Читать книгу Greek Bachelors: In Need Of A Wife - Линн Грэхем, Julia James - Страница 12
ОглавлениеNIK STALKED FORWARD with slow predatory grace, yet for all that there was barely a coherent thought in his handsome dark head. There was no reason, only reaction, no motive other than a desire that gripped him tighter than any vice, in fact a desire so powerful it made him throb and ache.
He reached for Betsy, tugging her arms round his neck, clamping her slim body close, sealing those soft curves to his with a raw exhalation of relief he could not suppress. Backing her to a wall, he raised her high to seize her mouth and claim it, opening his mouth over hers, using pressure to force an entrance and then delving deep with a hungry, devouring passion that stole the breath from her lungs. He tasted of whisky and spice and Betsy drank him in like an addictive drug, head spinning on an intoxicated high. He kissed her as if his life and hers depended on it and his raw urgency fired her up even more, her head falling back to allow him greater access.
Betsy whimpered beneath his lips, holding herself stiff while she fought a rearguard action in the back of her mind in which a voice was screaming that she didn’t want to do what she was doing. Unfortunately, she very much did want to do it at that moment when only passion ruled and reason couldn’t get a look-in. She was no victim either. Her tongue tangled with his and teased back, her small hands kneading his strong arms, rejoicing in the strength of him but frustrated by the barrier of his clothing.
Nik curved his hands to her bottom below her skirt, discovering to his satisfaction that her love of skimpy underthings still reigned supreme, and with one violent wrench the lacy knickers were torn away. Betsy gasped in shock.
‘You want me,’ Nik husked in hoarse excuse against her swollen mouth, his warm breath fanning her skin.
Oh, how she had wanted, night after night, day after day, craving what she had lost, missing the passion and the closeness and the intimacy that had once been so much a part of her life while wondering if she would ever trust anyone enough to let them touch her again. Every screaming skin cell was conscious of the proximity of Nik’s hand to the hottest, neediest place in her body and she couldn’t vocalise, couldn’t think of anything but the deep-down, all-encompassing hunger for his touch.
Bracing her to the wall, he thrust her sweater out of his path with an impatient hand to enable him to close his mouth hungrily round a plump pink nipple while his palm cupped the firm pouting curve. Betsy moaned, eyes tight shut, sensation darting down to the hot, liquid heart of her. A wild pulse of need was mounting there while he teased that tender swollen tip with the edges of his teeth and his tongue. Clinging to his shoulders, she spread her thighs and clamped them to his waist. Finally she could feel him even through his clothing, learn the hard, urgent thrust of his erection as he ground his hips into the apex of her slender thighs, provoking an impatient cry from her lips. Arching her pelvis into him, she shuddered and moaned.
They were acting like horny teenagers, she registered suddenly, in a short-lived burst of mental clarity and embarrassment. This is not me, this is not me. And it was her last chance to shout stop and her lips actually parted and then he found her with his hand, a long, knowing finger sliding into the hot, wet sheath of her body. In reaction, an explosion of fiery heat shot through her and she jerked against him, overwhelmingly eager for his touch, for anything that would assuage the intolerable scream of need building up so fast inside her that she could not contain it.
Nik struggled to support her at the same time as he unfastened his trousers. Betsy emitted a breathy moan when she felt him push against her. She was on a high of uncontrollable excitement, her hands biting into his shoulders, urging him on. He aligned their bodies, spreading her open before bringing her down on him. He sank into her slowly, stretching the sensitive tissue with his length and girth to the burning edge of pain. But it was so much a pleasurable pain that she almost wept at the thrill of his invasion because for the first time in many months she felt like a living, breathing woman again.
‘Nik...?’ she whispered shakily.
‘No talk, hara mou,’ he gritted, tilting her back at an angle, using the wall to partially support her as he slammed back into her again with sensual, dominant force. ‘Thee mou, what you do to me! Don’t tell me to stop!’
At that moment Betsy wasn’t capable of such a feat. She was already at fever pitch. An agony of desire and helpless need controlled her. Gripping her slender thighs, ebony-lashed green eyes blazing with emerald fire, Nik surged and retreated, keeping up the erotic pace with perfect timing. Her excitement rose with every driving thrust, pushing her higher and higher until finally she reached the crest and it shattered her, making her writhe and sob and cry out.
‘That was spectacular...’ Nik breathed raggedly as he lowered Betsy’s legs slowly back to the floor. She was weak, dizzy, unsteady on her feet, and even he was trembling. What had he done? Diavelos, what had he done? Yet in spite of that rational voice inside his head, Nik shed his jacket, yanked free his tie, contriving both instinctive actions without once letting go of Betsy. He tugged her by the wrist across the floor to the rug by the dying fire and drew her down on it to face him on her knees. He laced both hands into her tumbled hair, palms framing her cheekbones, and kissed her again, sliding his tongue between her lips, skating it over the sensitive roof of her mouth until she quivered and her hands curved over his arms again to support herself.
She couldn’t think, could barely breathe and could hardly believe that that single kiss had sent the heat surging again like a gushing river of liquid fire in her belly. Satiation was washed away by a renewed tingling and prickling of potent awareness that covered her entire skin surface with heat. He pulled her down, rearranging her legs to cradle him, pinning her beneath the weight and bulk of his lean, muscular body.
‘I’m not done yet, hara mou,’ he confessed thickly, luxuriant black lashes low over scorching emerald eyes, lean, strong face taut, cheekbones flushed.
Her hand rose of its own volition and she ran her fingertips along the mobile line of his often hard-set mouth. It had a softer, more flexible cast now. She thought of him bringing Gizmo home and she gazed up at him, curiously at peace with what had happened, her heart full to overflowing. After all, she never had been able to second-guess Nik’s next move and she guessed she never would have that power because he was very much a law unto himself.
He shifted against her, lithe and dynamic as a jungle cat, and she felt him hard and ready again against her stomach. ‘Don’t ask me to stop,’ he groaned.
‘Take off your shirt,’ she whispered, amazingly relaxed in his arms, marvelling at how right it felt to be there again although even in that instant, in a part of her brain, she wouldn’t acknowledge she knew she would never be able to justify what she had done.
He levered back from her and hauled roughly at the garment. A couple of buttons went flying and a long, brown, mouth-watering wedge of a six-pack male torso appeared between the parted edges. Her mouth ran dry, tiny little slivers of excitement sparking again. She arched up against him, revelling in the skin-to-skin contact she had never thought she would feel again with him. With a hungry sound in the back of his throat he kissed her again, sliding between her slender thighs, hitching her skirt with impatient hands.
‘This time...slow,’ he framed in raw promise.
‘Am I the hare or the tortoise?’ she teased.
‘Something about you turns me into the hare every time.’
Betsy laughed. ‘Is this us again?’ she mumbled wonderingly.
‘This is now, only now,’ Nik contradicted with innate precision, covering her mouth again with his to silence her and stop the questions and then lingering to savour her.
He sank into her again as slowly as he had promised. The taste of him was still on her lips and she was achingly sensitive to his every movement. A long, breathy sigh was extracted from her.
‘Too much?’ he prompted, staring down at her.
‘Not enough,’ she said daringly. ‘I’m not made of glass... I won’t break!’
Her heart and her body jumped in concert when he twisted his lithe hips and added a more dominant flavour to his possession, sensation winging through her in slow, delicious waves. She closed her eyes to contain her feelings, the excitement catching at her again and flaring bright as a falling star, making every nerve ending strain in longing for the ultimate peak. He quickened his pace and delicious friction intensified the electrifying pleasure. She moaned and her voice rose against her volition into a cry of shocked release, her whole body shaking with the soul-deep force of it as he emitted a raw groan of pleasure.
Nik eased back from her, righting his clothing, reaching down to scoop her up into his arms.
‘What are you doing?’ she framed limply, eyes flying open.
‘Taking you to bed, where we should have gone in the first place,’ Nik informed her, striding across the hall towards the heavily carved staircase.
‘What we did was more exciting,’ Betsy mumbled, thinking of how very long it had been since they had done anything this instantaneous or uninhibited. For the first time she recognised how much her campaign to fall pregnant had cost them in terms of intimacy. Nothing had been the same once that process had started.
Nik carried her into the room they had once shared and froze by the side of the bed, scanning the unfamiliar surroundings. The décor had changed and even the furniture was new. His mouth quirked. The reality jolted him, pushing him in the direction of thoughts he was determined not to think just then. He settled her down on the wide, low bed and undressed her with cool efficiency, tugging off the sweater, unzipping her skirt and slipping off her shoes before pulling the duvet over her.
‘I need a shower,’ he admitted. ‘Is there still one in the bathroom? Or have you got rid of that as well?’
Betsy almost laughed. ‘Of course the shower’s still in there.’
She lay watching him strip, a sight she had never thought to see again, and the experience felt utterly unreal. He strode naked into the bathroom, yet she had recognised his unease with his surroundings. He didn’t like change; he never had. The new colour scheme and furniture had made him tense and uncomfortable. Well, what had he expected? That she would continue to live with the bed they had once shared, allowing her home to inflict constant wounding with memories of what they had once shared together and lost? No, at least Belle had helped Betsy to make that much of a fresh start.
Nik emerged from the bathroom still towelling dry his black hair. She was startled to notice that he was still fully aroused. Nik had assumed that Betsy would fall asleep, but she was awake, wide, evocative azure eyes pinned to him. She was snuggled down under the duvet, hair as pale as a young child’s trailing across the pillow in tousled disarray. Would he simply have got dressed and left had she been conveniently asleep? He honestly didn’t know the answer to that question. What he did know as he looked at her was that he wasn’t yet ready to leave, and without hesitation he tossed back the duvet and climbed in beside her.
‘It’s the middle of the day,’ she reminded him, colour heating her face.
‘Are you only remembering that now?’ Nik traded sardonically, and she might have snapped back had he not closed his arms round her and tugged her reassuringly close. ‘What does it matter what time it is?’
‘It doesn’t,’ she conceded and then said in a different tone altogether, ‘Nik?’
‘Shush,’ he breathed, fearful of what she might say, curving her up against his still taut and aroused length with an exhilarating sense of extraordinarily intense satisfaction.
‘You’re still—’ she began.
‘I am,’ Nik agreed, draping her tiny body over top of him with care. ‘Do you think you could do anything about that?’
‘You’re not joking, are you?’ Betsy knew he wasn’t joking because she could feel him hard as an iron bar beneath her.
‘Evidently you make me insatiable, hara mou.’
Her palms curved to his broad shoulders. Nik had enormous reserves of charm when he chose to utilise them but it was a very long time since he had bothered to show her that side of him. As a result, the slashing charismatic smile that lit up his lean dark features literally mesmerised her, leaving her defenceless. He lifted his head and tasted her parted lips with an intensity that set up a chain reaction of response that slivered through her bloodstream and sprang a sneak attack on her. He tasted so good and his lean hands were stroking up and down her slender spine, finding spots that felt erogenous even though she knew they were not. Even sealed to the heat and hard muscularity of him, she shivered, her heart hammering again, astounded by events and yet covertly flattered by his unquenchable hunger for her.
‘One more time and then you can sleep,’ Nik husked, rolling her back against the pillows and leaning over her, his devastatingly dark and masculine attraction enhanced by the shadow of stubble beginning to roughen his lower cheekbones and jawline.
‘Time off for good behaviour?’ she teased.
Claiming her mouth hungrily again in answer, he caught a swollen nipple between finger and thumb and rubbed the tender tip. A flame darted anew through her slender length and centred at her core, renewing the throb of awareness she had believed quenched. ‘You could always make me want you,’ she breathed in a helpless admission.
‘Once you only wanted me when it was the right day on your temperature chart,’ Nik reminded her with more than a hint of ice in his dark deep voice.
Something shrivelled and died inside Betsy and she would have done anything not to have roused that memory, which tore an ugly hole in the cocoon of togetherness she had spun for them in her mind. She pressed up against him, flattening her breasts to his broad, hair-roughened chest, and nipped at his full lower lip in reproof. ‘I don’t have a chart any more—’
‘Siopi...quiet,’ he urged and kissed her until she couldn’t remember what they had been talking about and, furthermore, no longer cared.
He tasted wonderful. He even smelled wonderful, the evocative scent that was uniquely him flaring her nostrils, firing her senses with a tormenting familiarity that made her feel ridiculously safe. Expert fingers traced her breasts and skimmed up the inside of her thigh, teasing, taunting until the torment made her squirm and twist and whimper in frustration, wanting, by then needing so much more. Only when the hunger he had skilfully awakened rose to an unbearable intensity did he shift over her, sliding into the honeyed welcome of her body with an ease and dexterity that made her cry out and arch her spine. And from that point on, once an answering passion had fully seized her, the tenor of his approach changed and his shallow thrusts became deep and strong and she could feel what control she retained slipping away as the excitement built and built until finally she came, screaming his name, and almost instantly fell into the deep sleep of complete exhaustion.
Darkness had fallen beyond the windows when a slight sound awakened Betsy. She lifted her head from the pillow and everything came flooding back with much the same effect as having a bucket of cold water thrown over her and she sat up with an abrupt start of energy. Nik was engaged in tying his tie in front of the cheval mirror in the corner and hot, mortified colour enveloped her from top to toe. She hugged the sheet, afraid to think, shrinking from the prospect of passing judgement on herself.
‘You’re leaving?’ she whispered as she switched on the bedside lamp.
Nik swung round, eyes light and glittering in the shadows, reticence etched in every angle of his lean, strong face. ‘I should’ve gone hours ago—’
‘Were you planning to walk out without speaking to me first?’ Betsy pressed tightly because her throat was closing over. She edged the sheet as high as she could, so tense that her muscles ached from the strain.
‘That might have been easier for both of us,’ Nik quipped, striding to the foot of the bed to gaze down at her from his considerable height.
‘How so?’
‘I’ve heard that this...’ he shifted a fluid brown hand in a gesture that encompassed both her and the bed ‘...is quite common for couples going through a divorce.’
Betsy felt as if he had punched her in the stomach and she lost colour, her skin pulling taut across her fragile bone structure. ‘Really?’ she queried with no expression at all.
‘Yes, really,’ Nik fielded drily. ‘It happens but it doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t change anything.’
For the very first time in her life, Betsy wanted another human being lying stone dead at her feet. But even then she wouldn’t forgive Nik, she reckoned wildly, plunged as she was into an abyss of mortification and pain and, worst of all, the dreadful conviction that it was her mistake that had unleashed such a humiliation on her.
‘Obviously, we’re still getting a divorce,’ Nik assured her, underlining the point quite unnecessarily as though he feared that she might be too stupid to get that message.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, knowing that even the sight of him falling down dead at her feet wouldn’t satisfy her sufficiently. Hatred now leapt through her as fierily as the passion that had betrayed her. In spite of everything he had done to her, she had missed him, missed sex, and she was paying the price for her wretchedly poor judgement now.
‘We both need to move on,’ Nik breathed curtly.
‘Until now I never appreciated what a taste you have for platitudes,’ Betsy responded grittily. ‘You have patronised me, insulted me and used me. Now I know what it feels like to be a booty call.’
Nik ground his teeth together. He had said what he had to say. He was exceptionally intelligent and he knew the score, even if calling it was insensitive. They had both made a mistake and it was his place to spell that out. He wasn’t built to closely connect with another human being. After the abusive childhood he had endured, how could he possibly be? There was a lack in him, not in her, and he could never give her what she wanted and deserved.
‘I’ll let you keep the house as well,’ he told her flatly.
‘It’s good to know I profited from prostituting myself,’ Betsy hurled back at him shakily, tears burning the backs of her eyes like acid. ‘For goodness’ sake, go!’
And without fanfare that was exactly what Nik did. The door snapped shut in his wake but not before Gizmo had inserted himself through the gap and hurtled towards his only recently rediscovered mistress.
‘Oh, Gizmo...’ she gasped, her voice catching on a sob as she hugged the shaggy little dog to her chest.
Nik had just walked out on her again. His driver would have sat outside waiting for him all these hours. That wouldn’t bother Nik and he wouldn’t apologise for his thoughtlessness either. The only child of a fabulously wealthy Greek heiress, Nik was accustomed to staff who never questioned or complained and he paid highly for a very high standard of service. A wife with a similar attitude would have suited him so much better than Betsy ever had. She had wanted too much from him and had fought her own corner too hard while demanding an independence of thought and action that had frequently infuriated him. But then bearing in mind his behaviour on their first catastrophic date, she really couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned that nothing would be plain sailing with Nik Christakis at the helm...
And because the far distant past was less threatening than the turmoil of the present, she let her mind drift back to that evening and a wry smile formed on her lips. Nik had taken her to a glitzy party, where her little black dress unembellished by jewellery or a designer bag or shoes had failed to cut the mustard. Ten minutes after their arrival, Nik had excused himself and abandoned her, leaving her alone in a sea of strangers to be hit on by strange men and visually crucified by much-better-dressed women. After an hour and a half during which she had failed to find him she had angrily embarked on the long journey home by bus and train. He had turned up on her doorstep after midnight to furiously demand to know why she had walked out on him. And they had had their first row, a flaming no-holds-barred argument where he insisted he had only left her alone for about fifteen minutes.
‘You were away well over an hour... You treated me like dirt. I should’ve known what kind of treatment I was in for when you picked me up and then spent the entire drive to the party talking to someone on your phone!’
He had forgotten the time; she knew that. It was also possible that he had even forgotten he had brought Betsy to the party in the first place because an old friend had offered him a deal and business always took precedence with Nik. He had sent her flowers every day for a week afterwards and had then visited the bistro for coffee every day the following week.
‘You’re acting like a stalker,’ she had warned him.
‘Give me one more chance. I’ll treat you like a queen,’ Nik had promised.
‘You know, Mr Christakis doesn’t usually go to so much trouble with women,’ one of his bodyguards had told her chattily. ‘You must be special.’
And when she had returned with Nik’s coffee and those brilliant green eyes clung to her, she had realised that he did make her feel special. Everyone made mistakes, she had thought forgivingly; she would give him the chance to prove that he could act differently. And for a very long time afterwards she had not regretted that decision because Nik, she now recognised, had been on his very best behaviour. She even remembered the day he had asked her how she felt about having children. She couldn’t remember how the dialogue had progressed in that direction but with hindsight suspected that he had guided it there.
‘I don’t want children!’ she had proclaimed, wincing at the very idea. ‘I spent my teenage years in foster homes and I spent a lot of time helping to look after the younger ones and the babies. Kids are so much work and such a tie. I don’t think I’ll ever want any.’
But Betsy had discovered the hard way that Mother Nature had amazing ways of working her wiles to persuade a woman that what she wanted most in the world was a little baby. When she’d first married Nik she had been Cinderella and he had been Prince Charming. He had given her so much in terms of material things that she had somehow never dared to complain that he was rarely at home and was invariably preoccupied with business even when he was. He had missed her birthday and their first anniversary and slowly but surely she had become incredibly lonely and had begun to crave what she had never dreamt she would crave—a baby to love and keep her company.
In the grip of that desire she had made stupid optimistic assumptions, believing that Nik would spend more time at home if they had a child, that a child to share would bring them closer, hopefully breaking through his reserve as she had already discovered she could not.
She had made so many mistakes with Nik, Betsy acknowledged wretchedly, dabbing her damp cheeks dry on the sheet, soothing Gizmo when he whined and pushed his muzzle under her hand. But Nik had made just as many mistakes with her. Getting back into bed with him again, however, had to qualify as her crowning act of stupidity. Her face burned hot while her body ached in silent evidence of her weakness. Afterwards, Nik had been so cold, so sure that their renewed intimacy meant nothing. Why? Because it had meant nothing to him and he had been appalled by the idea that she might think otherwise.
Once again, Nik had taught her a hard lesson. A woman worthy of being treated like a queen had to maintain standards to exercise that power over a man. When she abandoned those standards, she was infinitely more likely to be treated like a booty call.
