Secrets of Cinderella's Awakening

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘Your turn now,’ she said.

  Her words shattered his erotic fantasy. ‘My turn?’ he questioned throatily.

  ‘I don’t really know anything about you, do I? Other than the fact you were named after a lion and you’re very handy with a pair of tweezers.’

  He started to laugh. Maybe that was the secret of her unexpected allure. She was quick-tongued. Bright. Plus she was treating him with an irreverence he wasn’t used to, which he was discovering he liked. Would she continue to behave in the same way towards him once she discovered who he really was? He doubted it.

  All the more reason not to tell her.

  ‘I’m Greek,’ he informed her.

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘And I came to Paramenios for the weekend because work has been pretty full-on lately.’

  He watched as she bit into a slice of tomato and found himself wanting to lick away the gleam of juice which lingered on her lips.

  ‘What kind of work do you do?’

  The question was unwelcome and Leon wondered how to avoid it. If he told her, it would change everything. It always did. His billionaire status altered the way women viewed him—hadn’t that been demonstrated time after time, and contributed to his innate cynicism?

  ‘I’m a builder,’ he said.

  ‘Ah. I thought so!’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Pushing away her barely touched plate, she smiled. ‘I can imagine you wielding a sledgehammer on a building site. You’ve definitely got the build for it—no joke intended.’

  For some reason, Leon found her remark slightly insulting. Was she implying he was all brawn and no brains? For a moment he was tempted to tell her that he’d been offered a place at Stanford at a precociously young age, until he’d decided that his future didn’t lie in academia and he needed to get out there and make some money. But then he wondered what he was thinking. This wasn’t some sort of boasting exercise. He certainly wasn’t there in order to establish his intellectual credentials, or prove himself to her. He knew exactly why he was there—and judging from the sexual energy which had been fizzing between them from the get-go, she knew it too.

  ‘Have you finished?’ he asked.

  She surveyed her plate. ‘Well, I have and I haven’t. I really don’t want to offend the chef, but I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Me, neither.’

  ‘Must be the heat.’

  ‘Must be.’ There was a long pause. ‘Don’t worry about the chef,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll make sure we tip generously.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ Hastily, she reached for her beach bag and a sandy shell fell onto the table as she started to rummage around inside. ‘I’ll get my purse—when I can find it, that is. I’m happy to split the bill.’

  Leon’s eyes narrowed. It was a novel experience to have a woman offer to pay and for a moment he thought about letting her, because novel experiences were rare in his world. Until he reminded himself that despite the clifftop restaurant’s deceptively rustic appearance, the food commanded prices far beyond the reach of most mortals. He shook his head. ‘No, you won’t—but thanks for the offer. I’ll see to it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I said, I’ll pay. Now, would you like to look at the desserts before I ask for the check, or would you prefer to walk on the beach and catch the last of the sunset?’

  His words floated on the warm air and as Marnie stared into his sculpted face, she was unbearably tempted. Until he’d suggested it, she hadn’t been aware of just how much she wanted to be alone with him—away from the frankly intrusive glances of the attendant staff who seemed to be hovering around their table quite unnecessarily in her opinion, considering they were the only customers in the place.

  But she wasn’t stupid and she knew how the world worked. If it were possible for a person to be aware of the corrupting power of sex without ever having had any actual experience of it—then Marnie was that person. She had been brought up to fear it. To be aware of all the trouble it could get a woman into. It was why it hadn’t particularly bothered her when men had accused her of being frigid or cold, whenever she’d failed to respond to their fumbling kisses. But those kisses had felt like ambushes, whereas the thought of Leon’s lips pressing down on hers was making her feel quite dizzy with need.

  He was making it clear that he found her attractive and maybe she should be scared by the knowledge of where that could lead. Maybe she should tell him that if he wanted to see her again, then he should take her number and call her and then arrange a second date. That was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it?

  But she wasn’t going to.

  Because Marnie knew better than anyone how fleeting happiness could be and something was telling her that if she didn’t grab at whatever he was offering, she might never get the chance again. Why wouldn’t she want to take a walk with this gorgeous man whose black waves tumbled so riotously against his darkly golden skin?

  Which was why she nodded. Why she rose to her feet with a solemn expression. Why she accepted that she was about to break one of her most fundamental rules—and break it big time. ‘I’d like that very much.’ Her fingers tightened around the strap of her beach bag. ‘I’ll just use the bathroom and then I’m all yours.’

  Her words were clumsy and open to misinterpretation and she wished she could take them back. But there again, why should she?

  They both knew what was on the menu for tonight and it certainly wasn’t fish and salad.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HIS LIPS WERE SOFT. Surprisingly soft. Marnie had thought they would be hard. Hard like his body. Hard like the fierce blue glint of his eyes. But what did she know, other than when Leon Kanonidou pulled her into his arms it felt as if this were the reason she’d been born?

  They had left the restaurant and walked slowly along the sand, the pain in her heel gradually receding as they watched the setting sun make its slow descent in the sky before finally slipping into the sea. Their arms brushing occasionally, they had commented on the soft sound of the waves and the fiery glow of the dying embers. But that conversation had felt mechanical, rather than natural, and it had filled Marnie with all kinds of fears—the main one being that she had totally misjudged the situation and maybe the attraction she felt for him was one-sided.

  She’d found herself wishing he would touch her. But he hadn’t. They’d just walked and walked until all the daylight had disappeared and faint stars had begun to puncture the moonless sky, before turning to retrace their steps towards his motorbike. And the more he had kept his distance, the more she had wanted him.

  They had turned to retrace their steps and Marnie had seen the restaurant in the distance—all brightly lit up like a cruise liner. They must have started playing music after they’d left but as they stopped to listen to the faint chords of a bouzouki drifting on the warm air, she had been acutely aware of a sinking sense of disappointment.

  So was this it? Was her determination to do something wild and free for the first time in her life about to amount to nothing, because the man she was with wasn’t interested in her? Maybe he really had just been acting as an impromptu guide, eager to show the English tourist the hidden delights of Paramenios.

  And then, almost as if he’d read her mind, Leon caught hold of her and turned her round, his hands on either side of her waist. She held her breath because his touch felt electric and he studied her upturned face for what felt like a long time, before lowering his head to kiss her.

  It was...dynamite.

  It was...life-changing.

  Marnie swayed in disbelief, her limbs growing instantly boneless. How was it possible for a kiss to feel this good? How could anything feel this good? At first there was barely any contact between them—just the intoxicating graze of his mouth over hers. Did he know how desperately frustrating that was? Was that why he deepened the kiss
so that, suddenly, everything changed? The pressure of his lips became seeking. Super-charged and somehow profound. As if she were the sleeping princess in the pages of a fairy story, who had been woken by a gorgeous prince.

  He deepened the kiss and began to stroke one of her breasts. Her nipple was pushing against her baggy T-shirt dress towards the circling of his thumb. She could feel the syrupy rush to her bikini bottoms and realised she wanted him to touch her there, too. She wanted things she’d never wanted before and she wanted them very badly. Was it that which made her writhe her hips against his with instinctive hunger, causing him to utter something in Greek which sounded almost despairing?

  The sound broke the spell and she drew back, though in the faint light all she could see was the hectic glitter of his eyes. ‘What...what did you just say?’

  ‘I said that you set my blood on fire, agape mou. And that I want you very much. But you already know that.’

  Well, she knew he wanted her, yes. She wasn’t actually sure about the ‘blood on fire’ bit, because nobody had ever said anything like that to her before. And although she liked it, her instinct was not to believe him because even if they were true, she knew compliments always came with a price.

  Yet what was the point of all this if she was just going to pepper the experience with her usual doubts, and spoil it? Couldn’t she have a holiday from her normal self and shake off all the worries which had been weighing her down for so long? Couldn’t she be a different Marnie tonight—one who was seeking nothing but uncomplicated pleasure? She had always been the responsible one. The one who looked out for other people, always preparing herself for the shadows which inevitably hovered just out of sight. Wasn’t it time to articulate what she wanted for a change?

  She cleared her throat. ‘Would you mind speaking in English so I can understand what you’re saying?’

  She could hear the amusement which deepened his voice.

  ‘Are we planning to do a lot of talking then, Marnie? Is that what turns you on?’

  Something warned her she’d be straying into dangerous territory if she told him she didn’t know what turned her on because she’d never given herself the chance to find out. But while she didn’t want to lie to him, that didn’t mean she couldn’t tell a different kind of truth.

  ‘You turn me on,’ she said boldly and something about the breathless rush of her words made his powerful body tense.

  ‘Oh, do I?’ he questioned, tilting her chin with his fingers so that their darkened gazes clashed. ‘So what are we going to do about that, I wonder?’

  She didn’t dare answer in case she said the wrong thing. In case she frightened him away with her appalling lack of experience—because her gorgeous biker looked and kissed like someone who knew his way around the block. So instead, she just did what she’d been aching to do all evening, which was to touch his face—grazing her fingertips down over its sculpted planes, as if she were committing them to memory.

  Did his quick intake of breath mean he liked it—was that why he pulled her back into his arms and hauled her up close to his body, so that they felt glued together? Her nipples were stony and she could feel the hot slick of desire between her legs. As he moulded the curve of her buttocks with his open palms, she became aware of the rocky outline of his erection, which was pressing through the soft denim of his jeans against her.

  ‘Can you feel how much I want you?’ he taunted softly.

  Maybe she should have been daunted by all that virile power, but weirdly enough she wasn’t. Because it all seemed so natural. As if it was meant to be. As if her life up until now had been nothing but a preparation for this moment. ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Yes, I can.’

  His fingertips were hovering close to the hemline of her dress. ‘I want to see you,’ he husked. ‘I want to see your body, Marnie.’

  Marnie closed her eyes. She could hear the raw hunger underpinning his words and sense the barely restrained need in them. And didn’t that match her own hunger and make it easy to know how to respond to him, despite her pitiful innocence? No need to point out that the moonless night would make twenty-twenty vision impossible and it would be practically impossible for him to see her with any degree of detail. ‘I’m not stopping you,’ she whispered boldly. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Meta haras.’ His words sounded like dark honey coating her skin with sweetness. With a fluid movement he peeled the dress over her head and let it fall to the sand, one-handedly unclipping the fastening of her now-dry bikini top, so that her breasts came tumbling free. And if at times Marnie had despaired about her disproportionately large bust, Leon Kanonidou’s murmur of appreciation was enough to banish those complaints for ever.

  ‘My turn, I think,’ he said, pulling off his T-shirt and dropping it to the ground, so that his torso was as bare as hers.

  He pulled her into his arms and that first contact of skin against skin felt so delicious that Marnie gave a little gurgle of joy. He was smoothing his fingers through her hair. He was kissing her and kissing her, until once again she was in that blissful state of molten compliance. He slid his fingers between her legs and she held her breath as they pushed aside the panel of her bikini bottoms—terrified he was going to stop his intimate exploration.

  But he didn’t stop.

  He started to stroke his fingers over her and a ragged moan escaped from her lips.

  Maybe it was the shock of discovery which made her so instantly responsive or maybe it was the things he was saying to her, some in English and some in Greek. She no longer cared which language he was using—all she cared about was the way he was making her feel. That sweet, savage tightening in her groin and exquisite aching of her breasts. Her heart was racing as waves of something unbearably beautiful beckoned her towards an unknown destination. The tension grew and her body felt so taut that she didn’t think she could bear it any longer. And then she went under—or was it over?

  His kiss drowned out her spiralling cries of pleasure as Marnie began to spasm around his finger, trying like mad to hold onto the feeling until her body gradually grew still. She was dimly aware of him supporting her weight while he bent to smooth his T-shirt over the sand to form a makeshift sheet—admittedly on the small side—before very gently easing her down on top of it. His shadow fell over her as his hand went to the button of his jeans and the image was reminiscent of when she’d seen him on the beach earlier. And that was when reality hit her befuddled brain with a bombardment of urgent questions.

  You realise what you’re about to do? You’re about to have sex with a man you barely know. All those things which have scared you all your life are right here. Things you were determined never to do. Things you know you shouldn’t do.

  That reality hit should have been enough to make her stop but it wasn’t. Because as he slithered out of his jeans, Marnie was able to ignore the voice of her conscience by noticing several things. Firstly, that he wasn’t wearing any underpants—which seemed more erotic than shocking. Secondly, that he was withdrawing a foil packet from his back pocket—making her wonder if he always carried a condom with him. And if that were the case—then didn’t that make her just one in a long line of conquests of women he barely knew?

  But those discoveries were quickly eclipsed by another—which was that she had been completely wrong about the available light. Because while there was no moon, the sky of Paramenios was incredibly clear and the millions of stars were certainly bright enough to illuminate Leon Kanonidou’s magnificent body. Twenty-twenty vision it might not be, but the starlight was strong enough to emphasise the rippling muscles and honed flesh. She gazed at the hair-roughened chest and narrow hips, which led down to those long, powerful legs coated in a silvery gleam.

  Naked, Leon Kanonidou was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. Even the proud pale pole of his erection springing from a dark blur of hair wasn’t enough to daunt the innocent Marnie as she opened her a
rms to him.

  Her soft curves accommodated his hard planes and sculpted limbs as if they’d been designed for that purpose. Was it always like this? she wondered dizzily as he moved over her. So...easy? His lips began to explore her skin, his tongue sliding over her as if he had all the time in the world ahead of him. He licked her nipples and belly and then the delicate skin between her thighs and she shivered. His fingers moved to reacquaint themselves with the slickness between her legs, feathering her with that dextrous touch which made her feel as if she were drowning in sweetness. Should she be doing something back? she wondered. Actively participate by touching him, even though her clumsy movements might give away the fact that he was with a novice?

  But while she was plucking up the courage to curl her fingers around his rocky shaft, he dissolved all rational thought by kissing her again.

  ‘You taste salty,’ he murmured, against her lips.

  ‘So do you,’ she murmured back—and something about that small interchange felt as intimate as anything else they’d done and filled her with a newfound confidence, so that when he reached for the condom which lay on the sand beside them, Marnie felt nothing but eager for what was about to happen. She watched as he stroked on the protection, his starlit expression a study in concentration until he had sheathed himself, his lazy smile of complicity emphasising the closeness of the moment.

  ‘Now, where was I?’

  He was right here. Holding her, and stroking her, and Marnie was touching him back and he was almost purring with pleasure. His fingers were tangled in her hair and his body was pressing down on hers so that she could feel the soft sand at her back. There was a sudden rapid escalation of need and a subtle shift in tension and her thighs parted eagerly as if some unseen force was choreographing her movements. She held her breath as he made that first deep thrust inside her, her quick cry the only indication that pain had momentarily eclipsed the pleasure.