Andreas uncrossed her arms, closed lean, strong hands over hers and slowly drew her close. 'Think of me as a hot blanket,' he urged.

Her lashes fluttered in confusion. 'I don't think I could…'

'Try. It will be a while before the fire puts out enough heat to defrost you.'

Hope lifted wide eyes as turquoise as the Aegean Sea on a summer day. 'I suppose.' she mumbled. 'Do you wear coloured contact lenses?' Andreas enquired, black brows pleating because even as he spoke he questioned the inanity of his enquiry.

'You must be joking… I can't even afford make-up!' Hope's state of nerves was betrayed by the tiny jerk she gave as he eased her into physical connection with his tall, well-built body. All of a sudden her heart felt as if it were jumping inside her chest and she could hardly catch her breath.

'You have perfect skin, you don't need it,' Andreas said thickly, his big, powerful body growing rigid. Even the separation of their clothing could not dull his high voltage awareness of the tantalising softness of her lush, feminine curves. In spite of his every effort to freeze his own all-to-male reactions, his libido was rocketing into overdrive.

That close he turned her bones to jelly and Hope couldn't think straight. She looked up and connected with his mesmerising dark golden eyes. A dulled heaviness gripped her lower limbs while a tight, hard knot of agonising tension formed in her pelvis. He lowered his handsome dark head and she guessed what was going to happen before it happened but still couldn't believe that he would actually do it. But Andreas confounded her expectations and captured her mouth with hungry urgency. That single kiss devastated her and as it began, it continued, his tongue delving between her readily parted lips to demand greater intimacy. She was defenceless against that wild, sweet tide of sensation, for her body flared into sudden desperate life. The tense knot low in her stomach spiralled into a drugging flare of heat that suffused her entire body with explosive effect. Only the need to breathe conquered that wicked heat and she had to pull her swollen lips free to drag in a great gulp of oxygen.