by Dani Collins
“What are you doing?” She snapped her head to the side, shielding her gaze.
“This tub is completely private. You don’t need a suit. And it’s been a long few days. I need to relax.” His belt hit the deck with a faint, jangling thud. The rest of his clothes must have followed because he sank into the tub with a sigh of contentment. “Your Victorian aunt called. She wants her delicate sensibilities back.”
“Ha-ha.” Tanja couldn’t tell if he was naked beneath the churning bubbles as she faced him across the small pool, but she would bet any money he was. The side of his foot grazed her thigh when he propped his heels next to her hip and splayed out his long arms.
“What did your mother say?” she asked, trying not to be a prude by shifting away. She was actually the opposite—some kind of libertine who reacted to the brush of a foot like it was the most erotically provoking caress imaginable.
“You know how to kill a buzz, don’t you?” His face hardened and his shoulders regained all their tension.
“Is that what she said?” she joked lamely.
He snorted, but there was little humor in it. “She wants us to come to dinner when we get to Athens. What did your father say?”
“That he wants me home,” she said with a wrench of homesickness she couldn’t keep from her voice. “He understands, though. He’s ridiculously proud to have two grandchildren.” She smiled as she recalled her father’s button-busting enthusiasm. He was also worried that Leon would hurt her or let her down again. So was she, but she kept that to herself.
“My mother didn’t say any of that,” Leon said flatly, cheekbones like calved glaciers they were so sharp and ghostly blue in the glow from beneath the surface of the water.
Tanja started to point out that Illi wasn’t his so why would his mother welcome her as a grandchild, but the mood he was radiating didn’t seem receptive to hearing excuses for his mother’s behavior.
“When you said your parents’ marriage was horrific, what did you mean?”
His breath left him in a disparaging exhale. “Name it. They both cheated. Used me against one another. Had ugly fights where they threw things and humiliated each other in public.”
“That’s awful. Were there drug or alcohol issues?”
“They didn’t admit to it or seek help, so is that a valid excuse?” His arm bent and he used his thumbnail to scratch his eyebrow. “My father was a terrible person. Profoundly selfish and manipulative. My mother brought her own father’s money into the marriage and would have divorced him if he would have given it back, but he refused. In fact, he hired a man to seduce her and take intimate photos, then held them as blackmail over her. I think I’ve got all the copies destroyed by now, but who knows? He could still haunt her with them.”
“That’s horrible!”
“It is. She was pretty horrible sometimes, too. I’ve had three DNA tests to prove I’m his. Frankly, I was hoping every time I wouldn’t be. When I was eight, he sent me to boarding school purely to punish her. Sometimes I think I should have tried harder to refuse.”
“You were eight. How much choice did you have?”
“None, but I knew she was upset. We had a decent relationship until then. It was damaged beyond repair after I left, and a lot of that is on me. She quit showing affection for me, though, so he wouldn’t keep using me against her. It made it hard to tell if she wanted me to... I don’t know. Fight to see her? I was just happy to be away from all of it so I took every excuse to avoid going home. That’s how I got into racing. I crewed through school breaks and bought my first sailboat by saving up my allowance.” His mouth twisted with self-mockery. He knew how spoon-fed that sounded.
“Did your mother know your father wasn’t always operating within the law?”
“She had suspicions,” he said with weariness. “She was afraid to ask too many questions.” He was deep in thought, absently working his thumb against his bent finger. “When I came home for the funeral and we began to realize how bad things were, she cried for the first time I’d seen in years. She said, ‘I hung on through all of that so you would inherit, and now there’s nothing?’ It was a kick in the gut to realize she thought she had been helping me by staying with him.”
“So you rebuilt your father’s fortune for her?”
His gaze flickered to hers, eyes flinty slits. “And the thousands of people around the globe who needed their jobs.”
Right.
“Does she feel threatened by me? Not me specifically, but the fact you have a wife?”
He let his head drop back against the edge of the tub again. “She’s angry I never told her I was married.”
“Ever?”
“We aren’t close,” he said flatly.
Tanja slouched deeper into the water to absorb that, absently bringing her feet up to the edge of the bench across from her. She jerked away when her foot touched Leon’s firm thigh.
His hand slid beneath the surface and caught her ankle, bringing it back, holding her gaze as he set her foot in place on the bench next to his hip before his arm returned to the edge of the tub.
The heat and churn and burble of the water filled the air. It was a manifestation of the conflicting energy between them. Of the clear head she was trying to keep while, below the surface, her body was roiling with sensations. Her heart was doing somersaults, trying to take in how Leon’s childhood had turned him into a man who had been charming, yet withdrawn. One who inspired confidence, then ultimately let her down.
“I wouldn’t stay with a man who treated me like that,” she told him quietly, meaning it, but also aware that his brief touch had left her simmering in more than the warmth of the water. Yearning was sitting in the pit of her stomach.
“Not even for Illi? Because you weren’t eating, Tanja.”
“I ate.” Not enough, but she understood. “You’re right, though. I don’t know what lengths I would go to for my child, but I have the luxury of family and friends who I know would support me, which gives me options. Obviously, your mother didn’t feel like she had any.”
“I hate that I’m not on that list. That I had to hear through your brother that you needed help,” he muttered. “I’m not proud of the way I left you. Or the circumstances I left you in. It’s the kind of thing my father would have done. Waiting for you to come to me to resolve things was just like him, too. The fact you never did, that you had too much self-respect to make the first move...” His dark brows lowered with intensity. “Don’t ever think you’re less than me. You have far more integrity than I ever will. Than most people I know.”
“That is an extremely generous thing to say, given the position I’ve put you in with Illi,” she pointed out, both touched and contrite.
“You wouldn’t have had to do that, wouldn’t have gone to Istuval or wound up so broke you were going hungry, if I’d looked after you properly. I’m going to make that up to you with the postnuptial.”
“I don’t want your money, Leon.”
“I know. But it’s important to me that I do this right this time. My opening offer is a million euros per year of marriage.”
“That’s ridiculous! No,” she insisted.
“And every time you say something like that—” he tipped his head back, speaking to the starry sky “—I’m going to double it.”
She held back a reflexive protest, hesitated, then asked, “Don’t you mean halve it?”
“No.” His head came up. “Another woman might play those games, trying to up the amount, but you won’t.”
He said it confidently, as if he knew her. That seeming approval and admiration increased all the sweet tugs and pulls in her middle and provoked her into teasing him.
“What happens if I ask you to double it?”
“Done.”
“Leon! Don’t you dare.”
“You understand that when it doubles
again, we’re going from two to four?” He tilted his face to the sky again, and she thought he might be laughing at her.
“Will you please be serious?” she asked, heart pounding with genuine alarm.
“I’m completely serious. I know you don’t want my money.” His humor was gone, his voice dispassionate. “You’ve said it several times already. But I need the amount to be attractive enough that you’ll leave if things get bad. Before they get bad. I need to know that I won’t spend my entire life causing damage to another human being. That Illi won’t be caught in the cross fire. I want us both to have a clean exit if things are unbearable.”
“Would it be, though?”
He picked up his head.
“Do whatever you want with your money. I don’t care, but—” She hesitated, then spoke her greatest fear aloud. “I’m afraid that if I sleep with you, I’ll fall in love with you.” Again. She didn’t admit that last bit because she’d lost her ability to breathe. She felt as though her lungs were locked, no air getting into them.
“Have you been listening? I’m not worth your love.” His jaw was clenched, his mouth tense, his biceps like smooth, tanned rocks.
“Your father was not a good person. It doesn’t mean you aren’t.”
“I need you to stay realistic, Tanja.” He spoke softly, but it didn’t leech any of the power from his words. “I am capable of charm and consideration, but I’m not capable of love. Don’t mistake my desire to be good to you for actual goodness within me. Don’t mistake my desire for you as anything more than intense sexual attraction.”
Her heart was being stretched in all directions by his words, until it was thin and threatening to unravel completely.
“But I do want you,” he said thickly, making her heart lurch and stumble into a gallop. A tic appeared in his cheek. “Other women won’t do. I want you. I want that fire we tasted last night. I made myself forget how uniquely well suited we are, but there’s no denying it. And I can’t stand the idea of not experiencing it again.”
The backs of her eyes were hot. So was her throat. Her mind was reeling, trying to reason through all the warnings he’d just voiced that he couldn’t be entrusted with her heart.
Ironically, his stark honesty made her trust him a little. Maybe she was only rationalizing what she really wanted, though. Because she wanted the fire, too. She couldn’t imagine living her life alongside him, calling herself his wife, and not allowing their combined conflagration to engulf her.
Before she let herself think it through any further, she nodded. “Okay.”
For two heartbeats, time stopped.
Then he moved like a shark. Like a sea monster. Like Poseidon himself as he scooped her up in the same motion of standing and rising from the tub. Water sluiced off them while she clung to him in shock.
He strode without ceremony into the bedroom and set her on the bed.
“We’re wet—”
He was already coming down on top of her, naked and still dripping, body burning with heat from the water. Their skin was abraded with damp friction as he pushed a knee between hers and spread her legs so he could settle between them. His mouth came down over hers, smothering her. Ravaging her. Consuming her.
They were instantly in the center of the storm, where they’d been last night, but even deeper in the maelstrom. She jammed her fingers into his hair and angled her head so the seal of their mouths deepened. His tongue thrust in and she moaned as she greeted his intrusion.
His weight was a glorious pressure pinning her to the mattress while the steely length of his naked shaft sat firm and undeterred by the wet triangle of fabric between her thighs.
He lifted his head abruptly and drew the tied strap from behind her neck over her head, dragging it down to reveal her breasts, the pale orbs topped by nipples drawn tight as the warm night air hit them. One hot hand cupped her clammy breast, making her writhe at the conflicting sensations. His gaze dragged upward even as he toyed with the hard button.
“Your hair. Your skin,” he said in a gritty voice, as though words were failing him. Or he wanted to use his mouth for too many things. His lips traversed from her cheek to her neck and back up to nip her jaw, then into her neck again, hot tongue sweeping into the hollow beneath her ear. “I want to lick every inch of you.”
She wanted that, too. Everything. All of him. Fast. Her hands were moving over his flexing shoulders, the sweep of her touch drying him. Her legs climbed to hug his waist tight. As she lifted her hips into his erection, she breathed his name like a mantra. “Leon. Leon.”
“Every inch, Tanja. Every damned inch,” he muttered, trailing his kisses down her arm to the inside of her elbow before he crossed her arm over her chest, lifting and shifting as he rolled her onto her stomach beneath him.
He tugged at the tie on her top and yanked her bottoms down before his naked weight settled on her again. The steely heat of his shaft nestled in the crease of her damp buttocks and a cloud of humid, gratified breath touched the side of her face, telling her he needed this as badly as she did. She could feel his heart slamming into her back, could hear him swallow and pant another shaken breath against her shoulder.
Despite those signs of tenuous control, his fingers traced a deliberate, tickling line across the tops of her shoulders, skimming the wet tails of her hair away before he kissed the top of her spine.
She gasped, arching as his benediction sent a shiver to her lower back. He set about nuzzling her nape and the back of her shoulder, her ear and the back of her arm. He was braced on one elbow, using his free hand to caress from her waist to her ribs, causing her skin to tighten all over her body.
She was nearly helpless, dominated this way, but she lifted her backside to caress him, moaning to let him know how much she needed this—to be worshipped as he conquered her. Caressed and teased and adored.
His open mouth zigzagged across her back and he drew one of her knees up so she was exposed to his touch when his fingers sought the fine curls that protected her damp, intimate folds.
They both took shaken inhales as he found the honeyed sweetness there. He was barely touching her, but her flesh was so swollen and wanton, it only took the lightest of explorations to make her shiver and moan into the pillow.
“Good?”
“Yes. But I need more,” she begged, barely able to speak. Her hands clawed into the blankets beneath her and she moved her hips, seeking his touch, rubbing her face into the pillow. “Touch inside me.”
“Soon,” he said in a rasp against her lower back. He set his teeth against one cheek in a playful bite, before he rose and rolled her onto her back again.
She was losing all inhibition. Her legs fell open so he had room between them, bikini bottoms dislodged so they sat across her mound. She stared boldly into his face as he loomed over her, waiting for his gaze to come back after he dragged her top free and threw it off the side of the bed. He ate up what he had exposed, his fierce expression terrifying in its intensity.
Yet she exalted in it. In being his.
Her breasts were swollen with anticipation. Her nipples drawn tight by the chill and arousal. With a growl, he dropped his head to close his searing mouth over her nipple and pulled so strongly, bright spears of sensation went straight into her loins.
“Leon,” she cried, squirming at the intensity.
“Bear it,” he commanded, and looped one arm behind her waist, arching her as he moved to the other breast to suck and tease.
She was losing her mind to pure carnality, ready to do anything at his command. She pulled at his hair, insisting, “Kiss me.”
“I will,” he said, prying her fingers from his thick curls and biting the heel of her hand before he slid down and rained kisses on her ribs, her stomach, her jutting hipbones.
She was trembling, shaking with anticipation. Weak.
He set the softest, sweetes
t kiss on her inner thigh. She nearly screamed.
“What’s wrong, beautiful?” he teased. But as he looked up at her, the lust in his gaze hit her like a punch.
Her breath left her so quickly she was dizzy, and the heat flooding her loins redoubled. The ache there intensified as he took his sweet time playing his tongue into the crease of her knee and along her calf, biting her instep, making her wait and wait and wait.
When he caught his hands in her suit, dragging it off her hips and down her legs, she lifted to help.
Naked, she gave a slow thrash against the covers, all of her so completely afire by his hot gaze roaming over her, she barely felt the wet patches beneath her.
With one hand, he held his length in a restrictive fist. His other caressed her calf to her thigh to the crease of her hip, spreading her legs wider, gaze unabashedly drinking her in.
Her stomach quivered in nervous reaction. She glanced at the windows surrounding them, noted the doors to the deck and jet tub were still wide open.
“Someone might see us,” she gasped.
“No one will come. Except you.” He set a smile that turned into a kiss against her inner knee. “And me.” He kissed his way up to her mound.
She spoke his name on a sob. A plea.
“I missed this.” His touch parted her and his tongue swept through her folds, making her whole body jerk at the streak of lightning that shot through her. He made a reassuring noise and set a steadying hand on her stomach. “Tell me hard or soft,” he murmured, curling his other arm around her thigh as he began to make love to her with his mouth.
She could only groan helplessly. Her hand tangled in his hair while wet heat built. Her thighs closed of their own accord, the ministrations of his mouth causing sensations so intense they were nearly unbearable.
She had missed this, too. So much. When he ignored her plea that he fill her, she abandoned herself to the pleasure he was determined to bestow. She gave in to the quivering tension building in her stomach. Abandoned herself to the growing waves of keening joy.
Suddenly a shuddering climax had her lifting her hips and muffling her cries with the back of her wrist. It was so good she could have wept.