Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 24
ОглавлениеLEO’S LIPS WERE aggressive and smooth on Grace’s as he lifted her and laid her down gently on the bed, breaking contact only to flip off her shoes and let them fall.
Grace breathed in deep, mastering her nervous tension, terrified of letting it show. Of course she could have told him the truth that she was a newbie in the bedroom, but she was convinced that it would seriously dent her desirability in his eyes. And being treated as if she were rather more beautiful and seductive than she was felt especially good to her at that moment. She wondered where the bathroom was, knew she would have preferred diving in there to undress before reappearing casually wrapped in a towel or something. But wouldn’t that be aping a fifties bride on her wedding night? Shyness and inhibitions were not sexy, she told herself impatiently.
‘I love your hair,’ he told her, stroking the tumbled strands as he sank down on the bed at the same time as he removed his cufflinks and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘It’s a gorgeous colour.’
‘I got called “Carrots” at school and hated it for years,’ Grace recalled with a rueful grin.
‘When you smile, meli mou, your whole face lights up,’ Leo said softly, lowering his head to claim another passionate kiss that rocked her even where she lay, her body behaving like a Geiger counter detecting radiation, strange new reactions awakening inside her.
His shirt parted, giving her a glimpse of broad, strong pectoral muscles and washboard abs that made her mouth run dry. He was excessively good to look at, what one of her friends would term ‘man candy’. The pool of warmth at her pelvis spread. He turned her over, ran down the zip and gently spread the edges back, kissing one slim white freckled shoulder and then the other and tugging her back against him.
‘Do you always go this slow?’
No, he didn’t and, considering that he was already hugely aroused, Leo had no idea why he was determined to be the perfect lover for her. ‘Depends on my mood... I want to savour you...’
He slid the sleeves down her arms and paused to appreciate the full globes filling the cups of her bra before he succumbed to temptation. With a soft little sound of impatience, he snapped loose the catch on the bra and raised his hands to cradle her superb breasts, massaging the creamy flesh, pressing her flat to explore them with his mouth and lingering over her straining rosy nipples.
‘You have amazing breasts,’ Leo muttered thickly as he dallied there, employing both his tongue and the glancing edge of his teeth to tease the straining buds.
Grace was rather more amazed at the effect he was having on her ignorant body. A hungry ache stirred at the heart of her. All of a sudden catching her breath was a challenge and she ran her fingers through his luxuriant black hair, surprised by how soft it was and how right it felt to touch him. She had thought she might have to steel herself to respond to him, genuinely hadn’t expected to be quite so caught up in the process as she was, had even believed that throughout the process some part of her quick and clever brain would be standing back assessing and judging. Instead as he lifted her to find her mouth again Grace was engaging in some exploration of her own, hands sliding below the open shirt to trace his wonderfully honed muscular torso, skimming over the flat male nipples and the etching of crisp dark hair sprinkled there before sliding down to stroke the flexing muscles of his taut stomach.
‘Don’t...not this first time,’ Leo urged, pulling back from her to slide off the bed. ‘I’m too close to the edge.’
Grace blinked, bemused, having assumed he would be as eager to be touched as she was. And, ‘not this first time’? Was that simply his prodigious self-assurance doing the talking for him? Her body all aquiver about even the thought of a single experience and the unlikelihood of her wanting a second, Grace watched him strip off his clothing with something less than the laid-back cool she had come to expect from him.
Everything came off at once, ensuring that she had little time to be curious about what her first aroused male looked like. He was larger than she had assumed he would be, but that was only a point of academic interest, she assured herself nervously, surveying the prodding length and breadth of his bold shaft. She knew she would stretch and she envisaged neither pain nor anything else that might reveal her inexperience. After all she had gone horse riding from an early age and believed any physical barrier would be long gone. With the same focused intellectual interest, Grace wondered why she literally felt overheated when she looked at Leo naked, her body hot, her breath catching in her throat as if she lacked oxygen.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Leo remarked, coming back down to her, dropping several foil-wrapped contraceptives on the bedside cabinet, soothing Grace’s instinctive terror of what had happened to her mother also happening to her.
For a split second she was almost tempted to tell him the truth about herself but innate reserve, learned growing up in a household where she had never belonged, kept her silent.
‘I’m used to women who chatter,’ Leo admitted with a slanting grin that was irresistible.
‘I’m quiet,’ Grace admitted, sliding for purchase on the slippery surface of the bedspread and flipping it back to scramble beneath the sheets, still clad in her panties, which she whisked off under cover.
‘Someone so beautiful could never be shy,’ Leo assumed, sliding in beside her in one lithe movement to reach for her. ‘But you are a cheat... I wanted to see you...all of you.’
Grace knew she wasn’t beautiful. She had grown up with the belief that tall, thin and blonde was the epitome of beauty and all the most popular girls at school had fitted that blueprint. But when Leo studied her with wide wondering eyes she felt beautiful for the first time in her life and, even though she was convinced it wasn’t true, it made her feel special. ‘I have to admit I liked seeing you,’ she confessed tensely, striving to reward his appreciation.
‘Really?’ Leo laughed, amused by that little morsel of flattery when he was accustomed to a positive barrage of compliments in the bedroom. He admired Grace’s restraint and lack of drama even while he could hardly wait to shatter her defences and see her lose herself in the throes of passion.
He kissed her and it was like the first time all over again, his tongue thrusting into her mouth to set her alight, tiny little spasms of excitement igniting afresh to clench her womb. He pushed her legs apart, ran a forefinger along the seam there and she stiffened, knowing she was damp and knowing it was absolutely crazy to get into bed with him and be embarrassed about such a natural thing but unable to overcome her self-consciousness. What on earth had happened to her belief that she could make him a science project? she asked herself suddenly, dismayed to be losing her detachment. She closed her eyes tight while he played with the most sensitive spot on her entire body, pleasure and longing traversing her in steady waves. She gritted her teeth, suddenly terrified of getting too carried away and losing control as her hips rose involuntarily.
She made no effort to evade him when he pushed back the sheet. In fact she braced herself to tolerate the intimacy as he tipped her legs over his shoulders and homed in on the most private part of her.
‘You’re beautiful here too,’ Leo purred with a lack of inhibition that shook her and she studied the ceiling in disbelief, struggling to retain some distance from the leaps and jerks of her feverishly aroused body. Then the tip of his tongue touched her and circled her and a rolling wave of pleasure gripped her. Her eyes closed, teeth tightening to hold back a gasp but her control was broken within moments because she had never ever experienced that much pleasure. Sounds were wrenched from her parted lips and her fingers knotted in his hair as the screaming ache for fulfilment inside her built and built and she was lost in the storm of it with her heart thundering and her body writhing. And when she reached a climax, it was explosive and mind-blowing and all the superlative exaggerated words of description that once would have made her roll her eyes in disbelief.
‘You’re incredibly responsive, meli mou,’ Leo husked, finding his every expectation mirrored in the dazed pleasure in her wide eyes and the closing of her arms round him in the aftermath.
Grace was dimly aware of him reaching for a foil packet. Her body might still be leaping with pleasure but her brain was firing back on all cylinders because he had blown her expectations out of the water with his very first move.
He shifted over her, lithe and confident as a jungle cat on the hunt, and she shut her eyes tight again against the intrusion of his. It was going to happen, it was finally going to happen and she would be like almost every other woman, no longer in the dark, no longer ignorant. But it had never occurred to her before that any man could make her want him so desperately that nothing else seemed to matter. His hands cupped her hips to tilt her boneless body back into a better position and then she felt the crown of him at her entrance and she tensed at the exact same moment he thrust deep and hard. The tender tissue of her channel burned and then a sharp little sting sliced through her, provoking a cry of discomfort from her lips. Leo froze.
‘What the hell...? I hurt you?’
Forced by the unexpected to open her eyes, Grace knew her face had to be redder than a ripe apple. ‘I was a virgin,’ she admitted belatedly.
‘A virgin?’ Leo yelled, as if she had jabbed him with a red-hot poker. ‘And you’re telling me that now?’
‘It was private,’ Grace told him succinctly, her lush mouth folding into a compressed line. ‘Now that it’s done, can we just go back to where we were?’
Go back to where we were? In a different mood, Leo would have laughed at that wording. But he was in the grip of angry astonishment, his every assumption about her wiped out. He didn’t like surprises, but as Grace shifted up to him in reminder that he was still inside her he discovered that his body was much less particular. He stared down at her with stunning dark golden eyes. He was her first and there was something mysteriously satisfying about that discovery. She was so tight and warm and wet. Struggling to control his every move, he sank deeper and a breathy little sigh that certainly wasn’t a complaint escaped her.
Grace shut her eyes again, ripples of pleasure reclaiming her, that momentary stab of discomfort forgotten. She could feel his girth stretching her and his hips ground into hers with every slow, heavy thrust. He was being so careful.
‘It’s OK...you’re not hurting me at all,’ she mumbled guiltily.
His pace quickened and a deep guttural moan was torn from him as her body clenched around his. He felt so good Grace couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe she had lived so many years without realising what she was missing out on. A sense of wonder seized her while her heart rate began to race with enjoyment as he pushed into her harder, faster and deeper. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t breathe for excitement; she felt as though she had stolen a ride on a comet. The excitement rose and rose to breaking point when without her volition her body jerked into another intense orgasm. Ecstatic cries broke from her lips as the white-hot heat exploded in her pelvis and left her lying limp and utterly drained but with a glorious feeling of satisfaction that was new to her.
‘Care to tell me why?’ Leo demanded, shattering her idyll. ‘Why did you pick me?’
‘You did the picking,’ Grace reminded him without hesitation, lifting her arms to break his hold on her to enable her to roll away. ‘There’s no agenda here, if that’s what is worrying you. I found you attractive and I decided it was time that I took the plunge.’
‘I would have preferred a warning,’ Leo told her drily.
‘I wasn’t expecting that jab of pain. After years of horse riding I assumed there’d be nothing there...my mistake,’ Grace pronounced with dignity. ‘But thanks for the experience. You were very good.’
Prior to his engagement, Leo had been a legendary womaniser but he felt quite ridiculously put down by Grace’s comment. He sprang off the bed and then a much more pressing matter came to his attention before he could reach the bathroom and he uttered a single crude expletive.
Grace froze at the sound of that word. When she was a child she hadn’t known it was a bad word because her mother had used it all the time. Unhappily when she had used that word in Jenna’s home, her aunt had screamed at her and put a soap bar in her mouth. She had still been throwing up when her uncle came home. The couple had had a massive row and Grace had never ever used that word again.
Impervious to her reaction, Leo had strode into the bathroom to dispose of the evidence. He reappeared, bronzed and stark naked in the doorway. ‘The condom broke...’
Grace sat up in horror. ‘What?’
‘Breaking you in probably strained it,’ Leo retorted with deliberate curtness because it was just one more unexpected development that he didn’t want.
‘It...burst?’ Grace whispered. ‘But I’m not on the pill—’
Leo grew even more rigid in his bearing. ‘Shouldn’t you have taken that precaution before you embarked on a one-night stand?’
Grace just ignored him; she didn’t have to talk to him just because she had slept with him. In fact now that the main event was over she decided that she should ask for a boat back to the marina. Or would that be running away?
‘May I use the bathroom?’ she asked with careful politeness. ‘And then possibly you could organise me a lift back to the marina?’
Leo moved to let her into the bathroom but his temper was now on a short fuse. Wham, bam, thank you, sir. Well, a woman had never treated him like that before but there was always a first time and maybe that was healthy for his ego. But the recollection that it had been her first time stopped his building aggression in its tracks. She didn’t know what she was doing. She wasn’t as much quiet as she was secretive and, flipping mentally back through the time he had been with her, he reckoned she had to be as innocent as a newborn lamb when it came to the nastier things in life. Perspiration beaded his upper lip when he thought of what might have happened to Grace had she gone off so casually and trustingly with some of the seedier individuals he had met on his travels.
‘I want you to stay the night. I’ll take you back tomorrow,’ he stated.
‘This is a one-night stand...you don’t get to tell me what to do!’ Grace flamed back at him with spirit.
‘You’re not doing so well right now when it comes to looking after yourself,’ Leo pronounced drily.
In the space of a moment, Grace travelled from a mood of silent resentment to one of raging rancour and sooner than betray herself by spitting out something inappropriate, she slammed the bathroom door on him. Who did he think would look after her but her own self if she was unlucky enough to conceive after that contraceptive accident? It was none of his business that she had come on holiday without planning to have sex with anyone and she wasn’t taking the pill because she hadn’t wanted to bombard her body with hormones before she was even sexually active. On the other hand, should she have foreseen the possibility that she might suddenly change her mind as she had done this very evening? Grace stood below the shower in a daze counting the days of her cycle, soon realising that the condom could not have failed at a worse time.
Leo swore vehemently beneath his breath and went off to use another shower. Why was she angry with him? Accidents happened, although it was the first time he had found himself in such a situation. Even as a teenager, Leo had never had unprotected sex because he knew all too well the cost of such carelessness. His half-brother’s birth to his father’s mistress had been a painful lifelong commitment for Anatole Zikos and his wife and son.
Grace emerged from the bathroom wrapped in the white towelling robe she had found hanging there. It was huge on her but she had rolled up the sleeves and wasn’t sorry to be covered to her ankles. The intimacy she had naively sought suddenly struck her as having come at too high a price and she was more self-conscious in the aftermath than she had been beforehand.
‘I thought you’d be hungry,’ Leo remarked with a casual movement of his hand pointing out the catering trolley that had appeared. ‘I don’t know what you like so I ordered a selection.’
‘You have someone in a kitchen cooking for you at four in the morning?’ Grace exclaimed in astonishment while being grateful for the distraction provided by the food. Wandering barefoot over to the trolley, she lifted the covers to inspect the mouth-watering options on offer. Her tummy gave a hungry growl, hopefully concealed by the clatter of the coffee jug lid she lifted and dropped again. In silence she helped herself to coffee and a plate of elaborate supper bites.
It was ironic though that since meeting Leo she had never been more aware of his compelling presence than she was in that charged silence. He had changed into jeans and a blue T-shirt, his black hair tousled, shiny and damp from the shower, his lean, darkly handsome face shadowed by dark stubble. Apprehensive though she was about the risk of consequences, she had to admit that Leo still looked amazing and the epitome of every fantasy she had ever had about a man.
‘I have a doctor on call, if you want—’
‘No.’ Grace leapt straight in before he could say it because the morning-after treatment that could stop a pregnancy developing was not a choice she was willing to make. Even though a pregnancy would damage her chances of qualifying in medicine. ‘That’s not an option for me.’
‘I had to make the option available,’ Leo murmured without any perceptible reaction. ‘When are you flying home?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’ Grace sat down in an opulent armchair.
‘I will want your address and phone number. This is not a situation I would treat lightly.’ Leo served himself with coffee, betraying all the awkwardness of a male who wasn’t used to waiting on himself and who had rather expected his companion to take on the role of hostess.
Grace allowed herself to look at Leo for only the second time since she had left the bathroom. Whether she liked it or not, he had gone up in her estimation.
‘If you give me your contact details, we won’t need to discuss this any further. I only need to add the assurance that if there is any...er...development, I will provide you with my full support.’
‘Yes.’ Grace almost shrugged because she knew words were cheap. Leo was saying the right things but only he and his conscience could know how reliable he would be in such trying circumstances as those of an unplanned pregnancy. After all, her own father had talked her mother out of the termination she had decided on when she had fallen pregnant as a student. Grace’s father had promised her mother that he would marry her and help her raise their child and then he had run off with another woman and left Keira Donovan literally holding the baby. That had been in the days when being an unmarried mother had still been a real stigma and a source of family shame.
Leo settled a notepad and pen down on the table beside Grace. She printed her address and phone number and returned the pad to the table. As she did so, she yawned. ‘I’m sorry, I’m very sleepy...’
‘It’s late...go to bed,’ he murmured quietly.
Grace thought of the hassle of arriving back at the marina before dawn, finding her way back to the apartment block and then sitting in Reception until Stuart took his leave. ‘I’ll stay...at least you have a bed.’
‘A bed?’ Leo queried, recognising her exhaustion in her pale face and heavy eyes.
Grace climbed into the bed still clad in the robe.
‘I wasn’t going to touch you again,’ Leo remarked drily.
‘Obviously I’ve offended your ego and I’m sorry,’ Grace mumbled.
As she closed her eyes Leo peeled off his own clothing, although he retained his boxers and slid into the other side of the bed, dousing the lights. ‘What did you mean about having a bed?’
‘Our apartment is only one bedroom and my cousin met a man the first day,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve been sitting up in Reception most nights so that she can be with him—’
‘That’s outrageous!’ Leo cut in.
‘No, it’s not. Jenna’s family paid for her to go on holiday with her best friend.’ Briefly she explained. ‘Now that she’s met Stuart, I’m surplus to requirements.’
‘Surely her parents would be furious if they knew how she was treating you?’
‘What Jenna wants, Jenna gets,’ Grace muttered drowsily, her voice trailing down in volume. ‘It’s always been that way. She’s the daughter, the little princess...I’m the niece they took in out of the kindness of their heart.’
‘But to make such distinctions between two children in the same family!’ Leo began angrily until it dawned on him that Grace had fallen asleep.
A moment later, the echo of his own words still ringing in his ears, he realised that there were remarkable similarities between Grace’s situation with her cousin and his own non-relationship with the half-brother he hated. Yes, in his home too, the same distinction had been made in favour of the legitimate firstborn son, Leo. For the first time Leo was recognising an angle that he had never even considered before: Bastien’s side of the story. Was it really so surprising that Bastien had always seemed to seethe with resentment as a child and had matured into a fiercely competitive and aggressive male? He was sobered by the unfamiliar thoughts afflicting him, and it was a long time before Leo fell asleep.
