His lashes swept up and he stretched slowly and languorously, long, taut muscles defined like ropes below his smooth brown skin. ‘Kalimera, yineka mou.’
Tabby arched a brow. ‘Which means...?’
‘Good morning, wife of mine,’ Acheron translated with rich amusement lightening his dark eyes.
‘I’m not yours,’ Tabby hissed back faster than a striking rattler.
A lean brown hand lifted and wound slowly and carefully into the tumbled fall of her blonde hair, his glittering dark golden eyes hot as boiling honey on her skin. ‘How else would you describe yourself? You married me and then you accepted my body into yours. Don’t you appreciate that that means that we legally consummated our union?’
Seized by chagrin and confusion, Tabby stiffened. ‘I...I...’
He covered her mouth with his, lingering to nibble teasingly at her full lower lip before moving on to taste her with explosive eroticism. A chemical reaction took place inside her, her body jerking in response while within seconds a giant mushroom of heated hunger and longing surged up inside her, blowing her best intentions to hell. Helpless in the grip of that sensual offensive, she kissed him back and his tongue drove deep between her lips with a raw sexual charge that roared through her like a rocket attack.
‘Ash?’ she mumbled when he freed her long enough to breathe again.
He stared down at her with lancing impatience, every line of him rigid with tension. ‘To hell with your rules,’ he growled in a tone of decision, his broad chest vibrating against her swollen breasts. ‘I only play by my own.’
Those words were still ringing in her ears when he slid his hands underneath her and lifted her slowly onto her side. ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.
‘I’m making what we both need possible,’ Acheron rasped in her ear, his warm breath fanning her neck as he buried his mouth in the sensitive slope between neck and shoulder while his hands slid up from her waist to cup her achingly tender breasts. ‘As you’re in no condition to run away, shout loud if you want to say no.’
In stark disconcertion her violet eyes opened to their fullest extent and locked onto the sofa he had occupied the night before. She had invited him into the bed in the first place. Had he assumed her body was included in the offer? Or was he just as entrapped as she was by the chemistry between them? Naturally that latter interpretation pleased her more but, in the midst of her pondering, long fingers plucked at the straining peaks of her breasts and actual thought became too much of a challenge.
Acheron tasted the soft white skin of her throat and the sweet scent of her enclosed him, heightening his arousal to an almost unbearable extent. In need of release he pressed his throbbing erection against her bottom, and she gasped and leant back into him while he lifted her nightdress to caress the swollen bounty of her small, taut breasts, paying special attention to her plump pink nipples. ‘I love your breasts,’ he told her thickly. ‘They fit perfectly into my hands, moli mou.’
Every tiny muscle straining as she trembled, Tabby looked down at the fingers, so dark against her paler skin, expertly caressing her. Sharp biting arrows of need were spearing down between her legs where her indescribably sensitive flesh was tingling. She shifted and a faint sound of discomfort was wrenched from her as she accidentally moved her ankle.
‘Lie still,’ Acheron urged. ‘You don’t need to do anything. Let me do all the work.’
Her desire was already so strong that she wanted to scream, wanted to tell him what to do and to do it quickly. The shock of the thought and a vision of his reaction cooled her teeming thoughts. But she hadn’t known, hadn’t ever dreamt that a kiss and a little intimate touching could send her temperature shooting from zero to overload and she knew that she was finally understanding the very basic reason why he had become her first lover. He burned her up like a lightning strike, awakened a craving that overwhelmed her defences.
His hand shimmied down over her thigh, flirting, teasing more intimate areas without delivering on the promise. She ached, she actually ached deep down inside where she felt hollow and desperate, her entire being locked to the playful passage of that provocative hand. Fingertips traced her hidden core, stroking nerve endings that were impossibly delicate. She dragged in a sustaining breath while he nibbled an enervating path down the side of her extended throat. ‘In a minute I’m going to kill you,’ she swore shakily.
‘No, you’re going to ask me to do it again.’
‘You really don’t suffer from low self-esteem,’ she noted even more unevenly, her breath catching in her convulsing throat as a fingertip brushed her clitoris, and flame leapt through her entire core.
‘Not between the sheets...no,’ Acheron agreed silkily.
‘You’ve been told you’re wonderful?’
‘Many times. I’m filthy rich. Telling me I’m rubbish in bed—even if it’s true—wouldn’t be profitable,’ he advanced with cynical cool.
Consternation seized Tabby. ‘That’s awful—’
‘Awful,’ he mimicked, stroking the most sensitive spot on her whole body so that she jackknifed back against him with a startled yelp.
‘I don’t want your money,’ Tabby exclaimed helplessly. ‘I just want your body!’
A stark little silence fell, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut in horror. I didn’t say that, I couldn’t possibly have said that!
‘I’ve got no objections to that goal,’ Acheron husked, biting at her ear lobe with erotic intent, ostensibly undeterred by her claim. ‘It’s earthy and honest...why not?’
He touched her again and her mortification drowned in a sea of shivering response. She lay back against him, tiny muscl
es twitching, soothed by the heat and strength of him even as that amplified physical contact heightened her awareness. With immense delicacy he stroked the seam of her femininity and then slid inside where she was warm and wet and, oh, so needy. She quivered, pitched straight to a high of longing that she couldn’t quell or even control. He sank a finger inside her, and she jerked and gasped as he plunged slowly in and out, raising her temperature to boiling point, making her squirm and shift, forgetting even the twinges of pain in her ankle.
‘Hot, tight, ready,’ Acheron growled hungrily in her ear as she arched back into his lean, hard body, instinctively seeking the fulfilment that only he could give while he angled away from her to don a condom. ‘I’ve been fantasising about this for days.’