The Holiday Escapes Collection. Sandra Marton

the sheets...no,’ Acheron agreed silkily.

      ‘You’ve been told you’re wonderful?’

      ‘Many times. I’m filthy rich. Telling me I’m rubbish in bed—even if it’s true—wouldn’t be profitable,’ he advanced with cynical cool.

      Consternation seized Tabby. ‘That’s awful—’

      ‘Awful,’ he mimicked, stroking the most sensitive spot on her whole body so that she jackknifed back against him with a startled yelp.

      ‘I don’t want your money,’ Tabby exclaimed helplessly. ‘I just want your body!’

      A stark little silence fell, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut in horror. I didn’t say that, I couldn’t possibly have said that!

      ‘I’ve got no objections to that goal,’ Acheron husked, biting at her ear lobe with erotic intent, ostensibly undeterred by her claim. ‘It’s earthy and honest...why not?’

      He touched her again and her mortification drowned in a sea of shivering response. She lay back against him, tiny muscles twitching, soothed by the heat and strength of him even as that amplified physical contact heightened her awareness. With immense delicacy he stroked the seam of her femininity and then slid inside where she was warm and wet and, oh, so needy. She quivered, pitched straight to a high of longing that she couldn’t quell or even control. He sank a finger inside her, and she jerked and gasped as he plunged slowly in and out, raising her temperature to boiling point, making her squirm and shift, forgetting even the twinges of pain in her ankle.

      ‘Hot, tight, ready,’ Acheron growled hungrily in her ear as she arched back into his lean, hard body, instinctively seeking the fulfilment that only he could give while he angled away from her to don a condom. ‘I’ve been fantasising about this for days.’

      ‘Days?’ she parroted in surprise as he lifted her undamaged leg to spread her open for him.

      ‘Every night since that first night, every day I saw you in that teeny tiny bikini, glyka mou,’ Acheron confided, tilting her forward, long fingers tightening their hold on her slender thigh as he entered her with a groan of intense masculine satisfaction.

      A muffled scream of pleasure was torn from Tabby’s throat as her body was forced to adjust to his size, her inner channel stretching to the brink of insane pleasure.

      ‘All right?’ Acheron murmured thickly.

      ‘Well, I wouldn’t want you to answer your phone right now!’ Tabby admitted shakily, her heart thundering, her blood racing, her whole body thrumming with sensation as he eased back and then slammed into her again, jolting her with wicked pleasure.

      ‘No boundaries!’ he ground out forcefully. ‘No boundaries between us!’

      She couldn’t think, couldn’t speak for the intensity of what he was making her feel. He tugged her head back and took her mouth with passionate, driving need and the taste and heat of him scorched her all the while the slow, sure thrust of his engorged shaft stimulated her senses to an unbearable peak of excitement. Her hips writhed. The pace quickened. The heat built. She was crying out, sobbing she knew not what when her wayward body finally clamped down convulsively on him and she soared over the edge in a frenzied crescendo of release that took her by storm.

      Ecstasy was still rippling through her weak body in small blissful waves when he wrapped his arms round her and kept her close.

      ‘You’re amazing,’ he husked.

      ‘You too,’ she whispered, exhaustion pinning her to the bed.

      ‘And we’re going to do this over and over again,’ Acheron decreed with lethally sexy assurance. ‘No more cold showers, no more separate beds, no more posing in teeny tiny bikinis I can’t rip off.’

      ‘Sleepy,’ she framed apologetically.

      ‘Sleep...you’re going to need all your energy,’ he said.

       CHAPTER NINE

      WHEN TABBY WOKE for the fourth time in twelve hours, she was totally disorientated and she blinked in the strong sunlight flooding through the French windows. A split second later, she sat up and checked her watch to discover that it was mid-afternoon.

      My goodness, she had slept half the day away! In guilty dismay, she clambered awkwardly out of bed, learning that Acheron had got it right when he had suggested she would feel better in the morning. Her hip still ached like the very devil but the pain in her ankle had become more bearable. Curious to see her surroundings, having arrived in complete darkness the night before, she limped over to the French windows with the aid of her stick and went out onto the sunlit balcony to stand at the rail.

      A craggy cove stretched out below her, the towering rocks encircling a stretch of pure white sand lapped by a turquoise sea so clear she could see the ocean bottom. The lush tree-filled gardens ran right to the edge of the beach. It was absolutely idyllic and very beautiful but Tabby’s attention was drawn straight to the couple standing together in the rippling surf. Amber’s pram was parked in the shadow of the rocks and Melinda, clad in a minuscule red bikini that exaggerated her bountiful curves, was talking with apparent urgency to Acheron, whose lean, powerful body was sheathed only in trunks.

      It was an unexpectedly intimate and disturbing sight, and Tabby couldn’t take her eyes off the couple, jealousy spearing through her with an immediacy that appalled her. She jerked in dismay and snatched in a startled breath when Melinda rested a hand down on Acheron’s arm. To his credit the contact only lasted for a second because he took an immediate step back from the forward blonde and with a brief final word strode back across the sand towards the house. Tabby hobbled back hurriedly indoors to get dressed, her brain struggling to encompass what she had seen at the same time as she accepted that, yet again, the very foundations of her relationship with the man she had married had been demolished and everything had changed.

      Sexual desire had stimulated that change, she conceded, shame slivering through her. No boundaries, Acheron had proclaimed with passion and he was certainly correct on that score: the rules she had tried to impose had been blown right out of the water along with her nonsensical belief that she could resist him. Even more pertinently, seeing Melinda touch Acheron had inflamed her with ferocious possessiveness and the sort of angry jealous feelings she had never before experienced. What did that say about her intelligence? What was she letting him do to her? Where were these violent conflicting emotions coming from? She was behaving like a lovesick idiot! Was that the problem? Had lust first sucked her in and then left her childishly infatuated with him?

      Opening her as yet still packed cases, she extracted underwear and a long, loose sundress before stepping into the bathroom to freshen up. The whole process took her much longer than usual having to wash her hair in the sink, which was a challenge, and left the bathroom floor swimming by the time she had finished. When she finally emerged after mopping dry the floor, however, she felt more like herself with clean, tidy hair and a little make-up applied.

      Acheron strolled into the bedroom and there Tabby was; captured in a patch of sunlight, long golden hair rippling down to softly frame her delicate features, her tiny body sylphlike in a pale blue dress that reflected her amazing eyes, which were currently pools of anxious troubled violet that evaded his. She was so open, so honest in her reactions, it literally shocked him. Nothing was concealed; nothing was hidden from him. His broad chest tightened as he expelled his breath and gritted his teeth. He could not begin to imagine how frighteningly vulnerable that lack of concealment and reserve made her. If he didn’t act first, she was undoubtedly about to unleash a rash volley of accusations and questions about their renewed intimacy, which threatened to put them both right back where they had started after their car crash wedding night and her proclamation of her unnecessary rules.

      ‘Tabby,’ he murmured evenly, noting avidly that he could see the little points of her deliciously prominent nipples showing below the fine material of her dress as well as the slender outline of her shapely