Her breasts had become incredibly sensitive and he played with the tender flesh with every atom of erotic expertise in his repertoire. His fingers flirted with the damp tangle of curls at the base of her taut stomach and she panted for oxygen and then moaned helplessly as his heated exploration roved to the very heart of her.
She couldn’t be still, couldn’t control her own limbs. The wild pulsebeat of desire had taken her over. Her hips jerked up in a rhythm she didn’t know but somehow found, her head thrown back, her slender throat extended. An intolerable ache was building up, making her sob out his name over and over again.
Nik said something in Greek and groaned against her reddened mouth like a man in torment. ‘I can’t wait.’
And then he was there where she most wanted him to be, pushing up her thighs with wildly impatient hands, sliding against the honeyed welcome he had prepared for himself. Her eyes flew wide, passion-glazed sapphire locking with burning jet. She tensed. She could feel him, hot and smooth and hard, suddenly threateningly male. She searched his taut features and saw such a look of vulnerability momentarily etched in those beautiful eyes that her heart lurched. And all of a sudden she wanted him so badly it hurt.
He entered her with a stifled groan, slowly, gently, and the pain she was braced to withstand was merely a fleeting stab of discomfort, quickly past and forgotten under the storm of fiery sensation which engulfed her. Instant meltdown. Every thrust lifted her higher, burning out everything but the feeling, submerging her in the hungry demand of her own need. He moved faster and she wrapped her arms round him, out of control, her heart pounding, her pulses racing, and then it happened, an explosion of white-hot heat flying up inside her, sending her out of her mind with its strength.
‘S’agapo...s’agapo.’ Nik drove into her violently and then shuddered with the force of his own release.
Blissfully pliant, still floating gloriously slowly back to earth, Leah snuggled into him as he slid onto his side, every quivering curve glued to him. She pressed her lips to a muscular brown shoulder, nostrils flaring at the musky damp scent of him. The light went out. Silence fell. Leah wandered over the edge of complete exhaustion into sleep, sprawled on top of him.
CHAPTER FIVE
NIK’S VOICE, talking Greek...but she was in bed. Her feathery lashes shot up, revealing startled sapphire-blue eyes. Her arrested attention fell on Nik. He had his back turned to her. He was standing at the window, one lean hand occupied by a mobile phone. Shock rolled over her in a debilitating wave. A Technicolor replay of the events of the night before sizzled through her brain, not a single X-rated second deleted.
And she couldn’t explain how it had happened. That was the most appalling discovery of all. One minute she had been screaming at him in fury, the next...? As she stiffened below the crumpled sheet, unfamiliar muscles complained and a faint ache intimately reminded her of the explosive passion which had flared up between them.
Hot colour burnished her cheeks. Had Nik not still been physically present, she would have believed it was all a dream...a nightmare, she amended with a shudder. She rubbed at her temples, vaguely conscious that her head was sore, her throat slightly raw.
Join the bimbo fraternity, she told herself with sudden fury. But join at the bottom of the class.
The average bimbo had a certain native cunning, knew where she was going and how. Leah had fallen at the first major hurdle. She had finally got up the courage to leave Nik, had felt good about that decision, indeed had felt empowered by it...and then he had brought her down on this bed and kissed her and inexplicably the balance of power had swung violently back to the enemy; for he was the enemy. Anyone capable of reducing her to this level was definitely the enemy. As she moved her head on the pillow, it swam.
Her tortured gaze rested on him, on the angle of his well-shaped dark head, the breadth of his shoulders beneath the fine cloth of his jacket, the jut of his narrow hips as he dug a lean hand into the pocket of his tailored trousers and splayed his long legs. And she was shattered by just how much she liked looking at him, how familiar every gesture was, every fluid change of stance. Pain traversed her tight features. She knew then how it had happened.
She had blocked out Nik’s attraction, blocked out the hunger, blocked out every thought of him. Self-preservation had taught her to do that. But all along that attraction had still been there, a sexual craving denied and buried and made all the more dangerous by that suppression. It was that same craving which had escaped and betrayed her in Nik’s arms. Given the opportunity, she had grabbed him...just as he had always said she would.
Hot moisture lashed the back of her eyelids but she wouldn’t let the tears fall. She really didn’t feel well but that was no good reason to give way to such weakness.
Nik turned and strolled across to the bed. He was too much of a predator not to smile, his sensual mouth curving with self-satisfaction as he looked down at her. He couldn’t even hide it. He settled down on the edge of the mattress, lustrous dark eyes tracking over her intently. ‘It’s a beautiful morning.’
She could hear the wind lashing the rain against the windows.
‘In Athens,’ he added softly, lifting a hand and skating a finger along the taut line of her lower lip. ‘And if you tell me you’re not coming— No, don’t you dare tell me that,’ he warned as her lips began to part. ‘Not after last night.’
‘That was just sex,’ Leah bit out, a heady flush staining her skin.
His smile merely grew in brilliance as he lowered his dark head. ‘Never just sex,’ he reproved huskily. ‘Fabulous, wonderful, incredible sex. If the jet wasn’t on stand-by, I’d still be in bed.’
Her teeth gritted. ‘Yesterday, I left you—’
‘Theos mou! And today we are closer than we have ever been. Life is so unpredictable,’ Nik pointed out with immovable self-assurance. ‘Think of this as the first day of our marriage.’
‘That is the most nauseating suggestion I’ve ever heard!’ Leah snapped, goaded beyond bearing. ‘I don’t want to go to Athens.’
Nik slid upright. ‘But you will. My family are all gathering to meet you at my mother’s home. I don’t care if I have to drag you kicking and screaming all the way to the airport,’ he delivered with sudden harshness, his strong jawline clenching. ‘To be blunt, agape mou, you made your decision last night!’
‘You did it deliberately!’ Leah gasped.
‘Yes.’ The unvarnished affirmative was like a slap in the face. ‘Now why don’t you get dressed? I instructed your maid to pack for you. I assume that what you have here wasn’t planned with Greece in mind.’
Wrapping herself awkwardly in the sheet under Nik’s grimly amused gaze, Leah was conscious of her swimming head and for the first time acknowledged that she really wasn’t feeling well at all.
She went into the bathroom. This was her penance, that was what it was. Her punishment for stupidity. The knowledge that she had helplessly connived in her own downfall was a bitter pill to swallow. But Leah made herself swallow it, trailing out every thought, every feeling with masochistic candour.
She had believed she was in love with Paul. Had Paul been her escape route from her marriage? Deep down had she needed the belief that someone loved her to work up the courage to leave Nik? The idea that she was loved had given her strength, had restored her faith in herself. But yesterday she had been forced to face reality.
Paul hadn’t loved her...but had she loved him? For a while he had made her feel good about herself. But yesterday she had seen through his superficial charm so clearly that she had marvelled that she had ever been taken in. Yes, it had been very painful, having to accept that he had viewed her as a purely profitable enterprise. But did she still long for him? No, there had been a terrible finality to the sense of alienation she had felt. She never wanted to see Paul again. So had she ever loved him? Or had it been an infatuation born of her loneliness?
Lord, the bathroom was hot. Leah sank down dizzily on the side of the bath in the midst of trying to dress herself. She felt as weak as a kitten and light-headed. It was becoming an immense challenge to concentrate but still she forced herself to the task.
Last night had been a ghastly mistake. Did she now hang her head in shame and let Nik browbeat her into staying with him even though she felt that that was the very worst thing she could do? She lifted an unsteady hand to her pounding temples and knew she had to make herself strong, knew she had to stand up for herself.
Emerging from the bathroom, she leant back against the door-frame for support. Nik surveyed her with narrowed eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think I’ve got the flu...but that’s not important.’ Breathing in to sustain herself, she stared sickly back at him. ‘I’m staying here...not coming back to you—’
‘You’re not feeling well. You don’t know what you’re saying,’ Nik cut in. ‘I’ll take you down to the car.’
‘No!’ she gasped, tears of frustration and weakness gathering in her eyes as her wobbling lower limbs threatened to collapse under her. ‘Don’t you ever listen? You’re wrong for me!’