by Trish Morey
But even the sunset could not make her forget Alexios was still here, close beside her. Never had she been more aware of a man’s presence in her life. He was right there at her shoulder. So close she could once again smell the lemon tang of his soap. So close she could feel his body’s warmth on her bare arm.
So close.
And yet he didn’t make a move towards her.
Slowly, inexorably, the sea embraced the sun, and with every passing second Athena wished he would touch her again, even if only to point out something else.
Though more than that, she wished, leaning closer, her bare arm brushing his, setting her skin alight, that he would kiss her. In this perfect moment with the perfect excuse of the most romantic sunset in the world as a backdrop.
Why did he not try to touch her?
Why didn’t he kiss her?
But while the air all but crackled between them, even while her body swayed of its own accord towards his, frustratingly he moved no closer to her. Still, he made no move at all.
By the time the sea swallowed the sun whole and the last glimmer of light was extinguished, her strung-out nerves were at breaking point for fruitless, pointless, wishing.
She reached for and clung to the balustrade with both hands, disappointment weighing heavy in her sigh.
‘Amazing,’ he said beside her, and his deep voice rippled into the fabric of her soul. She felt silly now that the rush of disappointment was over. All this time she’d been wary and suspicious and all the time he really had only wanted to share a meal and a sunset with someone.
She put her unfamiliar libido back in the dusty box where it had come from. She had no right to be disappointed. She hadn’t wanted anything to happen really. It was the sunset and the colour and the heart-stopping beauty of an island the gods had blessed with unimaginable riches to compensate for locating it over an active volcano.
‘That was spectacular,’ she said, turning her back to the balustrade now the show was over. ‘Thank you for sharing it with me, and for a wonderful dinner. I should probably be heading off now.’
‘You don’t want to stay for coffee?’
She shook her head. She felt foolish now. Carried away by the romance of the island. Reading too much into a simple invitation. If it was any lighter here on the balcony, he would surely see her face glowing red.
She crossed back towards the table where she’d left her bag, searching for a lightness she didn’t feel. ‘I have a confession to make.’
‘You do?’
‘I actually thought—I mean—just for a while there, when you took off chasing the thief, well, I’m sorry to admit that I half wondered if you hadn’t been working together, and that I’d never see you, or my bag, again.’
He shook his head, his dark eyes glinting with amusement. ‘You honestly believed me capable of behaving in such a despicable manner?’
She cast her eyes downwards. ‘I’m so sorry. I was strung out. I don’t know why else I would have thought such a thing.’
His dark eyes narrowed. His lips turned up on one side. ‘But then, you thought I was some kind of gigolo too.’
‘God, don’t remind me. I’m sorry about that too.’
He leaned an arm up onto the wall beside her and she was struck by the poetry in the slow but sure movement of his muscled limbs. ‘You thought I was going to seduce you.’
‘To be fair, I didn’t know what to think. I was alone and you were very charming. Are very charming. What was a woman on her own to think? But you’ve proved me wrong and I’ve had the most wonderful evening, thank you.’ She put out a hand to shake his.
He stared down at it, a crease tugging dark brows together. ‘Are you disappointed?’
‘What?’
‘That I didn’t try to seduce you?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t... I’m not sure...’
His eyes met hers, and in their dark depths she saw an insecurity and wavering that mirrored her own, an insecurity she would never have expected to see in this man’s, not when he otherwise appeared so confident and assured. An insecurity she instinctively wanted to smooth away and reassure.
‘Because you must know,’ he said, ‘I wanted to kiss you.’
Her mouth went dry. ‘You did?’
‘When the sun was setting before us and it was like we were part of it, rather than just watching, and I could see the look of wonder on your face—in that moment I ached to reach out a hand and touch you.’
‘You did?’ She tossed her head back, trying to inject no more than a casual interest in his revelation. Trying to sound as if they were discussing something academic. ‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Because I was afraid you might run. That it would confirm your worst thoughts about me. So I held back. Let me tell you, removing my hand from your back was one of the hardest things I have ever done.’ His dark eyes trained on hers. ‘Would you have run?’
Her bag suddenly felt heavy in her hands, her limbs felt boneless and it was all she could do to remember to breathe.
‘Would you?’
The air between them seemed to shimmer with expectation. This was no game they were playing. No innocent question and answer session. This felt dangerous.
Reckless.
Athena didn’t do reckless.
Not normally. But tonight was far from normal.
And this time that voice inside her head demanded to quash any resistance and to be heard, and this time, she was only too prepared to listen.
‘No.’ Her answer was a bare whisper, and yet more than a whisper. A confession.
He closed the distance between them and put the pads of his thumb to her cheek, the fingers of his other hand tracing the line of her lips. ‘You are more beautiful than any sunset I have ever witnessed. I have wanted you since the moment we first met.’
His warm breath, scented with the cognac they’d shared, caressed her skin, and like the waves upon the sea his words rippled into her soul. Her cheek leaned into his touch, her lips parting, seeking more, tasting him.
‘If you ask me to kiss you,’ he said, ‘there is no way I could refuse.’
Her heart skipped a beat. And she knew with a woman’s sense that this was bigger than any kiss. The heat pooling in her belly, the pulse beating at her very core told her this wouldn’t stop with a kiss. But he was giving her the choice—stop now or go on.
In the end, it was no choice at all. ‘So kiss me,’ she said.
And he made a sound, guttural and deep, a sound of triumph mixed with need that rumbled straight to her veins and turned her blood to bubbles as he pulled her close and his lips met hers. Warm lips. Surprisingly soft and yet firm. Engaged in a sensual dance with hers. Slow. Gentle. Teasing. Deeper. Repeat.
Her knees turned weak. She reached for him, needing an anchor to steady herself, finding a rock as her hands tangled in the folds of his shirt and found his hard body beneath. Her fingers embraced his sculpted torso and she heard a sound like a whimper and realised it had come from her.
But he was glorious. Muscled and hard beneath her seeking fingers. Thirsty fingers, drinking in the ridges of bone and tight bunches of muscle as his mouth made magic on hers. While his long-fingered hands scooped down the sides of her head, to her shoulders, leaving trails that felt like sparks under her skin and that scorched a path all the way down via peaking nipples, to where an aching heat pulsed between her thighs.
And even as she pressed her body closer to his, closer into his kiss, she knew this was all kinds of reckless, because she knew there was no way this was stopping with a mere kiss.
And she wanted it.
She wanted it all.
CHAPTER FOUR
SO MUCH MORE than a mere kiss! His scent, his taste and the feel of him combined into one powerful cocktail and she wanted more. She parted her lips and he accepted h
er invitation, his tongue tasting, testing, before engaging hers in a sensual dance of passion and need. She was already lost in sensation, blood fizzing in her veins, when she felt the brush of his thumb against one sensitive nipple, and she gasped into his mouth with the sheer electricity of it.
He growled, liking her response, his hands growing bolder, sweeping from her shoulders to the cheeks of her behind, squeezing, her muscles clenching and tightening in response as his fingertips ventured dangerously close to her cleft.
‘Theos,’ he said, wrenching his mouth from hers. ‘Stay, and make love with me, Athena.’
She answered him with her mouth and her body, pulling his head back to hers, pressing her full length against his body, her plumping breasts hard against his chest, her hips pushed against his. She encountered the evidence of his own arousal and felt a rush of heat hard on the heels of a bloom of delight.
For so long, it seemed, she’d felt numb. Too long. Ever since she’d heard the news of her father’s death and been sideswiped by the impact it had on her. By the knowledge that now she had lost both her mother and, even if their relationship had been difficult at times, or maybe because of it, her father.
She’d been operating in a vacuum ever since.
Numb. Emotionless.
But Alexios had awakened something deep inside her and it unfurled and blossomed like a flower that had been buried under a winter snow. It was so good to feel again.
And now, all she wanted to do was feel.
Her feet went from underneath her, as he swept her up into his arms, his lips still on hers. He turned and kicked open a door, before spinning around and kicking it shut behind them. She had an impression of space, of high ceiling and billowing curtains on windows opening to the caldera, before she felt softness at her back as he laid her down in a bed hung with silken drapes of red and gold, the colours of the sunset.
Then he drew back, one knee on the bed, and looked at her in the half-light. ‘So beautiful,’ he said, and his words gave her hope that her life had turned a corner, and that the bleakness of the last few weeks might be at an end.
He tugged at the buttons on his shirt, pulled it from his shoulders and sent it fluttering to the floor. Her eyes drank him in. Wide shoulders. Sculpted chest and abdomen and arms where muscles rippled with every movement. Arms whose hands were working at his waistband, sliding down the zipper, before they too joined his shirt on the floor.
And all the while, his dark eyes didn’t leave hers, their intensity leaving her breathless and giddy, making way for one brief moment of indecision, a sudden bubble of nerves that this was happening too fast. A sudden bubble of rational thought that sprang up unbidden.
As if sensing her momentary panic, he surprised her by reaching down to kiss her again, soothing her, and already it seemed too long that he’d been away, while his hand slid beneath her to ease down the zipper at her back. With every parted tooth she felt her desire intensify and coalesce, until need was at the very essence of her. He was still kissing her as he eased the shoulder straps down her arms, still kissing her as she eased up her hips and let him peel her sundress away, until she was lying on the bed with nothing but a few scraps of lace to shield her from his view, and never, it seemed, had she felt more vulnerable.
Only then did his lips leave hers, leaving her breathless and wanting, as he drew himself back on his heels. ‘Magnificent,’ he said, and she let go a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding, before he returned to her, running his strong hands up the outside of her legs, her hips, her waist and shoulders and her breathing ratcheted up another notch as he came closer, scooping her into his arms and rolling her against him.
Skin against skin. His legs tangling with hers, rough versus smooth, corded muscles against toned flesh. His abdomen against hers. Locked from head to toe. An electric connection only heightened by the places still hidden, the places still to be revealed, the places that now ached with potent need.
His hand cupped one breast and she whimpered, arching her back into his touch, while her hands roamed the glory of his sculpted back, muscles shifting with every movement, fascinating and thrilling her in equal measure, her hands drinking in the perfection of his skin-scape.
And then the lace covering her breasts was gone and she wanted to cry with relief, but when he dipped his head to take one peaked nipple into his mouth, it was a cry of ecstasy she gave as spears of pleasure shot straight to her aching core.
She was already burning up when he turned his attention to her other breast, his seeking hand now free to roam downwards, his fingertips toying with the lace edging of her underwear before inching slowly beneath the lace to cup her mound, before venturing closer to that place where her need pooled and coalesced into a living beast, demanding to be sated. She was breathing hard now, alight with the passion he’d unfurled in her, perspiration beading on her skin as, stoked by his every touch, the flames built up inside.
She was already teetering on the edge, anticipation acting like accelerant on a fire, so when his fingers parted her, finding her slick with want, her nerve endings all but screaming for his touch, she was already primed.
One gliding caress, one gentle pass by no more than a fingertip, and she climaxed against his hand. Hard. The shudders reverberating through her, wave after wave of pleasure rocking her world, until it felt as if he were the only thing anchoring her to the earth.
He kissed her as she came down, raining kisses on her mouth, on her eyes, on her sweat-slickened breasts. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, suddenly embarrassed and feeling gauche, her inexperience clearly on display.
‘Shh...’ he soothed. ‘Don’t be.’
‘But...’
‘We are just getting started.’
She blinked up at him, still catching her breath, to see him sliding down the band of black underwear at his hips. Her eyes widened in appreciation. Even bigger than she’d imagined when she’d felt the hard press of him against her belly. Even more magnificent. And despite just climaxing, despite thinking she was spent, she felt desire curl upwards inside her like tendrils of fragrance from a scented candle.
He reached across into a drawer beside the bed, ripping open the foil without taking his eyes from hers, rolling the condom down his long length, his eyes daring hers to watch his progress. ‘You see what you do to me, mikro peristeri? You see how much I burn for you?’
The endearment was sweet, but... ‘Why do you call me your little dove?’
‘Because since we met,’ he said, positioning himself between her legs, leaning on one elbow to slowly sweep the other hand from her hair to her shoulder, over one breast and her belly, and lower, his fingers curving between her thighs, ‘you are always on edge. Always looking to fly away.’
She swallowed. It was hard to hold a conversation when a man had his hand—there. ‘I’m not flying away now.’
‘No,’ he said with a smile, his fingers traversing her still-sensitive flesh, gently exploring, caressing, circling her tender core. ‘You are a gift straight from the gods. How blessed am I that I should have stumbled into your orbit?’
Why he was still trying to pleasure her with his touch and his words, she didn’t know. She would enjoy the sex, she had no doubt, but there was no point him wasting his time. She would never climax again, not after having her mind blown so completely and utterly already.
And yet he seemed in no hurry, taking his time, dipping his head again to take each nipple in turn into his hot mouth before returning to her mouth, still intent on pleasuring her. That was when she felt it, felt one long finger slide inside her. Her muscles squeezed in response at the intimate intrusion, and he growled, low in his throat, as he followed it with a second, working in concert with the pad of his thumb, their dance on her tender flesh generating sparks of sensation where she thought there would be none.
But it was impossible.
Th
ere was no way.
Except her body had other ideas. Her senses stirred, he seemed to know how much pressure, how much teasing was enough to leave her breathless and wanting more.
And then his fingers slid away, replaced with a new, heated pressure, and for a moment she felt a sense of panic, that perhaps she was being too greedy and wanting it all. ‘You are beautiful,’ he said, resting on his elbows either side of her, his hands weaving their way into her hair, holding her captive to his kiss.
And as his hot mouth told her that he’d meant what he’d said, she relaxed, her hips angling, tilting to welcome him. He seemed to sense the moment she was ready, for he chose that exact moment to lunge, driving himself deep inside her.
She cried out, not in pain, but in the completion, a delicious feeling of fullness suffusing her flesh while nerve endings lit up like sparks under her skin. And that was before he started to move.
‘Oh,’ she said, as he slowly withdrew, wanting to cling on, already missing him. But he was back, and then again, slowly accelerating, building the rhythm faster, until their ragged breathing became their accompaniment. And sparks born in the smouldering ruins of her latest climax flared into flame and flickered and danced under her skin, until with one final thrust from Alexios, accompanied by one triumphant cry, her world shook apart again, this time with his name on her lips.
It took longer to find her way back this time, her breathing ragged, her mind blanked from everything but the sudden realisation that all the stuff she’d ever believed about sex and how many times you could achieve orgasm in a night had been incinerated in the heat of their coming together, the ashes scattering to the waters of the bottomless caldera far below.
* * *
He stood at the window, looking out over the sleeping crater, a ribbon of silvery light bisecting the inky darkness and lighting a path direct to his room. Lights twinkled on the island across the water, likewise on the yacht, anchored in a bay, while all else was dark.