Julia James - Love Islands - Secret Escapes

With a groan, he let her go, wrenching his mouth from hers, pulling his hands away, stepping back from her.

There was a dazed expression on her face, the bewilderment of loss in her eyes—her huge, widened eyes—and their pupils were flaring with desire, arousal...

He shook his head. Held up his hands. Stepped further back.

‘Goodnight!’ he said.

His voice was shaken, he could hear it, and he could feel the heat in his body still, the fullness still there, but he had to beat it back, subdue it. Whatever primal hunger was possessing him, he had to defeat it. To indulge himself now, when far too much wine and champagne was coursing through her, would be unforgivable.

For a second a stricken look was there in her eyes—a look that somehow pierced him like a stiletto blade in his throat—and then, like the sun coming out from a cloud, dazzling in its brightness, she smiled. Her face lit up once more.

‘Goodnight!’ she breathed. ‘Oh, goodnight!’

He backed to the door. He did not want to do this. Did not want to leave. But he had to. Had to get back to his room—had to get that cold shower sluicing down over his body...had to!

As he reached the door she lifted her hand from one side of her bodice, dangerously exposing yet more of her sweet, succulent flesh, a final torment for him, and then, with another dazzling smile, an insouciant, joyous gesture, she kissed her fingers and blew the kiss to him.

‘Thank you!’

They were the last words he heard before he got out through the door and pulled it shut, to keep him safe.

Safe from the only thing in the world he wanted to do right now...

Go right back in and sweep her into his arms.

* * *

Ellen was asleep, but someone was making her wake up. A hand was on her shoulder, gently shaking her. She shrugged it off, nestled back down into her pillows, but the hand returned. Someone said something to her, but she didn’t know what. It was foreign. Greek?

Greek!

She bolted upright, only just having the presence of mind to clutch her bedclothes to her, her eyes flaring open. Max Vasilikos, freshly showered—she could tell from the damp hair feathering his forehead and the towelling robe that emphasised the Mediterranean tan of his skin—was sitting on her bed.

‘How are you feeling?’ he enquired. His voice was urbane, equable—and amused.

She pushed her hair out of her face. It seemed to her to be softer than it usually was, and finer, and less heavy. She blinked, looking around her, dragging her gaze past the figure of the man sitting at the foot of the bed, with his dark eyes resting on her speculatively and a curve at his sculpted mouth that suddenly made her very, very aware of her state of dishevelment.

‘Um—fine,’ she got out.

Was she fine? she wondered. She blinked. Yes, she did seem to be OK. Memory came rushing back, tumbling into her head like a series of snapshots. The ball—that fantastic, gorgeous, wonderful ball! Chatting away to all those people over dinner. Dancing with Max.

Kissing Max...

Colour flared in her cheeks as memory flooded her, intense and vivid.

He kissed me! Max Vasilikos—the man who made me beautiful and waltzed the night away with me!

Max saw the colour flare and knew what she was thinking. It was what he was only too conscious of himself. His night had not been peaceful. It had been disturbed by dreams. Dreams in which there had been no need to tear himself away from the woman he’d been kissing.

No—don’t think about it now! Not when he was sitting on her bed and she was only a metre away from him, her naked body shielded only by the sheet she was clutching to her, her lush hair tumbling wantonly around her shoulders, her smeared mascara making her eyes smoky and deep...

He got to his feet, stepping away from the bed. Well away. ‘I’ve ordered brunch,’ he told her. ‘So have a wake-up shower and come on through.’

She nodded, and waited till he was well clear of the room before getting up.

It was strange, she thought as she caught her reflection in the mirror of the en-suite bathroom... She was so used to her body, so used to thinking it large and muscular and unattractive. And yet now— Her eyes held her own naked reflection. Saw it for the very first time not through Chloe’s eyes, but through someone else’s completely.

Max’s eyes...

Tall, with sculpted shoulders, taut arms, generous breasts, flat abs, toned glutes, strong quads, long legs. A goddess body?

And her face still held the beauty conjured from it by those skilful magic-making stylists last night. Her fingers lifted uncertainly to her hair. Whatever those chattering women had done to it, it was amazing. Its colour was so much richer, glowing in the lights around the vanity unit, and it felt so light on her head, yet it waved in lush tresses down over her shoulders, softening her face, her jaw, caressing her neck. She touched her mouth with her fingertips—elongated nails still crimson with varnish—and felt a smile part her mouth.

A goddess indeed...

She heard Max’s words in her head, felt his eyes on her, his hand on her spine as they’d waltzed.

The melody played in her head again. Happiness filled her. Whatever her worries, whatever her woes, this...this would always be with her now.

He made me beautiful.

He might be trying to take her beloved home from her, but he had given her something she had never thought to have—something that Chloe’s cruelty had taken from her, that her own self-doubt, self-criticism had let her stepsister take from her.

And Max—wonderful, wonderful Max!—had now restored it to her.

With a smile of wonder and gratitude still playing on her lips she piled her hair up, pinned it loosely, and stepped into the shower unit. Brunch beckoned—and so did the thought of seeing Max again.

Even if only for what was left of the morning.

A pang smote her. She swallowed as the hot water plunged down over her shoulders, rousing her to full wakefulness. Suddenly the thought of leaving him, of returning home to Haughton, seemed like the worst thing in the world.

But the ball is over—and it’s time to go home.

For the first time in her life she did not want to.

* * *

Max was already seated at the table when Ellen emerged. He was clad, like her, in a white towelling robe. Seeing him like that seemed suddenly very...intimate.

Into her head came the memory, vivid and real, of how he had kissed her.

Oh, she might have been intoxicated—with champagne and wine, with music and wonder—but that could not dim the searing memory.

Instantly she reproved herself fiercely.

It was just a kiss! Don’t make anything of it! It was only a kiss. It meant nothing—just a way to say goodnight.

Yet even as she told herself that she could feel the colour flare in her face. Busily, she sat herself down, hoping Max hadn’t seen. Didn’t know the reason for it.

It would have meant nothing to him—think how many women he’s kissed in his life! With looks like his...

And one of those women—the most recent—had been a film star. To a man used to kissing film stars—used to doing a whole lot more than kissing!—bestowing a goodnight kiss on her was...well, nothing.

But not to me.

Her eyes flickered a moment. No, it had not been nothing to her...

To me his kiss was the ultimate breaking of Chloe’s vicious hex. The one I gave in to—was too cowed to fight, to deny. I gave her an easy victory. A victory she revelled in!

Her expression steeled. But no more. Chloe’s cruel mental domination of her was over. She had to keep it that way.

She looked across at Max. His eyes were resting on her with an expression in them that was half glinting, half veiled. She met it square-on, refusing to let any self-conscious memory colour her cheeks. Then she looked at the lavish brunch spread out before her. She was instantly hungry.