He raised his head. 'You're my wife, and tonight we consummate our union,' he stated in a husky growl; his black eyes, simmering with heat, burnt into hers. 'In fact you will beg me to.'
Jacy wanted to refuse him. With her arms pinned above her head, his long length half over her, she felt like some primitive sacrifice from a classic Greek legend. Except that the hard, pulsating force of h
is own arousal pressed rigidly against her hip told her Leo was as helplessly trapped, as much a slave to his passion as she was, and she was filled with a wild feminine satisfaction. Then his long fingers found the nub of her sexuality, and when he bent lower over her her lips parted provocatively. 'Make me,' she teased with an adult sensuality that she had never realised she possessed.
He reared up over her, setting her hands free to roam over the hard wall of his chest and lower to his narrow waist and the flat muscled stomach. He dragged her hands away and threw off his shorts. 'I never refuse a challenge,' he rasped, his hard-boned face taut with savage desire.
With one hand he spread her golden hair out over the white satin pillow. 'When I saw you at that party, I knew, I knew you would be mine again,' he groaned as his mouth covered hers in a long, drugging, passionate kiss, while all the time his other hand worked an erotic, sensuous magic on her tender flesh.
The blood raced through her veins like quicksilver, her breath strangled gasps between a moan or a whimper of ecstasy. The musky male scent of him filled her nostrils. She wanted him! Her small hand stroked down his stomach to his belly, desperate to touch him, but he caught her hand in his and placed it at her side.
'Not yet, Jacy! Tell me what you want.' His teeth bit on her tight, aching nipple, first one and then the other, and then in a soothing gesture he repeated the action with his tongue. 'What do you like?' he grated. 'Is it this?' And his mouth suckled her breast. 'Or perhaps this?' His fingers teased the hot, fluid centre of her.
Jacy cried out her need, her hand clawing around his waist and lower over his firm buttocks, urging him towards the ultimate act of possession. 'Yes, yes, please...' she begged, her body arched like a bow string, and with a muffled roar of masculine triumph Leo reared up and, sweeping her legs wide, lifted her up from the bed to accept his awesome male power. His mouth met hers in a frenzied all-consuming kiss as their two bodies locked into a rhythm uniquely their own.
Jacy woke up completely disorientated; her head felt fuzzy, and a great weight seemed to have settled over her waist. Her stomach churned and she wriggled, her bottom coming into contact with hard naked flesh. She heard a grunt and the events of last night came flooding back in sharp etched detail.
She stifled her own moan, not wanting to wake the sleeping Leo, and carefully moved towards the edge of the bed. Last night had been an education in the pleasures of the flesh; she would never forget it as long as she lived. How had she ever fooled herself into believing she could resist Leo? The question tormented her. He had taught her in the long hours of the night more about her own sexuality, her own wanton desires, until she had burnt in the fiery furnace of her own voracious appetite, avidly taking all he had to give and then greedily reciprocating in kind, until finally she had fallen asleep in his arms, satiated to the point of exhaustion.
She turned her head to look at him. His eyes were closed in sleep, his long, dark lashes curled over his hard cheekbones, his hair short, damp, ruffled curls on his broad brow. He looked younger and somehow defenceless. It was odd: they had been lovers years ago and again weeks ago, she was carrying his child, and yet this was the first time she had ever actually slept the night with him.
Her heart squeezed in her breast. 'My husband...' It was the first time she had said the word, and she lifted her hand to touch his face tenderly, then dropped it again. She swallowed hard as she thought about all the other women he must have spent the night with over the years. Simply because he had married her, it didn't make their relationship any different. A deep sadness welled up inside her, and with it the recognition she had tried to deny for years. She loved this man... always had... and probably always would... Fool that she was...
Her stomach churned, reminding her of her other foolishness, and, scrambling off the edge of the bed, she prepared to dash to the bathroom, but a large hand caught her wrist and forcefully dragged her back.
'No. Let go...' she cried, as she fell backwards on to the bed.
'No way. No woman cuts and runs on me,' Leo grunted angrily. 'Certainly not my wife.'
'You don't understand,' she tried to explain, her feet searching for and finding the floor, and with an almighty tug she was free and running for the bathroom, a hand over her mouth.
'Oh, God forgive me!' Leo leapt stark naked out of bed and caught her as she shot into the bathroom. With a strong arm protectively around her shoulder, his other around her stomach, he carefully held her while she was violently sick in the toilet bowl.
Jacy was utterly mortified, but too weak to object, as an oddly gentle Leo wrapped a large white fluffy towel around her naked body like a cocoon and sat her down on the bathroom stool. She watched fascinated as, totally unconscious of his own magnificent nudity, he put the plug in the large circular bath and turned on the taps. Then, rinsing a face cloth at the vanity basin, he came over and knelt in front of her. Taking her chin in his hand, he tenderly bathed her ashen face, talking all the time.
'I'm sorry, Jacy, truly I am. I forgot the baby; I never realised. I thought you were running... Hell, I don't know what I thought. I was just being my usual arrogant self and determined to keep you in my bed, until I said different.'
'It's all right,' she murmured, finally lifting her eyes to his face, and she was stunned to see the deep remorse in his dark brown eyes.
'Is it always like this?'
'Most mornings.'
'And I did this to you. You must hate me.' Straightening to his full height, he ran a tired hand through his rumpled hair. 'At this minute I don't much like myself,' he muttered.
For the next half-hour Jacy was treated to so much tender, loving care that she could hardly believe it. Leo insisted on helping her into the bath; he washed her hair with as much care as a mother would give a baby. He left her for a few minutes and she heard him giving staccato orders on the telephone. Then he was back and lifting her from the bath and, carefully wrapping her in another huge bath towel, he gently patted her dry, before carrying her back into the bedroom and tucking her tenderly back into the bed.
'Stay there and don't move.' He straightened, an impatient grimace twisting his hard mouth. 'Where the hell is the maid? I've already ordered the....tea and dry toast, isn't it...? I seem to remember the twins telling me.' He walked towards the door. 'I thought they exaggerated your sickness; now I know different. I'll see what the delay is.'
'Leo...' She said his name huskily. 'Yes?' He hesitated, a hand on the door.
Jacy started to smile, her honey-coloured eyes tracing over his magnificent body. 'Haven't you forgotten something?'
'What? Tell me.' His brown eyes, worried and flustered, searched her lovely face. 'Anything you want you can have.'
'Well, far be it from me to give you orders, Leo, but I think as your wife I would prefer you not to walk out of the door stark naked. I wouldn't want you frightening the staff.' And she burst out laughing as probably for the first time in his life the great Leo Kozakis blushed scarlet. Her laughter turned to a roar as she realised the blush wasn't confined to his face but suffused his whole body.
'Oh, hell.' He dashed across the room and into the bathroom, to reappear a second later in a short navy towelling robe. 'You could have mentioned it sooner, Jacy,' he opined, crossing to the bedside.