‘I don’t want to go to bed, Dimitri.’
‘I don’t want this, Anna.’
‘Do you want me to tell you what you’re feeling? What your body is saying to me? Is it my turn, Dimitri?’
The sense of her own arousal gave a strength to her words that surprised her. She allowed it to fill her, to empower her. He shook his head again, but this time he didn’t speak. She closed the distance between them. She felt rightness settle around her, making her movements sure.
She started with his tie, the crack of the silk as she snapped it away from his neck and threw it to the ground the only sound accompanying their harsh breaths. She pushed the black silk jacket from his shoulders, revelling in the feel of the superfine white shirt covering his powerful chest, the muscles there a solid wall.
She slid buttons through holes all the way down, slipping aside the shirt and glorying in the feel of his flesh beneath her palms. Was this how he had felt on their wedding night? Powerful and conquering? How had she gone all these years without this feeling? How had she allowed herself to become so afraid of her own desires?
Her hands went to the buckle on his trousers and were immediately halted by Dimitri’s.
‘Be careful, monadiki mou. Once you start this...’
‘I have no intention of stopping,’ she whispered into his ear, pressing her chest against his. She pulled back and barely had the chance to prepare herself for the bruising kiss that crashed down on her lips.
Their tongues warred for dominance, for control, but this time Anna was determined not to back down. Not to give over control to Dimitri. She pushed him back against the stone balcony, lifting the silk skirts of her dress over one thigh as she anchored her knee around his hip, pressing her core, the heart of her, against him, relishing in the hard length of his arousal. She shifted, moving their centres until she could almost feel him, through his trousers, through the silk of her dress, just where she wanted him, needed him, to be.
Dimitri’s guttural curse escaped their kiss and his hands came around the curves of her hips, dragging her even further against him. Their groans mingled, just before he pulled away.
‘You’re killing me, Anna.’ His dark eyes gleamed in the night. ‘You’re tearing me apart.’
Before Anna could say that he was putting her together again, that he was healing over the cracks in her heart, he took the silk straps of her dress and tore the material from her body, exposing sensitive flesh to the cool night air.
Her bare breasts heaved against his chest, his hand diving to the thin scraps of lace of her panties, his expert fingers finding the heat of her, pleasuring her, torturing her as she shifted in his embrace. It was as if he was trying to wring those same emotions from her with his seduction, tearing at her very being. His other hand had come down on the top of her thigh, anchoring it beside him, refusing to let her retreat, keeping her open to him, to his expert manipulation of her body.
It was an exquisite torture, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to give him this, for her, for him, for them. She needed to.
She let go of the grip she had on his neck with one hand, trailing her fingers down his chest, catching on the dusting of dark swirls covering his torso, letting it guide her hand further down to beneath his trousers. She relished the feel of his hardened length, wrapping her hands around the base of him, glorying in the flare she saw in his eyes, the moment of indecision she read there. Her breath caught in her throat while she waited. Would he push her away? Would he allow her to pleasure him?
The back of Anna’s hand brushed against the back of his, and their eyes locked in an instant. She told herself not to look away, refusing to close her eyes against the pleasure she was giving him as she stroked up and down, the way his bronze eyes darkened, the way a deep flush rose to his cheeks. Briefly she wondered what it was that Dimitri saw, how she looked, but as his long, lean finger plunged deep into her a gasp fell from her lips and she felt his satisfaction vibrate from his very soul. He thought he’d won this game of wills, this wicked contest of seduction. But he had severely underestimated her.
Using his distraction against him, she pulled away and, bending before him, still clad in her high heels and thong, she took him into her mouth. She let a smile play at her lips as curses littered the air, some in English, some in Greek... She didn’t care. She felt empowered by his reaction. From the periphery, she could see his hands gripping the stone balcony, she could feel how his powerful, muscular thighs trembled, his hips beginning to shift beneath her.
‘Anna...’ His voice was practically a growl.
Reluctantly she let him go, but that didn’t mean she was ready to let him take the lead. She drew herself up the length of his body slowly, stepping out of the reach of his arms. She watched as he kicked his trousers away from his legs, stepping out of them, fully naked. She took him in, powerful, proud, unashamed of his nakedness beneath the stars, open to the elements. With any other man, she imagined it would make them vulnerable, but with Dimitri it made him glorious.
‘What game are you playing?’ he demanded.
‘No game. No playing. This is real and this is me, and what I want,’ she said, knowing the words to be truer than any others she’d spoken to him.
A rush of emotion hit Dimitri’s chest hard. In all the different moments that he’d seen her, he’d never seen Anna like this. The closest to it was the night that they had spent together three years before, the night they’d conceived their child. But here, Anna was incredible. The woman that would have hidden from him, would have needed him to draw her out of herself, to put words to the desire and attraction she felt, was now owning it, not asking for something she was afraid of, but demanding it for herself.
His own nakedness didn’t shame him, it never had, and now he wanted Anna’s. And if Anna thought that her lacy thong protected her in some way...she was wrong. An errant thought ran into his mind, the same way it had done on their wedding day... Who would protect her from him?
She took a step back towards him, having only moments ago retreated from his reach. She took his large hand in her smaller one, flattened the fist he had unknowingly made it into and returned it once again to the centre of her chest, the flat plane in between the two perfect mounds of her breasts.
She pressed his rough palm against her smooth, silky skin and Dimitri forced his body under control. He wouldn’t allow
the shakes that had racked his body the moment her mouth had found him to happen again. The sight of her, before him, on her knees, had almost undone him.
But he could tell, now, from her eyes, from her tone, that this was something she craved—no, needed. An undercurrent of change was shifting beneath the surface of her skin, and he was drawn to it, fascinated by it and unable to take his eyes away from her.
He brought a hand up to her cheek, unable to resist the need to trace his fingers across her skin, his hand cupped her jaw, and once again he dipped the fingers of his other hand beneath her panties and into the seductive wet heat between her legs. Christe mou, she was so ready for him.
He spun her in his arms, bringing her back against his chest, her bottom cradled between his hips. His fingers stroked her, wringing cries from her mouth and tremors from her body. The heat of her body, flush with his, stoked the flames of desire that licked every inch of his skin.