The Greek's Innocent Virgin

by Lucy Monroe

  "I cannot wait another week to take you to my bed," he said.

  Heat pooled in a place she didn't even want to think about. "You don't have to."

  "Yes, I do." His grim look did not suggest he was open to discussion on the subject. “I will not dishonor you again."

  She glared at him, but none of her arguments swayed him. It was either marry now and share a bed, or marry later and him go to stay in the company apartment because he did not trust his libido in the same home with her.

  They were at an impasse.

  The last week had been one of the most miserable of Rachel's life. She'd missed Sebastian in every fiber of her being. She didn't want to spend another week living in his apartment while he lived elsewhere, but she wouldn't tell Sebastian that and admit her weak­ness to him either.

  And it only got worse when he took the decision right out of her hands. Back in full guilt mode, he refused to have the wedding until his mother could be there because it was important to Rachel. He be­rated himself for pushing her and informed her that he could control himself for a week to assure her happiness with the wedding plans.

  He didn't remind her that if she'd agreed to the original wedding, his mother would have been in at­tendance and they would be living together now, but Rachel latched onto that truth at lightening speed all on her own. She insisted on wearing the dress he had picked out for her, appalled when she realized he was going to dump it in favor of letting her pick out her own gown. She'd loved the dress, just not the way he'd steamrolled over her without a thought to what she wanted.

  She sat on the sofa they had made love on the first time late that night, nursing a mug of warm milk and unable to sleep. Sebastian's all-out determination to make her happy scared her spitless. If she allowed herself to believe it was personal, she was afraid she would be setting herself up for disappointment. Yet it felt really personal.

  It didn't feel like the consideration of a man who only wanted her to agree to marriage for the sake of their unborn child.

  Of course there was the sex thing. He wanted her and there was no hiding from the fact. However, could lust, even rampant lust, explain his actions? Wouldn't a man being controlled by needy hormones go for the early wedding and to heck with Phillippa being there?

  That week dragged by despite Sebastian's obvious ef­forts to keep her entertained, but his mood was pre­carious at best, the effect of having to deny his desire having obvious impact.

  By the time she met him at the altar of the old Orthodox church to say their vows, she was shaking with nerves. Although they had made love before, she was nowhere near certain she could appease the vo­racious hunger she saw in his gaze whenever he looked at her now.

  There was a quality to it that had not been there before, a need that went beyond the physical. It was that quality that made her so nervous. Added to her growing hope that he cared for her, her emotions were a mess.

  But when she looked into his slate gray eyes for the first time in front of the priest, her fears faded to nothing under the warmth blazing from them. He might not love her, but he did care and she loved him. Now and forever.

  Their marriage would be what they made of it and she was determined to make the best of the oppor­tunity God had given her to live out her dearest dream.

  And it felt like a dream as Sebastian took her to a five star hotel on the outskirts of Athens.

  He carried her over the threshold of their room and she smiled up at him, all the love she felt shining in her eyes, if he but knew it.

  His breath caught and then his lips slanted over hers with tender mastery.

  When he lifted his head, she was dizzy with long­ing.

  "Thank you." His voice was husky with the need reflected in his dark gaze.

  "For what?" she asked, confused.

  "For marrying me. I promise you, I will make you happy, yineka mou."

  "Being with you makes me happy," she said on a burst of honesty, her heart too full to keep all of her emotion in.

  She couldn't understand what he muttered as his mouth lowered again, but she understood the all con­suming fire in his kiss, because the same blaze burned hotly inside her.

  They were moving and then she felt the comfort­able firmness of a bed under her. The kiss continued with searing heat while his hand peeled her dress away from her shoulder and he touched her. Caressing the slope of her shoulder, he then gently trailed his fingers along her collarbone. The pressure of his lips changed subtly with each touch, the quality of the kiss becoming gentler, more tender.

  The first time they had made love, everything had happened so fast, but he wasn't rushing anything now. Sebastian's fingertips explored every centimeter of her exposed skin, her neck, her chest above the swell of her breasts, behind her ears, along her spine, across her shoulder blades. She shivered from the light ca­resses, her body trembling with powerful emotion.

  His tongue had not breached the defense of her lips and he had touched none of the erogenous zones she had expected. Yet Rachel was writhing under him, tears of intense passion leaking out the edges of her tightly closed eyelids.

  His mouth broke from hers, his lips traveling up her face to softly sip the moisture from her eyes.

  "Why are you crying?" he asked.

  "It's so beautiful, I can't help it."

  "Yes."

  The ready affirmation and lack of worry in his voice when he first asked the question, brought her eyelids open and she beheld a sight so shocking, her body stilled beneath his. Sebastian's eyes were wet too, their gray irises heated to molten metal.

  "You are so beautiful, yineka mou. And you are mine."

  She swallowed, unable to speak past the lump in her throat, but she nodded.

  He peeled her dress down farther, exposing swollen curves, flushed from arousal and tipped by hard points that ached for his attention.

  "So beautiful," he whispered again as his mouth brushed across the sensitive flesh, his heated breath an erotic caress.

  He said the words again in Greek just before taking one turgid peak into his mouth.

  She arched up toward him, her fingers locking in his hair, demanding silently that he keep doing what he was doing.

  He played with her nipple with his teeth and tongue, teasing her until the sensations arrowing to the core of her being were so strong, she felt on the verge of climax.

  "Oh, Sebastian. Please...." Her breath caught as he began to suckle flesh extra-sensitive from her preg­nancy. "My darling, oh, yes. It feels so good."

  Her tears turned to sobbing gasps for breath while her body bowed and twisted beneath him. The tension inside her tightened in an ever-winding spiral beyond anything she had ever known, even in his arms. Her other nipple strained against a light brush from his fingertip. He stroked it, kneading and caressing the resilient flesh around it until she thought she would die from the pleasure, or explode.

  She did both, experiencing what the French called a little death. A monsoon of tidal wave proportions crashed inside her, tightening her body until every muscle was tense, her womb contracting around the baby just beginning to show its presence in her body. She screamed her throat raw, her body locked in an agony of pleasure, her heart exploding with love.

  She couldn't stand one more second of the intense pleasure. It was too much, but she couldn't stop cry­ing out enough to say so. And then her body gave a huge, convulsive shudder and went limp against the bed, her mind conscious only on a very hazy level.

  She accepted his mouth moving against her lips, but could not make her own respond. She felt small kisses all over her face. Then he moved down her neck, over her chest and to her breasts as he praised her passion, her beauty, and her uniqueness in a mix­ture of English and Greek.

  He rolled away from her and she felt bereft at the loss of his body's warmth.

  With energy she had not thought she had, she opened her eyes and sat up.

  "Where are you going?"

  He was taking his clothes off. �
��Nowhere. I need to make you mine completely, to consummate our marriage with the joining of our bodies."

  She didn't know how she would handle it. She was already spent with pleasure, but she nodded. "Yes."

  The extent of his arousal and the level of self-control he was exhibiting became evident as the last bit of his clothing fell away. He was more than im­pressive in his arousal, he was downright daunting. They'd done this before, but she couldn't help swal­lowing in attempt to bring moisture to a dry throat. Had be been that big before?

  Something of her trepidation must have shown in her eyes because he came down on one knee beside her, his hand gently cupping her cheek. "I won't hurt you, little one. I will never hurt you again."

  It sounded like a vow and she took it as such.

  She licked her lips and then turned to press her mouth into his palm in a sign of trust.

  His big body shuddered at the contact. "Will you touch me?" he asked in a voice that she did not rec­ognize.

  It sounded so needy and her proud Greek needed no one.

  She reached out and tentatively brushed her fingers down the velvet length of him. He moved against her hand, the veins on his erect flesh pulsating with need he made no effort to conceal. It gave her a sense of power. This overwhelmingly masculine guy wanted her so much he was shaking with it.

  She curled her fingers around his hot flesh and squeezed.

  He groaned. "That's right. Agape mou, your touch is perfect."

  He'd called her his love again. It must be a sex thing, but she liked it. She caressed him with her hand, marveling at how new it all felt even though they'd spent an entire passion filled night together.

  There was something infinitely distinctive about this experience, but she was too caught up in her de­sire to figure out what.

  "I need you, Rachel."

  She smiled a secret woman's smile to herself. "Then have me, Sebastian, my love."

  If he could use such words during sex, so could she. It might be the only time she would ever reveal the depth of her feeling to him.

  He stilled in the act of pressing her backward, his gaze so intense it made her shiver. "Am I?"

  "What?"

  "Am I your love?" he growled, no pretense of patience or tolerant lover present.

  Her mouth opened, her lips working, but no sound came out. She could not admit the truth, but she could not make herself lie either.

  His face spasmed with pain. "Of course I am not, but you married me and for that I must be grateful."

  "Do you want to be my beloved?" she croaked, her voice cracked from both excitement and strain.

  Wariness filled his expression. "What husband does not wish to be loved by his wife?"

  One who had married her for the sake of passion and their unborn child?

  Only, it was apparent that he did want her to love him. Maybe his pride balked at being a means to an end as much as hers did. If she thought it was his heart involved, she didn't know what she would do. Expire from happiness maybe.

  However, it was far more likely his pride talking. He had been adamant she not marry him because she had no other alternative. Had fought to get her to take property and money to guarantee such an eventuality could not come to pass. She'd refused and he'd mar­ried her anyway, but perhaps this was another side to his insecurity in that area.

  One thing became crystal clear as they hung sus­pended between making love and talking about it: what she felt for him was not limited to his feelings for her. It never had been.

  Love was a generous emotion with a need to be expressed, not hidden. If he wanted her love, she would give it to him and they would both feel better because of it.

  "I love you, Sebastian."

  What he said in response was indecipherable in the swirling vortex of passion he took her to after she said the words.

  He finished undressing her with fingers, whose trembling clumsiness made her heart squeeze in re­sponse. He touched her all over again, pleasuring her with words and actions so tender she started to cry again. When his hand trespassed between her thighs, she was swollen and ready for him. He touched her until she was crying out with her desire and then he joined their bodies, setting a rhythm that brought them to a mutual, soul altering climax within minutes.

  Afterward, he rolled onto his back, taking her with him, so they stayed connected intimately. It was an odd sensation, but incredibly special. She lay, making patterns on his shoulder with her fingertip, loving the feel of his hard muscles under her hands.

  “Tell me about the assault when you were younger."

  Of all the words she'd expected to hear in the drowsy aftermath of passion, those were not the ones.

  She lifted her head from its comfy spot on his sweat dampened chest and looked at him. "Why?"

  "I shut you down the morning after we made love because I'd gone crazy with my own assumptions. After I realized how wrong I was, I was haunted by what you'd said."

  "So now you want me to tell you about it?"

  "Yes, but if it is too painful to talk about, I un­derstand."

  A sensitive Sebastian was an unknown quantity. Even before the untimely death of his uncle, Sebastian had been kind to her, but not sensitive. He'd brought his women around, breaking her youth­ful heart while repairing it with a smile and a com­pliment.

  "But why do you want to know?"

  He looked uncomfortable, but very, very serious. "I never want to do anything that might inadvertently remind you of him."

  The words shocked her, but his reasoning touched her deeply. "Nothing you could ever do would re­mind me of him, even if you touched me in exactly the same way."

  And she knew it was true, because with Sebastian, everything was different. Her love made it so.

  “I am glad.''

  She took a deep breath, ugly memories playing at the edge of her consciousness. "I've never told any­one but Andrea."

  He grimaced. "Knowing her, she was not sympa­thetic."

  That was a major understatement of her mother's cold reaction to Rachel's trauma. That's when she lost all love for her mother. "She told me to keep quiet about it afterward, never to bring it up again."

  "I am sorry for that, yineka mou. She did not pro­tect you like a mother should protect her daughter."

  She never had.

  "No, she didn't." Then Rachel started to tell him.

  It had been the night of one of her mother's parties. Rachel had been hiding in her bedroom as usual, try­ing to ignore what was happening in the rest of the apartment.

  A man came into the room and shut the door. He switched on her light and she recognized him as the younger brother of her mother's current lover. He made her feel dirty when he looked at her because he noticed parts of her body her innocent sixteen-year-old mind knew he wasn't supposed to. He was drunk. She could smell the liquor from across the room.

  It scared her.

  When he sat down on her bed, it scared her even more. He talked to her in the slurring tones drunks use. She told him to leave, but he just laughed and

  started touching her, telling her she was just like her mother. She screamed and he slapped her. No one in the apartment heard because the music was too loud. She fought, but he got her panties off and his hand was between her legs. He roughly shoved his fingers inside her and she felt a tearing pain that made her scream again.

  This time longer and louder than any sound she'd ever made.

  The door to her room crashed open and his brother rushed inside. He grabbed the younger man and punched him, calling him names and telling him what a lowlife bastard he was. Her mother came in to see what the ruckus was because her boyfriend's voice had carried where Rachel's hadn't.

  When she took in the scene before her, she told her boyfriend to get his brother out of the apartment. Rachel had been sobbing uncontrollably, still hurting between her legs, blood all over her thighs from her ripped hymen.

  "Andrea refused to take me to the hospital, saying lots of w
omen bled her first time. But it wasn't my first time. We hadn't had sex and the blood terrified me."

  Sebastian's hands were soothing her back although there was tension in his body beneath hers.

  "Did you press charges?"

  "No. Andrea told me not to say anything, got a lock for my bedroom door and that was the end of it. She married your uncle six months later and we moved to Greece."

  "And she appropriated your experience as part of the lure she used to trap him in her net."

  "Yes."

  The knowledge Sebastian had accused her of doing the same thing shimmered between them.

  Grief reflected in the depths of his gray eyes. "I am more sorry than I can ever say for the accusations I made the morning after we made love the first time." The words came out stilted, the English heavily accented with his Greek intonation. "I will understand if you can never forgive me."

  She felt a blessed freedom having told him about her past and release from its power in his ready ac­ceptance and apology. "I do forgive you. You were mixed up and said things you didn't mean."