Thee mou, he wanted her like this—spread out on the table on a veranda of the King’s Palace where sky and the stars would know that she was his. Her dress had already bunched up her thighs, giving him easy access to soft, silky skin. One hand sliding up her thighs, he buried the other in her hair and tugged her up.
Eyes glossed over, mouth trembling, she was utterly beautiful.
“I’m going to touch you, glykia mou,” he whispered at her ear. “I’m going to see if you’re wet for me already or not.”
He held her against his chest while his fingers found the dampness through the thin fabric of her panties. Fire spewed in his muscles, his erection pressing persistently against his trousers. Christos, she was so ready, so wet for him. Burying his mouth in her temple, he pushed a finger into her sex and she jerked against him.
“Andreas, parakalo...” Head thrown back, she pushed her hips against his hand when he pressed his thumb against her swollen clit. A sob fell from her lips. The setting sun made her flushed skin shimmer like pure gold. His fingers had made a mess of her hair. Beads of sweat dotted above her lip. He licked that lush lip. The scent of her arousal spread through his blood like a drug.
He tugged the neckline of the forgiving sheath and growled at the sight of her bare breast. He gave the brown puckered tip a lick and her spine arched hungrily.
Her fingers moved to his hair and he complied. He rubbed his jaw against the wet tip before he closed his mouth and sucked.
She was close now. He could feel her body swelling around his fingers. The muscles in her pelvis tightening against the very pleasure she craved.
“You did not wear a bra,” he whispered against her skin before he laved the plump nipple again. “Tell me, Ariana, that it was for me. Tell me that was because you knew how mindless I go at the sight of your breasts.”
Her eyes flew open, unfocused, sluggish, before they settled on him. Desire made them glitter like the finest gems. An impish smile curved her mouth. “The material...it shows straps. Not for you.”
Even now, she denied him that satisfaction.
He hooked his finger inside her tight entrance and waited, breath punching through him like bellows. She shuddered against him, and let out a slew of curses that had laughter thunder through him.
Her hands clutched his wrists, and her lithe body pushed against him. “Yes, okay. I went without a bra for you, kala. Parakalo, Andreas. More.”
Fierce satisfaction raging through him, he pumped his fingers into that fast rhythm her body loved. He intended to dismantle all the defenses she had built. He intended to have that Ari of old again.
Her body tensed and bucked, like a boat flung against the waves. Sounds ripped from her throat, needy and raw. Bending his mouth, he nuzzled at her breast and like Independence Day fireworks, she fell apart around him with a keening moan.
Her thighs trapped his hand between them, her breath still harsh for several seconds.
She fell into his chest like someone had removed the bones from her body. Andreas pulled the dress up to cover her breasts, his own body screaming for release. And yet, utterly satisfied on another level. He swept his gaze over her, that possessive instinct she always brought out in him in full riot.
Long, quivering limbs, golden skin flushed, a smile hovering about her lips, her sensual repose was just as arousing as her uninhibited response.
On a deep level he didn’t even try to understand, he felt as if his world was finally being righted.
From the moment he’d seen her standing in front of the city hall, her face pale, a stricken look in her eyes, he’d needed this.
He had needed to see her splinter with pleasure, pleasure he gave.
He had needed to know that Ariana was still his.
She opened her mouth and pressed a kiss to his chest, creating a damp patch. “I...” Her sigh whispered over his skin, his shirt no barrier to sensations. Another openmouthed kiss against his abdomen. Which clenched like a steel wall. Her hands moved over him, stroking, touching, questing with a possessive flair that was more revelatory of Ariana than anything else. “What was that about?”
He tilted her chin up. “If you’re asking me questions, clearly it was not that good.”
Ripples of her laughter shook her slender frame. “Oh, believe me, it was an earthquake. But I still want to know...what—”
“That was about the present.”
She looked up, and frowned. “What?”
He couldn’t help himself. He dipped his head and kissed her swollen lips again. “Neither the past, nor the future. It was about now.” He tucked a defiant curl behind her ear and stared into her eyes. The words came so easily to his lips. So clearly. “I wanted to kiss you, Ari. I wanted to see you shatter in my arms and I followed that urge.”
The most beautiful smile spread over her face, something almost incandescent flickering in her eyes. That quality that defined Ariana. That quality that he wanted pervading his own life.
She nodded, clasped his jaw and kissed him softly. Slowly. As if she never wanted the moment to end.
A feeling he was coming to recognize within himself.
“Going with that urge was good. Andreas Drakos giving in to urges is very good. Provoking you to that urge—man, I feel on top of the world.” She ran a finger over his lips, tracing them over and over. “I...have an urge, too.” He held his breath as her hands traveled down his chest, past his trousers and slowly came to rest on his groin. He became still, arousal spiking through him as she traced his shape. “We can’t go to bed yet, but your wife has other means to satisfy you.”
How he managed to hold her fingers from wreaking havoc on him, he had no idea. Even he was impressed by his willpower. His erection throbbed in rhythm with his heart, his breath serrated. “Why can’t we go to bed, exactly?” he asked softly. He hadn’t planned any of this. He hadn’t even meant to touch her until things between them had reached a new stage. But, of course, in his relationship with Ariana, passion had been one of the things that had always been right.
But now that she denied him, he wanted to know why.
A shadow passed across her face, though she tried to cover it up. “I started my pills again just the other day. So we won’t be protected.”
“Protected against what? I’m clean.”
“Against pregnancy,” she answered in a soft voice.
The moment stretched through awkwardness and fell directly into something altogether painful.
When he waited with a raised brow, she moved back from him. An edge to her movements, she straightened her dress, careful not to meet his gaze.
A shiver snaked up his spine. “There is something called a condom.”
She shrugged and ran a hand through her hair. Straightened her already perfect dress a little more. Buying time. “You hate condoms. More importantly, condoms are not foolproof. Nothing, actually, is foolproof.”
Déjà vu hit him like a strike to his solar plexus. “Ariana...” he said but arrested anything that wanted to come out.
He ran a hand over his face, tension corkscrewing through him.
They had been through this once before. Their biggest, dirtiest fight when he’d asked her to get off the birth control pills.
The closest he’d ever come to losing his self-control because of course, she had absolutely refused to do so. And then his threat that he would not sleep with her unless she did.
Dios, he had been like a wounded beast.
Of course, Ariana could never take a dare lying down. They had ended up in a heap in front of the fireplace, clinging to each other after the stormy sex and having realized that something had been broken irrevocably between them.
The only time, the single time, sex had been something other than a source of joy between them.
He had left for the oil summit three days after that without a word to her. And when he’d returned, she’d disappeared from his life.
He had used sex against her, corrupted the only pure thing between them.
Desperation, he realized now, had clouded reason, good judgment. And Thee mou, he recognized only now how desperate he’d been back then to stop her retreating from him. His desperation to keep the one good thing in his life amidst the mounting pressure from Theos and the crown. And his own inability to fix the situation between him and Ari. His own inability to handle what she did to him.
He cursed at the color leaching from her face. In a second, the moment turned from sensual languor to a minefield.
Frustration made his voice rise. “Ariana, you need to share what you’re thinking with me.”
She nodded, but the wariness was in full force. Her hands around her midriff signaling untouchability. Barriers that he wanted to break but didn’t know how. “I just don’t want us to chance it. We’re not ready.”
“Not ready for what?”
“For children, Andreas.”
The more she denied him something, the more he wanted to dig in. Andreas wanted to break that harmful pattern of their relationship. Yet something didn’t feel right. Something goaded him to provoke her into a reaction. Into an answer. “Sooner or later, we will come to this point.”
“It will be later then.” Her spine straightened, a combative look in her eyes. “Andreas, we’ve barely made it through one evening, one, without going at each other’s throats.
“I just don’t want to bring children into this. At least not yet.”