Satin Dreams by Maggie; Davis

as a jungle. She wasn’t drunk, but something definitely was wrong with her. An intense throbbing she’d never known before controlled her body. She was naked, she realized. That in itself was amazing enough.  
    Close your eyes, she thought. Don’t think about it.  
    It was impossible not to think about it.  
    Nicholas Palliades’s lips and hands were caressing her; they seemed to be everywhere at once. His fingers touched her breasts, circled the dark pink aureoles teasingly, then pulled the nipples to taut, aching points. Alix sagged in his arms.  
    “Yes,” she heard him whisper. Then his mouth touched, kissed, pulled enticingly at her where the clever fingers had been. “Ah, yes, yes, ” he groaned against the soft curve of her breast.  
    Alix clung to him, her fingernails clutching the shoulders of his tuxedo jacket as he kissed the long column of her throat, the silky length of her shoulders and arms, as though he wanted to leave nothing of her untasted. She could only manage little sultry cries of shock and confusion.  
    He answered with a sensuous growl. Still holding her tightly, he yanked off his jacket, then tore at the buttons of his shirt, peeling it away, as he renewed his ferocious caresses.  
    “I want you,” he muttered.  
    The bare flesh of his chest, hard and muscular with a few wiry black hairs, pressed against Alix’s naked breasts. She twisted her head, her eyes on the window. They were standing in front of an expanse of plate glass so large that all of Paris north of the Eiffel Tower could see them.  
    “Yes,” he told her, “I know.”  
    He picked her up in his arms and carried her down a shadowy hallway and into a bedroom that darkly resembled the premier luxury stateroom on an old Cunard liner. The bed’s plum velvet coverlet had been turned back for the night, revealing gold-colored satin sheets.  
    He lowered her, hurriedly dragging the purple cover out of the way. “This damned place,” he said under his breath.  
    He stood back, never taking his eyes from her as he undressed, devouring the sight of her long legs outlined in embroidered black panty hose, the fiery rays of her hair spread out against the pillowcase.  
    Alix’s mind was more than a little muddled. It was strange to have her body in such a state that she couldn’t think. She gathered that Nicholas Palliades was finally going to make love to her. It was incredible that the threat she’d made that afternoon in a fit of defiance had led to this. At least it was going quickly now. He’d seemed in a terrible hurry from the moment he’d lowered the zipper of her gown.  
    She tried to focus her eyes on the lean, muscular male body hurriedly stepping out of its clothes. Nicholas Palliades had managed to do something mysterious to her; she felt somnolent, confused, dazedly sensuous, waiting there against the gold satin sheet. Not like herself at all.  
    Alix slowly pulled down her panty hose and dropped them over the side of the bed. While she did so, Nicholas kicked off his shoes, his black eyes following the shifting curve of her hips, the flat planes of her belly with its ruddy triangle of curls. He tore off his tuxedo trousers and tossed them away. Black underwear briefs followed. Then suddenly he was standing at the side of the ornate bed regarding her with burning black eyes, powerfully, unselfconsciously nude.  
    After one startled glance she looked away. But a vivid picture remained in her mind of a tanned, sleekly muscled body, black hair that dwindled in a dark line to the slitted indent of his navel, then down into a springy mat with his big, aroused sex thrusting up rigidly in it.  
    Her mouth was dry; her lips wouldn’t move enough to speak. Her throbbing body wouldn’t obey her mind’s suddenly urgent command to get up, get out of the bed, and out of there before it was too late. It took all her strength of will to stay where she was, knowing that if she just waited, everything would be