But none of those frustrations were responsible for her ragged nerves.
Nick took all the blame. Nicolas Markos. And her tangled emotions.
She sipped her wine. The French champagne — from the house cellar — looked like liquid gold and tasted like heaven. But the intoxication fizzing in her blood came from the man in the kitchen. He was cooking for her tonight, something delicious-smelling called Greek beef. He’d settled her on the sunroom sofa with the wine and a tray of appetizers.
Settled wasn’t exactly the word. She hadn’t settled since their sweaty session on the gym floor.
When she’d returned late Friday from the debriefing, she discovered that he waited up after all. He rubbed her shoulders with fragrant lotion until all her muscles and bones liquefied. Then he tucked her in bed — his bed — kissed her sweetly and left her for his pallet on the floor. The only reason she closed her eyes at all was her lack of sleep the previous night.
After yet another night in the same room, the tension rose to a fever pitch. It was as if a magnetic field arced between and around the two of them. She felt off balance, as sensitive as a hair trigger. His every action seduced her. Common sense and her professional duty told her to beware, but her foolish heart ignored the warning. Nick would never betray DARK’s plan, so what was the harm if they yielded to chemistry?
A relationship with him could be only sexual. She wasn’t the woman for him. She wasn’t sophisticated and beautiful like Danielle — well, that was a bad example — or Diana. What would a world-traveling executive see in a plain government officer other than the undercover role she played?
And he had all that baggage of lost honor to work through. Darkness lurked at his core like a coiled force. Yet his mood had gradually lightened during the past few weeks. Maybe he felt empowered by taking part in DARK’s plans. For sure the slight change had nothing to do with her.
He wanted the persona she projected in her rich-girl clothes. At least he wasn’t using her to get to Diana or some society babe. A brief encounter was all she could expect. When this operation ended, they would end. That knowledge lodged a hot ball in her throat. Her heart would break whether or not they made love. He didn’t love her, but he wanted her. That was clear.
He constantly touched her — her hair, her cheek, her mouth. As they walked, he kept his hand on the small of her back. He spoke softly into her ear, privately, just for her. That deep, sexy voice made an inventory list sound like a hot proposition. Every look, every touch weakened her knees and her resistance. Away from the house, her protector, he hovered, his rangy body tensed for danger, his expression flinty, his eyes alert as a hunting hawk’s. The man was a walking aphrodisiac.
He crossed the room to her now with the champagne bottle. Her pulse jumped like a cheerleader at homecoming. In black trousers that clung to his sinewy thighs and a silk T-shirt the color of fine red wine, he nearly had her drooling.
He eased down to the cushion beside her, close enough to wrap her in his familiar scent. He turned toward her, his left knee bent and touching her thigh. Not in protection mode at the moment, he appeared focused solely on her. His gaze cruised her face and down her body with blatant heat. “Wrap your mouth around one of these.”
Before she could compliment him on the variety of bounty, he popped a stuffed grape leaf in her mouth. Blinking, she bit off half. Chewed slowly. Fought for equilibrium.
The man was hand-feeding her. The dinner was cooked. And so was she.
“Well?
Chapter 15
SHE SWALLOWED, CLEARED her throat. “Delicious.”
“More?” He offered a ripe olive as large as a plum.
“Whoa, buster.” She held her champagne flute in front of her. “We have the whole evening.”
The olive went back on the tray.
The corners of his mouth kicked up in a smug smile. He stretched his left arm behind her and rested it on the sofa back. The powerful male animal surveying his prey. He curved his right hand casually over her knee, an invitation to closeness, to intimacy.
The blue flames in his eyes glowed with banked desire. “You’re right. Why rush things? Slow and easy works for me.”
Was his seduction deliberate? Oh, yeah. A rheostat had dimmed the lighting. Logs crackled gently in the fireplace. Champagne. Succulent appetizers.
Turnabout was fair play. If she could slip into her undercover woman-of-the-world role, she’d steam up the room. He was making her melt. She would make him sweat.
She plucked the olive from the tray and put it to her lips. The ripe fruit dripped with a savory marinade. She licked at it, sucked gently before biting into it.
Nick’s mouth was hanging open, so she fed him an olive. Startled, he nearly swallowed the thing whole.
“Mmm, these olives are so-o-o good.” She ran her tongue slowly around her lips and purred.
He swallowed, cleared his throat. He adjusted his position as if his trousers were too tight. “They … they come from my family’s olive grove.”
“I thought your dad was a ship’s captain.” She looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes.
The fire and his nearness had warmed the room. Here goes nothing. Or everything. Slowly she peeled off the rust-colored shrug. She smoothed the matching sleeveless V-neck at the waist of her pants. Tugging the knit tightened it over her breasts to show more than a hint of cleavage. A woman was entitled to use her main asset.
His hand on her knee was sweating. It twitched. His eyes looked unfocused.
“Um, right.” He picked up his flute and swigged half his champagne. “When my father retired, he and Sophie bought an olive grove from her family in Greece. That’s where they live. Pop’s an olive farmer now, when he’s well enough.”
She refilled his glass and hers, leaned closer so her right breast pressed against his side. “Did he teach you to cook Greek food?”
“No, that was Sophie. I was already interested in the restaurant business, but she started me cooking.”
“You like her. That marriage has worked out then?”
He nodded. “Third time’s a charm, I guess. She takes good care of Pop.”
She cuddled closer, tilted her head the way Diana had showed her. “In a good relationship, a man and a woman take … care of each other.” She left it to his imagination what kind of care she meant.
He curved his arm around her shoulders. Lifting her hand to his lips, he said in a husky voice, “We’ve known each other only a short time, but you’ve taken better care of me than anyone I remember. Thank you.”
His warm breath and his lips, slick with olive marinade, sent tingles up her arm. Her breath stuck in her throat. “Me? What did I do?” A squeaky voice didn’t sound sexy, but she had no control over her vocal cords.
His gaze was languorous and sultry. “You’ve been my rock. You’ve taught me to smile again.”
Before he could ramble on and she became too embarrassed, she had to stop him. “I was just doing my job.”
He sat very still, just looking at her, ready to pounce. His heat and woodsy scent wove their spell.
The mood between them shifted again. At first it had been light, then suddenly serious. Now the air thickened and throbbed with a heavy sensual beat. A beat she felt with every nerve ending and in a pulse between her legs.
He released the hand he held and lifted the flute from her other. “Your job doesn’t include defusing my anger at my half brother’s crimes. Your job doesn’t include urging me to examine myself. Your job doesn’t include this.”
As his mouth found hers, he pulled her close. Heat flashed through her. Her entire body tightened. She fisted her hands in his shirt. His right hand burrowed beneath her sweater to caress her spine, her ribs. Her skin tingled at the rasp of his callused fingers. They teased one nipple through her silk bra.
A long flutter of pleasure and need flowed through her. It surged into a wave of yearning for this man whose pride and hono
r drove him.
He pulled her on top of him as he stretched out on the cushions. A rush of heat and electric awareness licked every point up and down her body where they touched. Her breasts felt full and flushed.
“I can’t get enough of you. I’m hungry for more than this … appetizer.” His voice was low, a velvet growl against her mouth. His fingers slid up her nape to massage her scalp. His thigh nudged her legs apart, and his arousal throbbed between them. He was so beautiful, yet so male, with every sinew straining and bulging.
Tingling pleasure radiated from his caresses, and she clenched her thighs against his hardness in a vain attempt to assuage the ache he’d triggered. Her foggy brain struggled to maintain a bantering tone. Keep it light, keep it safe. “Nick, your Greek beef, is it ready?”
His response was a muffled groan. “The Greek beef? Dinner’ll keep. What—”
“Not dinner.” She cupped her fingers against the heated length tenting his fly. “I was talking about this Greek beef.”
Rasping words in what she thought was Greek, he twisted on the sofa to bring her beneath him. His heavy body pressed her into the cushions. He pulsed against her. “Are you sure?”
His potency and heat and bottomless kisses filled her, invaded her very soul. Sex with him would be a shattering experience. He would make love as he did everything — with intense focus and expertise. Her nerves skittered. Ready or not, her need for him bordered on desperation. In reply, she unclipped the miniature microphone from her sweater and the receiver from her ear. She dropped them on the cocktail table beside the appetizer tray.
“There might not be enough heat left in the fireplace to keep you warm.” He tugged up her sweater.
“Then you’ll have to do it.” She fumbled with his belt buckle.
His hand covered hers to stop her. “Slow down. Nice and easy, remember, latrea mou?” He skimmed her sweater up over her head, her bra with it. “I want to see you. I love your skin, like fresh cream with dots of butter. I could lap you up like a cat.”
Latrea what? He’d called her that once before, during their hot encounter in the gym. The notion that his falling into Greek meant he forgot himself buoyed confidence in her appeal. “What did you call me? Latrea something?” Heat swept through her from the wet heat of his tongue on her nipples. Good thing she was lying down. Her legs could never hold her.
“Latrea mou. It means sweetheart or honey.” He started on her zipper.
She repeated the Greek endearment, savoring how the ending puckered the lips for more kisses. “Wait. I want to see you too. I want to feel you against me.” She yanked at his silk T-shirt.
He laughed as he toed off his shoes and divested himself of his shirt and trousers, leaving on only low-cut silk briefs stretched even skimpier by his erection. “Done with slow and easy?”
“There’s a time for everything.” She shimmied out of her pants. Her slides joined his loafers on the thick carpet.
With a murmur, he burrowed onto her again, rubbing skin against skin, his chest hairs tickling her sensitive nipples. “So sweet, so sexy, so much woman.”
At his whispered words, her doubts prodded her with icy needles. She didn’t want to make love with him as her undercover persona. The falseness of her mask closed over her nose, her mouth, and she struggled to breathe. She couldn’t let her sense of self burn to ashes in the fires of passion.
She pushed at the immovable wall of his shoulders. “Nick, say my name.”
Eyes glazed and mouth wet with passion, he levered up on his elbows. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Say my name. The real one.” Her breathing raced like her heartbeat, and she fought down tears. “Say it!”
“Vanessa.” Then again more softly, “Vanessa.” He held her chin between two fingers and gazed into her eyes.
Nick watched as her eyelids closed. Tears leaked out and trickled into the hair at her temples. His heart thundered, and his blood was on fire. Never before had he ached so much to possess a woman. She’d flirted and flaunted her assets, sending steamy smoke signals. And then boom. “What’s this about?”
“I’m nearly naked with you.” Her voice was thick with emotion, raw and husky. “Just plain Vanessa. Not the glamorous model Diana. Not the cool sophisticate. Not the seductress I’ve been channeling. Just Vanessa.”
The light of comprehension clicked on in his dazed brain. The old insecurity monster had reared its ugly head. “Ah, you want to be certain I know who I hold in my arms.” He beetled his brows in a scowl. “I’m insulted.”
She sniffed. “Dammit, I hate crying. Other women look gorgeous even when they cry—” ah, she meant Diana “—but my eyes get puffy and my nose gets as red as Rudolph’s.”
“Red or not, you’re beautiful, not plain.” Her hair tumbled around her head like a sunset cloud, curls and tendrils damp against her temples. Mussed, flushed and sultry, she was sure as hell not his buddy. “Your nose is a little pink. But so are your cheeks.” He lowered his head to kiss one budded rose-colored nipple, then the other. “And so are your breasts. Very sexy.”
She drew a deep breath. “Thank you for that. I’m sorry. It’s nothing you did. It’s me. It’s—”
He silenced her with the brush of his lips. “Shh, Vanessa. I’m insulted that given absolute proof—” he ground his hard and aching arousal against her “—you still don’t believe in your feminine appeal.”
“But you’re sure it’s me you want, not the identity I’ve assumed these past weeks? Not someone like Diana? Oh, I know that sounds juvenile, but I have to know.” Against his chest, he felt the tension knotting her stomach.
Feelings of protection and possession surged through him, constricting his chest. She made him want more than he’d thought possible. And she made him want yet more for her.
When he could breathe again, he said, “I know exactly whose curves are driving me nuts. And whose breasts are rosy from my attentions. I never got this … close to Diana, but I could never mistake you for her.” When she tried to speak, he stopped her with another kiss.
He had to find the right words, so she understood her unique worth. From the first moment they’d met, she’d seen into his soul. She saw the torment and offered comfort. She didn’t let him intimidate her in any way. Her warmth and sensitivity were lifting the heavy darkness inside him. With her, he didn’t feel so alone, so empty.
But how could he tell her? Insecure, she borrowed sophistication from her undercover role. No poet, he needed to borrow that damn Prince Amir’s glib tongue.
“Diana is model-perfect, granted,” he said, mental fingers crossed. “With the cool, remote blond beauty expected of a woman named for the goddess of the moon. A Greek goddess, of course.”
“Yes, yes, she is. And…” Her words died. Maybe she’d seen the heat and ferocious need in his eyes.
“You, Vanessa, are the sun.” He feathered a finger down the delicate arch of her neck and around the silk of each bountiful breast. “You are red and molten gold and life-giving warmth. You are fire and life. You’ve stoked hot coals in me since we met. I burn for you.”
“Oh, Nick.” She cradled his jaw in her hands and tugged him to her mouth. His awkward but heartfelt words seemed to be what she needed to hear.
And then he caressed her with his mouth and hands. He found her most sensitive spots and gave them his undivided attention. She writhed beneath him as he stroked and kissed. He stripped off the white lace triangle that passed for panties and revealed the thatch of reddish curls he’d imagined. His seeking hand cupped this source of her fire and his intoxication. “Latrea mou, you burn.”
When his fingers found her sensitive nub, she arched beneath him. His body clenched with a need that he longed to shout to the world. Her hand dipped inside his briefs to grip his aching flesh. He tore the garment away, giving her free access. Hot and hard and heavy, he leaned into the firm grip of her soft hand. He groaned at the sensation, his eyes clam
ped shut. He arched up, his weight on his straightened arms.
“No more!” he growled. “Vanessa. Now.”
When he flicked two fingers inside her, her body seemed to thrum with tension. “Yes. Now!”
He fumbled a foil packet from his pants pocket. Sheathed, he slipped between her legs. Desire darkened her green eyes and fluttered her lashes. He stroked her again with his thumb, and took one nipple in his mouth, suckling to raise her to fever pitch. Delirious anticipation thrashing him, he sank into her. She lifted her hips and took him deep. When she tightened around him, he went absolutely still for a heartbeat, his gaze lasered on her. Sensations rippled through him, sensations that surpassed the physical. Joy and fulfillment and contentment.
“Ah, Vanessa, I knew we’d burn each other up.”
Pleasure built as they found a rhythm together. Slow, silky and sinuous, with long, wet kisses, then intense and insistent, with panting urgency. Ecstasy hovered just out of reach. Sharp sensations exploded as he drove into her a final time, his body bowing and arching as she shuddered around him and they clung together.
Slowly Vanessa became aware of the cool air on her damp arms and the heavy, sprawled weight on her body. She never wanted Nick to move. Aftershocks still rippled through her. The absolute power of their lovemaking made her feel that she glowed from the voltage they’d generated.
His face pressed into the curve of her neck and shoulder, and he kissed her there before pushing up. The hint of wariness in his eyes tripped her heartbeat.
She smiled to eliminate awkwardness. “Whew, that was some powerful Greek beef!”
His rumble of laughter vibrated through her. “I suppose that’ll have to do for ‘honey, was it as good for you as it was for me?’ ” In one fluid motion, he rolled off her and to his feet. He held out a hand for her.
Standing flush against his heated body, she hugged him and pressed a kiss to his sternum. “I think I worked up an appetite. Are you still going to feed me?”
“The other Greek beef is coming right up. I hope it’s not too dried out.” His eyebrows shot up. A hint of embarrassment colored his cheeks. “Don’t touch that line.”
Dark Cover (The DARK Files #2) Page 15