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Oblivious to Max’s reaction to her, Ionanthe pressed on. ‘Either you bring that humiliation to an end by consummating our marriage,’ she told him determinedly, ‘or…’
Her words were like the worst kind of sharp blows against already dangerously raw and open wounds, overloading his self-control, inflaming him, driving him into an unfamiliar place where the red mist that came down over him obliterated everything else, Max acknowledged. All he could think, all he knew, was that she was tormenting him to the point where he had to put some distance between them or risk them both facing the consequences.
‘This isn’t a discussion I want to pursue,’ he told her flatly, turning his back on her and heading for the door.
For a second Ionanthe was too frozen with anger and disbelief to say or do anything. But then desperation drove her, and she ran for the door, reaching it ahead of Max and flattening her back against it, her arms outspread as she told him fiercely, ‘That’s not good enough. I won’t be treated like that. I want an answer from you, and I am not going to let you leave this room until I get one.’
Max was so close to her that he could feel the sweet warmth of her breath against his skin. He wanted to close his eyes to blot out her image, but he couldn’t. How ironic it was that, whilst all Ionanthe wanted from him was a clinical and detached act of consummation, her sister had actively wanted to reduce him to wanting her, with all her wiles and coquettish well-used tricks. But she had never once come anywhere near arousing him to one tenth of the desire rampaging through him right now—for Ionanthe. A desire he had to control.
‘Stand aside,’ he commanded Ionanthe, stepping up to her and reaching out to grasp the handle of the door.
‘No,’ Ionanthe refused.
Her denial was all the spark the dry tinderbox of tensions within him needed. Max’s self-control snapped. With one swift movement he imprisoned her against the door, the hand he had previously curled round the door handle now gripping her hip, whilst his other hand pinioned her shoulder.
‘You want an answer? Very well then—let this be your answer,’ Max told her, crushing his mouth down on hers, imprinting the shape and taste of it on her lips just as the weight of his body was imprinting itself against her flesh, forcing her to accept his domination.
This wasn’t what she had wanted—so why was she allowing him to impose the bruising pressure of his kiss on her? How had she moved so quickly from holding the high ground with justifiable anger to this place where she was now, where her whole body was awash with a flood of sensations she didn’t want and he was the one in control?
Somehow she managed to break the kiss, straining back from him, her heart racing from the exertion—the exertion or the excitement? The exertion, of course. He didn’t excite her. How could he? She tried to pull away from him, and for a second, as his hands lifted from her body, she thought she had succeeded. But he didn’t let her get very far.
His hands closed on her shoulders as he swung her round, so that he was the one leaning on the door and somehow or other she was leaning on him—on him and into him—her whole body pressed into his, making her aware of her own flesh and its sexuality in a way that shocked through her like lightning. Why had she never known before that the pressure of a man’s hard muscular chest against her breasts could turn their rounded softness into a mass of sensually receptive nerve-endings? Or that the pump of a male heartbeat lifting its owner’s chest against her could translate into something that her breasts interpreted as a caress, and to which they responded with a fierce ache that tore at her flesh?
That ache sent images into her head that were visually and sensually erotic—images of Max’s dark head bent over her naked body, his lips capturing the flaunting demand of her puckered nipples and drawing on them until her pleasure reached a crescendo that made her want to moan out loud—she could hardly believe that she was experiencing them.
But she was. And she was experiencing too the heavy low drag of need that was filling her lower body as it rested against his, making her want to press closer to him, making her want to grind her hips eagerly against him, making her want. A shudder of wild delight gripped her when Max’s hands slid down to her hips, pulling her even more intimately against him whilst his lips pillaged the vulnerable flesh of her throat.
Something unfamiliar and dangerous slid through her veins, like a heady, intoxicating potion that stripped her of her will to deal in the factual and logical. It carried her with it on a tide that reacted to Max’s maleness with the same kind of magnetic pull that the moon had on the oceans of the world.
He should have stopped before this, Max knew, whilst he had still been able to stop. Now it was too late. He swept Ionanthe up into his arms and carried her towards the bed.
As he placed her on it Ionanthe tried to listen to the inner voice warning her that she was in danger—tried to draw back from him as he started to undress her.
‘You were the one who wanted this,’ Max reminded her as he leaned over her, removed her skirt and then her sweater.
‘Not like this,’ Ionanthe protested.
Not like what?
He was kissing her again, nuzzling her throat, stringing kisses against it so delicate and yet so sensual that they dizzied her senses and robbed her of any ability to verbalise her true feelings. Instead she was arching her throat, offering it up to him and then shuddering in mute pleasure when the heat of his mouth became more possessive.
His hands on her bra had somehow become an aid, an ally, understanding her need to be clothed only by his touch. But Max seemed more disposed to linger over the silky underwear that was her one concession to the demands of her femininity rather than remove it speedily. Her frustration grew.
Through the fine silk of her underwear Max could see the dark thrust of Ionanthe’s nipples, and the even darker softness of the hair covering her sex. She dressed so primly on the outside that to see her clothed in such a way underneath was somehow unbearably erotic. Was it possible that her outwardly cold manner could conceal a passionate heat? Desire kicked fiercely through him at the thought of her meeting and matching him in the white-hot conflagration of shared need. He kissed the exposed upper slope of her breast, savouring the sweetness of her flesh, slowly easing away the silk until he could stroke his tongue-tip against her nipple.
Ionanthe cried out sharply, the sound torn from her in response to the shockingly intense stab of pleasure that pierced her, lifting her from the bed to arch against Max’s mouth. Her hand rose to cup the back of his head, her fingers curling into the thickness of his hair as she gave herself up to the hot pleasure his mouth was spilling through her. In response his hand covered her sex, probing the barrier of fragile silk and lace that was no barrier at all, slipping beyond it to find the warm wetness that waited for him.
The late afternoon light slipped away into darkness without Ionanthe being aware of the passage of time. She was capable only of measuring time by the acceleration of the growing ache of need that had possessed her. The whole purpose of her life, what she had been born for, had become distilled into this concentration of her entire being, so that it could be given up to the moment that would create life even while everything she had thought she was fell away and burned, dying in the conflagration of creating that spark of new life.
These thoughts and many others whirled inside her head kaleidoscope-like, meaning nothing. Her thoughts were incapable of doing anything to bring to a halt what she herself had set in motion, and nor did she want them to.
But this was not a time for thinking. It was a time for feeling, for knowing, for believing, for giving herself up to the sensation of Max’s hands and lips on her body. Every part of her pulsated with the urge for completion that was driving her. Every nerve-ending within her was so sensitised to and by his caresses that she felt that he could take her no higher, that the moment of culmination was there, a mere tantalising half a breath out of reach.
But Max would not allow her that culmination. By some alchemic force and power surely only he alone possessed he drew the fine skein of thread linking her to her desire higher and tighter, to her gasped litany of pleas and protests. Ignoring her plea to him not to torment her any further, he continued to prove to her that she was wrong and that he could. With the deliberate and lingering stroke of his tongue-tip against the pulsing thrust of flesh that was her sex and the intimate caress of his fingers within her he brought her time and time again to the point where the release she wanted was within reach—only to change his caresses to a gentler pace, brushing butterfly wing kisses against her inner thighs whilst he stroked the soft flesh there, keeping her at an unbearable pitch of need whilst refusing to satisfy it.
He couldn’t hold out much longer, Max acknowledged as he tried to separate his body from his mind and ignore the furious clamour and the almost physical pain of his self-denial. He ached with every cell he possessed to slide himself fully and deeply into the warm eager wetness Ionanthe was so eagerly offering him and take them both to orgasm. But he couldn’t; not yet. Not until he was sure she was ready to give him what he had to have.
The winter sunlight had long ago given way to the silvery light of the rising moon, painting Ionanthe’s body in silver and charcoal. She would make a magnificent subject for an artist’s eye, he thought. Her hair a dark tumbling mass around her shoulders, the bone structure beneath her skin delineated by the stardust silver brush on her shoulder, her hip, her thigh, whilst her flesh itself was moonlight-pale, her nipples charcoal-rose and the secret places of her body an inviting velvety night-sky-dark.
He wanted to lose himself completely with her and within her. No woman had ever made him feel like this, want like this, need like this—but no other woman had made him question her purpose and her beliefs either. Because no other woman had been important enough for him to have such feelings.
The sensual intimacy he was using against Ionanthe was a two-edged sword, Max recognised. He might be breaking down her contemptuous claim that for her sex between them could only be a cold, clinical matter, but in doing so he was creating within himself an emotional awareness of her, a closeness to her that could run totally counter to his determination to put his people and their needs before anything else.
He was creating problems where none needed to exist, Max told himself. This was a one-off—a response to the challenge Ionanthe had thrown at him.
He bent his head and painted slow, sensual circles of erotic delight on Ionanthe’s inner thigh, drawing the thread of her desire even tighter. Helpless to stop herself, Ionanthe reached down between her parted thighs to cup the back of Max’s head, unable to tell whether she wanted to keep him where he was or urge him to return and repeat the earlier, previously unknown intimacy he had shown her. She knew only that she could not bear it if he withdrew from her.
But he did, lifting his head to look at her through the moonlit darkness to demand softly, ‘So tell me now, Ionanthe, whilst you are still capable of saying the words and I am rational enough to hear them, how do you really prefer your sex? Cold and clinical? Or like this? Which is best?’
His touch stroked slowly, warmly, wetly the length of her, and then rested firmly against her clitoris before once more he lifted his head for her answer.
He hadn’t said that this would be the end—an end that would be no end at all since it would leave her gripped by agonising need—but the fear that that was what he had in mind was enough for her body to command her brain.
‘This is best,’ she admitted, closing her eyes as her body forced aside her pride, making her lips form words she had never thought she would utter. ‘You are the best,’ she added helplessly. “I have nev—’ She gasped and cried out—a low, guttural sound of aching pleasure as Max responded to her initial admission with the slow, powerful, deep thrust of his body within her own.
How could something so primitive, so basic, designed by nature and not the human mind, meet so perfectly the needs of flesh and the senses? Ionanthe wondered dizzily, instinctively tightening her muscles around the slick, hot male flesh that was not just filling her but stroking into her, receiving back from her a growing urgency. But then whilst nature might have provided the ingredients for her pleasure, it was Max who had taken them and honed them.
The climb grew steeper, making demands on her she had never known existed. Ionanthe fought for breath, for the strength to endure—and for purchase, so as not to lose her place on the sharp incline.
The summit was there, within reach—so dazzlingly beautiful, so immortal, so achingly needed that its promise brought the sting of tears to her eyes. And somehow he knew, even through his own journey. Just for a beat of time she wavered, half afraid of reaching the pinnacle, knowing that once she did she must fling herself headlong into its glory and give up all her sense of self. And then Max was there, whispering to her. ‘Now…’ His hand reached for hers, his fingers entwining with hers, holding her safe as the moment came and together they defied time and mortality. Together…
As the force of the moment shook her body, the knowledge burned into Ionanthe’s spirit that in those final seconds, with the peak so close and yet not reached, all she had wanted—all she had ached and yearned for—was to reach it with Max. Not one thought had she had for the son for whom she had married Max and begun the journey they had just completed. Not one thought had she given to the people. Her sacrifice of self had not been for them but instead for the need that had burned in her for the man who was now holding her.
‘Max?’
The sound of his name, spoken in a voice drenched with a heart-aching mix of emotions, had Max drawing Ionanthe closer to him, covering her body with the protective warmth and strength of his own in the same way that he suddenly longed to cloak her emotions and keep her from pain. He had driven her hard, fuelled by anger to punish her for the damage she had done to his pride, but now, rather than flaunt his triumph to her, he wanted instead to protect her.
As he held her Max felt Ionanthe slip into sleep, her breathing becoming even and soft against his skin. Very carefully and gently he detached himself from her, stilling when in her sleep she frowned, as though reluctant to let him go. He continued when she didn’t wake. There were things he had to do, duties he had to perform, responsibilities he could not and should not evade.
CHAPTER SIX
SOMETHING sweetly juicy was moistening her dry lips, causing her to part them the better to taste it. The pleasurable sensation woke Ionanthe from her sleep.
Fresh peach! A luxury in December, and grown, she remembered, in the hothouses of the summer palace, built in the eighteenth century on the site where centuries before the Moorish rulers of the island had also taken advantage of the most southerly facing coastline of Fortenegro to cultivate dates and grow peaches.
A more concerned and less selfish ruler would have used that fertile and protected land for the good of his people, rather than himself, ordering that the land be turned over to the production of fruit and vegetables for the export markets of Northern Europe. It was equally selfish of her to enjoy the taste of something grown only for the pleasure of one selfish man. But her mouth was dry, and the scent of the fruit as well as its taste was tormenting her senses. Slowly, Ionanthe opened her eyes.
Beyond the windows the sky was still night-dark, but now in the room beyond the bedroom a fire burned in the modern central fireplace, throwing out from its flames soft colour and warmth.
It was Max who was tempting her, his skin tanned against the whiteness of the towelling robe he was wearing, his feet bare—as he would be beneath his robe. A huge lump formed in her throat. She reached up to push away his hand, chagrin charging her emotions. But Max was ready for her rejection, his free hand firmly cupping the side of her face.
‘You should eat.’
The words were calm enough, but something her body heard in them that her ears could not sent a stab of something primitive and shamefully sweet kicking through her, and this time when he offered her the fruit her fingers rested on his wrist, as though she feared he might withdraw before she could bite into the slice of juicy peach.
Its taste was heavenly, sharply sweet, quenching her thirst.
‘More?’ Max asked softly.
Again her body responded ahead of her mind—her breath quickening, her gaze sleepily possessive as it fastened on his lips, watching him speak to her. Her assent might only have been a brief nod of her head, but it was enough. More than enough, she recognized, when Max held out to her the cream silk peignoir she had bought on impulse in Paris whilst waiting for her connecting flight to the island. Little had she known then just where and how she would be wearing it.
Ionanthe trembled a little as she turned her back on him to slip her arms into its sleeves. She had had to step from the bed naked, and she had been aware when she did so of the unashamed and intent way in which he had openly absorbed her nakedness. Now, with the warmth of that watchful caress still upon her, she trembled slightly. Because of the way he had looked at her, or because of her own secret but equally unashamed deep-rooted enjoyment of that visual caress from a sexually triumphant man in possession?
Out of nowhere a new road had been carved through the once impenetrable barriers of her mind, allowing her access to places within herself she didn’t really want to go. It was easier to focus on other things—such as the fact that Max had obviously been busy whilst she had slept, as evidenced by the lit fire and the small banquet she could now see laid out on low tables within reach of the sitting room’s luxuriously comfortable and deeply upholstered sofas. She could see fruit from the royal succession houses—peach, fig, nectarines—and almond sweets dusted with sugar—an Island speciality like the delicately flavoured local goats cheese, roasted and mixed with salad, served with seeded flat unleavened local bread and island-grown olives. There was even a bottle of the island’s wine, although it was a glass of champagne that Max now poured for her.
Her sister’s favourite drink. Her hand trembled, her heart chilling.
Max watched Ionanthe, trying to hold on to his resolution. He had chosen their food deliberately, focusing on what the island produced in an attempt to remind himself of his duty instead of giving way to his personal need.
Only now, in the aftermath of their shared passion, was the true legacy of what he had done hitting him. He had allowed his pride and his anger to push him into ignoring the warnings he had already registered, which he should have listened to. Warnings such as the unexpectedly powerful effect Ionanthe had had on his senses at their first meeting. Warnings regarding his increasing awareness of his desire for her. Warnings which had urged him to recognise that it would be fatally easy to step off the path he had chosen for himself. Because—most dangerous of all—it wasn’t merely physically that she affected him.
Was she aware that the small banquet in front of her comprised food and drink that came from the island but which was available only to the very wealthy? This kind of food and drink could and should provide not only a better diet for the people of the island but could also be exported, to provide them with a better income and bring in money which could be invested to the benefit of everyone—helping to pay for an improved infrastructure, for schools and hospitals and ultimately, through them, bringing better jobs for people and brighter futures. Or was she oblivious to all of that? Unknowing and uncaring?
Even worse, was she, as her sister had been, not just oblivious to but actively against the plans he had to persuade those who held most of the island’s fertile land by virtue of nothing more than inherited titles to allow it to be let out at a peppercorn rent for the benefit of the people? He planned to do so with much of the land he himself as Prince now owned. But her grandfather, after all, had been the most antagonistic of all his courtiers, and Max had swiftly come to recognise that the Baron’s plan to marry his granddaughter to him had not just been to secure for her the highest status in the island but, more ambitiously, because he had hoped to influence and if possible rule the island from behind the throne.
Max could still remember the quarrel between them after he had told Eloise that he would not take her to South of France to attend a celebrity party because he had set up a meeting with some Spanish growers whose advice he wanted to seek. She had announced with semi-drunken spite that he was a fool, and that her grandfather would never allow him to put his plans into practice.
He had known then that their marriage was dead. The revulsion with which Eloise had filled him had ensured that.
And Ionanthe was her sister. Brought up by the same man and in the same manner. He must not forget that.
He waited for her to take the glass of champagne he had poured for her, but Ionanthe shook her head.
‘Some, wine, then?’ he offered. ‘Although I should warn you that it is strong and…’
‘You should warn me?’ Ionanthe stopped him. ‘You seem to be forgetting that I grew up here—that I am perfectly well aware of the strength of our home-grown wine.’ As she spoke Ionanthe reached for the bottle and poured herself a glass. She would rather have drunk poison, she told herself bitterly, than to drink her sister’s beloved bubbly.
The truth was that she rarely drank alcohol at all, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. Lifting her glass to her lips, she took a deep swallow. The firelight on the glass warmed the potent darkness of its contents, just as the wine itself was now warming her, spreading a heat that relaxed the angry tension that had been clutching tight fingers round her heart.
She drank some more, grateful for the wine’s immediate and empowering effect on her senses. And then she made the mistake of looking directly at Max, and immediately that empowerment transformed itself into a dizzying and weakening surge of female awareness of his maleness, heightened by her body’s memory of the pleasure he had already shown it.
Could two gulps of wine be enough to make her feel like this? Far more likely her blood sugar level had plunged and she needed something to eat, Ionanthe reassured herself, turning abruptly towards the table. Embarrassingly, she almost stumbled, so that Max had to step forward and take hold of her.
Wide-eyed, she looked up at him. Why was it that the expensive fabric of her peignoir suddenly felt oppressive? Its touch was making her nipples feel so acutely sensitive that she wanted to pull it off. Why was it, too, that her heart was thudding so heavily and so unsteadily?
Steadying her with one hand, Max removed the wine glass from her hold with the other, putting it down and then telling her, ‘I think you should sit down, don’t you?’ He guided her towards the sofa.
No, Ionanthe thought rebelliously as he calmly but firmly urged her onto the sofa. What I should do is go back to bed, so that you can do everything you did before all over again.
Shock spiralled through her. Was she really having such alien thoughts? Where had they come from?
Max watched her with a small frown. She’d hardly touched the wine and yet her cheeks were flushed, her eyes brilliant, her lips swollen with promise.
His groin began to ache. His frown deepened. More sex wasn’t what he had had in mind when he had ordered this intimate supper and instructed the staff to leave them alone. What he had wanted to do was find out what basis they might have for beginning a relationship that might work.
He reached for the plate of figs that was close to his hand, intending only to ensure that Ionanthe had something to eat. But when he offered the plate to her she used her free hand to hold his wrist as she took one, so that he could not put the plate down or step back from her without pushing her away.
Her gaze on his, she bit into the fruit, causing its dusting of powdered sugar to cling to her lips and fall to her body, speckling the flesh exposed by the opening of her robe.
The fig was sweet and sticky. When she had finished eating it Ionanthe looked round for a napkin, and then put one of her fingers in her mouth and licked it.
Max felt reaction implode inside him, wiring his whole body to immediate fierce desire. He put down the plate and reached for Ionanthe’s arm, taking the sticky fingers one by one into his own mouth and sucking slowly on them.
Ionanthe drew in her breath and then exhaled it on a small sob of physical delight, silenced when Max released her hand to kiss the sweetness from her mouth. When she wanted to demand something more intimate he used his tongue to lick the sugar from her skin at the V her robe exposed—the tantalisingly small area of flesh where her breasts started to rise from the valley between them. Her nipples pressed eagerly against her peignoir, the agitation of her breathing increasing the silk’s movement against them so that the delicate friction became a torment of aroused sensitivity. Wild thoughts flashed though her head, filling her with reckless excitement.
She pushed Max away, giving him a small secret smile when he obeyed, but looked as though he had done so with reluctance. She reached for the plate Max had put down and then, balancing it on her lap, unfastened her wrap and shrugged her arms free of it. It slipped down to pool round her waist, leaving the top half of her body to be clothed only by firelight. Then, watching Max as she did so, she picked up one of the figs and began to eat it, very slowly, whilst its sugar coating drifted down onto her naked breasts.
Liquid fire ran through Max’s veins. Ionanthe’s playful sensuality intoxicated him far more than any amount of alcohol might have done. Had she somehow known what was going on inside his head earlier, when he had licked the sugar from her skin? Had she read his mind and guessed then that mentally he was visualising her exactly as she was now? No, not exactly as she was now, he admitted. His imagination had not had the power to do her full justice. It had not, for instance, painted her nipples with such dark swollen crowns that the sugar speckling them made him want not merely to lick it from them but to taste them and suck them.
Ionanthe watched Max with the liquid-dark secret knowledge of a woman. The kind of knowledge that came not just from knowing a man in the most intimate physical way there was, but also from seeing the pure essence of him laid bare through the power of mutual desire and need. Without having to question or doubt Ionanthe knew beyond mere ordinary knowing that the desire running through her, the images inside her head, the need driving her, were all things that were in their different ways reflections of what Max himself was experiencing.
When he came to her without haste, his desire so charged that she could feel its heat burning her own skin, she was ready for him. There was no need for any words between them. She bit deeply into the small fruit he was holding out to her, and then offered him the unbitten half, keeping his gaze even when his fingers gripped her wrist and his lips brushed her fingertips as he took the fruit from her hold.
Without words to accompany them, somehow the symbolic gestures they were sharing took on an almost sacred intimacy—as though in some way they were enacting a ritual that went all the way back into the mists of human time, as though the blood of the ancestry they shared mingled with their own to move powerfully and quicken within them, taking them to heights that for Ionanthe would have been unimaginable twenty-four hours beforehand.
As the firelight played and glistened on their desire-drenched bodies they came together, to ascend the peak and then to freefall from it into infinity—not just once, but throughout all the night hours as the desire within them rose higher to new heights by way of new pleasures.
And not once, as her body strained for pleasure and release, did Ionanthe think of the son she had sworn to herself was the only purpose for her being here.
The morning came slowly and kindly, waking Max first, so that he had the pleasure of watching Ionanthe whilst she slept, her body resting against his, her skin smelling of the musky intimacy of the night and of her, the heady combination sending a slow wave of freshly burgeoning desire uncurling within him.
Whilst he watched her Ionanthe’s eyes opened. Perhaps mystically she had sensed his need, as though it had called out to her, bringing her from the depths of sleep. Max derided himself inwardly for the danger of such thoughts. It was simply because he had moved that he had woken her. Nothing more. And yet without a word Ionanthe leaned over him, seeking his lips with her own, her hand sliding down his naked body until she reached the rigid swell of his penis.
Her kiss deepened, and her swift movement to straddle him surprised and delighted him. His hands immediately went to her hips to assist her as he lifted her onto his erection.
Max’s eyes closed in mute pleasure as she took him slowly into her body, tormenting him a little with the soft caress of her muscles. And then, just when he thought the torment would be too much for him, Ionanthe began to rise and fall on him, slowly at first, taking him deeper and deeper within herself, holding him there, and then faster—until he was the one holding her down onto him, and she was the one crying out the ache of her need and the glory of its fulfilment.
Afterwards they showered together—Max quickly, leaving Ionanthe alone to enjoy the warmth of the water.
When she returned to the bedroom she saw that he had made a small breakfast for them of tea and toast.
‘Of course if you’d also like some fruit…’ Max teased her, but Ionanthe shook her head even whilst the colour bloomed in her face.
She felt too languid to quarrel with him. Too… Too satisfied? Her face burned hotter.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS six hours and ten minutes since she had woken up alone in bed to the realisation of what she had done. And it was over eight hours since she had last seen Max—longer since they had last…
