by Julia James
There was no moon, but starlight gleamed on the sea beyond, and caught, too, the iridescent surface of the swimming pool, nestled into its terrace between the villa and the garden.
Ann gazed out over the vista. ‘It really is beautiful,’ she said. It was impossible not to say so. Impossible not to stand there drinking it in and feel the heady intoxication of the flowers’ fragrance, the even headier intoxication of her blood. She wasn’t sure how much wine she had drunk—she could feel it suffusing her veins, feel it swirling gently through her—but it seemed to have put the world into a strange, seductive blend whereby she seemed both supersensitive to everything around her and yet everything seemed dissociated from her, unreal almost…as if she were drifting through it like a veil.
But she knew she should not go on standing here beside Nikos, gazing out over the starlit garden with the scent of flowers in her nostrils, the soft music of the cicadas playing in the vegetation. She should, in fact, walk briskly away along the stone pathway to the terrace and get inside the villa, go straight to her bedroom. Where, equally briskly, she should take off her make-up, brush out her hair, get into her nightdress, get into bed, and go peacefully, immediately to sleep.
That, she knew, was precisely what she should do. Right now.
Not stand here in the soft Aegean night, feeling the wine whispering in her head, feeling the dark, solid presence of Nikos Theakis standing beside her. His hand was still grazing her back, so close that all she had to do was turn slightly towards him to let that warm, strong hand press her against him, to let her hand splay against the fine cotton of his shirt, feeling the hard wall of his chest beneath as she lifted her gaze to him, to drink in the shadowed planes of his face, the dark sweep of lashes across those eyes that could sear right through her, making her breath catch in her throat, making her sway, as if she were a flower on the breeze. His arm would encircle her pliant body, and his sensual, sculpted mouth would come down on hers—
She jerked forward—a single step. But it was enough to shake her back to reality.
‘I must go in,’ she said. Her voice sounded abrupt. She gazed at the long façade of the villa, brow furrowing slightly. Where, exactly, was she to get inside?
‘This way.’ His voice was smooth, assured.
Automatically she went the way he indicated, walking slightly in front of him until the path converged on the main terrace. Even though she had broken the moment, she still seemed to be in that state of hypersensitivity, feeling his presence behind her in every follicle in her body. Yet to everything else she seemed quite blind. So much so that when he stepped past her, to halt her progress and slide open the French window they were adjacent to, indicating she should step through, she did so.
And stopped. This was not a salon or a hallway, or any room she was familiar with.
It was a bedroom.
She turned. Nikos was smoothly sliding shut the French window again.
And walking towards her.
She stepped backwards. It was automatic, instinctive.
‘What—?’
He gave a low, brief laugh. ‘Don’t be naïve, Ann. What do you think?’ There was amusement in his voice.
He came up to her, looking down at her. There was a single low lamp burning by the bed—a wide double bed, swathed in a dark coverlet, sombre and masculine—dimmed right down. By its light his face seemed more planed than ever, with shadows etching his features. She felt weak suddenly, overcome. Gazing at him, lips parting.
Her breath quickened.
He saw it, saw her reaction. Saw how it came even without conscious volition.
‘This has been waiting for us since the beach,’ he said, his voice low, with a timbre that she could feel in her spine. ‘Then was not the time—but now… Now, Ann, we have all the time we need.’
Dark long lashes swept down over her. He reached forward, his hands closing over the loose arms of his sweater, still draped around her shoulders. She had long ceased to be conscious of it, having had so much else to dominate her awareness, but now she was vividly aware of it again, and even more vividly, breathlessly aware of the slight but inexorable pull he exerted through the sleeves, around her neck and shoulders.
Drawing her forward.
For a moment, a balance of time she could not say lasted either a few fleeting seconds or a long, long interval of consciousness, she felt herself resist. Felt her mind fill with the realisation that she must step back again and flee to the door behind her. Flee away from this man on whom her eyes were fixed as he drew her casually towards him, until he was discarding the sweater, sliding his hands along the slender column of her torso, his fingers splaying around her ribs. Sensation rippled down her as her breath caught again, mouth parting yet again, as she felt his thumb grazing the swelling underside of her breasts.
He held her there, in position for him, as his hooded gaze held hers, and he casually, leisurely, let his thumbs glide across the tautening material of her top.
She felt her nipples flower, the delicate tissues of her breasts engorge. And he felt it too, for he gave a smile. Slow and sensual. Watching her reaction.
‘Very nice, Ann,’ he murmured. ‘Very nice indeed. As is this…’ he continued, in the same considering tone.
His mouth came down in slow and sensual possession. As if he had every right to taste her, every right to let his lips smooth over hers, explore their contours, then ease them apart to taste the nectar within. Every right to overwhelm all her senses and render her helpless, unresisting, capable of nothing except feeling the exquisite sensuality of his kiss, tasting her, possessing her…arousing her…
She could feel the blood surge in her veins like a hot tide, drowning out everything. Everything except what was happening. Nikos Theakis was kissing her…holding her… seducing her…
She knew it was happening, but she could not stop it. It was too overpowering, too overwhelming. All rational thought, such as was left, was gone—dissolved away. All that existed was sensation—sweet, arousing, seductive. She could no more resist it than honey poured over a hot spoon could resist melting.
He let her go, and for a moment she only swayed blindly, held in his sensual grip. Then his hands were sliding around her spine, unfastening the tie of her crossover top, drawing each section of the lacy fabric away to reveal her bra beneath, straining over her engorged breasts. Smoothly he eased the top from her, over each shoulder, discarding it carelessly. Then his hands were at her spine again, slipping the fastening of her bra.
Her swollen breasts fell free, her bra following her top to the floor, and she was standing there, bared to the waist, the coral peaks of her nipples full and erect.
Dark eyes washed over her, flaring as they did so.
‘Perfect,’ he murmured. ‘Quite, quite perfect…’
With a leisurely motion he lifted his hand, letting the backs of his fingers drift against the fullness of the twin orbs. She gave a low, incoherent moan in her throat, her eyes fluttering as the exquisite sensation he aroused shimmered through her. A low laugh came from him.
‘Oh, Ann—do you have any idea how disturbing your breasts have been to my peace of mind? And now—now I can have my fill of them.’
His fingers drifted over them again, gently scissoring her nipples. The low moan in her throat came again. Heat beat up in her, and she felt her breasts react more strongly still, straining forward, as if eager for his touch. Her mind was in meltdown—inchoate, formless, distilled to pure, exquisite sensation and the heady, erotic knowledge that she was standing here, naked to the waist, while Nikos Theakis caressed the breasts he had bared for his pleasure.
Another low moan came from her parted lips, and this time it was as a signal to him. He swept her up, her skirt trailing to the floor, swung her around and then lowered her down on to the bed. Her hands splayed upwards, above her head, lifting her breasts, and for a moment he just gazed down on her, his eyes narrowed to a beam of intense focus that quickened the blood in her, susurrated
on her skin. She could only lie there, gazing up at him, letting her eyes twine with his, letting the desire flaring in them accentuate her own desire so that it flooded out all the last, fleeing shards of her resistance, drowned them out. Her desire was all-possessing, all consuming—to reach for that tall, strong body looming over her, to close her hands over the sinewed arms, draw it down to her, feel its hard muscled weight press down on her…
‘Nikos—’
Where had that word come from, murmuring from her lips? Had she really spoken his name. Pleaded it? Invited it—?
Invited him?
Invited him to do what he was doing now—stripping the clothes from his body so that her eyes widened, as they had widened once before on the beach, as his flawless body was revealed to her. Her eyes gloried in his arrant masculinity and his eyes never left hers, never strayed from the body she was displaying for him. Prepared now, he lowered himself down beside her, his hand splaying once more over each breast, his body moving over hers, his mouth finding hers.
He renewed his possession skilfully, expertly, with lips and tongue, soft and gliding, arousing and desiring. He drew from her a response she had not known was possible, engendered a sensuous bliss she had not known existed till that moment. His hands explored her body, turning it in his strong, assured grasp, unwinding her from her long skirt until she was boneless beneath him, until her body was a mesh of arousal. His hands smoothed over her, making him master of every portion of her body, easing her thighs apart, long, skilled fingers teasing the delicate folds concealed.
She gasped in pleasure, her head rolling back into the softness of the pillow, lips parting as the breath exhaled from her. She heard him give a low laugh, and then his lips were almost at hers, and he was teasing them with his even as his hand was performing the same office between her thighs, teasing the dewing flesh.
He murmured something to her, but she was beyond hearing, beyond anything but drowning in the sensations he was engendering. She moaned again, fingers clenching into the pillow as his fingers began their skilful, unbearable work. He eased her thighs yet further apart, gained deeper access to her, finding the throbbing nub of her desire. Arousingly he caressed it as her breath quickened to gasping, her body threshing in a flux of desire as he arched over her, his hand sliding away from her, letting the tip of his manhood take its place. Instinctively, blindly, her hands splayed over his hard, taut buttocks, holding him there, and her hips lifted to him in a gesture as old as time. Her mouth was questing against his, her breasts straining against the muscled wall of his chest, her peaked nipples crushed against it.
Fire licked through her. Her body was aflame, aching for his possession. She strained against him and his mouth was lifting from hers, saying something. She knew not what, but there was promise in it, promise and purpose…
Her head threshed from side to side as wave after wave of pleasure broke through her. She cried out, head lifting back, eyes fluttering shut, as her whole being focused on the sensation searing through it.
Then he was driving into her, strong and insistent, thrusting up into her. She heard him cry out above her, felt his body explode inside hers. She cried out with him, the universe burning all around them as their bodies convulsed one within the other. It went on—a tidal wave crashing again and again through her flesh.
Her head fell back again as the final wave died away. Long moments later, he slid his hand up over her throat, his fingers curving up around the line of her jaw to cup her. Slowly, shudderingly, her pounding heart started to ease. Her panting breath to steady. She lay exhausted, shaken, as he released her, gazing blindly up at him. Shock glazed her eyes. The world returned to her, and she realised what she had done.
Had sex with a man who held her in absolute contempt.
A man whom she had more cause to hate than any man alive.
Cold drenched through her, replacing the heat of her sated body with a chill that seemed to go down to her guts, pooling into ice. Disbelief and a dismay so wrenching that it seemed to convulse her stomach choked her lungs.
Oh, God, what have I done?
Her shocked eyes could only stare upwards to the man on whose bed she was lying, whose body was still pinning her, filling her…
For an endless moment the world froze in horror. Only around the edges, like a miasma, it was haunted by the imprint of a quite, quite different emotion—an emotion that had possessed her, consumed her, enveloped her into a world she had never known existed. A world against whose loss now she heard a faint, anguished cry, as if she were losing something incredibly rare and precious, as if the loss of it were unbearable…
But filling her consciousness, spreading through it like an ugly stain, was the overpowering emotion of dismay—and shock and disbelief that she could have done what she had just done. Limp with horror at herself, she could only lie there, all limbs exhausted, staring blindly up into the face looking down at her.
For a moment there was no motion. None at all. Then abruptly, roughly, her body was away from the weight bearing on her. Nikos was striding away, across the huge room, thrusting open the door into the en suite bathroom, and closing it sharply behind him.
For a handful of seconds she could only lie there, still, inert, motionless. Then, forcing her frozen mind to act, she clambered up, urgently scrabbling for her clothes, forcing herself into them with unbearable haste and clumsiness, not bothering with underwear, just winding her top and her skirt around her to cover her nakedness. From the bathroom she could hear the sound of a shower starting. Her eyes flew past the door opposite the French window to the terrace, and she saw the door which surely must lead to the rest of the villa.
She hurried to it, half tripping, heart racing, lungs still choking, and yanked it open, finding herself, to her abject relief, in a service corridor. She didn’t know where she was going but it didn’t matter—she simply hurtled along it, desperately hoping that at this late hour she would encounter no one until she came upon part of the villa she recognised and could navigate to her own guest bedroom from there. Minutes later she was shutting the door and collapsing down on her own bed, shaking like a leaf, her arms wrapped around herself, as if stanching a wound. She started to rock.
Words whipped through her, over and over again, more and more cruel.
What have I done? What have I done?
Nikos stood beneath the pounding water of the shower. Its needles should be knives. Knives to carve into his greedy flesh the punishment he deserved.
How the hell could he have been so stupid? Hadn’t he known—hadn’t he told himself, staring into the mirror above the basin in that very bathroom a handful of days ago, that he was playing with fire? And now what had he gone and done? Knowingly, deliberately fooled himself on the way back to the villa with the kind of self-flattering logic that, had it been a dodgy business proposal, he’d have seen through in an instant. But which, because it was his damn male desire—never thwarted before, never not satiated, whenever and with whoever he wanted—he’d seized on it as if it were legal writ!
His mind sheered away. Sheered away from remembering the moment when he’d realised that not only did he have to take her, right there, right then, but worse—far, far worse—the moment when the world had simply whited out.
It’s never been like that before.
The words formed in his mind as the stinging needles pounded down on him.
Never had the moment of sexual fulfilment been like that—so intense, so overpowering, so consuming that he’d cried out, unable to stop himself.
Until the moment when consciousness had knifed back into him and he’d stared down at her and realised, with harsh, pitiless self-condemnation, that he had just walked over the edge of a cliff.
Angrily his hand fisted, and he thumped it against the wall of the shower stall.
I damn well knew I should have left her alone. I damn well knew it!
But even as the words formed, so did others. Others that made him abruptly cut off the
water, grab a towel, and pat himself dry, roughly towelling the moisture out of his hair. Then he cast the towels aside and yanked open the bathroom door.
He knew he should never have touched Ann Turner. He knew he should never have taken her to his bed. Knew he should never have had sex with her.
But he knew something else as well as he strode out of the bathroom.
He wanted her again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SUN WAS SCARCELY UP, but Ann was lying in bed, wakeful and tormented. She would have to go. Leave Sospiris. There was no other option. She couldn’t stay here now!
I’ll have to think of something—something to tell Ari, Mrs Theakis. Something—anything!
Except the truth. Even as she lay there she felt a semi-hysterical bubble inside her at the thought of Mrs Theakis knowing…
She shuddered in horror, feeling her skin flush.
How am I going to face her? How can I even have breakfast with her—knowing what I did, where I was?
And yet she was going to have to. Going to have to somehow get through the morning, behave normally, then dream up some plausible reason why she had to go back to England.
A spear stabbed her. Ari! Ari would be so upset, so distressed! Wasn’t it bad enough he was about to lose Tina? Now she was proposing to walk out on him as well.
For ever.
Because unless by some miracle Mrs Theakis invited her here again when Nikos was somewhere else—like Australia, or better still Antarctica!—or perhaps herself come to London some time, then how could she possibly ever see Ari again? She could never go anywhere near Nikos Theakis again—never!