Читать книгу Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 80

WHEN ALESSANDRA EMERGED from the bathroom and closed the door softly behind her, the only sound Christian could hear was his own heartbeat. Drumming. Thundering in his ears.

He’d stripped naked, shedding his clothes in front of the mirror, staring closely at his reflection.

He didn’t know what it could be but he felt different.

He looked the same. The desire he felt for his beautiful bride still burned deep inside him.

But something had changed.

Now he sat in the huge bed, leant back against the headboard, the bed sheets draped across his lap, a dim light glowing. And she was here with him, her dress removed, only a white robe covering her beautiful figure.

Slowly she stepped to him until she reached his side.

‘Take your robe off.’ He could hear the thickness in the timbre of his voice.

Her hands trembled, but a knowing smile pulled at her lips. She tugged at the sash of her robe and parted it, letting it drop to the floor.

Christian couldn’t have torn his gaze away if he’d wanted to.

He didn’t want to.

He wanted to capture this moment so he could replay it forever.

Theos but she was more beautiful than he remembered, the white of her lacy lingerie contrasting against the golden hue of her skin.

Her breasts were swollen, the bra pushing them up to display her cleavage, only just hiding the dusky nipples he remembered so well.

Sitting upright, he extended a hand to grip onto her curved hip, sliding a finger under the strap of her suspender belt.

He ran his other hand up the soft swell of her belly, only slightly thickened since he’d last seen her unclothed.

She dropped a hand onto his shoulder, a cloud of her sultry scent releasing and filling his senses. He’d never known a scent like it, so perfectly matching its owner, a sweet yet musky fragrance, with depth.

He traced his hand back down her belly and clasped hold of her other hip, tugging her to him.

Inhaling her scent deeply into his lungs, he pressed a kiss into the curve of her neck, felt her quiver.

The ache in his groin, that constant state of affairs whenever he was with her, magnified by a thousand, his entire body coming alive to her sweet touch and even sweeter taste.

Using gentle manipulation, he pulled her onto the bed facing him, so she straddled his still-covered lap.

Her eyes darkened and swirled, arousal and desire burning strongly.

The first time they’d made love he’d plunged into her without a thought. His shock at discovering she was a virgin had been masked by concern that he’d hurt her. Her breath had hitched, a tiny mew escaping her throat. He’d held her tightly, stroking her hair, her body, raining kisses over her face until he’d felt her relax, seen her pupils dilate…

She’d been so responsive to everything he’d done to her, so eager to give in return.

She’d been a revelation.

And now he got to experience and taste her all over again.

But this time there would be no pain. Only pleasure.

Wrapping an arm around her and cradling the back of her head with his other hand, he pulled her flush against him and slanted his mouth over the soft, plump lips he’d spent the past two months dreaming about.

She sighed into him and rested her hands on his shoulders, her nails digging into him as her lips parted to allow his tongue to sweep into her warmth.

He stroked her back, up and down, exploring the silky skin anew, then down her sides to the top of her stockings.

She broke the kiss, nuzzling her mouth against his jaw and down into his neck, her hair tickling him.

‘You taste divine,’ she murmured, the first words she’d uttered since she’d left the bathroom.

Her compliment made his chest heave.

He speared her hair and tugged it back gently so he could look into her eyes. ‘You are divine.’

A small, almost shy, smile spread across her face, and she leaned forward to kiss him, deeply, passionately, her hands crawling up to his scalp and holding on to it.

He found the clasp of her bra and undid it. She released her hold on him, enabling him to pull the straps down her arms and discard the bra on the floor beside him.

When they’d made love the first time, he’d been enraptured with her breasts, their size, their taste, the way his hands could cup them perfectly, everything about them. Pregnancy had swollen them. He didn’t know if it was a trick of the light but her dusky nipples seemed darker than he remembered, contrasting against the paleness of her breasts.

He was the only person in the world who knew Alessandra’s breasts were the palest part of her body.

It was because his child was growing inside her that these small, subtle changes were taking place.

Using his hands to lift her a touch, he dipped his head and captured one of those beautiful, dusky nipples in his mouth.

Alessandra moaned and ran her fingers through his hair, arching her back to thrust her chest forward and into him.

He flattened a palm against the small of her back to steady her, his free hand roaming until he found the clasp of her suspenders. Before he released it he stroked the exposed flesh above the stockings. Her skin felt better than any material ever could.

When he played with the clasp he was shocked to find himself all thumbs, the deftness he’d acquired over the years gone. It was as if he’d never tried to undo a suspender belt before.

Spearing her hair again, he kissed her, filling his senses with her sultry, sweet taste, driving all thoughts from his mind.

Frustrated at the suspender belt, he tugged at a stocking and felt the material rip in his fingers. He grabbed the material of the other and did the same, then clasped her bottom and leaned forward, using his strength to lay her flat on her back. The movement caused the bed sheet to fall from his lap, freeing his erection which brushed against her thigh, sending deep pulsations firing through his blood, his loins, everywhere.

He sat back to gaze at her, noting everything, from her short, shallow breaths to the jutting of her erect nipples.

Unable to resist, he kissed her again, hard. Alessandra’s arms looped around his neck, her legs lifting to hook around him, clasping him to her.

‘Not yet,’ he murmured, kneeling upright.

She pouted and raised herself onto her elbows. Her breaths came in shallow pants.

‘Soon,’ he promised, leaning forward to kiss her neck and push her flat again.

A sound like a purr came from her as he kissed his way down her chest and belly and slipped a hand round her back to undo the clasp at the back of her suspender belt. Discarding it, he flattened a hand over her thigh and caught the top of the ripped stocking. Slowly, he pulled it down, past her knee, over her calf and down to the delicate ankle.

‘I’ve dreamed of you doing that,’ she said, her husky voice almost breathless.

She’d dreamt of him…?

In response, he leaned down to press a kiss to her now bare foot, then followed the trail he’d just made with his hands with his tongue, darting licks and kisses all the way up to her inner thigh and up to the very heart of her. Pressing his mouth onto her knickers, he inhaled deeply, the scent of her heat almost making him dizzy with desire.

Checking himself, he gritted his teeth before gripping hold of her remaining stocking and slowly sliding it off.

Now she was naked save for her lacy knickers. He took a moment to stare at her, taking every inch of her in.

She was perfect.

She was his.

The look on her face was something to be savoured, a knowing yet shy quirk of the lips.

She levered herself up until she knelt before him, face to face.

‘My turn,’ she whispered, her eyes sparkling.

For such a slight woman she had a hidden strength, able, with a push of her hand, to shove him onto his back.

She laughed softly, taking hold of his wrists and pulling them up and over his head.

This had to count as the single most erotic moment of his life: Alessa straddling him, pinning him down, her swollen breasts brushing against his face. Every time he made to capture one in his mouth, she would move just out of reach.

Her teasing was deliberate, as was the way she straddled him, positioning herself on his erection. Every time she moved out of the reach of his mouth her crotch rubbed the length of his erection, the material of her knickers preventing any penetration.

She leaned down to kiss him on the mouth, still holding his wrists.

With a simple flick he could be free from her clasp.

Instead, he kissed her back, succumbing to the delights she wanted to bestow on him.

Her soft mouth pressed along his jaw then she released her hold on his wrists and slowly made her descent. No part of his chest was left unkissed or unstroked, his skin alive under the trail she made.

When she reached his groin she completely ignored his erection, her mouth working around it, her hands cupping his balls while her tongue darted out to taste them.

Her movements were clumsy, a sign of her inexperience, but this only added to the eroticism of the moment.

This was all for him.

Her tongue flickered onto the base of his shaft.

A powerful bolt shot through him, a groan escaping his lips.

He gripped the bed sheets in his fists and clenched his teeth even tighter, finding a spot on the ceiling to focus on.

For a moment he’d been certain he was going to come.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, stopping what she was doing to look at him, her eyes clouding with doubt.

Speech wouldn’t form. He shook his head and sat up, leaning forward to clasp her cheeks and pull her into another kiss. In a tangle of arms and legs they collapsed together, Alessandra beneath him, devouring each other with their mouths.

He tugged at her knickers, pushing them down her hips, using his thighs and legs to pull them down. When they reached her ankles she kicked them off then wrapped her legs around him, raising her bottom so her heat rubbed against his erection.

And then he was inside her, burrowed in her tight heat, the relief giddying.

The first time they’d made love he’d been blown away with how deeply he’d felt everything, every touch, every movement magnified.

This was something else completely.

Slowing their kisses, he began to move, keeping his groin ground to hers.

Her soft moans fired him, her kisses fuelled him, her roaming hands and fingers burning through his skin.

He opened his eyes to find her gazing at him in a dazed wonder.

Reaching for her hand, he brought it up to rest by the side of her head and clasped it tightly, kissing her with renewed passion as his thrusts deepened. It was as if he’d fused into one with her.

He felt rather than heard her come. Her grip around his erection thickened and tightened, her lips freezing on his, her only sound a tiny, almost breathless mew.

He was hardly aware of his own release. His senses were too full of Alessandra, watching every last moment of her climax.

Finally spent, he burrowed his face into her neck, careful not to put too much weight on her belly, and savoured the most delicious warmth he’d ever known spread through him.

The heavy weight of sleep soon came to claim him, and he shifted his weight off her. She followed his movements and settled into the crook of his arm with a contented sigh.

He awoke a few hours later. The suite was in darkness, a sliver of moonlight shining through.

Alessandra was draped over him, breathing deeply, her hair tickling his neck and chin. He smoothed it down, marvelling at its silkiness.

He tried to doze but sleep refused to return.

How could he sleep with so much racing through his mind? When there were so many emotions racing through his chest, it was a struggle to catch his breath.

The first time he’d slept with her, in her apartment in Milan… He’d struggled for thoughts and breath then too.

This was much worse.

He’d felt her getting too close in Mikolaj’s restaurant, that feeling she could see through the veneer of his skin and through to the heart of him. That feeling had been compounded after the visit to his mother’s house. He’d retreated to New York partly to talk sense into Rocco but mostly for space to compose himself in preparation for his new life.

Marriage wouldn’t change anything, he’d convinced himself. He would compartmentalise Alessandra’s presence in his life just as he did with his mother. They would live together but they wouldn’t be together.

Making love to her again… Something had come alive inside him. He’d felt it uncoiling when they’d exchanged their vows but with everything going on that day had put it to one side. Now it, whatever it was, had uncoiled and bitten him, hard enough that it felt like a physical pain.

Before he could hope to decipher it, she roused in his arms, pulling herself up enough to kiss him, deeply, passionately, awakening in an instant.

He responded as if he’d been lying there waiting for her to wake, groaning when she slid onto his already hard length.

Doing nothing but hold on to her waist to support her, he let her take the lead. The moonlight bathed her, letting him watch as she took her pleasure, watch the lips that parted, the eyes that glazed. Her soft moans deepened until she ground herself onto him. He felt her release as deeply as he felt his own, revelled in the pulsations that seemed to draw his own orgasm into unquantifiable realms.

Afterwards, when he thought she was falling back into slumber, she pressed a kiss to his chest.

‘I could get used to this,’ she said, her voice sleepy but tinged with a smile.

And tinged with something that sounded like hope.

His eyes opened with a jerk.

He remembered the look in her eyes when they’d exchanged their vows. Now he knew what it had been: hope.

Alessandra had hopes for their future as a married couple.

She was changing towards him—she had changed towards him.

And with that change came the realisation that he could forget sharing a bed with her when they both wanted it.

Unless he kept a proper distance from her, he would soon have the power to hurt her.

Carefully he disentangled himself from her arms and got out of bed.

‘Where are you going?’ she mumbled.

‘To get a drink. Go to sleep. I’ll be back in a minute.’ But he knew his words were a lie even as he spoke them.

He needed to protect her.

He needed to protect her from himself.

Alessandra slipped into her robe and headed to the bathroom where she could hear the shower running.

Her skin flushed to think of joining Christian in there, lathering his gorgeous body…

She stretched for the third time, shaking the lingering sleepiness off, and turned the door handle. It was locked.

She tried the handle again and still the door didn’t budge.

She didn’t know why—what experience did she have of men in a sensual sense?—but it surprised her that he might want his privacy whilst he showered. After the things they’d done to each other…

The flush on her skin deepened, penetrating through her flesh and down low, erotic memories of what they had done together, making her glow from the inside out.

It had been even better than she remembered. The alcohol during their first time might have been enough to loosen her inhibitions but it must have dulled her senses a fraction too.

Or maybe it was because this time there was something real between them that surpassed mere lust.

All Alessandra knew was that she wanted nothing more than to spend the day in bed with him. The only thing to spoil her memories was awakening to find his side of the bed empty.

Instead of waiting for him, she dived into the adjoining bathroom and deliberately kept the door ajar, an open invitation for him to join her.

After a good few minutes of soaping herself under the powerful walk-in shower and washing her hair, boredom kicked in.

She dried herself quickly, rubbed the towel over her hair and moisturised her face.

She made to leave the bathroom, pausing at the last moment to put her robe back on, not yet confident enough to walk around stark naked in broad daylight.

The door of the bathroom he’d been using was open. Masculine scents mingled with the steam of the shower, filling the empty bedroom.

Maybe he was ordering breakfast for them.

She wandered through to the main living area of the suite and found him at the dining table—fully dressed and working on his laptop.

He looked up and flashed a quick smile. ‘Good morning.’

She nodded slowly, caught off-guard to find him working. For surely he must be working? He hadn’t even donned casual clothes but wore a white shirt and blue pinstriped trousers.

‘Are you planning on wearing that to Marrakech?’ she asked. They were due to fly there later that afternoon for a four-day honeymoon.

An uncomfortable look spread over his face, quickly gone, but there long enough for her chest to sink down to her feet.

‘I’m afraid we will have to take our honeymoon another time,’ he said calmly, looking back at his laptop. ‘An emergency has come up.’

‘Another one?’

He threw her a smile that was clearly intended to bestow patience when all it did was make her want to throw something at him.

‘You know my job is all about finance. When financial problems hit companies, prompt action is needed.’

‘I appreciate that. What I don’t get is why it has to be you—why can’t someone else step in and act as saviour?’

‘There is no one else.’

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘What about our honeymoon and the way it’s supposed to convince the world we’re in love?’ Why did her heart clench to say that?

‘I joined the board of an Athens shipping company last month in an advisory capacity. One of my staff has been going through the accounts and has discovered a large hole in the company’s finances. Unless we plug that hole in the next two days, fifty thousand people will not receive their pay cheques. That’s fifty thousand people who will struggle to pay their bills, their mortgages, feed their children. We will go to Marrakech at a later date.’

How could she argue with that? She couldn’t, not unless she wanted to sound like the most selfish person in the world.

She eyed him coolly, trying to decide if the whiff of duplicity she detected was real or the workings of a tired, disappointed mind. Four days in Marrakech with nothing to do but laze under the sun and make love had sounded like heaven.

She didn’t dispute the crisis he’d described was real. What she did dispute was his assertion that he was the only person in the world able to resolve it.

Throwing a tight smile, determined not to show her disappointment, she said, ‘Seeing as you’re going to be busy, I’ll return to Milan. There’s a lot of stuff there I need to be getting on with.’

‘No, you will stay here in Athens with me.’

‘Are you giving me an order?’

He sighed. ‘If you return to Milan on your own, the day after our wedding, suspicions will be aroused. People will understand the postponement of a honeymoon because of a financial crisis. This is Greece; the whole country’s in crisis. They will not understand a new wife who is not at her husband’s side during it. We need to live together full-time as man and wife for a few months to keep the doubters at bay. We already agreed this.’

Alessandra’s teeth were clenched so tightly against the metaphorical kicking they’d just received that she had to fight to prise them apart.

Suspicions would be aroused?

That was one way to bring her back down to earth.

While she fought the despondency crashing through her like a wave, she fought even harder to keep her composure.

This was a timely reminder that theirs was not a real marriage. The romance of their wedding day— what Christian had done to get her brother there, the wondrousness of their love-making—all must have combined to set off some new hormones within her that made her look at Christian in a fuzzy light.

Dio, she must have been cast under a spell.

She blinked rapidly to clear the fuzzy light, wishing she could clear the churning in her belly with the same ease.

‘Okay, I’ll stay in Athens with you, but remember I’ve a shoot scheduled for next Thursday so we need to be back in Milan for that.’

He bowed his head. ‘I’m sure that won’t be a problem.’

‘Good.’ She didn’t add that should a ‘problem’ occur she would fly to Milan and do her work regardless. ‘I’m going to order some breakfast. Do you want anything?’

‘Just a pot of coffee, thank you.’

Christian watched her pick up the suite phone and place their order then turned his attention back to the screen in front of him.

His eyes wouldn’t focus.

After the incredible night they’d shared he’d been expecting much greater resistance from Alessandra about the postponed honeymoon, had braced himself for the worst.

If he hadn’t seen the flare of despondency in her eyes he would believe her understanding and calmness at the situation was genuine.

As much as it hurt him to hurt her, he knew it was for the best.

He had to put their marriage on the footing they had originally agreed.

There were women who could separate love and sex. He no longer believed Alessandra to be one of them.

The hope he’d seen in her eyes as they’d exchanged their vows and then the hope he’d heard in her voice after they’d made love…

What did he, the gutter rat from Athens, know about love?

All he knew about it was that it broke hearts and destroyed people. It had destroyed his mother and Alessandra’s father.

He wouldn’t know how to love or show love if he tried. All he knew was how to make money. A woman like Alessandra deserved so much more.

Physical distance wasn’t enough. He needed to put emotional distance between them too. Now. Before he hurt her.

If he allowed their sexual relationship to develop, her feelings would likely develop too while his…

He’d never had a proper relationship before. Never. He had no idea how long it would take for boredom to set in, when the thrill of making love to the one woman would abate and he’d be looking for a new challenge.

If her feelings grew stronger whilst his decreased, the pain it would cause her would be immense.

He had to nip it in the bud now. For both their sakes.