by Lynne Graham
‘My goodness, that’s wonderful news!’ Elvi declared brightly, relief rolling through her in a rejuvenating wave of energy. It was done. Xan had kept his promise.
Elvi texted him a stiff apology for her lack of confidence, resisting the urge to remind him that he hadn’t trusted her either. In truth she didn’t know what she was wishing for. That he had ditched her and moved on? In which case she would be moving home again. Or was she stuck with the agreement she had made?
Xan was still in a temper with her when he read the text. He was done with her, wasn’t he? Last night had been his warning. When you draped a woman in diamonds, threw in a new wardrobe and the use of a very expensive apartment, you expected something in return...obviously. It infuriated him that that conviction made him feel cheap. It infuriated him that he was tempted to walk out in the middle of his working day and stage a rendezvous with her because he still burned for her. After a sleepless night, the urge to possess Elvi’s glorious body was as strong as ever, undaunted by the difficulty of dealing with her unrealistic expectations.
His thought processes were becoming disturbingly insidious and unfamiliar. Every man was entitled to one mistake, wasn’t he? Why shouldn’t he enjoy the mistake he had made and move on afterwards? He texted her that he would be with her that afternoon and endeavoured to get back into the meeting he was in. But he couldn’t concentrate, not for wondering what she would be wearing, what she would look like naked, how she would look when he gave her pleasure. In a passion of rare indecision, Xan breathed in deep and slow and wondered what the hell had taken hold of him. He didn’t like wanting Elvi as much as he did because such urges smacked of immoderation, indiscipline and chaos, every sin he meticulously avoided in life.
Even so, he stood up in the middle of the meeting and abruptly announced his departure. He would have Elvi one single time and then that would be it. Once only, as his mother lamented when she overindulged in chocolate. A treat was one thing, a habit quite another and he did not want a habit like Elvi who took his mind off his work.
Xan texted Elvi.
Coming for lunch.
Was she supposed to cook? Elvi wondered in panic. Or was lunch a euphemism for sex? Was she supposed to greet him in the rather risqué lingerie that had been delivered along with the most massive amount of clothing and accessories earlier that morning? Or was she simply supposed to drape herself somewhere and look inviting? I am not a prude, she told her reflection, and then pinched her cheeks because she looked so pale. Maybe she was a prude in comparison to him because he seemed to be astonishingly free of inhibitions and self-consciousness. Ironically his ability to be that way made her feel rather envious.
Xan didn’t know what he was expecting but he wasn’t expecting to be greeted by lunch or the shocking disarray of the living area, which ran counter to his every conviction of how an interior should be maintained. Something in the process of being knitted lay abandoned on one sofa and a box of sewing supplies sat on the rug. Books spilled across another seat and the coffee table was littered with random items. There was no organisation, no order. He averted his gaze from it all to focus on her, all anxious blue eyes above pink cheeks, glorious hair framing her face. And he had given her a new wardrobe and what was she wearing? An old denim skirt with a faded top and scuffed cowboy boots, he registered in stupefaction.
‘I didn’t know whether you’d be hungry or not,’ Elvi admitted tightly, striving not to stare at him but, oh, it was difficult not to surrender to base and embarrassing promptings. Xan looked like her every fantasy in one devastating package from the black luxuriance of his hair to the flawless hard lines of his breathtakingly beautiful features, all set within the frame of an exquisitely tailored light grey suit, a white shirt and a crimson silk tie.
‘I only have an hour,’ Xan imparted, stunned by the food she had prepared because he had never had a mistress who tried to feed him before.
‘Oh...’
‘I’m only hungry for you,’ Xan intoned huskily while wondering if he should draw up a list of rules to urge her in the right direction—tidy up, don’t feed me, wear the clothes I give you—and then his attention locked onto the voluptuous pink lower lip she was chewing on and the throb at his groin overpowered every other thought and he simply reached for her.
He snatched her up into his arms and kissed her breathless and a sort of giddy, unfamiliar delight pierced Elvi, because Xan Ziakis could wreak havoc on her body with one extraordinary kiss. So, when the kisses piled up, she got lost in them, which in its own way was a relief because it stopped her overthinking stuff and held the nerves at bay. Her arms snaked round his neck as he carried her out of the kitchen and her momentary panic had subsided to be replaced by a helpless sense of anticipation. She was finally coming to terms with the truth that she wanted him too and that there was nothing one-sided about their chemistry.
Abandoned clothing festooned the single chair in the bedroom. Xan ignored the display, for once too caught up in the wonder of Elvi’s response to notice. She tasted like strawberries and the soft damp welcome of her mouth inflamed him. He wanted that wondrous mouth of hers everywhere on him. In fact colourful images were tumbling through Xan’s head and making control a rare challenge. One time only, he reminded himself doggedly, like a man trying to bargain with the devil, as he settled her down on the bed.
‘I need a shower,’ Xan confided, yanking loose his tie beneath her arrested gaze. ‘Join me—’
The prospect of getting naked with him in a shower was a step too far too fast for Elvi and she gave him a tense smile. ‘I’ll just wait here.’
Xan was used to women who did exactly what he wanted when he wanted and he was disconcerted afresh by her reluctance. The instant one of the bathroom doors closed on him, Elvi leapt off the bed to buzz the blinds shut and undress at frantic speed. She had already had two showers that morning, one when she got up, the second after he texted her. She climbed back into the bed naked, every skin cell on high alert for his reappearance.
She wished she weren’t so shy. Prudish, he had called it, but she was painfully aware that what was amiss with her was inexperience and a lack of confidence in her own body. At school the majority of her peers had been skinny and leggy and that had made her feel chunky and unfashionable, for the trendy clothing that had flattered their slimmer curves had done nothing for her very different shape. Nor could she escape the demeaning suspicion that the minute Xan saw her naked, he would realise that she wasn’t quite the bombshell he had hoped.
But then what did any of that matter? she censured herself in exasperation. They had an agreement, not a relationship based on caring or commitment. It was only sex and it only seemed more of a challenge to her because sex was new to her. She had to assume that a womaniser would know what he was doing in the bedroom and by this evening she would probably be wondering what all the fuss was about. Her expectations were low. She might find Xan irresistibly attractive but the prospect of getting hot, sweaty and naked with a stranger still intimidated her.
The bathroom door opened and Xan emerged, towelling his hair dry; a naked bronzed muscular vision of masculinity in her shaken appraisal. No, Xan was definitely not shy. He seemed a little surprised by the dimness of the room and frowned as he crawled up lithely from the bottom of the bed, evidently equally surprised to find her waiting there for him. He reached up to stab the lights on.
‘I like it dim—’
‘I don’t.’ A slanting grin tilted Xan’s wide sensual mouth. ‘I lay awake half the night thinking about this moment—’
‘Truthfully?’ Elvi framed unevenly.
‘You really do it for me,’ Xan growled, yanking back the sheet she was cringing below. ‘Thee mou...what glorious breasts!’
Elvi just shut her eyes tight and lay there barely breathing, for an instant barely crediting that only a few minutes earlier she had believed she wanted him as much as he wanted
her. And then he hauled her under him and crushed her ripe mouth under his and once again everything changed so fast that her head spun dizzily. She wondered what magic there was to his mouth on hers that made her crave more, her fingers skimming up his cheekbones into his silky cropped hair and holding him to her.
A kiss is only a kiss, she thought abstractedly, but it wasn’t with Xan, it was fireworks and wild passion and the delving, curling intimacy of his tongue flicking inside her mouth, setting off a chain reaction that arrowed through her body with a piercing, burning sweetness that made her hips rise helplessly off the mattress.
He touched her breasts and she ached and quivered, the swollen, straining buds of her nipples shockingly responsive to the tug of his fingers and then the warm wet torment of his mouth, his tongue, his teeth...and her back arched, a sliding liquidity and heat rising in her pelvis because every touch felt as amazing as the hot, hard, muscular weight of him pinning her to the bed. He shifted back a little, muttering something in Greek, pausing to kiss her again with a hungry ferocity that made her heart beat stronger and faster than ever, excitement building as he stroked her thigh, parted her legs, finally touching her where she craved being touched. And at that point, everything became increasingly hazy for Elvi because she was out of control and pushed to a fever pitch by the intense sensitivity of her own body. Skilled fingers rubbed, delicately explored the sleek, silky depths of her, little tremors pulling at her, little sounds wrenched from her parted lips, the excitement blazing over her and soaring through her like leaping flames.
Burning all over, she writhed, yearning for more but too out of her mind to even recognise what more entailed. Xan’s wide sensual mouth crashed down on hers again and it was as if she had stuck a finger in an electric socket because for an instant, with her heart hammering and her breath clawing for escape from her constricted lungs, that spellbinding kiss enthralled her. And then he slid over her, lifting her thighs, pinning them back. Somehow the weight of him and that intimate contact were what her body craved.
Xan plunged into her heated core with passionate force. Elvi jerked and twisted her head away at the fierce jolt of pain, no longer flying in a delicious play world of the physical, suddenly brought back down to earth with a crash. Tears stung her eyes and she closed them tight, sealing herself off in an instinctive need for privacy, recognising that what she had mindlessly craved felt more like a punishment than a pleasure. Mercifully the pain faded as fast as it had come and her tension disappeared with it. Different sensations began to coalesce within her as he changed his angle, tilted her up and an almost forgotten jab of excitement tightened like a band low in her belly.
And then he kissed her again, claiming her reddened lips with hungry need, and she reconnected with him, compelled by the convulsive little quivers travelling through her pelvis and the almost mystical push of elation beginning to grip her every nerve. Never had she been more aware of anything than the sleek, hard invasion of his body into hers, stretching her, rousing her with his dynamic drive. The peak of pleasure took her by surprise, throwing her up in a gasping breathless wave to the heights and then letting her fall, slowly, gently while the ripples of delight were still convulsing her.
Xan pulled back, convinced he had just enjoyed the best sex of his life and shocked by the wildness of it and the alarming awareness that he had lost control. And then two unexpected events drove all such ruminations from mind. He was about to head for the bathroom to dispose of the condom when he suddenly registered that he hadn’t used one, a reckless omission that nothing could excuse and which froze him in his tracks. In that interim instant of inaction and disbelief he noticed the blood on the sheet.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he noted jerkily. ‘Did I hurt you?’
Raw mortification assailed Elvi and she squirmed away from him, yanking the top sheet over the embarrassing proof of her inexperience. ‘No, it was my first time,’ she muttered tightly, her face suffusing with chagrined heat.
CHAPTER FIVE
XAN COMPUTED THAT admission and he was so shocked by the revelation, he literally felt sick. His lethally accurate brain threw up the entirety of his dealings with Elvi Cartwright and shame engulfed him for the first time in his life because such a scenario, a sordid scenario in which he demanded sex from an innocent girl, appalled him. It had not once crossed his mind that at her age she could be literally untouched. No, not these days, when he was forever reading about young women treating sex as casually as young men and when he himself was offered sex as carelessly as a handshake at first meetings. He utterly recoiled from the image of himself as a violator of virgins. If he had known, he would have kept his distance, would never ever have suggested...
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that?’ Xan demanded rawly, sliding off the bed in one powerful movement. ‘Naturally I assumed that you had sexual experience—’
Shot from the heights of her first real orgasm to the depths of embarrassment and then held trapped there by the unexpectedly angry reaction of her first lover, Elvi wrapped herself in the sheet and raised her knees to her chin, linking her arms round her trembling legs. ‘But why would you assume that?’ she asked shakily.
Xan raked an unsteady hand through his tousled black hair. ‘Because that’s the norm at your age. If I’d known you were a virgin, I would never have touched you and I would never have offered you the arrangement that I did!’ he shot at her furiously.
Elvi was perplexed because Xan had not impressed her as a man with sincere moral principles and she shrugged a rounded shoulder in dismissal of that statement. ‘It’s a little late now for regrets,’ she pointed out. ‘I did warn you that I wasn’t really suitable for what you had in mind but you weren’t interested in hearing it.’
Xan was never interested in hearing anything that conflicted with his own needs and wants and he didn’t require a stinging reminder from her that he had made an inexcusable mistake. Dark colour laced his high cheekbones and, with gritted teeth, he spun and strode towards the bathroom, only to freeze again and turn lithely back to her.
‘Are you on the pill?’
Elvi shook her head. ‘Why would I have been?’
‘On any form of contraception?’ Xan persisted tautly.
‘No. I was planning to sort something out this week but the very tight timetable you imposed on me prevented me from doing anything in advance,’ she said shortly.
‘You should’ve told me you were a virgin!’ Xan lashed back at her with unconcealed censure.
‘Why?’ Elvi countered. ‘It was none of your business!’
‘It became my business when you were planning to have a sexual relationship with me,’ Xan contradicted with controlled savagery.
‘As you well know, you were the one who planned to have a sexual relationship with me and I had to move in here barely twelve hours after agreeing, so my planning anything didn’t come into it!’
Xan shuddered at the burn of being force-fed the truth on an unappetising plate. He and no one else had brought about this disaster. His arrogance, his ego had resulted in this mess and it was a lesson he had never expected to receive because for too many years he had been invincible, his every move lauded, his every deal a phenomenal success. It seemed he was not the man he had been raised to become, not the person he had believed himself to be. It was a pivotal moment for him, glancing round the spacious room where he had spent so many hours with forgettable women and inwardly cringing at how he had foolishly believed he had it made with that set-up, because that detached conveyor-belt system had now gone badly wrong for him. And he still didn’t know how to fix it...
Elvi’s clasped hands round her knees tightened, her knuckles showing white below her skin. She was a little ball of rigid tension in recognition of his. Presumably he was disappointed. That was why he was angry. Angry not with her, she sensed, but with himself for a poor choice of playmate.
‘I’m not wha
t you expected,’ she said for him.
Xan swallowed hard. ‘No,’ he conceded, wondering how the hell he was supposed to make amends. ‘You surprised me. Very few people manage to do that.’
Let her go, Xan reasoned. It was the obvious answer to fixing what was wrong but he looked at her, all wrapped round herself as if she was trying to make herself small, and his chest tightened and he hauled in a long rasping breath, his broad chest expanding. He didn’t want the obvious answer and he was still a selfish bastard, he acknowledged, because he still wanted her. Even when he could see the shininess of tears in her bright blue eyes. What did that say about him? That he was capable of wanting an unwilling woman? No way would he touch her again without an invitation from her, he told himself squarely, rationalising an irrational decision. He would make amends. He didn’t know how but in some mysterious way he would manage that feat. He was very clever. He would work it out eventually.
‘I think I’ll eat that lunch you were kind enough to make me,’ Xan said abruptly.
Astonishment flashed through Elvi and her lashes lowered on her anxious eyes. He was still imprinted on her eyelids, a spectacular bronzed man naked as a jaybird, standing there like a stone statue, his discomfiture obvious to her. What was the matter with him? The soft sounds of him dressing, the click of cuff links snapping closed, the sound of a zip penetrated her shell of silence. She had had sex for the very first time and he had disappointed her because he had denied the intimacy of the experience, pulling away as soon as he was done, and none of the pleasure he had given her had made up for that distance and reserve.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Xan prompted, more uncomfortable than he had ever been in his entire life with a woman.
‘I’m lonely,’ Elvi muttered truthfully. ‘I’m used to having my family around—’