He nodded, concealing his innermost thoughts. ‘Fine, have it your way. I do not need to know about your employment if you do not wish to speak of it.’ He shrugged, as though the conversation was now boring him. ‘I’ll have a room made available. Just let my assistant know what you need in terms of infrastructure and he’ll see you’re set up.’
‘He? You have a male assistant?’
It was Nikos’s turn to act surprised. ‘Yes. Bart. He’s been with me five years.’
She laughed quietly and shook her head. ‘I guess that makes sense. I can imagine you’d run through female secretaries pretty damned fast, given your track record for taking any woman with a pulse to bed.’
‘Jealous, agape?’
She’d been jealous, all right. For years she’d followed his exploits in the gossip columns. Like watching a train crash, she’d been powerless not to stare at the pictures. They’d come to life in her over-fertile imagination so that she hadn’t simply looked at an attractive couple coming out of some hot spot so much as imagined them in bed, or perhaps on the dining table, or the kitchen floor, while she lay in her own bed. Alone, untouched, able only to dream of Nikos rather than feel his hands on her body...
‘Oh, yes,’ she simpered, with an attempt at false sincerity. ‘I’ve spent the last six years desperately waiting for you to reappear in my life. I’ve been missing you and dreaming about you and praying you’d turn up and blackmail me into a loveless marriage. This is pretty much the high point of my life, actually.’
‘And we haven’t even slept together yet,’ he said, in a voice that was honey and dynamite.
Her breath caught in her throat. She spun away from him, her cheeks flushed.
‘What is it, agape? Suddenly you are shy? It is our wedding night.’
She lifted a hand to her throat and lightly rubbed her skin. ‘I... Of course not.’ She squared her shoulders. Hadn’t she been dreaming about this for as long as she’d known him?’
‘Relax.’ His hands on her shoulders were firm. He spun her in the circle of his arms so that they were facing one another, his warmth offering some comfort to her. ‘You are shaking like a leaf.’
Tell him the truth!
She fluttered her eyes closed, her lashes dark circles against her pale cheeks.
‘You are my wife.’ He pressed a finger under her chin, lifting her face to his. His eyes were troubled, tormented. ‘Are you...afraid of me?’
It was so uncharacteristic of him to show doubt that she raced to reassure him. ‘Of course I’m not.’ She shook her head, inhaling a deep breath that flooded her system with his spicy scent. ‘I’m afraid of myself, and of what I want right now.’
He nodded, silently imploring her to continue.
‘You hate my father. I think you might even hate me.’ She lifted a finger to his lips to stop him from speaking. ‘But I don’t hate you.’ Her eyes were enormous, loaded with fear and desire. ‘I don’t hate you...’
Her finger, initially placed against his mouth to silence him, dragged slowly across his lower lip. Her eyes followed its progress as if mesmerised.
She knew he was going to kiss her. The intent was in every line of his body. If she’d wanted to she could have stepped away. She could have asked for more time. Instead she lifted herself up on tiptoe, crushing her mouth to his.
In that bittersweet moment all Marnie needed was to right one of the biggest wrongs of her past: she wanted Nikos and, damn it, she was finally going to have him.
To hell with the consequences. They’d be waiting for her afterwards.
CHAPTER FOUR
HER BODY FLASHED like flame when his mouth crushed down on hers with the kind of intensity that spoke of long-held desire. She was powerless to swim against the tide of need: powerless and unwilling.
Her feminine heart was hot and wet, slick with moisture and need. Unfamiliar but instinct-driven urges were controlling her body. Her hands pushed under his shirt, seeking skin and warmth. She traced her fingertips up his hair-roughened chest, splaying her fingers wide. She felt the beating of his heart beneath her touch; it was as frantic as her own.
His body weight pushed her downwards—not to the bed but to the floor, to her knees. He knelt with her, kissing her, his tongue clashing fiercely with hers as his hands pulled through her hair then pushed at her head, holding her against his mouth. She groaned into him, marking their kiss with the desperation that was scrawling a painful tattoo across her being—inking her as his in a way that would never be erased.
He pulled at her as his body pushed at hers until she fell back onto the carpet. His weight on top of her was divine. She curved her hands to his back, digging her nails into his warm skin as she felt the power of his arousal for herself. Hard and firm through their layers of clothing, A bodily ache was spreading through her. She lifted her hips, silently begging him for more. To mark her once and for all.
‘Nikos!’ She cried his name into the room and he groaned in response. ‘Please!’ She dug her hands inside his jeans, cupping the naked curve of his arse, pressing him against her and grinding herself intimately against his masculinity.
He laughed throatily. ‘You want this, huh?’
He kissed her again—hard, fiercely, possessively—and then roamed his lips lower, encircling one of her erect nipples through the fabric of her dress and her bra. Even with such obstacles in the way the warmth and pressure of his mouth sent sharp arrows of need spiralling within her.
‘Yes!’ she hissed, arching her back, desperately needing more. ‘Please, please...’
‘In time.’
He smiled, running his mouth lower, over the fabric of her dress, until he reached the apex of her thighs. He skimmed lower, to the hem of the dress, and finally pushed it upwards, so that only a flimsy scrap of lace stood between him and her most intimate flesh.
Her cheeks were pink, her eyes fevered. Even when he wanted to go quickly he took his time, removing her underpants, sliding them down her soft, smooth legs and discarding them to one side. He let his hands dance patterns along her thighs, revelling in the way she quivered beneath his touch as her body responded instantly to him.
His fingers worshipped at her crease, teasing her, exploring her, aching for her. He was more gentle than he’d known he could be, perhaps afraid that she might regret her decision at any moment. That after years of waiting this was, after all, not to be.
Greek words, whispered hoarsely, filled the air. Words that swirled around her, wrapping her in magic and myth. She didn’t have a clue what he was saying, but she loved the sound of his native language.
When he slid a finger into her core she bucked hard, writhing at the intimate touch. Even back then, when they’d been fevered and passionate, he hadn’t passed this threshold. His invasion was completely, utterly unprecedented.
Sharp, hot barbs of pleasure drove through her body, into her mind, weakening every earthly thought before it could be imagined. He moved slowly, curiously, watching her face as he stroked her sensitive flesh, learning what made her almost incandescent with desire before pulling out of her.
She gasped, the withdrawal of his touch an unbearable pain she could not withstand. But he didn’t leave her for long before dropping his lips to her opening. His tongue was warm, but she was more so. Her body was on fire...his mouth seemed to kiss flame into her.
It had been a long time since Marnie had felt anything like this. She was completely unprepared for the insanity that his ministrations would bring. She was digging her nails into the carpet at her sides now, her knees lifted towards the ceiling as her toes curled into the ground and her whole body shook and quivered.
The orgasm was intense. She screamed as it saturated her being in long, luxuriant waves.
Sweat beaded her brow; heat painted her cheeks pink. Her throat, her arms—she was burning up. Her breath was loud in the room as she panted, satiated passion making her lungs work overtime.
Before she could drift down from the clouds that had absorbed her into their heavenly orbit Nikos was straddling her, his arousal pressed against her tingling core.
Marnie stared up at him, and everything in her world was perfect.
He studied her as his hands worked the buttons of his shirt, and she was powerless to look away. Her tongue darted out, licking her lower lip, moistening it hungrily.
His smile was sexy as sin. She groaned, impatient for more. As he pushed at his shirt her trembling fingers unfastened his belt and pulled it from his jeans. She cast it across the room, wincing apologetically when it hit the wall loudly. He didn’t react.
His shirt was unbuttoned, his chest exposed to her greedy eyes, and she stared and she touched and she felt, tracing his muscles, circling his nipples and filling with pride when he sucked in a raspy breath. He rotated his hips, taking back the upper hand, making her weak with the promise of what was to come.
She pushed at his shirt, chasing it down his arms, catching the fingers of one hand as she passed, lifting it to her lips and kissing him. It was a tender moment in the midst of passion. Their eyes locked and the past was all around them, threatening to suck them into the vortex of what had been.
‘It might have cost me a small fortune, but finally you are going to be mine.’
His eyes glittered with dark anger, and the moment was swallowed up by cruelty as though it had never been.