by Julia James
Until the night she'd finally decided that twenty-two was no age to be a virgin still, and Dave had wanted her, so very, very much...
She could remember the look on his face as if it was yesterday. The strangled noise in his throat as she took her jeans off in his flat, the undisguised expletive that exploded from him. The word he'd called her.
Freak.
Crippled freak.
It's what I am. What every man will think me...
'Nikos—'
She caught his head with her hands. His hair was Like black silk to her touch.
'Nikos—don't, please—'
He raised his mouth, lifting his face to her.
'Hush, agape mou, hush.' His voice was low.
He slipped his forearms underneath her thighs, and with the lightest exertion swung her legs round and on to the bed, following them himself to lie beside her. He leaned over her as she lay there, eyes wide and confused.
'Nikos—' Her voice was faint
He laid a finger over her mouth.
'This is not a time for talking,' he told her.
Then slowly, sensually, he began to make love to her.
It was like walking along the blade of a knife. Every move, every gesture, every touch was crucial. Control beaded in every nerve.
This is for her, not for you—
Carefully, incredibly carefully, Nikos kissed her. His mouth was light, as light as swansdown, his lips feathering hers, his tongue flickering at the corners of her mouth until it opened to him, and then slowly, delicately, he explored within.
Her eyes had shut. He hadn't noticed when, but it didn't matter. He knew she could not help it. Knew that the only way she could accept what was happening to her was by closing herself to everything but sensation—pure, blissful sensation.
And it was the same for him. He too knew that he must focus only and absolutely on what was happening now. Not just because of the utter physical control he had to impose on herself, but because somewhere, deep down inside, emotions were running so deep he could not name them. All but one.
Anger. Anger at a universe where such things happened. Anger at himself for being such a boor, a fool. Anger, most of all, at the men who had looked at her and let her feel that she was repulsive to them...
His mouth glided down the smooth, flawless column of her throat, seeking the hollow at its base where her pulse throbbed. With the skill of all his years he parted her robe, shaping delicately, sensuously, the sweet richness of her breasts. His mouth moved to their reddened tips and his tongue nickered over the hardening peaks.
Her heard her gasp, low in her throat, felt her head roll back as she savoured the sensations he aroused in her.
His body surged, and he quelled it urgently. He wanted— Theos how he wanted—to take her swollen nipple into his mouth, to suck and take his fill, move his body over hers at once, fill her with his, and feed and sate his appetite on her.
This is for her, not you—
With extreme control he held back, focussing only on her response, compressing her ripe breasts together so that his tongue could move from one peak to the other, endlessly keeping both in straining engorgement while little moans pulsed in her throat.
He felt her fingers come around his shoulders, beneath the towelling of his robe, pushing it back, sliding it from him, seeking the broad swathe of his shoulderblade to press into the smooth, flawless flesh of his back. He eased the robe from him to let her access him, never for a moment lifting his mouth away from her, only letting it drift down, over the swell of her breast, to lave the suddenly tautened plane of her belly.
And soon beyond.
As his fingers began to thread, tantalisingly, oh, so tantalisingly, in the tight curls that nested above the vee of her legs, -Andrea thought she could stand no more. The sensation overload of her whole body was so intense, so exquisite she could not bear it.
But she could not escape it. It was like being sucked into dark, breathless whirlpool, circling with infinite slowness, infinite power. She knew she ought to open her eyes, but she could not. Knew she ought to stop this, now, right now, push away those hands, that mouth...
But she could not. She was drowning in sensation, lost to all reason. There was nothing, nothing in the universe except what she was feeling now—as if her whole body were one whole, sweet mesh of soft, liquid pleasure that suffused every cell, every fibre of her being.
A pleasure that was growing with a mute, remorseless crescendo, spreading out in one sweet wave after another, quivering down all her nerves, washing through and through her as the slow, dark whirlpool took her with it.
His mouth was where his fingertips had been, and now his fingertips had moved on, brushing down the tender flesh on either side of the tightly curling nest of hair, seeking the parting of her legs.
Almost she tensed. Almost she thrust him back—away. Almost the knowledge of her disfigurement triumphed. But then, with a breathless sigh of pleasure, she felt her thighs loosen, fall open.
The whorls of pleasure intensified. She was weightless, floating in some sea of bliss that took everything away but the flickering of his tongue, the soft easing of his fingertip through folds made satin with a dew that his touch drew out of her.
The sensation was all there was.
Nothing had felt like this. Nothing hi all her life. She had not known such sensation could exist.
A long, sweet moan escaped her. Her head rolled back, shoulders almost lifting from the bedclothes. The flickering intensified, the stroking fingertip easing her lips apart, exposing new, sweet feminine flesh to his skilled, exquisite touch.
Her hands clenched in the bedcover and she moaned again. Sensation broke over her again, wave after wave. And yet, with an instinct she did not know existed, she knew she was not yet sated. These were just the shallows of sensation.
She felt her hips lift and strain towards him, seeking —ore—more.
He answered her supplication. His fingertip drew back, glides delicately in the flooding dew, circling slowly, rhythmically, like the vortex of a whirlpool, at the entrance to her body. Her fingers clenched again into the heavy folds of the bedspread, and her hips called to him again.
His tongue hovered minutely, and then, as the most drowning sensation yet broke through her, its very tip touched at the part that had swollen, all unbeknownst to her, past the protective furrow which had sheltered it.
Her breath caught, lips parting. What she had felt till now had been an echo, a shadow. Now, now was the true flame to her body lit. It burned beneath his touch, like a sweet, intense fire, making her whole body molten, focussing her entire being, as through a burning lens, on that single point of heat. It grew, and grew. She did not know how, or why—could feel nothing now, not the closeness of his body, nor the ministrations of his fingertip circling steadily, steadily, as her body opened to him, nor even the controlled, oh, so controlled accuracy of the flickering of his tongue, just there, just there, until the heat there, just there, was all there was, all there could ever be.
She was molten, molten, the warmth welling from the only centre of her body that could exist now, until it ascended through every vein, higher, ever higher, as the whirlpool sucked at her and sucked, and she could hear, from far, far way, a long, slow, rising cry that came from somewhere so deep inside she had never known its existence, reaching out, reaching out to exhale through her lifted, opening mouth...
Heat flooded through her, a huge, overwhelming sheet of flame that simply raced to encompass her whole body. It flooded again and again—a surge of flame, lifting her body, arching her spine, her neck, a surge of pleasure so intense, so absolute, it filled her with incredulity and awe that her body could feel so much...so much.
And go on feeling. It came, wave after wave, one more bliss ful than the next, and the cry from the heart of her being went on, and on, and on...
She could feel the internal muscles of her body rippling in-' side her, feel the blo
od surging, feel the pulsing of every fold, the rush of moisture releasing.
Time lost all meaning as she gave herself, consumed, to the molten overflow flooding and flooding again through her. And still it came. Until, singing its ecstasy, her ecstasy, her body began, finally to ebb, exhausted, sated, the vast, encompassing whirlpool slowly, slowly stilling...
Arms were holding her. There was the alien scent of male-ness, the strong hardness of masculine muscles, the brush of I body hair against the new softness of her breasts. She was folded into it. Folded against him.
Slowly reality came back to her, and she realised what had happened.
Andrea lay in his arms as motionless as a rag doll. Her entire body was limp. He was not surprised. When she had peaked it had been like an endless outpouring of her whole body, the flush of ecstasy suffusing the paleness of her skin, her eyes fluttering beneath her long, long lashes, her breath exhaling in a long, slow susurration of bliss.
And now she lay in the sheltering circle of his arms.
Nikos held her quietly, not moving, not stirring, knowing his own body was at peace as well.
And more than his body.
He had done the right thing, he knew. Followed his unconscious instinct—knowing, somehow, that he must take her on a journey she needed to make. A journey that must be an exorcism of all her fears, a healing of the wounds that had been laid upon her.
He felt the inert length of her legs beside him and coldness iced through him. He heard her words again—The doctors wanted to amputate.,.
Inside his head he heard his answering cry of negation of such a fate.
'Andrea mou...' He did not know if he said the words aloud or not. But they echoed in him all the same.
His eyes were heavy. At his side, in the cradle of his arms, he felt her body slacken imperceptibly, saw her face slide into repose, her breath shallowing into sleep. He felt its call, his eyelids too heavy to hold apart, and as his own breathing flowed his muscles relaxed, like hers, into the sweet embrace of sleep as well.
CHAPTER NINE
There was sunlight in the room, bright and pouring, flooding in from the wide-set windows. Andrea stirred, surfacing un willingly from sleep. There was some reason she didn't warn to wake up, but she didn't want to think about what that might be.
But wake she must. Someone was shaking her shoulder. No roughly, but insistently.
'Andrea, mou, we are wasting a glorious day! Come, breakfast awaits.'
Nikos's voice was a mix of chiding and encouraging, his tone deliberately light. It would be the best way to play it, he] knew. For the moment at least. She didn't want to move, didn't want to acknowledge his existence, but she must—this was not something she could run away from or deny any longer. He would not hurry her, he would be as gentle as she needed, but her denial must end. He desired her and she desired him—and the trifle of her scarred legs must not get in the way of her acceptance of that inalienable truth.
He dropped a kiss on her exposed cheek.
'What do you say in English? Lazybones?' He stood up. 'There is a pot of tea for you here to wake you up—the chef poured all his genius into making you the perfect English "cuppa"—you must not offend him by rejecting it! He will sulk for days and we shall starve! So, drink your tea like a good girl, and come and join me on deck in fifteen minutes.' He stooped briefly, to brush her cheek very softly with his fingers. 'It will be all right, Andrea—trust me.'
Then he was gone.
She needed every one of those fifteen minutes he had allowed her. As she showered and dressed a single thought drummed through her brain—Don't think about it! Just don't think about it!
But the moment she emerged onto the sunlit deck, where a breakfast table was set up, and laid eyes on Nikos sitting there it was all for nothing. Memory, in total, absolute detail, came flooding back to her.
He could see it in her face, her eyes, and acted immediately. He got up and came across to her swiftly, taking her hands.
'Come—breakfast,' he said. 'What would you like to have?' He swept an arm to indicate a sideboard groaning with enough food to feed an army, with everything on it from fresh fruit to devilled kidneys.
Grateful, as he had intended, for the banality of choosing something to eat, she let him help her to lightly scrambled eggs, toast, and a plate of highly scented freshly cut pineapple. She felt surprisingly hungry.
If I don't think about it, it never happened... she told herself, sitting herself down at the table.
There were no crew in sight, and she was grateful for that too. Whether it was Nikos being tactful she didn't know, but she simply couldn't have borne to have that mute chorus in attendance.
Instead, she looked about her. The deck they were seated on faced the stern, and all Andrea could see all around was a glorious expanse of sparkling blue water. The sight lifted her spirits of its own accord. A tiny breeze whisked around her cheeks, fanning the tendrils of her hair. It was a bright, fresh, brand-new day.
From nowhere, absolutely nowhere, a sense of wellbeing filled her. It was illogical, impossible, but it was there. She felt her spirits lighten. Who could be otherwise on a morning like this?
She set to, demolishing her breakfast swiftly. She'd only picked at her food over that excruciating dinner last night, and now she was making up for it. There was something so incredibly comforting about scrambled eggs on toast...
Nikos said nothing, just busied himself leafing through a newspaper as he worked steadily through a surprisingly hearty breakfast. As they ate, with him paying her no more attention than from time to time checking if she would like more tea, more toast, more butter, little by little she found herself capable of lifting her eyes from her food, and instead of sliding them immediately to the sparkling horizon let them pass, in focus, over the man sitting opposite her.
Don't think about it! she reminded herself, and to her surprise the technique seemed to work.
Maybe it was because Nikos seemed so totally relaxed. He sat there, a man at peace with the world, eating his breakfast beneath an Aegean sky. Maybe too, Andrea realised, it was because for the first time she was seeing him in informal clothes. Instead of the habitual business suit or evening dress this morning he was wearing a beautifully cut but informally tailored short-sleeved, open-necked fawn-coloured shirt and tan-coloured chinos.
He still looked devastating, of course, but the air of command was absent—or, if not absent, definitely off-duty.
As he swallowed the last of his coffee, folded up his newspaper and glanced towards her some twenty minutes later she realised she was just sitting there, her own breakfast finished, content to feel the warm sun on her face, the air ruffling her hair occasionally, and watch the stem flag flap in the breeze.
It dawned on her that they were not moving.
'Where are we?' she asked, puzzled. 'Why have we stopped?'
'We are on the approach to Heraklion. If you wish, we can make landfall.'
'Heraklion?' queried Andrea. 'Isn't that on Crete?'
'Yes. The island is visible from the aft. Shall we go and look?'
There didn't seem to be a particularly good reason not to, and Andrea found herself standing up as Nikos moved to draw back her chair. She walked beside him along the side of the vessel, and as they drew clear onto the foredeck she could see the long east-west land mass of Greece's largest island lying to the south of them. Mountains rose in the interior, almost all along the spine of the island, and Nikos pointed to the town of Heraklion on the coast in front of them.
'Knossos is only a few kilometres inland. Would you like to go and visit the Minotaur?' he asked genially.
The prospect tugged at her. Then, sinkingly, she realised she must ask for the yacht to put about and return to Piraeus. She had a plane to catch.
As k reading her thoughts, Nikos touched her arm lightly. Though it was only the briefest gesture, she felt her skin tingle.
'Stay a little, Andrea mou. What harm will it do, afte
r all?'
His voice was light, but there was a cajoling beneath the lightness. 'Today we could just play tourists. It's been a strain, these last weeks—let us relax a little, ne?”