But she didn’t want her underwear torn off; not the first time. She wanted his gentleness; his understanding.
‘Don’t,’ she said shakily.
His eyes narrowed as instead he unclipped it at the front, pushing the filmy fragments aside before lowering his head to take one swollen bud into his mouth with the gentleness she had dreamed of, and her head tipped back and she cried out as he made the slowest and most excruciatingly exciting journey from breast to breast, until she realised that she was pushing her hips into his, driven on by some urge she neither knew nor understood.
He moved away then, and she looked up to see that his face was grim as he pulled off his tie and tossed it away. ‘Unbutton my shirt,’ he ordered softly.
She hesitated, momentarily stricken by doubts, and he watched her from between narrowed eyes before briefly bending his head to suckle at her nipple, and Jade felt a sharp surge of pleasure, her doubts forgotten.
‘Do it,’ he urged huskily.
With faltering fingers, she started to undo his shirt, stumbling a little as she reached the last button because it was tucked beneath the belt of his trousers.
‘Take it off,’ he whispered, but she lowered her eyes as she did so. ‘So shy, agape mou?’ he queried mockingly.
For answer, she pulled the shirt off and let it flutter to the floor, and laid her head dreamily against his bare chest, running her cheek up and down it, her fingers losing themselves in the dark whorls of hair, just as they’d done so often in her dreams.
He found the side button of her skirt, and then unzipped it with ease, pulling it down past her knees until he could impatiently toss it aside, and she was left wearing nothing but a tiny pair of black silk panties which matched the flimsy bra.
He said something in Greek then, something very soft which she would have given her heart to understand, and his hand slid down to the soft skin of her inner thigh, teased her there until she moved so that his fingers would touch her where she most needed to be touched, and she heard him give a soft laugh as his fingers moved inside her panties, his hand at last on her moist, heated flesh, and he bent his head to her ear when he heard her helpless moan of pleasure.
‘You want me, very much, agape mou?’
But Jade couldn’t even nod; he was working some kind of magic with his hands, sending her out of her mind, so that she didn’t feel like Jade Meredith at that moment, she was being reborn in Constantine’s arms and she wondered whether the world would ever be the same place again.
He slid the panties down her legs and threw them off the sofa, while his other hand unbuckled the belt of his trousers, and she heard the zip being drawn down and her heart started beating even more frantically. He moved away to remove the last of his clothing and Jade lay there naked, but not in the least bit shy as she watched the formidable power of him springing free. She’d never seen a man naked before, and yet it felt so right. She al- lowed her eyes to feast themselves on his magnifi- cent frame, on the massively muscular shaft of his thighs; on the narrow hips and the powerful evi- dence of his sex. And when he moved on top of her she revelled in the feel of his naked body on hers, of breast touching breast, belly on belly, thigh against thigh. She sighed on a broken little note of wonder.
He kissed her and touched her and she ap- proached some unimaginably beautiful brink time after time, so that by the time he thrust powerfully into her, she was so ready for him, so at one—that there was none of the imagined pain. Indeed, she seemed to know instinctively what to do, entwining her thighs around his bare back so that each thrust went deeper and deeper, and she found herself thrusting back against each movement of his, until she reached the brink once again. But this time it was different; this time he didn’t hold back, just kept on moving and moving inside her, harder and harder, until she tumbled over, crying out with wonder and relief as the first great wrenching spasm pulled ecstatically at her womb, and then he too uttered a word which sounded almost like a protest before he shuddered helplessly against her, and she locked her arms around him protectively until she felt him finally still inside her.
There was silence for a moment. His heartbeat sounded muffled and heavy as it gradually slowed down to something approaching normality.
Jade nestled her face luxuriously against his neck, lifting her mouth up to plant a lazy kiss there, when he forestalled her by withdrawing himself from her abruptly, his face averted, before getting up off the sofa.
Aware of the flush which had pinkened her neck and of her nakedness, so noticeable now that he had left her, Jade stared up at him in disbelief. ’Constantine?’
He didn’t even look round. ‘What?’ he asked indifferently.
‘Where are you going?’
The unbelievable was happening. He had started to pull on his trousers, and as he zipped them up he turned to look down at her, his face as for- bidding as the devil’s. ‘I’m going to take a shower, then a nap. I don’t know about you—’ and he gave a lazy, insulting yawn ‘—but I feel I could sleep for a week.’ His eyes glittered. ‘But then good sex always makes me feel like that.’
Jade sat up, still not believing what she was hearing, and, seeing his eyes drawn to her still- naked breasts, she grabbed at her blouse in an at- tempt to cover herself.
His mouth twisted with a cruel kind of satisfac- tion. ‘Oh, don’t bother covering up, agape mou. I’ve seen it all, touched it all, tasted it all. Here,’ and he bent to pick up her discarded clothes and threw them to land in her lap. ‘Put your clothes on and get out of here.’ And he began to turn away.
Filled with the most bitter, humiliating rage, Jade pulled on her panties and bra and haphazardly but- toned up her blouse, before leaping up to confront him. ‘How dare you? You lousy’
But he held one palm up with the calm authority of a policeman stopping traffic. ‘Please, no. We’ve done all that once and once was enough,’ he said, in a bored sounding voice. ‘Your pretended viol- ence served its purpose—it provoked me into taking you.’
Her anger became something concrete to focus on, because the alternative to anger was tears, and she would sooner die than give him the pleasure of letting him see her cry. She swallowed, but her voice was mercifully steady. ‘Let me get this straight, Constantine—you’ve just been to bed with me, and now you’re asking me to leave?’
He shook his head. ‘But that’s where you’re wrong, Jade. On both counts. I haven’t taken you to my bed—I’ve just had sex with you. And I’m not asking you to leave—I’m telling you.’ He gave a brief glance at his watch. ‘If you get a move on you might be able to catch the man who was em- bracing you so fondly in the foyer earlier.’
Jade stared at him. Was he referring to the creepy Russ Robson putting his arm around her waist? ‘You can’t honestly believe that I’d have…that I’d go anywhere near Russ Robson after what’s just happened between us?’ she demanded hotly.
He gave her a cool, steady stare. ‘Can’t I?’ he queried softly. ‘Who knows what I should believe about you, Jade? I was even lulled into believing that you were virtuous—’
Her eyes widened. ‘And n-now you’re implying that I’m not—?’