Page 197 of Snowbound Surrender

She did. Every instinct in her knew what he wanted – but she was not going to give it to him so easily.

Still mounted upon him and smiling down at him, Anne very slowly rocked backwards and forwards without moving up anddown, but as she gazed into his eyes, she started to untie her gown.

Maxim’s eyes closed and his hands twitched. “Annika, God I want you – give me what I want.”

“No,” she murmured, revelling in the power she had over him. “No, this time we are going to do it my way.”

It was a delicious five minutes of gently teasing him before she was totally naked. If she had been concerned he would not appreciate her nude body, she was wrong. Maxim surprised her by sitting up, his mouth eagerly closing around one breast and his hand worshipping the other.

Anne arched her back, desperate for more, and only then did she start to gently rise and spear herself onto his manhood.

Maxim fell back, his eyes closed, hands on her hips. “Yes, oh Annika, faster!”

She could feel the heat building in her again, but she would not give him satisfaction that easily.

“No,” she said with a smile, hardly able to keep her voice steady. “My pleasure first.”

She took it, twice, her body exploding around him each time, her voice unable to remain quiet, until finally Maxim had clearly had enough.

“Annika, I will have you,” he growled, twisting so that she fell back into the soft linens.

His mouth captured hers as he built a steady, hard rhythm, Anne twisting in the bed to allow him in deeper.

“I wanted you,” she gasped, “ever since – ”

“And I wanted you,” he groaned. “Annika, I want this every day, I want you every day.”

“And you can have me,” Anne smiled. “Every day, whenever you want. Just give me – oh!”

Maxim shouted out with her this time, their ecstasy in glorious union, and as Anne’s body rocked with her fifth orgasm, he ploughed into her and exploded into pleasure.

Maxim triedto pull breath into his lungs, but no matter how much air he took in, it was not enough.

Dear God, that it was possible to experience something like that, a closeness, an intimacy, a pleasure like that with a woman – and all the same woman!

He glanced at her, dark hair wild and her own breathing heavy. Annika Marsh. She is everything he could have wanted, everything he could have imagined.

How was it possible that she knew not only how to please him, but also to take her own pleasure?

She was the perfect woman; all the elegance of the English with all the fire of the Russians. If he did not have a Czardom to claim, he would sneak her across London to a little Orthodox chapel he knew, and marry her immediately.

“This cannot be real.”

Her words were soft, breathed rather than spoken, and he laughed as he pulled her closer.

“I have to be honest,” he said quietly, “I was more worried that you would be in pain than in pleasure.”

“I have never,” she began, and then hesitated before continuing in a less controlled voice, “never experienced anything…anything like this.”

If he had heard words like that from anyone else – and if he were honest, he had – he would have found his ego inflating, to know he had given such sensual delight to a lady.

But not with Annika. All he felt was relief, and joy that she had experienced ecstasy. She was important – far moreimportant than he had realised before she had stepped into his room this evening.

Not only important, but precious. He felt honoured, as though he had been given a precious gift, that it had been he to give her that first experience of intimacy between a gentleman and a lady.

She shifted slightly in his arms, and Maxim could feel himself stiffen at the very thought of a repeat experience. No, he must be controlled. Though she was not sore now, she certainly would be if he took his pleasure and plunged into her again.

“Well,” Annika whispered, tracing an invisible line across his chest with a finger, “that was a secret worth knowing.”