Did it drill down to that as he’d always known, always feared? Did it come down to the fact that even now, he could not process or admit to his own feelings?
She pressed against his back, her body trembling. “I was afraid of what you and your father would do to our child. I was afraid that if I came back to you, you would...”
He turned with a vicious snarl. Dios, he just couldn’t take anymore. But she was determined to rip him up, she was determined to prove that there was something in him worth loving. “We would do what?”
“I was terrified that King Theos and you would repeat history. That it would be another person your father would control. I was terrified that you would turn our son into...another you. That like my own mother, I would have no say in the bringing up of our child. I stayed away for the baby, Andreas.”
The bare truth of her words fragmented the last thread of his self-possession.
He crushed his mouth to hers, for he couldn’t stave off that fear spreading through him. Couldn’t find a way to hold off the anger, the desperation and worst of all that hurt that seemed to saw through him.
She was right. Theos had made him into this and there was nothing he could do. He could not love her. He still had nothing to offer her.
All the rage he felt at himself, his father and Ariana mutated into this raw, overwhelming need to possess her, the only time in his entire life when he felt something.
The only thing in his life he still had, the only thing that was real and constant in his tilting world.
He poured everything he had ever felt into that one kiss, dragging his mouth over hers desperately. As if she was air and he would expire if he let go of her.
Her mouth was sweet and soft, a cavern of welcoming heat. A place where he’d always found something he didn’t know he was missing.
“Andreas, please—”
A sob burst out of her mouth when he buried his hands in her hair and tugged roughly. He had no control anymore and he didn’t give a damn. He tangled his tongue with hers, licking in and out of her mouth. The more he kissed her, the more he wanted.
In some portion of his mind, he was aware that she was trying to talk. That she had more to say. But he didn’t want to hear any more. He didn’t want excuses. He didn’t want more accusations even though he knew most of what she said was true. He wanted nothing but to drown himself in sensation.
So he took her mouth again and again, rough and hard.
He bit her lip when she tried to argue.
He licked at that nip when she sobbed.
He thrust his tongue into her mouth when she moaned.
He molded her body with his hands when she thrashed against him.
At some point, she had stopped trying to get him to listen and began giving as good as she got. Slim hands were clutching him, pushing back his suit jacket. Nails digging into his nape. Fingertips gripping his buttocks.
He laughed against her mouth, a bitter, twisted sound. He’d forgotten how much she loved his body. How many hours she’d spent kissing and licking him. Testing and teasing. Theos’s excruciatingly rigorous physical regimen had come in handy in this.
Desire banishing any sense, he picked her up and ate up the few strides to his enormous bed. The French doors were open, he could hear the whisper of the staff walking back and forth across the courtyard. But he didn’t care.
All he needed was to be inside her.
He devoured her and she devoured him, their focus so completely on each other that the outside world melted.
“Andreas...you didn’t let me finish. Please, let me—”
His questing hands found the zipper of her dress and half pulled, half tore it away from her pliant body. Bra undone, her breasts spilled against his hands. The tips engorged when he ran his knuckles over the nipples. He pushed her onto the bed and her hair billowed on his pristine white sheets like burnished copper.
A string of silk was the only thing that separated him from the warmth he needed. From the moment Theos had let it slip that she was alive, he’d needed this. Only with her had he ever been like this. An animal that let instinct rather than reason drive him. Years’ worth of need burst through him like water through a dam.
He saw so many things in her body. So many things she’d given him with her generosity and all he’d done...
Only staring at her gorgeous body held off the pain. The ache of how much they’d lost. The fear...the stabbing fear that he was still that same man.
That he would only destroy her again.
With his palm splayed on her lower back, he pushed her onto the bed.
He ripped off the flimsy piece of silk from her body. Dizzying need. Glorious freedom.
The taut curves of her buttocks. The neat little indentation of her waist. The fluid arc of her spine. The long, trembling muscles of her thighs. The toned arms that she had spread under her. The fingers digging into the silky sheets for purchase.
He let his gaze rove up and down her body like a starved man staring at a feast. Goose bumps were rising on her skin, exposed suddenly to the cold air.
There was no mercy in him tonight.
She laid her head on one cheek, her shallow breaths making the air near her head fly in a mesmerizing rhythm. Their eyes met and held. There were tears in her eyes, unspilled, making them huge in that gamine face. Her already pouty lips were swollen and a voluptuous pink.
He might as well have been a predator holding down prey for the continual shudders that coursed through her body.
Exposed to him like this, she should have looked feeble. At least fragile. Yet there was a fire in her eyes that dared him to take her like that. To continue on the explosive path he seemed to have pushed them to, even as she quivered like a finely tuned string under the softest of his touches.
“S’agapo, Andreas. So much. Always.” I love you, Andreas.
The words seared him like lashes against bare skin. Like lightning striking things to ground. Like hot spewing lava burning up everything in sight.
The true meaning of those words terrified him, bound him when all he’d wanted was to walk away.
Just once, he promised himself. He would take her for this one night. He would let himself revel in those words this one time.
Holding her gaze like that, he unzipped his trousers and pushed them and his boxers down. His erection sprang free and he saw the tiniest flicker of something—hunger, fear, he didn’t care what the hell it was—in her eyes. Heard her breath quicken.
His arousal lengthened at the greed in her eyes. With a growl he couldn’t contain, he shed his shirt and undershirt. “Spread your legs, agapi mou,” he whispered and she complied like a nice, docile wife.
Legs straddling hers, he bent his body over hers. The skin-to-skin contact sent heat ripping between them. She was like spun silk against his rough chest. Her buttocks an inviting cradle for his rock-hard flesh. When she tried to move against him, he locked her movements with his hands on her wrists, using a bit of his own superior strength against hers.
Sounds ripped out of their mouths in unison, a hoarse symphony of need and desire. Sensations they had both long forgotten shimmered close. Fluttered in and out in their harsh breaths as their bodies recognized things their minds hadn’t.
God, he loved her like this. He needed this submission from the woman who constantly defied him, who again and again set his world upside down. He needed her willing and wanton beneath him because it was the only place where there was complete honesty between them.
Where she couldn’t hide anything more from him.
Where she couldn’t retreat behind lies.
Where he was enough for her.
He dug his teeth into her upper shoulder. She bucked under him, thrusting into his hardness with a sob. “More, Andreas. Everything you can give.”
The sheets whispered and slithered around them as he grazed a few more spots on her lovely back. He licked the tender spots, already bruising. Sensual and all woman, her taste licked through his veins, incinerating.
His erection caught between their bodies was like velvet-encased steel.
She was moaning and clawing at the sheets when he slipped his hand between her legs. Her slick warmth was like molten fire over his fingers. He felt her writhe under him, trying to arch her pelvis into his hand, searching mindlessly for the rhythm that would bring relief.
He stroked her long and leisurely, opened her up and sank his fingers into her, never giving her the pace she wanted. Stringing her along until she was one long pulse of sensation underneath him.
In a flash of movement, she turned under him, until she was facing him. “Don’t retreat from me, please. Andreas. Don’t treat me as if I’m nothing but a body to you.”
“But you’re just that, Ariana. I can give you nothing but this. I have never given you anything but this, agapi mou. When will you learn?”
“No, no, no,” she said, thrashing against him. Bringing her body flush against his, she brought her mouth to his in a crushing kiss. Her breasts were crushed against his arm, her legs tangled with his. She kissed as if she meant to hold him to her with it.
“I was wrong,” she whispered against his mouth, pressing kisses all over his face. “We are both different now, Andreas. We have a chance and I will not—”
He slammed his mouth against hers. Kicking her legs apart, holding her with his hands on her hips, he entered her welcoming warmth with one deep stroke. No warning, no waiting.
A groan ripped from his throat. Her snug sheath closed around his hardness like a glove.