Kitabı oku: «Six Greek Heroes», sayfa 15

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE said nothing in reply to his question and he lasted one scene and two sighs from the woman beside him before his free hand went looking for bare skin beneath her loose top.

She sucked in a breath that seemed to suspend in her chest as his fingers met silky, smooth flesh just above the waistband of her skirt.

He let his hand rest there throughout the next scene, not moving, merely establishing his possession. Her fingers fluttered against his chest and embarked on a tentative exploration that made his heart accelerate into the danger zone.

“You are playing with fire,” he warned her, still not ready to credit her willingness to be intimate with a man who had handled her offer of herself so badly.

“Are you saying I can make you burn?” The words should have been said with feminine seduction, instead she sounded shocked by the concept.

“Ne. Yes.” He shuddered as one gentle fingertip brushed a hard nipple. “With you, I feel like Mount Vesuvius.”

“Ready to explode?” she asked with a catch in her voice.

“Hot as the core of the earth itself.”

“That’s nice,” she sighed against him, her hand continuing its tormenting exploration that was not enough.

Without taking his eyes off the television, he began to gently brush back and forth with his thumb against the indentation of her waist. Her fingers contracted on his chest, kneading him like a kitten.

“I am not nice, pethi mou.” Such a tame word would never describe what he was intent on making her feel.

“No, you aren’t.” Something besides passion laced her voice, but he was too turned on to wonder what. “However, you are extremely sexy.”

His laughter was harsh with want.

A kiss as soft as down brushed against his chest and he felt an unknown twinge in the region of his heart. It made him determined to get to her as deeply as she got to him.

He allowed his thumb to move higher up her torso with each caress, but always stopped shy of the generous and tempting curve of her breast.

Her small, feminine moan was music to his ears. Then she said his name in a long drawn out hiss and arched against him.

“What is it?” he asked, knowing exactly what she wanted.

“I need…”

He let his thumb rest just below the line of her bra. “What do you need?”

“You, Sebastian.” Her head came up and she met his gaze, her green eyes dark with the depth of her emotion and he began to believe in something he had dismissed as fairy tale years ago. “I need you.”

The uncontrolled passion and sincerity in her voice, the expression in her beautiful eyes combined to shatter his self-control. She wanted him, not his money, not even a wedding ring. Just him.

Had any woman ever wanted him only for himself? His ego wanted to say yes, but his bank account guaranteed he could not with certainty.

Rachel was different and the rage of his arousal reflected his body’s reaction to that truth. He could not doubt her. She came to him without any promises, without any conditions.

And he would make sure she did not regret that choice.

Without any warning, Rachel found herself on her back, a sexually voracious male vibrating with his need to possess above her. A position that had caused her only terror in the past turned her on to the point of recklessness now and she tore at his shirt, yanking it from the waistband of his pants.

His big body convulsed when her hands encountered hot, hair roughened skin.

“You like that,” she said with helpless wonder.

His powerful muscles tense and bulging, he hissed, “Yes.”

It was incredible, unbelievable even, that she could affect him this way. The knowledge sent her fingers on a tactile exploration that covered every centimeter of his naked torso that she could reach.

He made guttural sounds deep in his throat and then reared up to tear his shirt all the way off, exposing gleaming, hard masculine planes to her eyes. Was it fair that any man should be so utterly, devastatingly gorgeous? Her eyes devoured him even as her hands reached out to press against the body giving her vision so much pleasure.

He reached for the hem of her knit top. “This goes too.”

She waited to feel the fear the thought of being naked with a man would have brought before, but it did not come and grinned at him with unashamed triumph. “Yes!”

She helped him remove her shirt with hands that fumbled in their haste and he laughed once when they got their fingers tangled.

She’d been craving this closeness with him since the night on the beach and now she knew it would be all right. Her mind splintered as his hands took possession of her naked skin. Her nipples ached to feel his touch, but he touched her everywhere else instead. He caressed her stomach, smoothed his warm hands down her arms, then up along her sides.

She shook with need, she moaned, but she had just enough mental capacity left to grit her teeth against begging.

It did no good. When his tormenting fingers strayed onto her breasts, but only drew circles around where she most needed his touch, her jaw unlocked and she shouted in raw demand, “Touch me there.”

His steel gray eyes burned her with sensual promise as his fingertips finally trespassed onto turgid peaks, stinging with need. She bowed up toward him, offering him her breasts which he accepted willingly, peeling away her bra to expose her completely to his gaze and touch.

He leaned down and kissed each tip, licking it like a cat before raising his head to meet her gaze. Her eyes were wet with a surfeit of emotion and his name came out on a broken sob. He touched her again, giving her so much pleasure, she shook with the feelings he evoked.

A feverish daze came over her so that she was aware of only the affect his expert caresses had on her body. Somehow he removed the rest of their clothes and then it was full body contact, heart to heart, skin to skin, moist feminine welcome against hard male flesh.

It was so alien and yet more wonderful than anything she’d ever known.

That other time, that man had not even undressed all the way, but Sebastian wanted more than sexual release from her body, he wanted to be intimate with her. Every word out of his mouth, every movement by his body told her this.

Legs slid against legs. Torsos meshed. His mouth came down on hers, his lips demanding all she had to give and she willingly gave it. He crushed her highly sensitized breasts into the thick mat of hair on his chest, pulling her body toward him with ardent hands while thrusting his pelvis against her.

His tongue thrust into her mouth, emulating a mating dance she had thought she would never want to engage in. Well, she wanted now. Oh, how she wanted.

Her legs separated in an age-old invitation and he rubbed his hard flesh against her swollen flesh. Sensation zinged through her feminine center. His mouth broke from hers to trail sexy kisses down her throat.

“I have to taste you,” he said against the skin of her neck.

She couldn’t make sense of his words. Wasn’t he tasting her already?

He nibbled at the base of her neck and she shivered. “Oh, Sebastian, oh…” She couldn’t get anything else out and kept saying his name over and over again.

He didn’t stop the tasting at her neck, but moved to her breasts, giving her love bites on the resilient flesh that sent sensation arcing through her. When he started suckling her tender peaks, the feeling went straight to her womb and she cried out with the cataclysmic pleasure of it.

Despite her attempt with frantic hands to keep him at her breast, he moved down her body, stopping at her belly button to submit it to a sensual torture she would never have believed possible. When he pressed her legs farther apart, she let him without thought to the consequences, but when his head lowered and he kissed her in the most intimate way possible, shock at the unexpected sensation made her try to buck him off.

He raised his head, his expression that of a jungle animal thwarted of its prey. “Do you not want the pleasure I can give you?”

How could she answer that? “I’ve never…”

His brows rose. “Ah, a man has not tasted your sweet nectar before?”

“No,” she croaked.

His eyes questioned her.

“Never,” she affirmed.

Definite male satisfaction glowed in his molten gaze. “I want to taste you, Rachel. Let me.”

It sounded more like a demand than a request for permission, but he had stopped and she could not deny him. Not when telling him no meant stifling desires consuming her with unquenchable flames.

“Yes.”

His smile made her shiver even as her body melted under another intimate kiss from his too knowing mouth.

Sebastian savored the essence of Rachel with a consuming need to imprint himself on her, to make her know she was his. Her excitement was sweet and her scent so feminine it drove him wild. No woman had tantalized him like this one, had made him want her until he could taste her mouth in his dreams and feel her body when he closed his eyes.

He brushed his thumb against her pleasure spot while taking possession of slick, swollen feminine flesh with his tongue.

She gave no warning before her body went rigid in ecstasy and a scream of fulfillment burst from her lips. It continued to echo in his mind long after the only sounds coming from her mouth were tiny whimpers of residual pleasure.

Her body was still shaking with aftershocks when he came up over her and positioned his hardness at the entrance to her hot velvet depths.

He kissed her rosebud lips, reveling in their taste as much as he had enjoyed the sweet core of her.

“I want you,” he rasped.

Her eyes fluttered open, the expression in them soft and full of an emotion that impacted him to the depths of his soul. “I want you too, but please…”

“Please, what?” He could barely get the words out, his need was so great.

“Don’t hurt me.”

Ardor ebbed, though it did not leave completely as he considered her reasons for making such a request. “You believe I will hurt you?”

“No, but…”

Her innocent reactions, the surprised way she responded to his every touch, her instant rejection of his mouth on her…they all added up to a truth he could barely credit. “You are a virgin?”

“Yes.”

“But you are twenty-three.” He could not help the shocked words from leaving his mouth.

“I have never felt this way about another man.”

He looked down at her, his heart pounding in his chest and he believed her. “Then you do me a great honor.”

He bent and lifted her into his arms.

Her eyes filled with vulnerable appeal and an unstoppable wave of tenderness swept over him. Never before had it been so important to ensure his partner’s pleasure and well-being, but he was determined to make her first time one she would remember always.

He bent down and kissed her with lips gentled by the feelings coursing through him. “It will be perfect, agape mou. I promise you.”

She reached up and returned his kiss, hers full of trust and a surrender as ancient as Adam and Eve. “I believe you, my love.”

Did she know what she had called him?

He looked into her beautiful green eyes, glazed with passion and he did not think so, but just because she was not conscious of the words did not mean she did not feel them. He had blinded himself to her feelings because he thought he had to, but Rachel was as far removed from the woman who had given her birth as a nun from a prostitute.

He forced himself to take the time to arouse her all over again, to bring her to the brink of climax before carefully beginning to ease himself into her body. As silken tissues stretched around him, an incontrovertible truth assailed him.

Nothing but marriage would do.

The thought of another man doing to her what he was about to do was intolerable.

“You are mine,” he growled as her tightness allowed him to gain only the beginning of entry.

Love glazed eyes stared back at him and she nodded. “Yes. I’m yours. I always have been.”

Her mass of silky brown hair, long since fallen out of its conservative style, spread around her on the sofa cushions like a pagan goddess of old.

It took more self-control than he thought he had, but he eased into her slow inch by slow inch. The farther he sank into her body, the more fractured his thoughts became. The lack of any impediment to his progress registered only on the periphery of his mind as his own passion took control of him.

He made love to her in a state of mind-numbed need, the pleasure blasting through him greater than anything he had ever known.

She moved under him, the noises coming from her throat desperate and carnal. Again, she gave no warning, but climaxed beneath him with powerful contractions in the swollen tissues surrounding his needy flesh. And he joined her, the world going black around the edges for several incredible seconds.

When he came fully to himself, he was collapsed on top of her. He felt weak in a way he had sworn he would never allow himself to experience.

She was crying, soft, silent tears.

“Did I hurt you?” His gut twisted in agony at the prospect.

She shook her head causing more moisture to leak out of her eyes. “It was the most incredible experience of my life. Thank you.”

He carefully pulled himself back from her, frowning at her sucked in breath as he withdrew completely. “You are all right?”

“Oh, yes. It’s just so different. Every little movement sets off earthquake tremors inside me.” She said it apologetically, but he shook his head in wonder.

Did she have no idea how special a lover she was?

She was asleep before her head even rested against the pillow. He climbed in beside her, physically replete as he’d never been before.

He woke her in the night twice and both times she gave herself to him with delightful abandon.

Sebastian woke with a sense of having lost something important.

Himself.

Never before in his life had he experienced such intense need, such driven desire. Nor had he experienced the depth of emotional connection with another woman that he knew with Rachel. His body had possessed hers, but she had also possessed him and left him with a need he did not believe would ever be completely slaked.

A man was a fool to let any woman have this sort of power over him, but he was helpless to minimize his reaction to her.

The only redemption he could find in the situation was that their obsession was completely mutual.

She could not resist him.

Soft warmth cuddled against his side and sensual memories of the night before came flooding back, attesting to that. Rachel had participated in their lovemaking to the very depths of her being. She was an amazing lover, a woman like no other. Every man’s dream.

A sense of disorientation assailed him as he remembered a line from his uncle’s letter.

Matthias had said the same thing about Andrea, that she was every man’s dream in bed. The old man had written that he had continued in his travesty of a marriage for so long, not only because of the desire Andrea elicited in him. He had also been addicted to the sexual response she gave him.

Addiction. The word was too close to Sebastian’s feelings for Rachel to be comfortable.

But he was not so enslaved to his libido that he would allow a woman to destroy his pride and trample his masculine dignity because she was good in bed.

Wouldn’t you?, a tormenting voice prompted in his head.

His thoughts in turmoil, he let his gaze settle on the small woman sleeping beside him. He could not see her face because it was covered in a cloud of brown silk, but the top swells of her breasts were revealed above the duvet and he could feel their softness against his skin. Sexual desire roared up hot and hungry and he had to bite down on the urge to touch her into wakefulness.

Addiction. Obsession. How different were they?

But was he addicted? He wanted, but he did not have to take. He could survive not making love. He was no slave to his passions.

Besides a virgin deserved some consideration.

That thought was a more effective checker to his tortuous want than any determination to prove his ability to control his libido. He did not want to hurt her, but thinking back to the night before, he could not remember hurting her at all. Not even the first time.

Memories began to niggle at him, impressions of the night before that he had been unable to assimilate in his rapture dazed mind. There hadn’t been any blood.

A woman’s virginity had to be carefully breached because it caused the rupture of a thin membrane of flesh inside her, the result of which was blood. But she hadn’t bled. She also had not been sore. She had accommodated him with eager acceptance every time they made love.

She had told him she was a virgin, but the evidence was to the contrary.

The prospect that Rachel had lied to him about her innocence made his insides tighten in fury and pain until he was nauseous with it.

Hadn’t Andrea suckered his uncle into believing she was far more innocent sexually than she really was?

Was Rachel set on ensnaring him just as her mother had ensnared Matthias?

She had let him make love to her even though he had clearly stated marriage was not on offer. Why?

A curse erupted from his throat as he remembered something else from the night before. They hadn’t used anything for protection the night before. She had never even mentioned it, not when he’d clumsily told her he wanted her without strings or later when they made love. He dismissed as irrelevant the fact he had said nothing himself.

It was only one step further in his admittedly agitated thought process to decide that had been her plan all along. She hadn’t asked for a commitment because she’d planned to trap him into one. Rachel had been even more devious than her mother, for he had never been fooled by Andrea.

Rachel had taken him in completely.

When he thought of his decision the night before to marry her, the sickness inside him grew.

She was a professional player of extraordinary skill.

Rachel came out of the bathroom wrapped in Sebastian’s oversize robe. She’d woken up alone, but had tried not to be bothered by that fact. He was a businessman and had spent days away from his company. He would have a lot to catch up on. For all she knew, yesterday’s reason for the urgently called meeting still existed.

She would not see it as a dismissal of her importance in his life. No man could make love as tenderly as he had to her and not feel anything but lust.

He’d been so gentle with her, and her heart swelled with the memory. As far as first times went, it had been ideal. Amazing. Beautiful. Wonderful. Her face creased in a goofy smile as the superlatives rolled through her mind.

Sebastian Kouros was the perfect lover.

And she didn’t want their relationship to end, but she had asked for no promises and he had offered none. If she told him the truth, about her feelings and her past, would it make any difference?

He had to know she was nothing like her mother now. Rachel had come to Sebastian a virgin. She did not sleep around and she loved him. She was almost positive she’d told him so at one point during their lovemaking. Dared she repeat the words in the cold light of day?

Could she stand the definite cost she would pay for her cowardice if she did not? Sebastian would let her go back to America believing she didn’t want anything more than an intense sexual encounter, when in fact, she wanted it all.

She doubted he loved her, but he felt something deeper for her than mere lust. Was it enough to build a relationship on? Would he even want to?

She would not know unless she came clean with him.

Besides, love was honest. It didn’t hide behind pride or a fear of the past.

There was so much she hadn’t told him about her past, things that would let him know she was not and would never be like her mother. After her experience as a teenager, she had rejected Andrea’s way of life completely and Sebastian was bound to believe her when she told him. He was a smart man. He would understand.

He would believe she truly loved him when he realized she had been able to let him make love to her after that trauma.

She got up and headed for the door, ready to tell him everything, only to be brought up short when Sebastian walked into the room, his expression grim.

“Are you all right?” she asked, wondering if another time would be better to discuss their feelings and their future.

He didn’t look very receptive.

Almost immediately, she chastised herself for being a coward. Sebastian owned a multinational corporation. There would always be events that were bound to cause a deterioration in his mood. She had to believe her emotions and his could rise above that.

“I am fine.” His gaze flicked over her, a strange light in his gray eyes. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Sebastian, there is something I need to tell you.”

“Is there?” He didn’t sound all that receptive either.

“Yes. Please, will you hear me out?”

His lips twisted in a parody of a smile. “I believe I already know what it is.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” He was more intelligent than any man she’d ever known, but even Sebastian wasn’t a mind reader.

“It is related to the matter of your virginity,” he guessed, his voice curiously flat.

Shocked, she stared at him, incapable of speech for several seconds. How could he know?

“Andrea told you?” she asked in disbelief, but unable to come up with another scenario that made any sense.

“Yes. I figured it out through your mother.”

That was an extremely odd way of putting it. “Sebastian, I’m talking about what happened to me when I was sixteen. Do you know about that?”

He paled and bitter anger crossed his features before he wiped them of all expression once again. “You are about to tell me you had a traumatic experience with a man, no?”

She nodded, but found it was harder to talk about than she had expected.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, her knees feeling wobbly. “I can’t believe she told you. She made me swear never to say a word.”

“And now you are going to tell me that you did not believe you could respond to a man, but I have brought out your womanly passion.” The total lack of emotion in his voice bothered her.

“Yes,” she said nervously. She wished she could tell what he was thinking.

“Ne, yes, I am not easily fooled.”

He was talking about it all so dispassionately and yet, perhaps that was how he was dealing with it. If he cared about her and after last night, she believed he did, he would be furious about what had happened to her. He was a traditional Greek man, possessive and protective. This was probably as hard for him as it was for her to discuss.

“I know you very well.” His words confirmed her hopes.

She nodded, choking on emotion. “Yes, you do and maybe that is one of the reasons that I love you so very much.”

His face contorted as if in pain and he spun away from her. “Tell me something, Rachel.”

She hadn’t expected him to match her declaration. Men like Sebastian didn’t give in to their feelings very easily, but she hadn’t thought he would dismiss her completely either.

Perhaps his turning away did not signify that. “Anything.”

“You are aware Matthias had denounced Andrea and planned to divorce her?”

She didn’t know what that had to do with her and Sebastian, but she sighed. “One of her friends E-mailed me with the news.”

He whipped back around to face her, the ice in his eyes sending shivers down her spine. “So, this knowledge is what prompted the big seduction scene last night.”

“What big seduction scene?” Nothing was going the way she had anticipated and he was confusing her.

“The dinner, your willingness to be close to me even after I told you I would not offer marriage. It all adds up now. You came to Greece knowing your mother had been cut off. You didn’t want your meal ticket to end so you made a play for another rich man.”

“What are you talking about?”

He sliced the air with his hand. “I am talking about you, the innocent virgin,” he said the words with major scorn, “allowing yourself to have sex for the first time with me, the meal ticket.”

She couldn’t believe he was saying these things, more and more horror filling her with each passing word until she was as cold as his eyes. She wrapped her arms around herself, but it did not help a cold that had started in her heart and was radiating outward.

“You believe I made love with you because I was looking for money?” She wanted to scream the words, but they came out a harsh whisper instead. “You think I came to Greece for my mother’s funeral intent on seducing you?”

Not only was the suggestion a sick one, it also indicated a colossal ego she’d give anything to deflate until he felt as empty as she did right now.

“You knew about the divorce.”

“I didn’t know before I came to Greece. I found out yesterday.”

“Who told you, a Mina bird?” he asked deridingly.

She tried to explain about the E-mail, about how it had been waiting in her in-box with all the others, but he simply stood there in stone-faced rejection as if her words impacted him not one iota.

“You expect me to believe Andrea did not call you in a temper and tell you the truth, but that one of her friends sent you an E-mail you conveniently received posthumously?”

It did sound unlikely, but not impossible and if he respected and trusted her at all, he would not deride it as a quickly composed lie.

“No, I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s the truth,” she uttered, defeat sinking into her bones as her dreams shattered around her.