Maxie stared down into those stunning dark golden eyes. Fear and fascination fought for supremacy inside her. She could feel the raw magnetism of him reaching out to entrap her and she knew her own weakness more and more with every passing second in his company. She hated him but she wanted him too, with a bone-deep yearning for physical contact that tormented her this close to him. She was appalled by the strength of his sexual sway over her, shattered that she could be so treacherously vulnerable with a male of his ilk.
‘Come here...stop holding back,’ Angelos urged softly. ‘Neither of us can win a battle like this. Do we not both suffer? I faithfully promise that I will never, ever take advantage of you as Leland. did—’
‘What are you trying to do right now?’ Maxie condemned strickenly.
‘Trying to persuade you that trusting me would be in your best interests. And I’m not laying a finger on you,’ Angelos added, as if he expected acclaim for that remarkable restraint.
And the terrible irony, she registered then, was that she wanted him to touch her. Her bright eyes pools of sapphire-blue dismay and hunger, she stared down at him. Reaching up to loosen the band confining her hair to the nape of her neck, Angelos trailed it gently free to wind long brown fingers into the tumbling strands and slowly tug her down to him.
‘But that’s not what you want either, is it?’ he said perceptively.
‘No...’ Her skin burning beneath the caress of the blunt forefinger that skated along her tremulous and full lower lip, she shivered violently. ‘But I won’t give in. This attraction means nothing to me,’ she swore raggedly. ‘It won’t influence my brain—’
‘What a heady challenge...’ Black eyes flaring with golden heat held her sensually bemused gaze.
‘I’m not a challenge, I’m a woman...’ Maxie fumbled in desperation to make her feelings clear but she didn’t have the words or, it seemed, the self-discipline to pull back from his embrace.
‘A hell of a woman, to fight me like this,’ Angelos confirmed, with a thickened appreciation that made her heart pound like mad in her eardrums and a tide of disorientating dizziness enclose her. ‘A woman worth fighting for. If you could just rise above this current inconvenient desire to turn over a new leaf—’
‘But—’
‘No buts.’ Angelos leant up to brush his lips in subtle glancing punishment over her parted ones, scanning her with fierce sexual hunger and conviction. ‘You need me.’
‘No...’ she whispered feverishly.
‘Yes...’ Dipping his tongue in a snaking explorative flick into her open mouth, Angelos jolted her with such an overpowering stab of excitement, she almost collapsed down on top of him.
Pressing his advantage with a ruthless sense of timing, Angelos tumbled her the rest of the way and gathered her into his arms. She gasped again, ‘No.’
The palm curving over a pouting, swollen breast stilled. Her nipple was a hard, straining bud that ached and begged for his attention, and she let her swimming head drop down on the pillow while she fought desperately for control. She focused on him. The brilliant eyes, the strong nose, the ruthless mouth. And that appalling tide of painful craving simply mushroomed instead of fading.
‘No?’ Angelos queried lazily.
She inched forward like a moth to a candle flame, seekmg the heat and virility she could not resist, all thought suspended. He recognised surrender when he saw it, and with a wolfish smile of reward he closed his mouth hungrily over hers and she burned up like a shooting star streaking through the heavens at impossible speed, embracing destruction as if she had been born to seek it.
He curved back from her when her every sense was thrumming unbearably, her whole body shaking on a peak of frantic anticipation, and eased one hand beneath the T-shirt to curve it to her bare breasts. She whimpered and jerked, the most terrifying surge of hunger taking over as his expert fingers tugged on her tender nipples and then his caressing mouth went there instead. For long, timeless minutes, Maxie was a shuddering wreck of writhing, gasping response, clutching at him, clutching at his hair, her denim-clad hips rising off the bed in helpless invitation.
Abruptly Angelos tensed and jerked up his dark head, frowning. ‘What’s that?’ he demanded.
‘W-what’s what?’ she stammered blankly.
‘Someone’s thumping on the front door.’
By then already engaged in gaping down at her own shamelessly bared breasts, the damp evidence of his carnal ministrations making the distended pink buds look even more wanton, Maxie gulped. With a low moan of distress she threw herself off the bed onto quaking legs.
‘You swine,’ she accused shakily, hauling down her T-shirt, crossing trembling arms and then rushing for the stairs.
She flung open the front door. Her nearest neighbour, Patrick Devenson, who had called in to introduce himself the day before, stared in at her. ‘Are you aware that you have a Ferrari upended in your stream?’
Dumbly, still trembling from the narrowness of her escape from Angelos and his seductive wiles, Maxie nodded like a wooden marionette.
The husky blond veterinary surgeon frowned down at her. ‘I was driving home and I saw this strange shape from the road, and, knowing you’re on your own here, I thought I’d better check it out. Are you OK?’
‘The driver’s upstairs, lying down,’ Maxie managed to say.
‘Want me to take a look?’
‘No need,’ she hastened to assert breathlessly.
‘Do you want me to ring a doctor?’
Maxie focused on the mobile in its holder at his waist. ‘I’d be terribly grateful if you’d let me use that to make a call.’
‘No problem...’ Patrick said easily, and passed the phone over. ‘Mind if I step in out of the rain?’
‘Sorry, not at all.’
Maxie walked upstairs rigid-backed, crossed the room and plonked the phone down on the bed beside Angelos. ‘Call for transport out of here or I’ll throw you out in the rain!’
His stunningly handsome features froze into impassivity, but not before she saw the wild burn of outrage flare in the depths of his brilliant eyes. He stabbed the buttons, loosed a flood of bitten-out Greek instructions and then, cutting the connection, sprang instantly out of bed. Maddeningly, he swayed slightly.
But Maxie was less affected by that than by her first intimidating look at a naked and very aroused male. Colouring hotly, she dragged her shaken scrutiny from him and fled downstairs again.
‘Thanks,’ she told Patrick.
‘Had a drink or two, had he? Wicked putting a machine like that in for a swim,’ Patrick remarked with typical male superiority as he moved very slowly back to the door. ‘Your boyfriend?’
‘No, he’s not.’
‘Dinner with me then, tomorrow night?’
Words of automatic refusal brimmed on Maxie’s lips, and then she hesitated. ‘Why not?’ she responded after that brief pause for thought. She was well aware that Angelos had to be hearing every word of the conversation.
‘Wonderful!’ Patrick breathed with unconcealed pleasure. ‘Eight suit you?’
‘Lovely.’
She watched him swing cheerfully back into his four-wheel drive and thought about how open and uncomplicated he was in comparison to Angelos, who was so devious and manipulative he would contrive to zigzag down a perfectly straight line. And she hated Angelos, she really did.
Hot tears stung her eyes then, and she blinked them back furiously. She hated him for showing her all over again how weak and foolish she could be. She hated that cool, clever brain he pitted against her, that brilliantly persuasive tongue that could make the unacceptable sound tempting, and that awesome and terrifying sexual heat he unleashed on her whenever she was vulnerable.
Barely five minutes later, Angelos strode fully dressed into the front room where she was waiting. He radiated black fury, stormy eyes glittering, sensual mouth compressed, rock-hard jawline at an aggressive angle. His hostile vibrations lanced through the already tense atmosphere, threatening to set it on fire.
‘You bitch...’ Angelos breathed, so hoarsely it sounded as if he could hardly get the words out. ‘One minute you’re in bed with me and the next you’re making a date with another man within my hearing!’
‘I wasn’t in bed with you, not the way you’re implying.’ Her slender hands knotted into taut fists of determination by her side, Maxie stood her ground, cringing with angry self-loathing only inside herself.
‘You don’t want any other man!’ Angelos launched at her with derisive and shocking candour. ‘You want me!’
Maxie was bone-white, her knees wobbling. In a rage, Angelos was pure intimidation; there was nothing he would not say. ‘I won’t be your mistress. I made that clear that from the start,’ she countered in a ragged rush. ‘And even if I had slept with you just now, I would still have asked you to leave. I will not be cajoled, manipulated or seduced into a relationship that I would find degrading—’
‘Only an innocent can be seduced.’ His accent harshened with incredulity over that particular choice of word. ‘Degrading?’ Outrage clenched his vibrant dark features hard. ‘Fool that I am, I would have treated you like a precious jewel!’