CHAPTER FOUR

      TIA SUCKED IN a great lungful of air as Max temporarily released her mouth. There was a golden glow of what she fully recognised as lust in his stunning eyes. It didn’t have to be love, she told herself, she wasn’t looking for love yet, was content with a dose of healthy normal lust. In the future, there would be plenty of time and opportunity for her to fall in love. But even so, nothing had ever felt so necessary as Max’s sensual mouth plundering hers and the sweet, sliding invasion of his tongue.

      Her body was all pulled taut and needy with responses that were new to her. Her breasts felt ridiculously sensitive, the tightly beaded tips pushing against the scratchy fabric of her top.

      ‘You should make me wait for this,’ Max growled soft and low, conflict in his hungry gaze as he perused her.

      Already flushed, Tia’s face burned at that unsought advice. ‘I can’t believe you’re saying that to me. I thought you wanted me.’

      ‘Doubt there’s a man in Rio who wouldn’t want you, bella mia,’ Max assured her helplessly. ‘But I also don’t want you to have any regrets.’

      ‘Why on earth would I regret this?’ Tia questioned, sitting lithely up to reclaim his drugging mouth again for herself, hands settling on his warm, wide shoulders, fingers flirting with the silky tips of his black hair. The buzz in her body wouldn’t let her stay still or act compliant.

      Max loosed the halter tie at the nape of her neck and found the soft pouting swell of her breasts with his hands, catching her nipples between thumb and finger to pluck at the swollen buds, pushing her back against the banked-up pillows as she writhed.

      The liquid heat at the heart of her went into a frenzy when he touched her breasts. She pressed her thighs together, head rolling back and shifting restively against the pillow as he released her reddened lips to close his to her straining nipples. The light was burning and her lashes flickered on a sudden view of Max’s dark head over her bare breasts. For an instant she went rigid, mortification threatening to claim her because she wasn’t accustomed to being even partially naked in front of anyone and the shock of that glimpse was extreme. Are you a woman or a mouse? a little voice asked at the back of her head, and the words bubbling on her tongue died there. She knew what she was doing, she did, she told herself, trembling as the heat between her thighs mounted with every tug of his mouth. How could anything that felt so good be wrong?

      Max rearranged her petite body on the bed the better to enjoy her. Her nipples were a delicate tea-rose pink, darkened by his attentions, and her breasts exquisitely shaped but bare handfuls to a man used to better-endowed women. Even so, Max was enthralled by her porcelain-pale skin and the satiny softness of it, even while he was deciding that while Teddy the dog might be a little on the porky side his owner was a little too thin and needed feeding up. He wrenched at the shorts and the thin material ripped, startling her, troubled blue eyes opening to belatedly recognise that he was still fully clothed.

      ‘Take your shirt off,’ she whispered.

      Charmed by that instruction, Max dealt her a slanting grin. ‘You wouldn’t think you were a first timer at this.’

      Forcing herself to keep her hands loose on the bedspread when self-consciousness prompted her to cover her breasts from his view, Tia watched him strip off his shirt.

      * * *

      ‘I’m a quick learner,’ she told him, her mouth watering as he exposed the coiled lines of muscle across his abdomen and flat stomach. The dampness at her core increased and she couldn’t drag her gaze from his lean, powerful body. His bronzed skin sheathed rippling muscles, a broad chest and narrow hips stretching down into long, hair-roughened thighs and around there her scrutiny bounced hurriedly upward again, noting the trail of dark hair that ran from his navel to disappear below the band of his boxers and, the whole time, striving not to think nervously about his obvious arousal.

      Was she stupid? She was annoyed with herself for that schoolgirlish embarrassment. He was aroused, of course he was, just as she was. She wasn’t about to let the horror stories told by Maddie and her potty-mouthed friends of their first sexual experiences to unnerve her...was she? She was a grown woman, not an adolescent playing with forces she didn’t understand.

      Max came down on the bed, kneeling over her, caging her with his big body and a rush of excitement snaked through her, every nerve ending jangling with anticipation. He had done this before, hadn’t he? Of course he had, she told herself instantly. But it didn’t always pay to make assumptions about people, she conceded.

      ‘You’ve done this before...haven’t you?’ Tia pressed awkwardly.

      And Max, who didn’t embarrass easily, in fact who would have said he was impervious to embarrassment, could feel his face heating up. ‘Yes,’ he pronounced flatly, reasoning that, as she had waited, it was not impossible that he could have been the sort of rare male who waited too for that one special experience. And unfortunately, that set off a whole train of conjecture in his head about what Tia might want from a man. An innocence that matched her own? A guy who went to mass? A perfect shining angel of a male, who was honest and decent and religious? He didn’t think he was any of those things.

      ‘A lot?’ Tia could not resist prompting uneasily. ‘I mean...er, have you had a lot of women in your life?’

      Wide, sensual lips compressing, Max simply jerked his head in acknowledgement, wishing that the heat in his face would subside.

      Her own face warming, Tia closed her eyes but still saw the troubled dark gold of his gleaming eyes below the black fringe of his lashes. She had embarrassed him and she shouldn’t have done that. At least he had been honest, though; at least he hadn’t lied about it, she reflected ruefully.

      ‘I think this would be a lot more challenging if we were both virgins,’ Max breathed curtly while thinking he had never thought to share such a conversation in his life with a woman. Then again, he hadn’t bargained on a