by Tessa Radley
She stopped breathing.
His face was taut, his eyes blazing, and he held the garter aloft like a trophy.
“Mine,” he said hoarsely. “Every perfect bit of you is mine.”
She didn’t even have time to gasp before his lips landed on hers, hard and ravenous.
Stretching onto tiptoe, Pandora wrapped her arms around his neck, the impact of his chest against her rousing a wildness she’d never known, and she kissed him back as though she were starved, all the while pressing herself closer.
“Slowly, wife of mine, slowly,” he panted, his big hands going to her hips, holding her off.
“I—” she punctuated it with a kiss “—can’t—” another kiss “—wait.”
“Ah, Christos.”
His hands cupped her buttocks, lifting her, the priceless dress ruching up around the tops of her thighs, pulling her close until…until…she could feel his hardness through the fabric. With a rough mutter he hoisted her higher, and her feet dangled off the ground. Zac lurched forward.
“Zac! You’ll drop me.” Hurriedly, she hooked her legs around his hips, her feet tangling with the soft silk folds of the dress as she clung on for dear life.
She landed on the bed with Zac sprawled on top of her. Breathlessly she stared up into hot green eyes.
“I can’t wait—not another minute.” His body moved against hers, restless and insistent.
She could feel his heat, his hardness, could sense that he was hanging on to his control by a fine thread. “The dress—we’ll ruin it.”
“Forget the dress!”
“I can’t. The dressmaker kept eulogising about it being a piece of living history. I’d feel so guilty—”
“Shh. Roll over, then. Let me get the damned thing off,” he growled and shrugged off his shirt.
In a brief second Pandora took in his naked chest gleaming in the soft golden light of the bedside lamps, the curve of his chest muscles, the lean tapered strength of his hard stomach and groaned.
And promptly nearly died of embarrassment.
Balling her fists against her mouth so that no more humiliating sounds would escape, she rolled onto her stomach so that he wouldn’t see her face, wouldn’t see the desire, the wanting…and then cringed as the skirts of the irreplaceable dress caught around her legs. “Oh, no.”
“I’ll set you loose.” There was laughter in his voice now.
“It’s not about me—”
“It’s about the damned dress, I know.” A hint of very real masculine frustration mingled with the humour.
How could she explain that she’d hate to be responsible for tearing or damaging a priceless heirloom?
Then she forgot all about the dress. Zac’s hands had slipped through the slit he’d already unbuttoned, were on her skin. Smoothing, caressing.
“Nghh,” she moaned. “I thought you were supposed to be undoing the buttons.”
“This is much more fun, agapi mou.”
She leaped at the brush of his lips behind her knees. “Zac!”
He trailed a row of kisses along her tender, sensitised skin. Stopped. She waited, her heart pounding, tensing for what might happen next.
She heard a rustle of silk, felt the sleek, slick wetness of his tongue on the back of her smooth thigh. She gasped, then buried her mouth in the bed coverlet, willing herself to be silent, not to moan like a wanton.
He was pulling at the fabric caught under her. She lifted her hips. He tugged again and muttered something succinct in Greek.
“I am going to have to undo these buttons. Every damned one…without a buttonhook.” He muttered an expletive, then laughed. “This time I’ll start at the top. It will be easier on my restraint.”
Thank God.
Pandora raised her face from the coverlet and rested her chin on folded arms. The breath whooshed out of her as his thighs straddled her and his weight settled astride her.
“Am I too heavy?”
“No.”
His fingers brushed her nape and she went rigid.
“First button.” There was resignation in his voice now. “Seventy-five, you said? And I doubt I’ve undone even half. Ai mi! How long is this going to take?”
“Perhaps we can make small talk?”
“Small talk?” He gave a snort of disgust.
Pandora bit back a smile. “Like, about the weather.”
“Yes, let’s talk about the weather. It’s so hot that I can barely breathe, and tonight I’m even hotter, despite the air conditioner in here. Shall I describe exactly how hot I am?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “My skin is so hot that it’s tight.”
At his harshly bitten out words Pandora had a searing visual of his chest just before she’d turned over and hidden her face. The sheen on the bronzed skin, the curve of his nude chest muscles. Jeez, she’d wanted to touch him. His skin would have been sleek and warm to her touch….
“What else?” she gasped.
“I am throbbing with something—a hunger—that I have never felt in my life before. I’m thirty-one years old and I feel like a damned boy. A boy who wants to grab…and squeeze…and possess. Hell, I’m not hot—I’m on goddamn fire.”
Pandora couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response to Zac’s raw outburst. But she could feel. She could feel the rub of Zac’s fingers as he loosed the tiny buttons, could feel the winnow of air against her naked skin as he peeled back the gown. She could hear the faint hum of the air-conditioning and his harsh breathing in the sudden silence of the vast bedroom.
“Okay, that’s the weather taken care of. Any more small talk you fancy making?”
She stared blindly ahead, her body burning with arousal at the fierce onslaught of his erotic, highly charged words.
“Damn! I’ve shocked you, haven’t I? Shocked you with the reality of my desires for you. Sometimes I forget how young and—”
“Zac—”
“—how innocent you are. All those years in a girls’ boarding school, then helping your father, working in his business…I should be shot.” He’d stopped fiddling with the buttons. “I told myself I’d take it slow, told myself I’d—”
“Zac.”
This time he heard her and broke off.
Unable to see his face, she drew a deep breath. This was difficult, more difficult than she’d ever anticipated. “I wasn’t always at school or with my father. I visited with friends—”
“Your father told me,” he interrupted. “Vacations with school friends, carefully vetted—that’s hardly experience.”
“I’m not a total innocent.”
“What are you saying?” There was a fine shake of tension in the thighs clamped around her hips. She baulked. It was too late for this discussion, a discussion that she’d thought totally irrelevant in today’s day and age. They were married, for goodness’ sake. What difference would it make?
She put it all out of her mind and said throatily, “That I want you.”
He gave a growl. His hands were back on the dress, tugging, fevered with impatience. “Damn these buttons! Pandora, my wife, I want you, too—more than I can tell you.”
“So show me, don’t tell me.”
“I thought you wanted small talk.” He gave a soft, husky laugh. “Perhaps we can talk about flesh…” He lifted more fabric from her back. “Or skin.” A finger slid into the indent of her spine, along the length of the shallow groove. “Shall I tell you how soft your skin is?”
An exquisite sensation rippled down…down…pooling in her abdomen, sliding lower. Pandora shuddered and flexed her toes, anything to slow the pleasure that threatened to consume her. “Talk’s cheap,” she gurgled, struggling for air.
“So you want action?” And then his lips were there placing openmouthed kisses in the hollow of her spine. And his tongue…
Jeez, his tongue! She bit the back of her hand, determined not to let the moans escape. The maddening caresses eased. And she breathed again. The dress gave some more, his hands were wo
rking quickly now. Frenzied.
“At last.”
She felt the cool air on her exposed buttocks as he peeled the fabric away, heard his gasp.
“What is this? Is it meant to drive me out of my skull with desire?” His voice was hoarse, his Greek accent pronounced. “Because, I swear to you, it’s succeeding.”
As his fingers hooked under the tiny bits of white Lycra that made up the minuscule thong she wore, the tremors started again. Stronger this time. Tremors that he must feel. She pictured what he saw: a Y made up of three laces of Lycra. Then there was the narrow triangle of delicate white lace in front that he couldn’t see.
She struggled to find her voice. “That’s the something new.”
“What?” He sounded shell-shocked.
“Something old, something new. Remember? The rhyme I told you about? I thought the dress could do double duty and pass as something old as well as something borrowed.”
“Forget the dress.” He tugged it out from under her, dropping it on the floor. “I don’t want to hear another word about that damned old piece of silk. It’s taken up far too much of our time this evening already.” He stroked a long sweep down her back and whispered, “Your skin is living silk. Pandora, wife, you are amazing.”
She didn’t—couldn’t—answer. A blast of desire unlike anything she’d experienced in her life shook her. Then his hands were running over the naked globes of her bottom, a finger tracing the white thread of the thong that laced across the small of her back. And he was kissing the depression at the base of her back. That finger—oh, glory, that finger—traced the last bit of thong down between her legs. She bit down harder in case she started to scream.
The yearning ache between her legs caused her to shift restlessly…she wanted him to touch her there.
“Is this what you want, agapi?”
His hand was under the whisper of white lace now, at the heart of her, his fingertips exploring the wet crease, touching the tight bud.
A moan broke from her.
She wriggled, opening her legs wider. Another stroke. She went rigid as sensation shafted through her.
“More?” he asked. And touched again.
She fought the ache…the desire…all the while craving—
“More,” she panted.
This time he barely touched her, just the lightest teasing brush of his fingertips, and a fierce heat swept that tiny bead of flesh. This time she screamed and came apart in his arms. Then she lay there breathless, spent, feeling as if a firestorm has swept over her and heard Zac’s murmur full of dark delight in her ear.
“There’s much, much more to come. And we have all night long.”
Three
“It is done.”
Pandora tilted her head at the sound of Zac’s beloved voice and paused in midstep on the balcony outside his study. She’d woken to find Zac gone, only a delicate long-stemmed white rose and a note on the pillow beside her. His writing was strong and slanted and told her that something had come up to which he needed to attend and he’d see her at breakfast in the sunroom downstairs.
She’d risen, placed the rose in a glass of water and picked the discarded wedding dress off the carpet and hung it up carefully. A quick shower to freshen up, and she’d pulled the first thing that came to hand—a filmy sundress with splashes of colour that clung in all the right places—out of the large walk-in cupboard where her clothes had been hung. Leaving her long hair loose, she sprayed a dash of fragrance behind her ears and came to find Zac, still dazed and glowing from the incredible lovemaking of the night before.
Her groom was not in the sunroom, so she skipped through the open doors onto the balcony where they’d kissed last night, wondering what people—his family, his friends, his colleagues—had made of their sudden disappearance from the reception.
Oh, jeez. She shut her eyes. They hadn’t even stuck around long enough to cut the cake. Soon she’d have to face the knowing stares of Zac’s family at lunch. She shuddered at the discomfiting idea.
The sound of voices halted her embarrassing thoughts. From where she lurked on the balcony she could see two men through the French doors—Zac and another man with his back to her. It was the other man who’d spoken. As he turned and raised a fluted glass, she recognised Dimitri, Zac’s cousin. His best man. His best friend. And also his lawyer.
Dimitri had prepared the complex prenuptial contracts and been present when she and Zac had signed them three days ago. Initially she’d pushed aside her instinctive objection that legalities weren’t necessary between her and Zac. But she’d known that Zac was a hardheaded businessman, known her father would expect them. A law firm in London which her father used had vetted them for her and suggested only minor changes.
She hadn’t needed a prenuptial contract to feel secure. Zac’s love had done that.
Embarrassed, she hesitated outside, uncertain what to do next. The last thing in the world she wanted was to walk into that room and meet Dimitri’s gaze. Not after she and Zac had departed so hurriedly last night. She wavered. She longed to wish Zac a good morning, kiss him and let him see the love and joy that bubbled inside her.
Through the crack in the curtains Zac looked utterly gorgeous. She stole another look as he clinked his glass with his cousin.
“I thought I’d never find her, Dimitri,” Pandora heard him say. “My wedding is definitely cause to celebrate.”
“Vre, you have been lucky. And so beautiful, too, you lucky dog.”
Pandora grinned. Men! Love was not enough, beauty was always important. But she was touched at the relief in Zac’s voice as he’d said I thought I’d never find her. His relief in finding someone to love.
She felt the same about him.
Yesterday he’d told her he thought she was perfect. Well, she disagreed. He was perfect. She was the luckiest—
“It is done—finally. Now there is no going back.” Something about the tone of Zac’s voice interrupted her musings and stopped her from rushing headlong into the room. She paid close attention. “No one knows better than you that this prophecy has been the bane of my life.”
“I know, cousin. But it’s tradition. A tradition that haunts the Kyriakos heir.”
She listened harder, intrigued. What prophecy? What tradition? What on earth were they talking about?
Dimitri was still speaking. He’d crossed the room, his back to the glass doors. Pandora strained her ears to hear what he was saying. “It’s the twenty-first century—you would’ve thought that the family, the public, would be prepared to let it go.”
“They can’t.” Zac gave a harsh sigh. “And neither can I. The risks are too high.”
“You mean, the likelihood of Kyriakos Shipping’s share prices dipping are too high, don’t you?”
“That, too.”
Pandora cocked her head. What was all this about haunting and share prices? For an instant she considered pushing the door open, striding in and demanding an explanation. But something held her back. Something that filled her stomach with cold dread.
For a moment she considered turning, walking away, pretending she’d never heard whatever this conversation concerned. It scared her. Made her stomach cramp and apprehension swarm around inside her head like a clutch of bewildered bees.
Yes, she should pretend. She could retreat, then stamp her way back down the corridor, make an entrance that they would hear. She could look Dimitri straight in the eye and pretend that she and Zac hadn’t rushed off to consummate their wedding vows with indecent haste. She could pretend that she’d never heard a thing about the prophecy that haunted Zac. And then what?
She’d never find out….
How could she ask later? How could she just drop it into conversation? Oh, by the way, Zac, tell me about the prophecy. You know—the one that you thought would never be fulfilled?
She’d married a man whose deepest secrets she didn’t know.
No.
She wanted—needed—to hear more. Even if it
was not all good. After all, Zac loved her. She had nothing to fear. He’d married her very publicly. Made the love he felt for her clear to the world. The apprehension started to recede.
She was being silly letting the men’s lowered voices build a terror of conspiracy within her.
When the footsteps came closer, Pandora shrank away from the door, panicking for an instant at what she would do if they found her standing out here, eavesdropping. Then she forced herself to get a grip. For goodness’ sake, there was nothing ominous about what they were discussing.
If only this stupid, ridiculous chill in the pit of her stomach would go—
“To find a virgin, a beautiful virgin…my God, cousin, the odds were against you. But I envy you this morning.”
A virgin? What did Dimitri mean a virgin? They were talking about her.
Then it hit her between the eyes. Jeez, she’d been so blind. This was the reason Zac had married her. Not because he loved her. Because he needed a virgin bride.
“That’s my wife you’re talking about, Dimitri. Be careful.” The warning growl in Zac’s tone did nothing to assuage the bile burning at the back of Pandora’s throat.
She’d heard enough. No way could she walk in there and confront Zac and his cousin. Not about something as intimate as her virginity.
She ducked her head and wheeled around, walking faster and faster until she broke into a run.
The third door Pandora rattled was unlocked and opened into a bedroom. Pandora rushed in, pulled the door shut behind her and locked it before leaning her aching forehead against the hard door.
What was she to do?
“Can I help?”
The sweet voice came from behind her. Pandora straightened and spun around. The too-thin brunette in an ice-blue dress watching her with a questioning smile was a total stranger. Then the smile faltered and lines of concern etched into the other woman’s forehead.
“Is everything all right?”
Pandora nodded jerkily. She wasn’t ready to reveal what she’d learned to anyone, especially not a stranger. “I’m fine. Really.”