by Various
Then a soft knock sounded on his bedroom door and he knew, even as he walked barefoot across the room, that no matter how hard he’d worked at it, he’d controlled nothing at all. For there was only one person in this house who could be knocking on his door and she was naive enough and blind enough not to know what she was tempting by doing it.
And there she stood in a short ivory silk robe with her recently shampooed hair a pagan swathe of glossy damp waves around her beautiful face. Her blue eyes looked anxious. A set of even white teeth were pressing into her full bottom lip.
‘I’m s-sorry to disturb you,’ she stammered out, ‘but I n-need…’
The stammer did it; the big blue eyes staring up at him did it, the pearly white teeth worrying her lip. She’d been disturbing him for too many frustrating hours and days and weeks, and he just reached for her and pulled her into his arms, then drove his hungry mouth down onto hers.
And the hell of it was, she let him. Next thing he knew he was stepping back with her trapped against him and kicking the door shut so he could press her back against it to indulge in the kind of hot sensual embrace that said goodbye to his self-control.
Mia fell into the kiss like a starving woman. It was so much what she wanted there wasn’t a single second when she thought to pull free. Her arms had already wrapped around his neck to fasten tightly and she was kissing him back so deep and hotly she did not recognise herself. The feel of his strong hard masculine body pressing against her felt glorious, the flood tide of pleasure that went rushing through her made her gasp and groan and quiver feverishly as he explored her mouth with a deep hot knowing intimacy which had her lips open wider in search for more.
Her reward was a lusty masculine growl that excited her dreadfully. Tightening his arms around her he lifted her up against him and fed her legs around his waist, then just stood there with her clamped against him, their parted mouths fused together and the intimacy taking place with their tongues a shattering mimic of something else he was doing to her.
His hands were splayed across her silk-covered buttocks, the fiercely bold evidence of how he was feeling shocked and excited her in equal amounts. When she moved voluptuously against him she felt his shudder that blew the last of his common sense to bits.
Turning to walk with her over to the bed, as they landed on the mattress in a tangle of clinging limbs, he pulled his head back. ‘What did you come here for?’ he rasped out.
Having to fight to try and understand the question, Mia opened her eyes and just stared blankly up at him. His mouth was barely an inch away, his warm breath scoring her face. She could feel the pounding pump of his heart against her tightening breasts as he waited for her to give him a response. To tell him she had come here to ask for a couple of headache pills was just not going to leave her warm moist swollen tongue. This was more important. She no longer even had a headache!
When she didn’t say anything, with a softly grated curse he repeated the question, watched her blink slowly, watched her teeth press down into that hot plump lower lip—and lost patience.
‘Well, I’m in no mood to stop now,’ he groaned thickly. ‘So if you decide that you do want to stop you’re going to have to say it loud and clear.’
But Mia did not want to stop. And she proved it by running her fingers into his thick black wet silken curls on his head and drew his mouth back to hers. She could not explain it, did not want to try and explain it. All she knew was that, tough as he was, and hard and cold and dangerous as he was, Nikos Theakis had grabbed something from her that day on Oscar’s driveway and deposited this terrible need for more of him in its place.
The kiss drove out any need for more talking; it was hungry and it was deep. And he was so practiced at this she barely felt his weight on top of her or the deft way that he undid her robe belt. The burning pleasure when she felt their naked bodies come together was just about the most overwhelming sensation she had ever felt.
He knew what he was doing, so she just hung on and followed where he led, revelling in each new and exciting experience. He knew just where to touch her, knew just when to break their mouths apart so he could drive her frantic with slow moist kisses down the length of her body. He splayed long fingers around one firm tender breast and teased its shy sensitive bud to flower and tighten, then caught his prize in his mouth.
Wild pleasure took her over, her body arching and her thighs trembling as she gasped out his name. His fingers stroked her ribcage, trailing a path of fire down to her stomach and, finally, shocking her into complete stillness when he made that first sweep between the thighs.
Her breathless stillness brought his head up, eyes drugged and blackened by passion honing on to her face. Her hair flowed across the pillow; her hands still held his head. Her eyes were closed, her soft lips parted, and she was quivering—flesh, muscles, bones all vibrating in unison at the first exploratory caress he made. She did not seem to have any control over what she was feeling. Control, Nikos realised, belonged exclusively to him.
When her restless fingers trailed his nape, then slithered down his burning chest, he groaned as his body responded violently.
She shaped the bunched muscles in his wide shoulders as her slender hips arched into his. She held nothing back, and he felt so intoxicated by her he sunk them both down—down into the dark heat of passion until it was all she could do to cling to him and let him dictate the rest.
It was like being lost, floating on a rocky sea of building pleasure, Mia likened hazily. When he reared back from her to remove his towel, her heavy eyes drank in the powerful beauty of his body—coveted it, reached out and touched the whirl of dark hair between his bulging pectoral muscles and made him shudder as she scored him with her fingernails.
He came back to her on a hiss of hunger, lay over her, letting her feel the glorious heat of his naked flesh against her own once again. It was power versus weakness, hard versus soft. He nibbled at the corner of her mouth until she twisted her head and anxiously demanded the full onslaught of his mouth.
Passion, desire, overrode everything. He made love to her slowly and erotically and intensely, his sensual caresses moving her closer and closer to a place she had never been before. Her fingers plucked restlessly at his flesh, her teeth fastened on to his throat. He was hot, a film of salty male sweat tasting on her tongue. She could not keep still and she could feel the tense state of his erection pushing against her thigh.
‘Nikos,’ she whimpered over and over for some dizzyingly important reason she could not understand.
He understood though.
She felt her first spark of self-consciousness when she suddenly remembered that she was nothing like the long slender blondes he was used to looking at like this. She had curves. She had a waist and hips and full real breasts, not fakes. As if he was thinking along similar lines an odd twist of a smile curved his lips as his gaze flickered down to that other difference she was suddenly acutely aware of, the triangle of ebony curls nestling at the juncture with her thighs.
Then he bent down and kissed her navel; it was so shockingly unexpected, her muscles jerked violently in response. One of his hands stretched out, grabbing hold of her hand as it went instinctively to push him away from her, long fingers closing around her fingers as he repeated the kiss with a slow and sensual glide of his tongue lower and lower.
‘Nikos, no,’ she groaned out.
He ignored her protest and was so ruthless about his intentions that she surrendered to the silky waves of pleasure he was making her feel, her eyelids folding downwards as he traced each moist, hot, swollen part of her. Within seconds he was carrying her way beyond sense, drugging her with the newness of one sensation laid on top of another. The way he used his tongue to pleasure her, the way he continued to clasp her hand. The way her limbs had gone boneless and restless, the way there was a slow languorous drag of her breathing. He knew exactly what he was doing to her as he moved up her body to the flat of her stomach, the curve of her ribs, the ti
ght tender peaks of her breasts and finally, with a hungry moulding of his lips, to her mouth.
And with a single lithe move he arrived on top of her, his narrow hips pressing between her trembling thighs and at last she experienced the sense-spinning intimacy of his bold erection sliding into her like hot smooth silk.
‘Madre di Dio,’ she breathed, ‘non posso più,’ as she shot right over the pleasure threshold.
And still he held one of her hands captive, still he ravaged her mouth. She was wild, she was scared, she could not keep her legs still. Her free hand was clawing at his bronzed damp flesh, the breath leaving her in short tense little bursts. Pleasure was lighting her up from the inside, bright hot shimmering pleasure she had no control over as it built and built. And he was hot—burning, murmuring things to her she could not understand, though some instinct inside her recognised that he was urging her on and on.
‘Non posso più,’ she whispered a second time.
‘Sì, you can stand it,’ he responded thickly. ‘Hold on to me, Mia. There’s a lot more to come.’
And he was right, there was so much more of it and on so many levels she just couldn’t keep up. Her dizzy world went misty, she was held enthralled by how acutely she could feel every centimetre of him as he slowly filled her up.
He was hot and trembling, so lost in the sheer power of what he was generating between them he forgot just what kind of creature it was he was holding in his arms. He was only aware of the desire, the hunger, the passion, raging through both of them. He felt it, fed it and eventually surrendered to it, and with a heavy groan drove home with a final deep stabbing thrust.
Mia had forgotten to expect it. So the sharp spasm of pain locked her muscles in shock. She could not breathe, she could not think. Nikos had frozen on top of her, his eyes like black caverns blazing down into her stark staring blue eyes already swimming with tears.
He started cursing and she started sobbing, hitting out at him with her tightly clenched fists. He eased back a little, cursing all over again, his eyes closing as her tense muscles unwittingly clung to him sending waves of pleasure rippling his powerful frame.
‘It’s OK.’ He tried to look for sanity, his hands gently capturing her two clenched fists. ‘It’s OK, agape mou,’ he repeated, though he knew nothing had ever been less OK, because he was already hungrily moulding her lips to his. He managed to hold the pressure back. He managed to control his rampant needy senses long enough to give her chance to adjust.
And she felt wonderful, narrow and tight and so deliciously hot. His breathing was hectic, hers was the same, the two of them fighting for breath in panting urgency around the clinging darting heat of the tongue. He felt her clenched fists relax their tension, then her taut slender body slowly ease from its crucifying arch. Their hearts were beating like crazy hammers, sending tremor after tremor rippling across their flesh. Slowly, carefully, he released her fingers and groaned in relief when she instantly ran them into his hair. He fed his hands beneath her to support her and with the flickering passion of his tongue against her tongue, he just lost it altogether and let his hips surge forward, thrusting him deep.
It was as if a whole tidal wave of pleasure rushed through her, hot as lava and sweet as melting honey. Caught in its thrall Mia raised her hips to take him in farther and sent a thick moaning cry into his mouth. Dragging her pulsing lips free she whispered, ‘Again,’ and felt him draw back, then thrust again. It was the sweet—sweet—sweetest torment. ‘Oh, again,’ she gasped out.
Feeling drunk on her greedy pleasure, Nikos caught her mouth and ravished its soft swollen fullness and set the deep and fluid motion of loving with a rampant erotic thoroughness that emptied his head of all else but her and this and what he could feel was building between them. Never in his long sexual experience had he ever felt anything so intensely as this. She moved with him with an innate sensuality born of instinct. She clung to him with her arms and her legs. When the final madness began to accelerate them towards their climaxes, he could feel that she was with him every blindingly glorious step of the way.
And it went on and on, like time never ending. Mouths separate now, Mia felt every single sense she possessed sing to a pleasure that just grew and grew.
‘Nikos,’ she whispered, floating up her heavy eyelids to look at him. Her eyes clung to his eyes where the sheer power of his feelings burned, naked and exposed. The first jolt of blinding pleasure brought forth a sharp cry from her throat, followed by another one, and he plunged deeper, catching her up to him in his strong arms and holding her, the rasping race of his breathing something she only understood when he joined her in the exquisite pleasure of hot drowning release.
Afterwards was almost as good as the climax to this first loving Mia had ever experienced. The slow sensual reactionary quivers that brought her downwards slowly, the awareness of his hot skin against hers. The size and weight of him, the strength and the power of his wonderful masculine magnificence crushing her down into the bed.
And the way he still held her, close, so close. ‘Bello—bello,’ she breathed on a fragile wisp of a murmur.
Easing her of his weight, Nikos slid onto his side, taking her with him. Content to remain lost in the hazy aftermath of sweet pleasure, it was all she could do to curl against the man who had just made her first experience so wildly beautiful and gloriously passionate.
While Mia floated, Nikos felt as if he’d just come down to earth with a thud after enjoying one of the most exciting releases of his life. Payback, he named it, staring over the top of her tumbled raven locks into the stark face of what he had just done.
He had just broken his own cardinal rule and taken an innocent, and what’s more she was a Balfour innocent. He could already hear the wedding bells ringing, could feel the noose closing around his throat. As the chilling face of reality spread its icy fingers out across his flesh he sensed her drifting into sleep. She was curled lovingly against him, warm and soft and so damn trusting with her cheek resting against the unsteady thump of his heartbeat and her fingers gently stroking the whorls of damp dark hair on his chest.
But she didn’t know him. Even Oscar, who knew him better than anyone, did not know who the real Nikos Theakis was. It was safer not to know him, safer to keep himself crushed so deep inside he would never rear his head. If that meant he had to crush the more human emotions at the same time, then that was the way it had to be.
People looked at him and saw the smooth billionaire entrepreneur, ruthlessly focused on his career. They saw the cool sophisticated male who turned out for elite functions like the one they’d attended this evening, or the good-looking guy with a trail of beautiful well-satisfied women drifting behind him in his wake.
They did not know that he needed to shower four times a day—more often if he had the opportunity, or that there were no locks on any doors in any of his homes except for the locks on main entrances.
They did not know that he always—always—slept alone. That this beautiful creature sleeping curled around him now was actually receiving a twisted kind of honour, because he had not already shaken her awake and sent her packing back to her own room to sleep.
As if she could sense what he was thinking she moved against him, a soft sigh escaping her parted lips as she stretched, then relaxed again, the movement so fluid and naturally sensual Nikos had to clench his body to stop it from responding to it. One of her long silken legs lay warm across his, her fingers lay buried in the whorls of dark hair on his chest.
She murmured something—ti’amo, he thought she said, and felt its emotive impact like a violent crash to his chest. Ti’amo, I love you. Ti’amo, I so belong to you now it’s a done deal, he translated with harsh mocking bitterness.
And like a man making a dangerous bid for escape, he eased himself free of her clinging shape and gave her a pillow to hug instead of him. She curled around it like some beautiful dark sensual siren clinging on to her latest victim, and with no idea that the cold ruthless side to
his nature was busily rearing its awesome head.
Chapter Eight
A SOUND awoke Mia as the quiet light of dawn was drifting in through the window. She continued to lie there for a few seconds, grappling to make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings, then she remembered and her heart gave a thump. Twisting her head on the pillow she saw that the place beside her in the bed was empty, and she sat up with a jerk, a hand going up to push her tumbled hair from her face. The sound came again and she focused on Nikos, who was standing with his back to her on the other side of the room.
He was already dressed in one of the dark business suits he favoured, and was snapping his paper-thin watch to his wrist. He looked so breathtakingly handsome that tender muscles deep in her abdomen responded with a pulse of awareness at the same moment she picked up the clean male scents permeating the room which told her he had recently showered.
The sheer novel intimacy in their situation suddenly engulfed her in a rosy hue of shyness. Realising she was also very naked beneath the thin sheet had her clutching at its fine linen edge and drawing it up to her chin before she could fight a drowning wash of self-consciousness to speak.
‘What—what time is it?’ she asked huskily.
The way his wide shoulders tensed at the sound of her voice sent her teeth biting down into her soft lower lip. Perhaps he was not quite comfortable with their new situation yet either, she allowed.
‘Five o’clock,’ he answered without turning. ‘Go back to sleep—it’s too early for you to get up.’
‘You are up,’ Mia pointed out to him.
He said nothing, his long fingers reaching out to pick up his mobile phone, which he placed in his jacket pocket, followed by some other bits and pieces Mia followed without really registering what they were. Beginning to frown now, it was slowly dawning on her that he did not want to look at her. That the tension gripping his wide shoulders also repeated itself in the sharp movements of his fingers, and from the small amount of his profile she could see, the muscle that angled his strong jaw was clenched.