‘I want to make love to you,’ Nik growled, bending down to scoop her up and plant her down squarely on the end of the bed. He skimmed off her knickers and ran the tip of his tongue across the pointed evidence of her achingly sensitive swollen nipples before testing the honeyed welcome between her thighs with the single dip of a long, appreciative finger.
Even before he came down over her, Betsy was gasping and arching, unbearably eager for the finale she longed for. Nik tipped her legs over his shoulders and sank into her slick channel hard and fast, stretching her with delicious force.
‘You’re incredible in bed, kardoula mou,’ he told her rawly, angling back his hips before thrusting back deep inside again in a movement that wrenched a helpless cry from her convulsed throat.
Her heart raced and she struggled to breathe as the excitement built, backed by the ever-tightening constraint of tension gripping her pelvis. His fast, fluid rhythm became rougher, rawer as he pounded into her and finally she lost control, overwhelmed by the passion and the wild explosion of pleasure that assailed her when she could hold it back no longer. Even afterwards little tremors of delight continued to rock through her in rippling waves while she buried her face in Nik’s damp shoulder and drank in the hot, musky scent of the lean, powerful body pinning hers to the mattress.
‘I think we’d better make a move if we want to make the party before midnight.’ Mocking light green eyes rested on her dazed expression and he laughed as awareness reclaimed her, dismay flashed across her face and she shoved against his shoulders, scrambling to get up and reclaim her party finery.
* * *
‘I was really chuffed to see Nik taking some time to chat to Bruno about his art course,’ Belle confided as she urged Betsy into the conservatory at the rear of the vast and luxurious London town house she and Cristo lived in. It was two in the morning and most of the party guests had already taken their leave.
‘Nik probably finds Bruno less intimidating than his sisters,’ Betsy joked.
‘I invited far too many people tonight. I haven’t been able to get five minutes alone with you all evening,’ Belle complained, waving her glass of champagne in an emphatic gesture of annoyance, which sent a quantity of the golden liquid spilling over the lip of the goblet and down the stem.
Betsy laughed because the birthday girl was definitely a little tipsy. ‘It’s your party. Naturally everyone here wanted to speak to you personally—’
‘But you and Nik...it’s definitely all back on again?’ the lively redhead asked with a fascination she couldn’t conceal. ‘When Cristo first told me that Nik had moved back into the hall, I refused to believe it.’
Betsy resisted an urge to admit that she too had initially been incredulous about that development. But some things were better kept private. ‘The divorce is off,’ she confirmed. ‘We’re going to try again.’
Smooth brow furrowing, Belle studied her with keen curiosity. ‘In spite of everything that’s happened between you? Regardless of everything he’s done?’
Betsy chose to respond to those thorny questions with honesty. ‘Apart from the fact that Nik’s not the only one of us to have made mistakes, I never stopped loving him. I thought I had but then once I was with him again, I realised I’d only been kidding myself.’
In receipt of that confession, Belle unexpectedly looked surprisingly thoughtful and then she sighed in grudging surrender to the argument. ‘I think we’ve all been there at some stage,’ she confided with unexpected feeling. ‘When I thought Cristo was in love with you, I honestly thought I hated him because I was devastated and so unbelievably jealous.’