by Lynne Graham
‘Wait until you see the boots,’ she whispered teasingly, wildly aware of his arousal and flattered that he was in that state purely because he was close to her. ‘And the garter and the stockings.’
‘I’m getting you in stockings for my wedding night?’ Nikolai murmured thickly. ‘Bring it on, khriso mou!’
And Ella laughed and forgot about what she had overheard. Of course he had exes and a past but that was life and she had to live with it.
* * *
‘I felt sad when I realised that you didn’t have a single relative at our wedding,’ Ella admitted during the flight in the private jet to Crete.
‘I didn’t feel sad,’ Nikolai countered squarely, lounging back in his leather seat, very much in command. ‘But then I didn’t have a white-picket-fence childhood like yours.’
‘It wasn’t like that. I didn’t have a mother,’ Ella argued and shared her story.
‘You had a father and a grandmother who loved you. You were lucky.’
But Ella would never forget how rejected she had felt when she had first met her mother as a teenager. Her mother had not regretted never having got to know her and, more hurtfully still, had had no ambition to foster an adult friendship with her long-lost daughter either. It had been a one-off meeting and a disappointment. In truth it had made Ella better appreciate the family she did have.
‘Family can be toxic,’ Nikolai remarked with rich cynicism.
‘How...toxic?’ she questioned uncertainly. ‘Tell me about your childhood.’
‘It’s ugly.’
‘I can handle ugly. Tell me about your father.’
Nikolai grimaced. ‘He got into trouble from an early age. He was thrown out of several schools for dealing in drugs,’ he divulged.
‘How did you find that out?’
‘My grandfather’s solicitor told me what he knew about my background when he was trying to explain why the old man was so determined not to meet me,’ Nikolai explained with a wry twist of his expressive mouth. ‘Although my father was given every support to turn his life around and numerous second chances he continually chose to return to crime and violence.’
‘Some people are just born with that tendency,’ Ella imputed, sadness gripping her that Nikolai could not even respect his father’s memory. No son would want such a father and nor would he want to grow up in such a man’s image. ‘What about your mother?’
‘She was Russian...a lap dancer called Natalya.’
‘You’re half Russian?’ Ella cut in, her surprise unhidden.
‘When Natalya became pregnant with my sister, my father married her. Possibly the only conventional thing he ever did in his life. At some stage my grandfather disinherited him and cut off all contact with him. I have few memories before the age of five,’ Nikolai admitted stiffly. ‘I do remember chaos...shouts, screams, hiding behind a locked door with my sister begging me to keep quiet. My father was in and out of prison. We moved around a lot. There were frequent police raids, gang attacks. My sister looked after me.’
Ella was quietly appalled by what she was learning about his background and finally comprehending why Nikolai would say that a family could be toxic. ‘Why not your mother? Was she at work?’
‘No, she didn’t work. She was always in the background somewhere drunk or high. But for Sofia I would either have starved or been beaten to death. My father took his frustrations out on me,’ Nikolai volunteered without any expression at all, watching her as though he was measuring her reactions to what he was telling her, which made her all the more careful not to reveal a sympathy, which could hurt his pride. ‘He broke Sofia’s nose once when she came between us in an effort to protect me... I was more her child than my mother’s.’
‘I’m really sorry it was so bad for you,’ Ella whispered, green eyes luminous with a compassion she couldn’t hide.
She wondered if anyone but his sister had ever loved Nikolai. And he had lost her as well. Was that why he kept himself so isolated? Why he was so determinedly detached?
‘My parents died in a car crash when I was ten and my grandfather set up a trust to pay for my education. I was sent straight to boarding school in England.’
‘He saved every one of your school reports,’ Ella reminded him, because she had told him what she had found in his grandfather’s desk. ‘And yet he didn’t want to meet you?’
‘He was afraid of being disappointed. I think he’d already worked out by then that if you make an emotional investment in individuals you get hurt, and he was old and tired.’
‘So, he kept you at arm’s length.’ Ella sighed. ‘But he missed out on so much. Obviously you’re not like your father.’
‘I’m brighter but I don’t know that I’m better,’ Nikolai murmured with forbidding honesty, studying her in all her bridal finery. So appealing and beautiful, so vulnerable, so clean. She had probably never done a really mean thing in her life. Ella was too good for him. He knew that he didn’t deserve her. He had seduced her with blackmail into his bed...no honour or decency there! And if she knew him now as he truly was and stripped of pretence, she would never have married him.
‘Your troubled background was what made you...unsure about having a family, wasn’t it?’ Ella probed helplessly.
Nikolai shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘Of course. What does a man like me know about being part of a normal family? How could I ever be a father when I wouldn’t know where to begin?’
Ella paled. ‘You could learn.’
‘And what if I don’t have the interest to learn? I’ve heard that children put a lot of pressure on a relationship. Why would you take that risk?’ Nikolai enquired with sardonic bite.
Ella could only think of the tiny seed in her womb, which she would have protected with her life, and she turned her head away lest her face reveal too much. For the first time she was scared of what she had to tell Nikolai. It was true that, while he had no experience of family life, he could certainly learn. But would he want to learn? A baby coming so early in their marriage would definitely impose restrictions on them that he might well resent. Yet it was important to Ella that her baby have two loving parents, for she knew how much her own mother’s indifference had hurt her even as a young adult.
‘And I’m not unsure about whether or not to have children,’ Nikolai contradicted. ‘I have simply never felt the need to reproduce.’
‘But you agreed that if I—’ she began heatedly.
‘Yes. I’m not that selfish. I will adapt to whatever the future brings.’
But how far would ‘adapting’ get him if he had a fundamental dislike of the idea of becoming a parent? Ella repressed the thought and breathed in deep and slow. She had to be patient and understanding, not critical and pushy. Honey was much more effective than vinegar.
She collided with hard dark eyes, finally noticing the rigidity of his sculpted bone structure. Nikolai’s sheer tension leapt out at her. She had raised sensitive issues when she’d forced him to share the story of his dysfunctional childhood and family. Was it any wonder he was on the defensive? Still gorgeous though, no matter what mood he was in, she thought helplessly as she studied him, her guilty conscience assailing her until the germ of a wild idea struck her. The instant she thought of it she wanted to smash the mould of his undoubtedly low expectations and seduce him.
Could she? Dared she? Wasn’t this the male who had moved heaven and earth to bring her into his life and his bed? With Nikolai she never needed to doubt her welcome. Nikolai always wanted her. Uplifted by that conviction, she felt bold but she also needed to be closer to him and she craved the soothing balm of the intense connection they shared when they made love. Unclipping her seat belt, she stood up before she could lose her nerve. ‘Ask the cabin staff to stay out,’ she told him tightly.
His brow indented as he lifted the phone at his e
lbow and spoke. He stared at her, watching the colour rise in her cheeks. ‘Why?’
‘Newly married? Do not disturb? Do I need to draw a picture?’ she asked teasingly, feeling the wanton heat of anticipation coil at the heart of her.
‘I think perhaps you do,’ Nikolai murmured, still frowning, still not getting the message.
Ella tugged up the tight skirt of her gown and knelt very deliberately down at his feet and pressed his thighs apart. Only as she reached for his belt buckle did the extreme tension go out of him to be replaced by tension of an entirely different variety.
‘You’re kidding me?’ Nikolai husked, black lashes rising over stunned dark eyes.
‘Does this feel like a wind-up?’ Ella enquired, running a caressing palm down over the revealing bulge at his groin.
He shivered, hard dark eyes flashing to pools of melted-caramel astonishment.
Face hot, Ella ran down his zip. Helpfully he lifted his hips to allow her to move his pants out of the way. She was determined to use all the things that she had learnt from the books she had read. Her tongue stole a long swipe along the length of him.
Nikolai swore in Greek and pushed back in his seat with a little groan. ‘I never know what to expect from you but I adore the way you continually surprise me. Presumably you know what you’re doing...’
‘No, this technique is straight out of a book.’
‘A book?’ he repeated in disbelief.
‘Shut up...you’re distracting me,’ she muttered shakily, settling down to practise everything she had learned with enthusiasm.
Nikolai very quickly decided that she must’ve read a humdinger of a text. Her tongue stroked and flicked and circled and her luscious lips engulfed. Her warm, wet mouth took him to paradise. His hands fisted in her hair and as she found her rhythm an earthy groan of satisfaction escaped him. She looked up at him once when he was right on the edge, little shudders travelling through his muscular thighs, eyes glowing gold.
Nikolai had never been so aroused and he knew he wouldn’t last long. He tried to back off once he realised he was about to come but she wouldn’t let him take control. He climaxed in a storm of raw excitement and threw his dark head back, watching in wonderment as his so recently virginal bride swallowed, zipped him back up, straightened her dress and returned to her seat as though nothing had happened.
‘A book?’ Nikolai queried raggedly as he shifted with voluptuous contentment in his seat.
‘Why not a book? I don’t like not knowing how to do things.’
‘I’m willing to teach you anything you ask, so willing,’ Nikolai savoured in a roughened undertone, still barely able to credit what she had just done. ‘You are insanely sexy, khriso mou. I am a very lucky man.’
Ella was so pleased that she’d chased the shadows away. His eyes had been haunted because she had asked him to talk about his disturbing childhood, but she had sent his thoughts and his imagination racing in a far more positive direction. There was more she needed to know about Nikolai’s past, but she had learnt enough for the present and she loved him. Loved him so much that she couldn’t bear to see shadows in his lean dark face and listen to him insisting that he wasn’t sensitive or upset when he was.
And she had learned from what he had told her as well. One person had rejected her but more than one had rejected Nikolai: his mother, his father, his grandfather. Of course he didn’t know how a family operated. Of course he worried about being a father when his own had set such a bad example. But with her love and support his outlook would change so that when he found out about their baby he would feel very differently...wouldn’t he?
CHAPTER NINE
‘SO, WHERE ARE we staying?’ Ella enquired after a car had collected them from Heraklion Airport and begun the drive along the coastal road in the fading light of dusk.
‘The house where my grandfather was born.’
‘I like a place with family connections,’ Ella admitted. ‘Did you inherit it?’
‘Yes, but by the time I did it hadn’t been occupied in years and it needed gutting. It started out as a simple farmhouse, which was gentrified when the family fortunes improved, but my grandfather never used it. I almost had it demolished,’ he confided with a wry smile. ‘And then I stood on the veranda in the sunlight and thought of all the generations who must have enjoyed that same view and I decided to try and retain the character of the place.’
‘You see, you do have sentimental attachments,’ Ella told him with an appreciative glance as the car turned off the main road onto a much more narrow one lined with trees.
‘I also have a surprise for you,’ Nikolai admitted. ‘But you won’t get it until later.’
The house was larger than she had expected, a sprawling ranch-style villa with various offshoots and a large inviting veranda. Nikolai gave her a brief tour of the house, which was all cool tiled floors and contemporary furnishings. The beautifully carved staircase had been conserved, as had a turn-of-the-century stained-glass window of saints in the hall, but it remained first and foremost a luxurious and comfortable modern home.
At the foot of the stairs, Nikolai bent without warning and scooped her up into his arms.
‘What on earth?’ Ella gasped.
‘I always wanted a woman small enough to carry up the stairs.’
‘So why did you only get involved with very tall blondes?’ Ella quipped, unimpressed, thinking about the women she had heard talking about him at the wedding.
‘I was running scared,’ Nikolai assured her, deadpan. ‘I knew when I found a little one I’d have to marry her.’
Involuntarily, Ella laughed because he was so slick with that response. He pressed open the door on a spacious bedroom. A tall geometric vase of glorious flowers adorned a side table and beside it stood an ice bucket and two champagne flutes. He lowered her carefully to the polished wood floor and uncorked the champagne to fill the glasses. Ella put the glass to her lips, bubbles breaking beneath her nose as she pretended to sip as she had done all day while drinks were served and toasts were being made.
‘You look fantastic in that dress,’ he told her huskily, sincerity ringing from every syllable and empowering her.
Ella set her flute down and turned her back to him. ‘Undo my hooks,’ she urged.
‘You’re still determined to surprise me,’ he said thickly, deftly dealing with the hooks at her nape and then running down the side zip over the swell of her hips.
Ella moved back a few steps, loosening her sleeves and slowly working the gown down and off, murderously conscious of the bareness of her breasts because the dress had had built-in support. And she was still shy with him, foolish she knew after the intimacy they had already shared but she was still afraid that he might be disappointed by what she had to offer.
Nikolai leant back against the ornate black iron footboard on the bed and stared at her. ‘I think I’ve died and gone to heaven, khriso mou.’
Fiercely resisting the urge to cover her breasts with her hands, Ella stepped out of the gown and settled it over a chair.
Nikolai simply gloried in the view. She was wearing ridiculously cute lace ankle boots and stockings that stopped mid-thigh. One slender thigh sported a frilly blue garter and cream lace knickers encased her pert little derriere. Breasts with straining soft pink nipples seized his attention and that fast he was on sexual fire.
Ella loved that Nikolai was staring at her like a man in the grip of a holy vision. He made her feel like a sex goddess. Suddenly it didn’t matter that she had tiny boobs and a rail-thin body. Nikolai looking at her like that was like a shot of power-packed adrenalin in her veins. He peeled off his jacket, wrenched almost clumsily at his shirt. A long delicious slice of bronzed muscular torso appeared.
‘And the best thing of all, khriso mou,’ he breathed in a roughened undertone as he r
eached for her. ‘That ring on your finger says you’re all mine.’
He fed on her mouth like a hungry wolf and that kiss was rough, uncompromising and absolutely dominant. It also set alight every nerve ending in her quivering body. He pushed her down on the bed and claimed a taut little nipple while long fingers toyed with its twin. It was as if an electrifying piece of elastic ran between her breasts and her pelvis as the heat surged through her. A finger skimmed aside her knickers and skated through her damp folds. As she gasped he groaned.
‘You’re so ready for me...’ he savoured, claiming her succulent mouth again with driving hunger.
He spread her out on the bed like a pagan sacrifice and the burn at the heart of her tingled and seethed even before the stubble on his face grazed her inner thighs. She wanted him so much. She had never wanted anything or anybody so much that it literally hurt to wait. A finger teased her inner sheath and her hips wriggled, her spine arching as he found the tiny bundle of nerves with his expert mouth. And what happened after that, well, she wasn’t quite sure because she was bucking and shifting and moaning and the pleasure kept on building and building until she couldn’t contain it any more and a climax ripped through her lower body like a detonation, flaming through every limb and nerve ending with explosive effect. It was almost as though the world stopped for a moment and she held onto him as though he were a rock in a whirlwind.
‘I love what you do to me,’ she whispered breathlessly into a satin-smooth dark-skinned shoulder.
‘That was a bit bull-in-a-china-shop,’ Nikolai growled, rolling free and springing off the bed, dark eyes volatile as a hot fire ready to rage out of control. ‘This is our wedding night. It was supposed to be a slow, sweet seduction.’
‘Stop talking,’ Ella told him. ‘Being thrown on the bed works for me. Seeing you a little out of control is more real than some plan of slow seduction.’
‘Blame yourself. You’ve been wrecking my plans all day,’ Nikolai asserted, swiping the package off the dressing table and returning to the bed. ‘First you blew my mind on the flight and then you flaunted your gorgeous self in boots and stockings and a garter and I was lost...’