Her confidence had been battered by the meeting but somehow she had managed to survive the toasts and the dancing before Drakon had whispered that it was time for them to slip away. And now she was standing nervously in the honeymoon suite of the Granchester Hotel, about to begin her married life with a man she didn’t really know.
She swallowed, removing the fragrant garland of roses and the attached veil from her head and placing both on a nearby table. Should she ask if he still wanted to go through with this? If seeing Amy had made him realise what a dumb thing he’d done by marrying someone like Lucy Phillips? Because if he had changed his mind then perhaps they could still get the marriage annulled before they actually consummated it. She was certain that was legally possible and it would certainly be a mature thing to suggest. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. All she could feel was the rush of hot colour to her cheeks.
‘Still she stands there like a frightened lamb, which makes me realise I shall have to come to you instead, my blushing bride.’ Drakon’s words were cajoling as he began to walk across the marbled floor towards her, but he moved with the stealthy intent of a dark panther who had just spotted its helpless prey. He had removed his jacket and tie and undone the top buttons of his dress shirt and, with his olive skin glowing and black hair ruffled, he looked relaxed and supremely poised. Unlike her, who was feeling completely overdressed and had started trembling violently, despite the warmth of the room.
He reached her at last and touched his fingertips to her cheek, slowly trailing their tips downwards until they reached the quivering outline of her lips. He bent to brush his mouth over hers in a slow kiss, before raising his head to look at her, his eyes still narrowed speculatively. ‘Don’t look so scared, Lucy,’ he murmured. ‘There’s no reason to be. I mean, it isn’t as if we’ve never done this before, is it?’
But never as man and wife, thought Lucy desperately—the sweet magic of his kiss fading as the enormity of her actions hit her. People said getting married needn’t change anything but of course it did—otherwise, why would anyone bother? Because she wasn’t just starry-eyed Lucy Phillips any more—the virgin who’d had a crush on him since for ever. Now she was the billionaire’s wife and mother to his son—and suddenly she felt like an imposter. ‘It just feels...different.’
‘Then maybe we should stop overthinking it and just rely on our senses to do the work for us. What do you think? Turn around,’ he said softly, without waiting for an answer.
She’d actually thought he couldn’t bear to look at her anxious face but realised he wanted to undo each tiny hook of her wedding gown, his fingertips tiptoeing enticingly over her sensitive flesh. As the corseted bodice came apart and the cool air hit her skin, Lucy closed her eyes and silently practised different ways of asking the questions which had been plaguing her throughout the reception.
Tell me about Amy. How long have you known her? Have you ever made love to her? Or wanted to?
But Drakon’s lips were following in the wake of his fingers. They were whispering over her back and trailing over her quivering flesh as he formed a featherlight path of kisses from neck to waist. Her skin flowered into goosepimples wherever he touched her and against her lacy bra, she could feel the insistent pushing of her nipples. Lucy sucked in a shuddering breath as he turned her around to face him again. The gleam of desire in his black eyes made something clench deep inside her and she wondered if she had taken complete leave of her senses. How could she possibly shatter the mood by asking him about another woman at a time like this?
‘Now,’ he murmured. ‘Why don’t we get rid of this dress completely?’
She heard the rueful note in his voice and was instantly on the defensive. ‘You don’t like it?’
He smiled as he traced a slow finger along the modest neckline of her very traditional gown. ‘I thought it was perfectly appropriate for the entrance of my beautiful bride, but looser and freer is what I have in mind for what happens next.’
He slid the embossed satin of her gown over each shoulder and let the entire confection fall to the ground before effortlessly lifting her from the vast canopy of stiffened petticoats, until she was standing before him in just her white lacy underwear, hold-up stockings and spiky white high-heeled shoes. Slowly, he studied her and his black gaze felt as if it were scorching her skin where it lingered. ‘Much better,’ he said, and his voice was unsteady. ‘Though I’m now feeling a little overdressed. Any ideas how we might redress the balance, Lucy?’
Lucy felt suddenly stricken with shyness as she lifted her fingers to his chest. Was he wondering what had happened to the uninhibited person she’d been back in the summer when he had awoken her sexuality and her appetite for him had been wild and untamed? She was wondering the same thing herself. But back then it had felt as if she had nothing to lose, while now the stakes seemed significantly higher. Yet wasn’t she in danger of sabotaging their union before it had even started if she wasn’t careful?
So snap out of it. Enjoy your wedding night with your gorgeous new husband. Make this so good he’ll never want to look elsewhere for his pleasure.
‘I have some idea,’ she murmured. ‘Let me help you out of this shirt.’
She was so nervous she could barely undo the first button, but as soon as she made contact with his skin all her reservations melted away like honey left out in the midday sun. How could she have forgotten just how beautiful he was? His olive skin gleamed with health and vitality and hungrily she ran her gaze over all that hard, honed muscle. Her fingers drifted over his hair-roughened chest and Lucy heard him expel a shuddered sigh as she slipped the shirt from his shoulders and it slid to the ground. Which just left his trousers. She swallowed. It was easy to see how huge and taut his erection was, straining against the fine material, and her cheeks grew hot as she dropped her head to his shoulder.
‘Oh,’ she whispered against his neck, shy once more.
‘Anyone would think you’d never seen me in such an intimate state before.’
She swallowed. ‘It seems like a long time ago.’
‘It seems like that to me, too,’ he agreed raggedly as he tugged at the belt of his trousers and swiftly bent to remove the rest of his clothes, his black eyes opaque with lust as he straightened up again. ‘I’ve never had to wait for a woman like I’ve waited for you, Lucy. And it has been an exquisite kind of torture, do you realise that?’
Was it the thrill of the unknown which was making his voice dip with such husky intent as he unclipped her bra, so that her breasts sprang free against his bare chest? Did novelty alone account for the tense shudder which ran through his big body as he tugged her panties down over her thighs and kicked them impatiently away, before dextrously disposing of her high heels and filmy stockings so that they ended up in a white heap on the floor? Lucy didn’t know and, right then, she didn’t particularly care because he was lifting her into his arms and carrying her over to the bed, laying her down in the centre of the vast mattress like a willing sacrifice. His gaze moved down over her body. He stroked his fingers over her breasts, her belly, her hips, his narrowing eyes noting the restless wriggle of her bare bottom against the duvet. And then he smiled.
‘Want me?’ he questioned softly.
‘You know I do,’ she whispered.
He lay down on top of her, pushing her hair back from her flushed face before bending his head to kiss her. And as Lucy opened her eager lips to meet his, she felt a powerful wave of emotion rushing through her. Because this was the bit she remembered best. The sensation of his flesh pressing against hers. The long, drugging kisses and entwining of limbs and the feeling that this was somehow meant to be. Eagerly, she touched him back, and he moaned softly as she stroked him, and for a while they both seemed content with a rapt and silent rediscovery of each other’s bodies. And then suddenly the tempo seemed to change. Drakon’s body became taut as he captured her arms above her head and h
eld them against the pillow, before pressing his mouth to her nipple so that she could feel the warmth of his breath against the erect skin.
‘Oh,’ she gasped softly.
‘I love your breasts, Lucy,’ he said huskily. ‘They’re so damned...big.’
As if to illustrate his pleasure, he began licking what felt like every inch of her, making her squirm with helpless delight. And meantime his hand had slipped between her legs and was spreading open her thighs, one finger thrumming urgently against her creamy heat so that Lucy’s head fell back against the pillow. His rhythm was blissful and relentless—it rocketed her straight up to the stars and she came very quickly, her body arching beneath his hand as the spasms clenched low in her belly and then reverberated through her body like a sweet, spent storm. And when at last her eyelids fluttered open, it was to meet the black gleam of his penetrating gaze.
‘And I like watching you come,’ he observed throatily. ‘I like it when your body goes rigid and you make those gasping little sounds at the back of your throat.’
These were starkly sensual statements which only an hour ago might have had her blushing like a schoolgirl, but not now—not when satisfaction was flooding through her still-pulsing body. Yet despite the intense pleasure which had transformed her, it wasn’t enough, Lucy decided. Not nearly enough. Because she was no longer just some random woman he’d ended up having unexpected sex with on his private Greek island. She was now his wife and she wanted him to make love to her properly. She wanted him inside her. Badly. Reaching her arms up around his neck, she pulled his head down, and as his lips met hers a restless heat begin to rise inside her once more. She heard him give a low laugh as his tongue slipped inside her mouth and he began to circle his hips in a provocative demonstration of his arousal, until she thought she would go crazy with longing.
She realised he was rolling away from her and, for one illogical moment, wondered if her earlier fears had materialised and he was actually having second thoughts about consummating the marriage. But his reasoning was far more pragmatic than that. He was reaching for something on the bedside locker and Lucy swallowed when she saw what it was. A condom. Of course he would wear a condom. She could feel faint hysteria—and fear—spiral up inside her, because he’d told her he didn’t want any more children and he was just making sure that wouldn’t happen. He wasn’t to know that protection was completely unnecessary in her case, was he?
‘Drakon?’
His eyes were smoky with lust as he turned round. ‘Ti?’
‘I’m... I’m on the pill.’
He smiled approvingly as he dropped the condom back on the nightstand. ‘What excellent planning, my clever wife,’ he murmured. ‘That’s exactly as it should be.’
Hysteria began to build again. Should she tell him she’d been on the pill for years because of her endometriosis? But by then he was rolling back towards her, pulling her into his arms with a groan of feral hunger, and Lucy could feel his naked hardness touching against her moist heat. He bent his dark head and was kissing her with a thoroughness which was making her heart want to burst out of her chest, because when he kissed her like that it felt like a fairy tale. And why would she risk destroying that by talking about her tragic gynaecological history at a time like this, when none of it related to their marriage plans?
‘Now,’ he breathed as he eased himself inside her. ‘Evge! You are so tight, Lucy. So very tight, my sweet little virgin.’
‘But I’m not...’ She gasped as he began to drive up deep inside her. ‘I’m not a virgin any more.’
‘Always,’ he contradicted as his body took on an exquisite rhythm. ‘Always to me.’
Did his raw words intensify her pleasure? Possibly. Again, Lucy came very quickly and so did he—and all her fears about the amazing chemistry they shared being some sort of fluke were banished. Afterwards she lay sleepy and sated in his arms but she felt him stir almost immediately and they did it all over again. And again. They did it so many times that she lost count and she must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew she was being woken by the sound of Big Ben chiming out midnight. But as the last chime faded into the night, Lucy knew she had to ask him the question which was still gnawing away at her—because otherwise wouldn’t she just keep torturing herself with fevered imaginings?
She waited until he had poured two glasses of champagne and brought them back to bed, but her own drink lay untouched on the nightstand as she glanced over at Drakon’s autocratic profile. He had picked up his phone and was reading something off the screen and Lucy cleared her throat, trying to make her words sound as nonchalant as possible. ‘You seem very close to Amy,’ she observed.
‘Mmm...’ he said absently as he put the phone back on the locker, screen side down. ‘We’ve known each other a long time.’
Make it casual. All you’re doing is finding out a bit more about him and the people in his life.
She tried to keep her voice bright but her words sounded as forced as the last bit of toothpaste you tried to squeeze from the tube. ‘So how did you first get into partnership with her?’
There was a pause as he turned to look at her, his black gaze mocking. ‘You really want to talk about this right now?’
Of course she didn’t. She wanted him to put his glass down and pull her into his arms and tell her he was starting to fall in love with her, but that was never going to happen, not in a million years. And in the meantime she had to face down her nameless fears or allow them to grow. To grow and run the risk of dominating her thoughts and ruining her relationship, even if it was a relationship which fell short of her dreams. ‘I’m just interested,’ she said blandly. ‘And as your wife, it’s useful if I find out as much as I can about you. There’s loads about your past which is a mystery to me.’
Drakon took a sip of champagne and leaned back against the bank of feathered pillows. He didn’t particularly feel like talking—but the sex had been so damned hot that he was feeling unusually accommodating towards his new bride. ‘Me and Amy,’ he mused. ‘I guess it was one of those lucky meetings.’
‘Sort of...star-crossed?’ she ventured casually.
He shrugged, wondering why women always complicated things—or was she just trying to impress him with overblown quotes from Shakespeare? ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said, a little impatiently. ‘We were both working at the same office in Hong Kong and one night I decided to ask her out for dinner.’
‘Because you fancied her?’
Drakon frowned. She might have been a virgin until very recently, but surely she wasn’t that naïve? Because Lucy was practical. A practical and realistic woman who’d experienced her own share of bad stuff. Surely one thing which could come out of this unplanned marriage was the ability to be completely honest with her, because wasn’t honesty the quality he valued above all else?
‘Who wouldn’t fancy her?’ he questioned, barely registering the way she flinched, because by then his jaw had tightened with the memory of those turbulent days. ‘I was in a bad place,’ he admitted. ‘My father’s will had just been read to reveal that he’d basically blown the entire Konstantinou fortune during his lifetime. And my brother had gone ballistic when he’d discovered there was nothing left for him to inherit.’
‘And you must have been disappointed to discover that you’d lost your own expected share of the family fortune?’ she suggested.
He shook his head. ‘That would never have been the case. The laws of primogeniture meant that, as the eldest son, Niko would have inherited everything.’
‘And you never minded that?’
‘Of course I minded! I’m not some sort of saint, Lucy.’ His mouth twisted into a hard smile. ‘But I’d resigned myself to my fate a long time earlier. And underneath it all, I discovered I was less like my father and more like my grandfather, who had worked his way up from the bottom to the very top. I knew I could make my own
way in the world and that’s exactly what I was doing. I’d been to university and got myself a decent degree and was a petrochemical engineer, working for a big company in the Far East.’
‘But employees of big companies don’t tend to make billions of dollars,’ observed Lucy slowly. ‘They don’t own private jets or private islands or spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on last-minute weddings in luxury hotels.’
‘No, they don’t. And that’s where Amy came in.’ Drakon’s voice became thoughtful. ‘She was a geologist—the best geologist I’ve ever come across. After she’d explained she wasn’t interested in me romantically, she told me that she’d seen the potential for oil on one of the Indonesian islands, but didn’t have the wherewithal to explore it. And that’s where I came in.’ He paused. ‘I believed in her passion and enthusiasm and my gut feeling told me she was onto something big. I’d just received a huge bonus from the company but I was growing bored and frustrated with working for someone else. I told Amy I was prepared to back her hunch but that we needed to really go for it. So we chartered a small company to do the drilling for us, and within six months we’d struck oil.’ He took another sip of champagne and sighed. ‘Best feeling in the world,’ he reflected.
‘I’m sure it was,’ she said woodenly.
He turned to look at her. The rosy flush which had made her skin glow after a rapid succession of orgasms might never have happened, for her face was as pale as it had been just before she’d taken her wedding vows. He felt a flicker of irritation, because surely irrational mood swings had no place in what they had both agreed was to be a purely functional marriage. ‘Is something wrong?’ he questioned coolly.
Lucy wanted to jump up from the bed and rail at him for his insensitivity. To tell him that yes, of course there was something wrong. It was the first night of their honeymoon and not only had he confided that discovering oil was better than having sex with his new bride—he’d also confessed that the gorgeous Amy had once turned him down!
His Contract Christmas Bride Page 9