by Jane Porter
She heard him groan deep in his throat, a hoarse, guttural sound of pleasure, and it gave her a perverse thrill, knowing she could make Drakon feel something so strong that he’d groan aloud.
His hands stroked the outsides of her thighs and then down the inside and she shifted her hips, positioning him at her wet, slick core. “Do you want me?” she whispered, her lips at his ear.
“Yes,” he groaned, his voice so low that it rumbled through her. “Yes, always.”
And then he took control, lowering his weight, forearms pressed to the bed, and kissed her, deeply, his tongue plunging into her mouth even as he entered her body, thrusting all the way until they were one, and for a nearly a minute he remained still, kissing her, filling her, until she felt him swell inside her, stretching her, throbbing inside her, making her throb, too. Her pulse raced and her body tingled and burned, her inner muscles clenching and rippling with exquisite sensation. He was big and hard and warm and she could come like this, with her body gripping him, holding him, and Drakon knew it, knew how just being inside her could shatter her.
“Not yet,” she gasped, hands stroking over his broad shoulders and down the smooth, hard, warm planes of his back, savoring the curve and hollow of every thick, sinewy muscle. Men were so beautiful compared to women, and no man was more beautiful than Drakon. “Don’t let me come, not yet. I want more. I want everything.”
And maybe this was just the plain old missionary position, but it felt amazing, felt hot and fierce and intense and emotional and physical and everything that was good. Sex like this was mind-blowingly good, especially with Drakon taking his time, thrusting into her in long smooth strokes that hit all the right places, that made her feel all the right things. Morgan wished it could last forever, but she was already responding, the muscles inside her womb were coiling tighter and tighter, bringing her ever closer to that point of no return. Morgan’s head spun with the exquisite sensation, the tension so consuming that it was difficult to know in that moment if it was pleasure or pain, and then with one more deep thrust, Drakon sent her over the edge and her senses exploded, her body rippling and shuddering beneath his.
Drakon came while she was still climaxing and he ground out her name as he buried himself deeply within her. She could feel him come, feel the heat and liquid of him surging within her, and it hit her—they hadn’t used a condom. On their honeymoon they had never used protection. Drakon wanted children and she wanted to please him and so they had never used birth control, but this was different. They were divorcing. She’d soon be single. There was absolutely no way she could cope with getting pregnant now.
“What have we done?” she cried, struggling to push him off of her. “What did we do?”
Drakon shifted his weight and allowed her to roll away from him, even as a small muscle jumped in his jaw. “I think you know what we just did.”
“We shouldn’t have. It was wrong.”
“Doesn’t feel wrong to me,” he said tersely, watching her slide to the edge of the bed and search for her tunic, or something to cover up with.
She grabbed Drakon’s shirt, and slipped it over her arms into the sleeves and buttoned up the front. “Well, it was. We didn’t use birth control, Drakon, and we shouldn’t have even thought about sex without using a condom.”
“But we never used a condom.”
“Because we were newlyweds. We were hoping to have children, we both wanted a big family, but it’s different now. We’re separated. Divorcing. A baby would be disastrous, absolutely the worst thing possible—”
“Actually, I can think of a few things worse than a baby,” he interrupted, getting off the bed and reaching for his trousers. He stepped into one leg and then the other before zipping them closed. “Like famine. Disease. Pestilence. Or someone swindling billions of dollars—”
“Obviously I didn’t mean that a baby was a tragedy,” she retorted, crossing her arms over her chest to hide the fact that she was trembling. Just moments ago she’d been so relaxed, so happy, and now she felt absolutely shell-shocked. How was it possible to swing from bliss to hell in thirty seconds flat? But then, wasn’t that how it had always been with them?
“No, I think you did,” he countered. “It’s always about you, and what’s good for you—”
“That’s not true.”
“Absolutely true. You’re so caught up in what you want and need that there is no room in this relationship for two people. There certainly was never room for me.”
Her eyes widened. “You can’t be serious, Drakon. You’re the most controlling person I’ve ever met. You controlled everything in our marriage, including me—”
“Do I look like I’m in control?” he demanded tautly, dark color washing the strong, hard planes of his face.
He was breathing unsteadily, and her gaze swept over him, from his piercing gaze to the high color in his cheekbones to his firm full mouth, and she thought he looked incredible. Beautiful. Powerful. Her very own mythic Greek god. But that was the problem. He was too beautiful, too powerful. She had no perspective around him. Would throw herself in the path of danger just to be close to him.
Good God. How self-destructive was that?
Before she could speak, she heard the distinctive hum of a helicopter.
“Rowan,” Drakon said, crossing to the balcony and stepping outside to watch the helicopter move across the sky. “He’ll have news about your father.”
“Then I’d better shower and dress.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
MORGAN REFUSED TO think about what had just happened in her bed, unable to go there at all, and instead focused on taking a very fast shower before drying off and changing into a simple A-line dress in white linen with blue piping that Drakon had shipped over from the Athens house with the rest of the wardrobe.
In the steamy marble bathroom, she ran a brush through her long hair before drawing it back into a sleek ponytail and headed for her door, careful to keep her gaze averted from the bed’s tousled sheets and duvet.
The maid would remake the bed while she was gone, and probably change the sheets, and Morgan was glad. She didn’t want to remember or reflect on what had just changed there. It shouldn’t have happened. It was a terrible mistake.
She took the stairs quickly, overwhelmed by emotion—worry and hope for her father, longing for Drakon, as well as regret. Now that they’d made love once, would he expect her to tumble back into bed later tonight?
And what if he didn’t want to make love again? What if that was the last time? How would she feel?
In some ways that was the worst thought of all.
It wasn’t the right way to end things. Couldn’t be their last time. Their last time needed to be different. Needed more, not less. Needed more emotion, more time, more skin, more love…
Love.
She still loved Drakon, didn’t she? Morgan’s eyes stung, knowing she always would love him, too. Saying goodbye to him would rip her heart out. She only hoped it’d be less destructive than it had been the first time. Could only hope she’d remember the pain was just grief…that the pain would eventually, one day, subside.
But she wouldn’t go there, either. Not yet. She was still here with him, still feeling so alive with him. Better to stay focused on the moment, and deal with the future when it came.
Reaching the bottom stair she discovered one of Drakon’s staff was waiting for her. “Mrs. Xanthis, Mr. Xanthis is waiting for you in the terrace sunroom,” the maid said.
Morgan thanked her and headed down the final flight of stairs to the lower level, the terrace level.
The sunroom ran the length of the villa and had formerly been a ballroom in the nineteenth century. The ballroom’s original gilt ceiling, the six sets of double glass doors and the grand Venetian glass chandeliers remained, but the grand space was filled now with gorgeous rugs and comfortable furniture places and potted palms and miniature citrus trees. It was one of the lightest, brightest rooms in the villa and almost alw
ays smelled of citrus blossoms.
Entering the former ballroom, Morgan spotted Drakon and another man standing in the middle of the enormous room, talking in front of a grouping of couches and chairs.
They both turned and looked at her as she entered the room, but Morgan only had eyes for Drakon. Just looking at him made her insides flip, and her pulse leap.
She needed him, wanted him, loved him, far too much.
Her heart raced and her stomach hurt as she crossed the ballroom, her gaze drinking in Drakon, her footsteps muffled by the plush Persian rugs scattered across the marble floor.
He looked amazing…like Drakon, but not like Drakon in that soft gray knit shirt that hugged his broad shoulders and lovingly molded to his muscular chest, outlining every hard, sinewy muscle with a pair of jeans. In America they called shirts like the one he was wearing Henleys. They’d been work shirts, worn by farmers and firemen and lumberjacks, not tycoons and millionaires and it boggled her mind that Drakon would wear such a casual shirt, although from the look of the fabric and the cut, it wasn’t an inexpensive one—but it suited him.
He looked relaxed…and warm. So warm. So absolutely not cold, or controlled. And part of her suddenly wondered, if he had ever been cold, or if she’d just come to think of him that way as they grew apart in those last few months of their marriage?
Which led to another question—had he ever been that much in control, too? Or had she turned him into something he wasn’t? Her imagination making him into an intimidating and controlling man because she felt so out of control?
God, she hoped not. But there was no time to mull over the past. She’d reached Drakon’s side and felt another electric jolt as his gaze met hers and held. She couldn’t look away from the warmth in his amber eyes. Part of him still burned and it made her want to burn with him. Madness, she told herself, don’t go there, don’t lose yourself, and yet the air hummed with heat and desire.
How could she not respond to him?
How could she not want to be close to him when he was so fiercely alive?
“It’s going to be all right,” he murmured, his deep voice pitched so low only she could hear.
Her lovely, lovely man that made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the entire world. Her lovely, lovely man that had pushed her to the brink, and beyond, and he still didn’t know…still had no idea where she’d been that first year after leaving him, or what had happened to her trying to separate herself from him.
Part of her wanted to tell him, and yet another part didn’t want to give him that knowledge, or power. Because he could break her. Absolutely destroy her. And she wasn’t strong enough yet to rebuild herself again…not yet. Not on top of everything else that had happened to her father and her family with the Amery scandal.
“I promise you,” he added.
She heard his fierce resolve and her heart turned over. This is how she’d fallen in love with him—his strength, his focus, his determination. That and the way he smiled at her…as if she were sunshine and oxygen all rolled into one. “Yes,” she murmured, aware that once upon a time he’d been everything to her…her hope, her happiness, her future. She missed those days. Missed feeling as if she belonged somewhere with someone.
There was a flicker in his eyes, and then he made the introductions. “Morgan, this is Rowan Argyros, of Dunamas. Rowan, my wife, Morgan Copeland Xanthis.”
Morgan forced her attention from Drakon to the stranger and her jaw nearly dropped. This was Rowan Argyros? This was one of the founders of Dunamas Maritime Intelligence?
Her brows tugged. She couldn’t mask her surprise. Argyros wasn’t at all what she’d expected.
She’d imagined Drakon’s intelligence expert to look like one, and she’d pictured a man in his forties, maybe early fifties, who was stocky, balding, with a square jaw and pugilistic nose.
Instead Rowan Argyros looked like a model straight off some Parisian runway. He was gorgeous. Not her type at all, but her sister Logan would bed him in a heartbeat.
Tall and broad-shouldered, Argyros was muscular without any bulk. He was very tan, and his eyes were light, a pale gray or green, hard to know exactly in the diffused light of the ballroom. His dark brown hair was sun-streaked and he wore it straight and far too long for someone in his line of work. His jaw was strong, but not the thick bulldog jaw she’d come to associate with testosterone-driven males, but more angular…elegant, the kind of face that would photograph beautifully, although today that jaw was shadowed with a day-old beard.
“Mrs. Xanthis,” Rowan said, extending a hand to her.
It bothered her that he hadn’t even bothered to shave for their meeting, and she wondered how this could be the man who would free her father?
Rowan Argosy looked as if he’d spent his free time hanging out on obscenely big yachts off the coast of France, not planning daring, dangerous life-saving missions.
She shook his hand firmly and let it go quickly. “Mr. Argyros,” she said crisply. “I would love to know what you know about my father. Drakon said you have information.”
“I do,” Rowan said, looking her straight in the eye, his voice hard, his expression as cool and unfriendly as hers.
Morgan’s eyebrows lifted. Nice. She liked his frosty tone, and found his coldness and aloofness reassuring. She wouldn’t have trusted him at all if he’d been warm and charming. Military types…intelligence types…they weren’t the touchy-feely sort. “Is he alive?”
“He is. I have some film of him taken just this morning.”
“How did you get it?”
“Does it matter?”
“No.” And her legs felt like Jell-O and she took a step back, sitting down heavily in one of the chairs grouped behind them. Her heart was thudding so hard and fast she thought she might be sick and she drew great gulps of air, fighting waves of nausea and intense relief. Dad was alive. That was huge. “Thank God.”
For a moment there was just silence as Morgan sat with the news, overwhelmed that her father was indeed alive. After a moment, when she could trust herself to speak, she looked up at Rowan. “And he’s well? He’s healthy?”
He hesitated. “We don’t know that. We only have his location, and evidence that he is alive.”
So Dad could be sick. He probably didn’t have his heart medicine with him. It’d probably been left behind on his boat. “What happens now?” she asked.
“We get your father out, take him to wherever you want him to go.”
“How does that happen, though?”
“We’re going to have you call your contact, the one in Somalia you’ve been dealing with, and you’re going to ask to speak to your father. You’ll tell them you need proof that he’s alive and well if they are to get the six million dollars.”
“They won’t let me speak to him. I tried that before.”
“They will,” Drakon interjected, arms folded across his chest, the shirt molded to his sculpted torso, “if they think you’re ready to make a drop of six million.”
She looked at him. “What if they call our bluff? Wouldn’t we have to be prepared to make the drop?”
“Yes. And we will. We’ll give them a date, a time, coordinates for the drop. We’ll tell them who is making the drop, too.”
“But we’re not dropping any money, are we?” she asked, glancing from him to Rowan and back again.
“No,” said Rowan. “We’re preparing a team right now to move in and rescue your father. But speaking to your father gives us important information, as well as buys us a little more time to put our plan in place.”
She nodded, processing this. “How long until you rescue him?”
“Soon. Seventy-two hours, or less.”
She looked at Rowan, startled. “That is soon.”
“Once we have our plan in place, it’s better to strike fast.” Rowan’s phone made a low vibrating noise and he reached into his pocket and checked the number. “I need to take this call,” he said, walking away.
Morgan exhaled as Rowan exited through the sunroom, into the stairwell that would take him back up to the main level of the villa.
“You okay?” Drakon asked, looking down on her, after Rowan disappeared.
“Things can go wrong,” she said.
“Yes. And sometimes they do. But Dunamas has an impressive track record. Far more successes than failures. I wouldn’t have enlisted their help if I didn’t think they’d succeed.”
She hesitated. “If Rowan’s team didn’t succeed…people could die.”
“People will die even if they do succeed. They’re planning a raid. The pirates are heavily armed. Dunamas’s team will be heavily armed. It’s not going to be a peaceful handover. It’ll be explosive and violent, and yet the team they’re sending are professionals. They’re prepared to do whatever they have to do to get him out alive.”
So some of them—or all of them—could end up dying for her father?
Nauseated all over again, Morgan moved from her chair, not wanting to think of the brave, battle-tested men, men the world viewed as heroic, risking their lives for her father, who wasn’t a hero.
Stomach churning, she pushed open one of the sunroom’s tall arched glass doors and stepped onto the terrace, into the sunshine. She drank in a breath of fresh air, and then another. Was she being selfish, trying to save her father? Should she not do this?
Panic and guilt buffeted her as she leaned against the terrace’s creamy marble balustrade and squeezed her eyes closed.
Drakon had followed her outside. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer immediately, trying to find the right words, but what were those words? How did one make a decision like this? “Am I doing the wrong thing?” she asked. “Am I wrong, trying to save him?”
“I can’t answer that for you. He’s your father. Your family.”
“You know I tried everything before I came to you. I asked everyone for help. No one would help me.”
“Who did you approach?”
“Who didn’t I?” She laughed grimly and glanced out across the terraced gardens with the roses and hedges and the pool and the view of the sea beyond. “I went to London to see Branson, and then to Los Angeles to see Logan, and then to Tori in New York, and back to London, but none of them would contribute money toward Dad’s ransom. They’re all in tight financial straits, and they all have reasons they couldn’t give, but I think they wouldn’t contribute to the ransom because they’re ashamed of Dad. I think they believe I’m wasting money trying to rescue him. Mom even said he’s better off where he is…that people will find it easier to forgive us—his kids—if Dad doesn’t come back.”