The Innocent Behind The Scandal - Abby Green Page 0,49

huge palazzos and bathing everything in a rosy golden light.

It was so beautiful that Zoe’s breath caught. She lifted her camera, even though she knew that to try and capture it would fail miserably. But she needed to have some record of this moment, even if it would be infinitely inferior. Because she knew it wouldn’t happen again.

When they arrived back at the hotel Maks barely acknowledged the manager who leapt to attention. Zoe shot him an apologetic smile as Maks pulled her into the elevator with indecent haste.

As soon as they got to the suite he closed the door and looked at Zoe. For a charged moment neither one moved. Zoe had no idea who moved first, but she was in Maks’s arms, her legs wrapped around his waist, her mouth on every bit of exposed skin she could find as he walked them into the massive bedroom.

The French doors were open, and the curtains moved gently in the warm evening air, but Zoe was oblivious to everything but the spectacle of Maks’s body being revealed, inch by delicious inch, as he stripped off his clothes until he was naked.

‘Now you...’

He started undoing her shirt, pushing it open, pulling the lace cups of her bra down so he could cup her breasts and push her nipples into pouting peaks, begging for his hot mouth. Zoe clasped his head in her hands as his wicked mouth tended to her sensitive flesh, his hot tongue leaving a trail of fire.

Her shirt and bra were dispensed with. Shoes kicked off. Trousers opened and pulled down. Underwear ripped. She didn’t care. She just craved contact. Mutual desperation fuelled their movements, and they took a simultaneous breath of relief when Maks entered her on a smooth thrust.

But the relief was soon replaced with urgency as the tension built and built, until Zoe was begging incoherently for Maks to release them both... And even though she’d been begging for it, when it came she still wasn’t ready.

She was tossed high, and then fell deep down into a whirlpool of pleasure so intense that she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Could only hold on as the storm racked Maks’s body too and only then the tumult subsided.

Maks slumped over her body, still embedded deeply, and Zoe wrapped her legs around him and wished that this moment would never end.

When Maks woke, the bedroom was filled with the pearlescent light of dawn. He felt drunk, but it wasn’t from alcohol. It was from an overload of sensual pleasure. Zoe lay curled into his side, one arm thrown over his chest and one leg over his thigh, her foot locked behind his knee, as if to stop him from going anywhere.

He extricated himself carefully from her embrace, the nerve-ends in his body firing to life as he touched the plump curve of one breast and felt the indentation of her waist...one silky thigh.

She curled up on her side, saying something in her sleep. Maks pulled a sheet over her. She was adorably slow to get going in the morning, sleepy and sexy.

Naked, he went to the open window and stood there for a moment, relishing the cool morning breeze on his overheated skin. He felt utterly sated, and yet a delicious tendril of anticipation coiled in his gut.

He heard movement behind him and looked around, a smile curving his mouth, his blood already heating at the thought of waking Zoe up in a very explicit—

Click. She was sitting up in bed and she had her camera lifted to her face. She was taking pictures.

At first Maks’s smile stayed in place. ‘What are you doing?’

Click. It was as if the sound of the shutter woke him from a trance. He was naked. She was taking pictures.

His smile faded. He said it again. ‘What are you doing?’

Zoe lowered the camera. Not even her bare breasts could distract Maks from the sudden cold rush of reality. And the feeling of intense exposure.

‘I woke up and you looked so beautiful in the light... I just... I didn’t think...’

Maks shook his head. ‘Don’t do that.’

She put the camera down in her lap. Her eyes were wide. ‘Maks, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You looked so beautiful in the light... I just acted on instinct.’

A sense of vulnerability prickled over his skin. A sense of waking out of a deep dream. He felt cold, all of a sudden. He needed to get away from Zoe’s huge eyes.

‘I’m taking a shower.’

‘Maks...?’

But he didn’t turn back.

He stood