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‘Lucy, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re a sensualist. That’s the only word I can find to describe you. Even though you seem determined to deny it, and I’ve no idea why that is. Don’t you know why you have a taste for exotic underwear?’
‘It’s because …’ Lucy stopped, remembering all those shopping trips with her mother—how she’d had it drummed into her how important it was to buy decent underclothes. But of course other teenage girls hadn’t had the privilege of shopping with the scandalous Maxine Malbec.
‘It’s because I developed too early. I’m too …’ her face burnt and she was glad of the dim light ‘… big. To get the right sizes you have to pay more …’
His hand still gripped her chin. ‘Lucy, there’s a whole nation of women out there bigger than you who wear woefully fitting underwear. Can’t you just admit that you’re drawn to it? To the feel of it against your skin? How it fits and makes you look—’
She tore his hand away and stepped back further. ‘No.’ But she knew his words had made an impact. Did she instinctively like it? Was she a sensualist, despite everything—just like her mother? Well, she’d proven spectacularly that in all other respects their shared genes certainly seemed to be showing themselves.
‘No. Look … I have my reasons for not wanting this. I just … want you to respect that.’
Ari fought the most intense battle of his life as he looked at her downbent head and the tightly drawn belt on the robe. His body burned and ached. He felt hard from tip to toe and couldn’t believe she was denying them this.
But he found some strength from somewhere. He stepped close again and saw the way Lucy’s body tensed even more. In that instant something inside him melted. He wanted this woman with a passion he’d never known before, but he didn’t want to force her. He felt an uncomfortable level of concern grip him as he tipped her chin up to see her face. She avoided his eyes. He felt her grit her jaw against his hand and his stomach clenched. He rubbed his thumb back and forth over silky smooth skin. The bones felt unbelievably delicate. Her jaw finally relaxed, and something akin to triumph moved through him.
Suddenly the urge to take Lucy to bed was superseded by his wanting to reassure her. He had the insane impulse to pull her close and tell her everything was going to be OK. Something deeply ingrained within him kept him from making the move, but it made his voice husky.
‘I’m going to leave, but I want you to think about this, Lucy. What’s between us is more than a banal attraction that happens every day of the week. This is …’ His own words surprised him, and so did the emotion he could feel behind them, but he told himself it was just because he wanted her so badly. ‘This is something much stronger. I don’t know what demons you’re fighting, and I can’t fight them for you. Only you can do that. I’m going to leave the interconnecting door to my room open. I’d like you to use it, Lucy … I want to explore what this is with you …’
His mouth twisted. ‘I’ve no doubt it’ll burn itself out, but it’s not going to go away until we do explore it. It’s just going to get stronger. It’s up to you. If you’re strong enough to resist this then by God I hope you have enough strength for the both of us.’
Lucy’s breath had stalled, and because it was hard not to she found herself staring directly into his eyes. What she saw there made her heart twist. It wasn’t the heated intensity she’d expected—well, it was—but it didn’t make her feel threatened. It made her feel quivery and achy, as if she wanted to throw caution to the wind and say yes.
For a long moment they stood like that, his words hanging heavy in the air, and all Lucy’s nerves seemed to centre on the hand which felt so warm and oddly reassuring on her jaw. But then Aristotle was taking that hand away and stepping back. He turned and walked to the door. In a second he was gone, and the room felt huge and cavernously empty. Bereft. In mere seconds she heard him opening the interconnecting door on his side and flinched slightly at the sound.
She went and sat heavily on the bed, feeling sick in her belly, his words swirling in her head. Was he right? Would this only get stronger? The ripples of sensation still pouring through her body mocked her. Who was she kidding? She’d fooled herself that it had receded this week, but he was right—especially if her reaction just now was anything to go by.
She’d also, she had to acknowledge, fooled herself into thinking she was frigid. Right now she felt like the least frigid person on the planet. She had to recognise that in losing her virginity she’d subconsciously gone out and deliberately chosen someone she didn’t feel attracted to—as if to try and convince herself that she wasn’t like her mother, that she wouldn’t spend her life craving sex.
She frowned at that. It sounded wrong as she thought it now. She’d always believed her mother to have craved sex … but in actual fact it had been the men, their power and attention. She’d sought validation from that. When Lucy really thought about it, her mother had always been quite cool and clinical about sex. She’d never become so passionate about a man that she’d lost sight of practicalities.
The way Lucy felt about Aristotle right now had nothing to do with being cool and clinical. He could be the hotel doorman and he’d still have this effect on her. While Lucy knew for a fact that her mother would never in a million years have spared a mere doorman a second glance.
Seeing herself and Ari reflected in the mirror, the look on her face—it hadn’t been the same as her mother’s that day.
She’d never seen her mother look like that. So … desirous, so caught up in the moment.
The revelation stunned her now. Because of her mother’s profession, and how overtly sexual it had been, she’d always assumed that Maxine’s myriad liaisons had been all about sex. But they hadn’t. They’d been about money and power and her mother’s self-esteem. Not sex. That had merely been a tool she’d used. Lucy had known this, but it had taken the awakening of her own desire to really see it for the first time.
One of Lucy’s biggest fears had to do with losing her independence by depending on men as her mother had done. But wasn’t this a totally different situation? She was working; she already had a job. She wasn’t hoping to get anything out of Aristotle—certainly not money or gifts. And he seemed to be as surprised by this flaring of attraction as she was. She had no doubt that if he had a choice he’d prefer this to be happening with someone in his own social group.
So didn’t it stand to reason that once this thing had burnt out, as he’d said, things would get back to normal? Although Lucy had to concede she didn’t know what it would mean to get back to normal in the office after something like this … her mind skittered weakly away from that.
She was pacing now, the thought of sleep impossible to consider. She bit at her nail, a tight feeling growing in her belly. For the first time in her life the fears she’d carried for so long about turning into her mother and all that meant seemed flimsy—they didn’t hold water any more. She was different. The warm feeling of reassurance she’d imagined she’d felt just now surged back even stronger. And it scared her slightly, as she’d never in a million years have said that Ari was a reassuring type of man.
She stopped pacing. What if she could do this? Instead of running away, why not face this and vanquish the demons that had been plaguing her? Already she felt different; she had to admit she’d enjoyed the less restrictive wardrobe, and even though her reflex was still to cover up it was diminishing. She’d caught some of the men looking at her earlier in the ballroom, and instead of wanting to hide away she’d found herself straightening up, feeling a very fledgling sense of confidence trickling through her.
Had Aristotle helped her come to this? It didn’t feel like the diminishing needy power that she’d seen her mother crave. It felt like an innately feminine power, pure and strong.
She thought about it again, tested the words: what if she did this? Just went over there to that door, opened it and walked through.
Before she knew her legs had even carried her Lucy stood at the door, breathing short shallow breaths, her heart thumping. She’d once read a book: Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway. Was she brave enough? To step across the line?
As if in answer to her own question, an intense yearning spread through her. She wanted this—wanted this man and what he promised more than she wanted to look at all the reasons for not doing it. He was right. The thought of repressing this desire was … inconceivable.
With a shaking hand she touched the doorknob, took a breath and turned it. She shut her eyes as the door opened silently. A lurid mental image of Aristotle lounging back against black silk sheets, hands behind his head with a mocking smile, nearly made her slam it shut. But she resisted the impulse and opened her eyes.
It took a second for Lucy’s eyes to adjust, and the scene greeting her was as erotically charged as she could have imagined and yet surprisingly benign. Through the open bedroom door, across the wide expanse of opulent sitting room, Lucy could see the reflected figure of a sleeping Aristotle in his bed in a slightly open mirrored wardrobe door.
Far from black silk, the sheets he lay on were white, like hers. He’d thrown off the main covers and lay now, half propped up, with just a sheet hitched up to his waist. She’d seen his naked torso the other day, but now she looked her fill. It was long and lean and bronzed and hard, and exquisitely muscled. More superlatives filled her head but she couldn’t articulate them. He was simply the most devastating specimen of a man she’d ever seen—not that she’d seen many, she had to acknowledge wryly, but she felt fairly sure that Aristotle could take his place among some of the most beautiful men on the planet.
Unruly inky black hair flopped with incongruous youthfulness onto his forehead, making him look much less like the feared CEO of Levakis Enterprises and instead like someone altogether more vulnerable and human.
Lucy’s breath snagged when her eyes rested on those lean hips and then moved down lower, to where the strategically placed sheet was tented slightly over his lap. Hot colour poured into her cheeks at the intense and immediate reaction to even such subtle provocation.
A sound made her eyes dart up, and suddenly the sleeping god of perfection was no more—he was awake, light green eyes darkening even as she looked at him. Lucy belatedly realised that, as if in a dream, she’d walked right into his room and was now standing at the foot of his bed, the dim light of one lamp imbuing everything with innate intimacy.
Her hands gripped the sides of her robes together, knuckles showing white. Reality slammed into her, and she suddenly wondered if she’d suffered some kind of paralysis as she couldn’t seem to move.
‘I …’
Aristotle was completely still, awake and watchful now.
‘You …?’
The sound of his voice resonated deep within her.
‘I … I don’t think … That is … perhaps I should—’
‘Come here.’
The words were uttered with deep implacability, and Lucy’s legs felt shaky. She’d come too far to go back now, so she moved forward jerkily, around the bed, until she was standing just a few feet away, eyes glued to his, mesmerised.
He lifted a hand and gestured. ‘Come closer.’
Lucy looked desperately for any sign that he mightn’t be as über-cool as he looked. And at the last second, just when she was contemplating running while she still could, she saw it: the light sheen of sweat beading his brow and the pulse beating fast at the base of his neck.
But, even so, it was as if the old, safe Lucy was calling her back through the doors, willing her to slam them shut between her and this man and this craving, aching need within her. She even turned and looked, as if to judge the distance.
Immediately her hand was taken in a ring of heat. Lucy looked down to see her wrist dwarfed by his bronzed hand. She looked at him, and gulped.
‘Lucy, are you sure you want this? Because if you stay there’s no going back.’
And in that instant Lucy mentally shut the doors behind her. She didn’t want to go back. She wanted to go forward and free herself of this unwanted baggage she’d been carrying.
She shook her head and felt her hair slip around her shoulders. ‘I’m not going.’
He pulled her irrevocably towards him, and then she was there, legs leaning weakly against his bed, His eyes never left hers as he brought her wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss against the pulse, his tongue flicking out. She gasped and felt as if he’d branded her, even with that small move.
And then he let her hand go and leant on one elbow. ‘Take off your clothes.’
When he said the words, Lucy felt only an intense explosion of heat in her pelvis. She was far beyond disgust or shock. Without breaking eye contact she undid her thick robe and let it drop to the floor. She still wore the dress, which gaped open, and her shoes. She stepped out of the shoes and bent to put them neatly under the chair. Then she stood and looked at Aristotle again.
He had made no move, but his eyes had turned so dark with lust that the green looked almost black. His gaze burnt into her.
With a tremor in her hands she pulled the zip down all the way, and then slowly peeled the dress off her shoulder and down, baring breasts only just confined by a strapless lace bra. Her awful self-consciousness seemed to have faded away to another place. Another person.
Hands on her hips, Lucy wriggled slightly to ease the dress down and over her womanly shape. The veritable waves of heat coming from Aristotle as his eyes followed the path of her dress nearly had Lucy melting on the spot. The heavy silk pooled at her feet, and she stepped out with an innate grace she was entirely unaware of.
Seeing a heavily brocaded chair beside the bed, Lucy lifted one leg to rest her foot there and started to peel one stocking down, only belatedly becoming aware of the eroticism of her pose. She sensed it in the way Ari had stilled even more, felt it in the intensity of his gaze on her, and for the first time in her life, found herself glorying in her innate femininity.
Aristotle knew that the only thing keeping him from jumping out of the bed and burying his aching hardness into her as she bent like that over the chair was the knowledge that, given one touch of her skin, he’d lose all control. When he’d seen her standing at the foot of the bed like a vision, his feeling of pure desire twinned with what had felt suspiciously like joy had made him act gruffer than he would have liked. He gripped the sheets tight in both hands now. It felt hard to breathe. The fact that he also felt more out of control than he’d ever felt with another woman was uncomfortable. Finesse in this kind of situation was a distant memory.
A curtain of dark hair swung forward, restricting his view of the bountiful breasts threatening to spill from that completely inadequate bra, and instinctively he leant forward and brushed it back over one pale shoulder. She turned her head and looked at him, her lower lip caught by her teeth, sending a shudder of pure arousal through his body, tightening the erotic notch on his flimsy control.
She put down that leg and lifted the other, repeated the exercise. By the time she was done Ari could feel sweat rolling down his back from the effort it took to stay still.
Lucy registered the almost indecent bulge in the sheet covering his lap and her throat went dry.
‘Your bra,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Take it off too.’
Lucy reached around behind her and felt for the clasp. She had to pull the bra tighter in the motion it took to undo it, and she saw Aristotle’s Adam’s apple move convulsively as he registered the movement. The clasp was undone, and Lucy held it for a long moment … this was it. And then, with an almost defiant movement, she pulled it away and threw it down, releasing her heavy breasts. She stood before him in nothing but her silk and lace pants. In some dim and distant part of her still-functioning brain Lucy had no idea how she was doing this—the enormity of the moment was too huge to contemplate—but the beat of her blood was drowning out everything but the need to be here right now, with him.
His eyes seemed to glaze over as he looked at her, making her skin tighten and tingle all over, especially her breasts. She could feel the tips puckering and growing unbearably tight. She didn’t have time to feel self-conscious. Aristotle reached out with two hands and grabbed hers in both of his, pulling her close to the bed. The sheet moved down. Lucy had a stomach clenching view of narrow hips and dark hair just above—
With a smooth move she never saw coming he tumbled her down, so that she lay flat on her back. He loomed, huge and dark over her, his hands still capturing hers, held against her belly, his knuckles brushing the sensitive undersides of her breasts. Her heart was beating so fast she felt dizzy, but then his head was lowering to hers, his mouth slanting over hers, and within seconds dizziness had been replaced with heat and sensation. His naked torso crushed her chest. He released her hands and she instinctively wound them around his neck as she arched voluptuously towards him.
Never had she imagined feeling like this. This rightness. She fitted him; he fitted her. The moment she ached for him to touch her somewhere he touched her; the moment she wanted him to deepen the kiss he deepened it—sucking her tongue deep, biting her lip, pressing fiery kisses down over her jaw and further, until he hovered teasingly over her breasts.
He cupped one and then the other, caressing their firm smoothness. Lucy’s breathing was fractured, jerky. She looked down but couldn’t bear the eroticism of seeing her breasts in his hands like that. So she closed her eyes and cried out when he took one burning nipple into his mouth and sucked hard, rolling the tip, flicking it with his tongue, grazing it with his teeth before suckling hard again.
Lucy was burning up, her hands in his hair as he cupped both the voluptuous mounds together, his mouth tasting and testing each peak until they were throbbing with arousal.
‘Please …’ she begged brokenly.
Her hips moved in a silent and primeval rhythm, her lower body on fire. She looked down to see Aristotle looking up at her, eyes dark green, cheeks flushed. His huge broad shoulders blocked out the light as he finally released her breasts and came over her on strong arms, lean and awe-inspiring.
‘Are you ready?’
She nodded jerkily. She wanted to say yes to anything this man said, not even caring what he meant.
‘Are you sure? I think we should check, just in case … don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Lucy gasped. ‘Whatever—just do it …’
He smiled down at her even as she registered that the sheet had fallen away and his powerful erection nudged her belly. On pure instinct she reached down and covered him with her hand, heat suffusing her face and neck as she registered the size of him—fully aroused.
He grimaced as her hand tightened on him and he took it gently away. ‘That’s why we have to see if you’re ready Lucy, mou … patience.’
She didn’t know what mou meant, but then he disappeared, and Lucy gave a yelp when she felt him drawing her pants down, over her hips and down her legs, before he spread her legs apart with big hands. Lucy tried to resist the movement, which felt far too intimate, but he was ruthless, eyes on hers, holding her, telling her to trust him as his head lowered. She closed her eyes and put a fist to her mouth to hold back the groan when she felt his breath feather in the intimate space between her legs, and then the sensation of his mouth and tongue on her nearly sent her shooting into the stars.
He licked her, exploring her secret folds, thrusting deep into her, circling and sucking on her clitoris until her hips were lifting off the bed, wantonly jerking towards him, her teeth biting down on her fist.
When she felt two fingers slide deep into her slick heat everything in her body teetered on an edge that she’d never known before; every nerve pulled tight. But then he was withdrawing for a moment. She heard a drawer slam shut, a foil wrapper, and then he was back over her, strong, hair-roughened thighs parting her own smoother ones even more.
She could feel his erection nudging her down there, where she burned. He moved back and forth, drawing his penis along the moistened and plump folds of her sex, eliciting a deep groan from somewhere deep within her. She was almost mindless for the need for something … she wasn’t sure what it was … it hovered just out of reach.
Lucy put her hands on his shoulders. They glistened with sweat, and the feeling of something so earthy made her rejoice.
‘Ari …’ she breathed. ‘Please—I’m ready.’
And that was when Ari’s control broke. He heard her husky words, felt her tip her hips up towards him, reach down to take hold of him, forcing him to impale her slightly. And then he drove in deep and hard, knowing instinctively that this woman was made for him alone and they would fit like a glove.
Ari stilled his movements—both of them did. Lucy’s eyes were wide with shock at the sensation of him filling her, but it wasn’t painful … it was delicious.
She moved again, experimentally, and Aristotle sank into her even more, pushing her down into the bed. Lucy wrapped one leg around his waist and threw her head back, hands still clinging onto his shoulders as he slowly withdrew and then impaled her again. He continued with his slow, voluptuous rhythm, the pleasure building and building. Lucy could feel her body starting to shake as he took her other leg and bent it back, opening her up to him even more, changing the angle slightly, going even deeper, and as his movements started to get faster and more urgent Lucy could feel the onset of something so huge, so terrifying as it came hurtling towards her, that she tensed—even though everything in her was urging her to meet it head-on.
Aristotle bent his head, his body holding her suspended with his movements, and kissed her deeply. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her arms clasping his neck. ‘Let go, Lucy … It’s OK … let go.’
Holding on tight, she took the final, terrifying leap and let go … and was thrown so high and so far on the wave of her orgasm that she was hardly even aware of Aristotle’s own explosive loss of control as his big powerful body jerked and still rhythmically thrust into hers as the never-ending ripples of her orgasm held him suspended in a halfway world he’d never known before.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ARISTOTLE was running away. And the fact that he was aware of what he was doing made him nearly incandescent with rage. He didn’t run away. And yet after last night, with Lucy, all he’d known was that he needed space—and fast. His brain was still too hot and far too tangled to even pretend he could deal with a banal morning-after scenario. He’d received a call from his New York PA while Lucy lay sleeping, and on the flimsiest of pretexts had declared he’d fly over for the weekend to take care of something that ordinarily he wouldn’t have touched with a bargepole.
Lucy had woken to find him dressing that morning. He’d seen her wake through the reflection of the mirror as he’d knotted his tie with unsteady hands. Unsteady because he’d wanted to strip off all his confining garments and go over to where she lay in such gloriously voluptuous naked abandon and take her all over again. But the truth was he wasn’t sure if he could take that intensity of experience again.
Wasn’t sure if he could take that intensity of experience again? Ari’s hand clenched around the crystal glass, the design digging into his palm as he looked unseeingly out of the plane window. Since when had sleeping with a woman been too intense for him? They were the ones left weak and dizzy and sated. Not him.
He closed his eyes and threw his head back. And then opened them again abruptly when all he could see was Lucy’s passion-glazed eyes as she’d looked up at him the moment he’d filled her, the moment he’d been completely sheathed in her hot moist warmth … It had felt … it had felt like nothing he could have imagined. He could remember the feel of her breasts pushing against him, their peaks as hard as bullets against his chest, could hear their heartbeats even now, thudding slow and unsteady, and then, as he’d started to thrust deeper and deeper, the beats had got faster … until—
Aristotle swore softly. He needed to numb that intensity.
His mouth twisted and he called himself all sorts of a fool for running away. So it was the best sex he’d ever had? That was it. It didn’t mean anything. It hadn’t touched any part of him that hadn’t been touched before. So why did it feel as if it had?
Ari blocked out that assertion. He was immune to feeling, immune to emotions. He’d started to shut them away when his mother had died, and then when Helen Savakis had come into his life, and then finally on that first night in a cold boarding school in England at the age of five. It was the last time he’d cried and now … His gut clenched. Now he only cried in his sleep. He reiterated it to himself: he didn’t do emotions.
Perhaps he’d sensed that Lucy did, and that was why he’d run. A sense of calm stole over him. That was it. She wasn’t like the women he went for … she was bound to be less versed in how this would work. He’d seen the look on her face that morning, slightly nervous, biting her lip … And suddenly he was right back to square one—a raging erection pushing against his trousers, thirty thousand feet in the air, and the only chance of alleviating it far behind him on Greek soil.
He just had to lay it on the line with her, that was all. Make sure she knew what not to expect. And then … then he would take her again, and these demons would not be hovering over his shoulders. Ari smiled cynically. Who would have thought he’d be growing a conscience now, after all these years?
Lucy had got over Aristotle’s abrupt and cold departure yesterday morning. She told herself stoutly that she was back on an even keel. But if she allowed images to surface for a second—She stumbled slightly in the street and a kindly old woman caught her arm and smiled up at her, saying something in Greek. Lucy smiled weakly and mumbled something back. So much for an even keel. If she even thought about the other night for a second she lost her balance … Self-disgust ran through her.
She spied a taverna on the other side of the street and made her way there, sitting gratefully in an empty chair. She ordered sparkling water and fanned herself with a menu, thinking that perhaps it was the heat getting to her. Who was she kidding? The heat was getting to her all right, but it had nothing to do with the sun.
And along with the heat was a lingering hurt—Lucy brutally cut off her thoughts there. She wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t.
She tried to focus on her surroundings, the pretty and quaint area of Anafiotika, a hidden gem of old Athens within touristy Plaka, just beneath the Acropolis. She’d climbed up there earlier, the exertion doing little to clear her head of the tangled knots. She took a sip of water, but with annoying precision her mind slipped back again to that excruciating moment when she’d woken the day before.
