‘But perhaps that is something we could remedy together.’
It felt as if her heart had skipped a beat. Or maybe it had just stopped altogether. But no, she was still standing and there was her heartbeat, pounding louder than ever in her ears.
She looked up at him, afraid she’d misconstrued what he meant, afraid in case she hadn’t.
Afraid.
And he took her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers.
‘I promise you your second time will be better.’
She was in his arms in the next moment, bundled still with the golden dress tangled around her and feeling strangely disjointed and other-worldly.
‘Andreas,’ she whispered as he placed her like a treasured prize in the centre of the bed. ‘What if I can’t? I mean—’ She felt the heat flood to her face. ‘You’re so…big.’
And he smiled as he unwrapped her from the coverlet, uncovering her bit by bit until she lay naked on the bed before him. ‘I will not hurt you,’ he said, and his dark eyes held a promise as intense as their desire so that even when he untied his own robe and revealed the full extent of his arousal she believed him.
Time became irrelevant in the minutes following. Colours blurred and merged with her feelings into a sensual overload. And nothing mattered but the sensations Andreas conjured up inside her as he worked his brand of slow magic upon her body.
No part of her escaped his attention. Nowhere was ignored by his clever fingers or his heated mouth or the hot flick of his tongue.
Until she was burning with a need that she’d never known.
Burning for completion.
‘Did he do this to you?’ Andreas asked as he parted her thighs and dipped his head lower. And she tossed her head from side to side, the sensations inside her robbing her of the power of speech.
‘Did he make you feel this way?’ He wanted to know as he pressed his hot mouth to her very core, almost tipping her over the edge.
‘Did he make you call his name?’ he demanded.
Her cry was torn from her, his name on her tongue as he sent her once again over the edge. ‘Did he?’ he demanded, raining hot kisses on her eyes and on her mouth. Hot kisses that tasted of him and of her.
‘No’ she breathed when finally she could talk once more, her head still spinning, her body humming. ‘No.’
‘Then he was not a man. He gave you nothing and so what he took from you was nothing.’
She shuddered under him, though whether from the intensity of his message or from the obsidian gaze meeting hers, she couldn’t tell. Nor could she think as she felt the nudge of him against her.
She gasped and felt a moment of panic but his eyes stayed her.
‘You are ready,’ he told her. ‘Trust me.’
Strangely she did. And this time there was no stab of pain, no discomfort. This time she felt her muscles slowly stretching as he eased his way inside, until he filled her completely, all the time his dark eyes not leaving hers.
He kissed her then, a slow, deep kiss that spoke of possession as he started to move inside her. She gasped into his mouth as he slowly withdrew. She gasped again when he returned, awakening nerve endings she’d never known she possessed, inviting their participation in this sensual dance.
Every part of her felt alive. Every part of her awake to his slow seduction, welcoming him as he increased the pace and the rhythm. And still his eyes didn’t leave her face.
She clung to him, inside and out, feeling it building again, that relentless ever-increasing tension as he took her higher and still higher with each deep thrust until there was nowhere left to climb, nowhere left to go.
And then her world exploded, shattering into tiny fragments as he pushed her over the edge. And this time she wasn’t alone. This time he came with her.
Clearly the man had been a fool. Andreas lay there listening to the sound of her deep even breathing as the moonlight spilled through the long window and over her creamy skin, giving it a pearl-like sheen. He’d always made a point of not bedding virgins. He didn’t want to build false hopes. He didn’t want attachments based on first times. He didn’t want attachments full stop.
So whoever had clumsily relieved Cleo of her virginity had handed him a gift. She was unbelievably responsive, her delight in an unfamiliar act refreshing and light years away from that of the women he normally associated with, who tended to go mechanically through the motions with a brisk, businesslike efficiency. Not that there was anything wrong with that; it was no different from the way he himself operated. But now that he had been handed this prize, it would be refreshing to spend a few weeks having sex with someone who wasn’t quite so practised, someone for whom the art of love-making would be more of a novelty.
Far from being the disaster he’d been contemplating earlier tonight, his four-week plan had been inspired, now that she’d clearly dispensed with that no-sex clause. A few weeks with Cleo in his bed would suit him perfectly and then she’d depart back to wherever she’d come from and meanwhile Petra would have well and truly got the message.
He sighed, congratulating himself as he relaxed back into the bed, the scent of a woman’s hair on his pillow, the scent of their love-making in his bed.
A few easy-to-take weeks with Cleo, and life would be back to normal.
CHAPTER TEN
ANDREAS started work early the next day, hoping to work out a way of getting Constantine back on side, but he wasn’t returning calls and with growing frustration Andreas picked up a file from his desk, flipped it open and found documents he’d been waiting on since before his trip to London. Good. He glanced over them once and frowned when he couldn’t remember a thing he’d just read. Took a second look and still nothing stuck. He closed the file, pushing it away as he leaned back in his chair, spinning it around to face the view of the caldera from his office.
What was Cleo doing today? He’d left her snug in bed, the scent of their recent love-making perfuming the air. Had she decided on a late breakfast and a swim? Or had she decided to explore the streets of Fira on her own after he’d curtailed her exploration yesterday? She didn’t speak Greek. Santorini’s tourist venues catered for tourists of course, but still…
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ll be back,’ he told Petra as he strode past. ‘Later.’
An hour later he was back, his mood foul because he’d missed her, still no call back from Con and still the damned papers made no sense. He opened another file. Signed some papers awaiting his signature, relegated some more marked for his attention to the out-tray, read and reread another batch of files before he decided his heart wasn’t in it and he pushed his chair back with a rush.
Where was she? He’d told the staff to let him know the moment she returned, and he’d heard nothing. Surely they couldn’t have forgotten his instructions.
Maybe they had. By four o’clock he’d had enough of waiting and guessing. How much time did one woman need for shopping? Fira wasn’t that big a town.
He found her in the suite preparing to take a shower, already in her robe, and he knew he’d been right to suspect she was up to something because not one shopping bag littered the room. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
She turned, startled, her cheeks reddening. ‘You told me I could go out.’
And he had. He exhaled, trying to rid himself of hours of frustration in one single breath. ‘You were gone a long time. You clearly weren’t shopping. What were you doing?’
Her face brightened again, warily at first, gaining enthusiasm as she spoke. ‘Fira is amazing! The paths and the houses and even the gates. Did you realise how wonderful the doorways are here? They beckon you with a glimpse of paradise, a snatch of view, like some wicked temptation, and opening to stairs you don’t even know are there and that lead to terraces hidden below. It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
She was like a powerhouse, so lit up with the joy of her discoveries that her joy fed into him. He should be used to the everyday sights that surrounded him but she made them all fresh and new and now he wished he’d been there to see it through her eyes and feel the joy of her discovery with her.
‘And there are donkeys with ribbons and beaded headbands that carry people all the way up and down to the port…’ For a moment her blue eyes misted and lost a little of their joy. She shook her head. ‘I walked. I felt a bit sorry for them. But then,’ she said breathlessly, her eyes lighting up again as if she’d discovered the meaning of life itself, ‘then I found the Archaeological Museum.’
‘You what?’He smothered a snort of disbelief, but it was only just. Nobody he’d ever brought to Santorini had bothered to look it up. Not one of his former women had ever been interested, preferring to shop for the gold jewellery the island was renowned for or designer trinkets to take home. ‘Why did you go there?’
‘I was curious about Santorini, and it was amazing! I couldn’t believe the history of this place. There was an entire city buried under ash. A whole city buried, just like Pompeii, but thousands of years earlier and they’d found pots and urns and the most incredible artworks.’ She held out her hands and sighed, her blue eyes bright with discovery, her cheeks alive with colour and all he knew was that he wanted that enthusiasm and joy wrapped around him. He wanted her. Now.