As if her clutching fingers reminded him he was still wearing his clothes, he muttered something and reared back, wrenching impatiently at his shirt. Buttons flew in all directions. Opening her eyes she was shocked to see the amount of angry hot furious tension clenched in the muscles in his face.
‘Why are you so angry?’ she whispered.
‘I messed up with you,’ he answered harshly. ‘I don’t mess up.’
Rolling off the bed he stood so he could rid himself of the rest of his clothes.
‘Marriage was not on my agenda, nor were children,’ he muttered, raking his trousers off his body to display the astonishing beauty of his long tanned physique presented in its fully aroused state.
Mia touched the trembling tip of her tongue to her upper lip in sheer siren hunger. ‘I have not placed marriage on your agenda, Nikos.’
‘If I’m stuck with it, then you’re stuck with it. Theos,’ he groaned, coming back down to her. ‘I’ve been aching to do this again.’
It was like being handed a gift she had not been expecting, so Mia rewarded him with a passionate kiss. He’d wanted her. He’d flown around the world and ached for her. She was so exhilarated by that confession she forgot to continue the other subject.
The marriage subject.
Instead she let him sink her down into a deep dark well shored up with pure sensation. His touch was sheer tormenting pleasure. Clever and light, so sensually expert at driving her towards that screaming-pitch peak.
She raked his back with her fingernails. He set her sobbing with his mouth on her breasts. He made her touch him. He fed her hand down the length of his long body in a stirring trail that followed the virile line of dark curls to the velvet hard shock of his erection. He taught her how to send shudders of pleasure raking through him. When he made that first silken thrust inside her she felt the leash he had placed on himself shake his entire frame. He was hot, his skin moist with sweat, his lips trembling against hers and she clung to him, clung like she was in danger of drowning if she ever let go.
Now what? Mia wondered as she lay curled on her side, watching him move about the room. Another ruthless slap down in case she got romantic ideas about his feelings? Another grim demand for marriage she neither wanted nor was about to accept?
He had already showered but had not yet bothered to dress. A small towel rested low on his waist, hiding his tight narrow buttocks and clashing wonderfully with his deep bronzed skin.
‘When you’ve rested, you need to go and pack a bag,’ he said, lifting clean underwear out of a drawer.
‘Why,’ she asked warily. ‘Where am I going?’
‘Athens,’ he answered. ‘It’s time you saw how we run things from my main base.’
And that was it? No—go and buy a wedding dress? No return to the marriage subject at all? Curving a hand beneath her cheek, Mia said nothing, her eyelashes resting low across her eyes as she watched him move to a bank of wardrobes.
‘And it’s time you met the guy whose job you filched,’ he continued evenly, pulling a striped blue-and-white shirt on over his fabulous torso and making Mia pull a disappointed face. ‘Fortunately for Petros, he’s enjoyed staying behind in Athens, taking my place while I’ve been elsewhere.’
‘So he is not likely to want to beat me up.’
Fastening the top button on the shirt, he turned a glance on her. Belissimo, Mia thought. Sexy, she thought. Those lazy satiated love-darkened eyes should be censored—or kept right here in the bedroom with me.
‘You look like a long sleek golden cat lying there.’ He smiled at her.
Her heart tippled over, then gave a soft squeeze because he was not being cold with her, and the way he had not been looking at her while he talked had made her expect his cool detachment.
‘My hair is black,’ she pointed out.
‘I wasn
’t referring to your hair, agape mou.’
Mia did not know she could blush all the way from her toes, but that was what she did. Nikos saw it and laughed as he strode across the room to the bed. He leant over her, smelling clean of soap and Nikos, and his slow intimate kiss tasted of mint.
‘No,’ he husked when she reached for him as he went to straighten again. ‘We haven’t got time for what you want us to do, little cat.’ Bending down he picked up her dress and dropped it on her. ‘You have an hour to get ready before we have to leave.’
Ignoring her disappointed pout he strode back to the wardrobes to select the pants to a navy suit. As he drew them up his legs and Mia sat up with all the reluctance of someone who did not want to go anywhere, he murmured, ‘And you will need to give me your birth certificate. Do you have it with you here?’
‘Yes, with my passport, but—’ she frowned ‘—I don’t understand why you need it.’
‘Marriage licence,’ he responded as cool as anything. ‘We will be married in Athens next week. Petros is already seeing to the arrangements.’