‘You are the most amazingly sexy woman,’ he breathed thickly.

It was not how Abbey saw herself and the comment stunned her back into possession of her senses. Suddenly she felt naked and exposed and foolish. She reached down and yanked her clothing back up over her bare skin, struggling with clumsy hands to retie the straps. He dragged her hands out of the way and performed the task for her.

‘I don’t do stuff like this,’ she muttered as if she was excusing herself, but her eager body refused to resist when he tugged her back into his arms.

‘This is different. We’re different. I’ve never been so hot for anyone as I am for you, milaya.’ Long fingers delving into her mass of rippling red curls, Nikolai muttered something else in Russian and pressed her hand against his aching groin with an explicit need that shocked and excited her in equal degrees. That bold invitation fascinated her. With a thrill of awareness she felt the hard thrusting power and shape of his boldly aroused manhood beneath the barrier of his trousers. Light-headed with the strength of her desire, she moaned beneath the marauding ravishment of his hot mouth, her fingers sliding between his shirt and his belt to explore the taut hair-roughened skin of his flat, muscular stomach and trace the aggressive length of his erection. He groaned beneath her inexpert ministrations and that open responsiveness and unashamed hunger of his allowed her to glory in her feminine power for the first time in her life. She felt drunk on the daring of what she was doing.

‘I want you now…I don’t want to wait,’ Nikolai growled thickly.

That uncharacteristic sense of daring that had momentarily fired Abbey shrivelled and died. She whipped her hand away from him, shattered by her total loss of control. ‘This is wrong…this is not me. I hardly know you.’