‘Don’t stop,’ she gasped at the height of another peak, every nerve straining greedily for more.
And Xan laughed with pure unashamed enjoyment, pulling back from her briefly to flip her over onto her knees to continue, driving deeper into her receptive body with every cry he wrenched from her until finally Elvi reached the highest summit of rapturous excitement and a seething rush of convulsive delight sent paroxysms of electrifying pleasure travelling through her exhausted length.
‘Please don’t make me move until tomorrow,’ she mumbled, face down on the bed.
‘I thought you were into cuddling.’
‘Are you hot and sweaty?’ she asked prosaically.
‘You want me to shower first?’
Elvi turned back over and laughed with helpless appreciation. ‘Only joking!’
Xan closed an arm round her and pulled her close. It wasn’t a hug or a cuddle but it was more of a connection than he had offered before and it soothed her racing thoughts and the anxiety she was holding at bay.
‘You used a condom, didn’t you?’ she checked worriedly.
‘Of course. Are you still worrying about that?’ he said in surprise.
‘Worrying comes naturally to me,’ she admitted.
‘Worrying is a waste of energy that can be better employed. I want to have you again,’ Xan confided, pressing a kiss to a sensitive pulse point below her ear, making her squirm.
‘Already?’ she gasped, huge blue eyes lifting to his lean, darkly handsome face, instantly rejoicing in the sleek dark beauty of him laced with the wilder elements of his tousled hair and stubble.
Xan nodded very seriously. ‘I’ve got a major backlog of Elvi hunger to clear. I’m going to be very demanding, moli mou...’
A little flame of anticipation kindled wickedly low in her pelvis at that news. For the first time Elvi acknowledged just how much she revelled in Xan Ziakis, clothed or unclothed. It didn’t matter how much he infuriated her, it didn’t stop her craving him with every fibre of her being. It was only physical attraction, nothing more serious, she told herself with determination, telling herself to move with the times and stop judging herself for a situation she couldn’t change. After all, their arrangement wouldn’t last for ever and the real world would reclaim her soon enough.
Before she’d met Xan, she had sunk into a rut and stopped thinking about her own future, she acknowledged ruefully. Perhaps Joel had had a point when he’d criticised her for her absorption in her family. When Xan moved on, she decided that she would change her attitude. She would seek a more challenging job or even training that would enable her to be more ambitious. Her mother and brother were finding their own feet now and would no longer need to rely on her to the same extent.
When Xan emerged from the bathroom, Elvi was fast asleep. He had to fight the temptation to wake her while he studied her with brooding disquiet. Sex had never been so intense for him and his voracious desire to have her again disturbed him. He wasn’t treating her the way he normally treated a mistress. He didn’t know what it was about her that got to him deep down where he had sworn never to let a woman go again.
And inexplicably and unnervingly, she made him keep on changing his mind. What had happened to his determination not to touch her until she invited him to do so? What had happened to his decision to let her go free in five days?
Even worse, Elvi made him want more and he liked that even less.
Was it the fact that he was her first lover? Did he somehow feel responsible for her now? He reminded himself that he had wronged her and that he had deliberately set out to redress that damage. But that didn’t explain why he hadn’t just let her go or why he was tempted to put his arms around her when she was asleep and there was no chance of sex. Thee mou...that urge was freaking him out! He was even more unsettled by the tangle of clothing untidily littering the bedroom floor. That wasn’t like him either. He was quick to remove the evidence of his lack of patience and control, but throughout the exercise he was acknowledging that he should not allow any woman to affect him the way she did and he was urging himself to walk away fast.
* * *
Elvi drifted slowly out of a deep sleep to greet the dawn. Light was filtering through the curtains and she was too warm. She muttered a complaint and the sheet was tossed back, Xan’s fingers returning to the place which made her writhe and heat up even more. A slight gasp escaped her as he shifted against her, all power and potency and temptation and then he was where she needed him to be, sinking into her welcoming body with urgent force. But then the tempo changed to sensually slow and her tension ramped up accordingly, heart hammering with frantic longing, her body gripped by fierce, needy impatience. She pushed back against him, wanting, needing, and with a husky sound of appreciation, he speeded up, delivering what her body was programmed to crave in a heart-stopping, blood-stirring storm of sensation that peaked and then left her floating.
‘I ordered breakfast in bed for you,’ Xan murmured lazily. ‘I have some work to catch up on before I have to walk Delphina into the church.’
‘It’ll take me all my time to get ready for the wedding,’ Elvi sighed, feeling like a hot sweaty mess even while her whole body purred with little aftershocks of pleasure.
Xan strode out of the shower and she watched him dress, her brow furrowing while she ate. He seemed very preoccupied, his dark classic profile taut, his stunning eyes veiled. Something had changed, she grasped on a level she didn’t quite understand: there was something different about Xan. A distance she hadn’t noticed the night before? The first hint that their arrangement was already heading towards its natural end? Was he getting bored with her? It was what she wanted, what she needed. She had to pick herself back up and get her life back on track. Unfortunately, that did not clarify why her skin chilled and her tummy succumbed to a nauseous lurch at the thought of their parting.
There was no way she was becoming attached to Xan, she reasoned with firm conviction. She wasn’t that foolish or that quick to allow her feelings to control her. At heart she was sensible and practical and a stranger to the kind of dangerous emotions that were likely to upset her. For goodness’ sake, she had only been with him a few days, long enough to learn that sexual pleasure was a lot more seductive than she had ever dreamt but nowhere near long enough to start thinking too warmly of a man she disliked.
And she did dislike him, she thoroughly disliked him, Elvi reminded herself with satisfaction. Xan was immoral and unscrupulous and he expected the whole world to revolve around him and his needs and wants. All he cared about was making money and maintaining a stress-free sex life. They weren’t even in a relationship. Everything Xan did and said spelled out that message because he didn’t want her to misinterpret an intimacy that was not destined to last.
The sooner it was over between them, the better it would be for her, she told herself staunchly. She had changed as well. She would never