Alexei was standing over her shedding his clothes with a seething impatience that thrilled her. Lean strong face taut, he viewed her with scorching golden eyes. As he cast aside his shirt, he bent down and raised her up to pull her dress off her without unzipping it. She heard the rip of material, for it had been a neat fit. He flicked loose the catch on the balconette bra that had merely acted as an extra line of suspension and, with it gone, she was naked.
'No, don't you dare try to cover a centimetre of that beautiful bare flesh,' Alexei censured huskily, lifting her up the bed to settle her in a pose that concealed nothing from his burning gaze. 'This is what I wanted from the moment I saw you in the bath earlier. Within seconds I was hotter than hell for you, moraki mou.'
A high-voltage smile of extraordinary sexual power tilted his beautiful mouth and it was just as if he lit a fire inside her. In a flash Billie went from feeling hideously awkward in her unadorned skin to lying back in quivering readiness and acceptance. He wrenched off his silk boxers and came down to her. All rock-hard muscle from his magnificent torso to his flat stomach and long powerful thighs, he was hugely aroused. He brought her hand to the virile shaft rising from the thick dark curls at his groin.
Feeling the pound of the pulse at the heart of her and the moisture there, she closed her fingers round his hard male heat and watched his thick dark lashes sweep down with an uninhibited sensual pleasure that sent the blood pounding at an insane rate through her own veins. With a new boldness she drew him down to her and used her mouth to caress his straining masculinity.
Within the space of a minute he pulled back from her. 'I can't take too much of that,' he confided, his dark deep accented drawl rough with erotic meaning. 'I want to be inside you too badly.'
And he touched her then with infinite skill, his thumb teasing her swollen bud and making her release an abandoned little cry and shiver even as a lean finger probed the slick wetness of her lush opening. As her hips bucked in a movement as old as time he entered her all too willing body with a single driving thrust. Her spine arched and her teeth clenched on the extraordinary tide of sensation as his engorged length stretched her tight inner depths.
'You feel like hot silk,' Alexei ground out, rising over her while gliding into her tender flesh with strong, stirring strokes that fuelled her growing excitement to ever greater heights.
He wanted to make it last but her sheer abandonment to pleasure and the frantic urgency of her movements pushed him to the edge very quickly and created a chain reaction. As Alexei surged into her with ever greater power, it was too much for Billie and she soared into a convulsive orgasm, writhing and crying out with the bittersweet pain of release. While she was still struggling to surface from the incredible intensity of that climax, Alexei's magnificent body shuddered over hers in the grip of the same overwhelming finale.
Afterwards, Billie felt emptied and adrift, totally shattered by the intensity of what she had just experienced. But this time, Alexei did not pull away from her, making her feel alone and uncertain at a most vulnerable time. Still trembling from the explosive force of his own release, he kept her in the circle of his strong arms and kissed her brow in a surprisingly gentle salutation.
'Alexei…' she whispered softly in acknowledgement, her body surrendering to her exhaustion, her eyes sliding closed.
'You're worth going to hell and back for,' he murmured with growling carnal satisfaction. 'Nobody has ever given me that much excitement, moraki mou.'
And Billie drifted off to sleep in his arms, happier than she had ever dreamed she might be after that awful nerve-racking two weeks apart from him. The sex was amazing, she was willing to agree, but that tender kiss and his relaxation with her in the aftermath meant a great deal more to her. She wondered if she would ever fully understand the man she loved. He was so complex, volatile and in every respect unpredictable. And on that frustrated acknowledgement she sank into the deepest sleep she had enjoyed in many weeks.
She awakened, befogged by drowsiness and bewildered, to the bright light of an island morning. Alexei, fully dressed, was standing over the bed.
'Is there no end to your deceptions?' he demanded of her in savage condemnation.
Astonished by that attack, Billie pushed herself up clumsily against the pillows, suddenly conscious of her nudity and holding the sheet to her breasts. Running trembling fingers through her wildly tousled red hair to rake it back off her face, she mumbled, 'What are you talking about? What's wrong?'
'This…this is what's wrong!'
Alexei bit out rawly, flinging a newspaper down on the bed for her to look at. 'You and Damon Marios holding hands on my private beach!'
Her face stiff with shock, Billie glanced down at the page and froze, her skin turning clammy, her throat closing over. It was not the best photo she had ever seen and it seemed to have been digitally enhanced for clarity, but it did show her and Damon on the beach, clearly engaged in intent conversation, her hand in his, her face turned up to his. She was dismayed to recognise that even though her dialogue with Damon had been entirely innocent of even flirtation the photo was misleading, as was the closeness of their bodies.
She flung her head back, green eyes very bright. 'This is not what it looks like,' she whispered shakily.