HIS HANDS ON her body were gentle, roaming her flesh slowly, so slowly, feeling every little bit of her. Her arms, where his touch sparked a torrent of nerve endings and goosebumps, her shoulders, his fingers splayed wide, his thumbs moving to the base of her neck, his eyes locked to hers, always watching, examining, seeing the way she responded.
Reading her, as though she were a book. And she stood there, looking up at him, her eyes huge in her face, her expression stricken—not with panic, so much as a sense of wild longing, and surprise that she could feel that. Surprise that he could invoke that.
She’d thought Clinton had inured her to sexual attraction.
She’d thought she’d learned how stupid it was to let your body guide you like this.
But standing there with Thanos Stathakis lifting her shirt higher up her body, she felt only relief.
‘You’re trembling.’ His hands grazed her sides, the fabric soft against her oversensitive skin.
‘I know.’ She nodded, and when he pushed her shirt over her breasts, his palms grazing the sensitive flesh of her nipples, she moaned softly, the feeling like nothing she’d ever known before.
He pushed it over her head and dropped it to the floor at their feet then returned his hands to her breasts, cupping them lightly while dropping his head, his lips seeking hers, kissing her with a slow inquiry.
It was like lighting a fuse.
Desire exploded inside Alice, a spark igniting to a firework, so she was pushing up onto the bench, sitting against it, her legs wrapped around his waist, her hands desperately running over his chest and back, seeking skin, needing to feel it beneath her fingertips, to feel him beneath her.
‘I didn’t expect this.’ She kissed the admission into his mouth, wondering in the back of her mind if it was true. Hadn’t she looked at Thanos from that first morning and felt a kick of longing? Still, their wedding was supposed to be a means to an end—and not this end.
In response he kissed her harder, his mouth crushing hers, his fingers weaving through her hair, cupping her scalp, holding her in place for his total domination, his body weight easing her back, so she was lying on
the cold marble bench top, his hair-roughened torso a torture against her sensitive nipples. She arched her back, lifting her hips in a silent, age-old invitation, and he laid a line of kisses from her lips to her throat, flicking her décolletage with his tongue, so she moaned into the night air, the word ‘please’ tripping out of her mouth again and again.
Ancient, primal urges drove her and she answered their call, her body wild, her breathing ragged. She dug her heels into his back, drawing him closer to her feminine heart, and his hands dropped to the yoga pants she wore, pushing inside the elastic and cupping her bottom,. He lifted her, pulling her from the bench, so she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him as he carried her through the palatial lounge towards a large leather ottoman.
It was jet black outside the windows—vineyards rolled away from the hotel and in the distance there was the ocean, waves relentlessly pounding against the shoreline, just as need was slashing against her heart, demanding she answer it.
He removed her pants quickly, easily, and dispensed with his own while he stood above her, his chest moving hard and fast as he came down over her, his eyes glittering in his handsome face. But the separation was too much to bear. She pushed up on her elbows, her body lifting to find his, her eyes seeking, looking, hunting, her hands pulling for him.
There was no room for self-consciousness, no room for doubt, no room for worrying about how she’d feel in the morning. A fire was raging out of control and the only way to put it out was to indulge it completely. His hands on her thighs were strong, insistent, spreading her legs wider, his arousal poised to take her, and she held her breath, desire arcing inside her in a kind of mania.
Her nails scraped down his back, urging him forward, and he laughed gruffly, but it was a sound that was as deranged as she felt.
She bucked her hips as he thrust into her—and it was not a possession of slow, lazy intent; this was a sheer, blinding thrust of need, hard and desperate. He drove into her and she cried out because it was everything she’d ever thought she could want in life.
She tilted her head backwards and his stubbled jaw ran across her décolletage then lower, his mouth, warm and moist, curving around one of her nipples, his tongue lashing it until she was in a state of delirium. His hard arousal thrust into her again and again, his hands lifting her bottom, holding her higher so he could reach all of her, and then one hand was moving around to her womanhood, his fingers tormenting her most sensitive cluster of nerves until she was whimpering with the sheer agony of her desire.
‘I feel like I’m on fire,’ she groaned, and he smiled against her breast, but it was a smile of tension, because the same agonising want was throbbing through him, churning his gut, making him impatient for a release that he wanted to stave off as long as possible.
‘I like being on fire,’ she said, not even sure the words made any sense; her mind was no longer a part of her body. There was only this: feeling, pleasure, desperate yearning. He moved rhythmically, his body stoking hers, and she pushed up on her elbows as a tidal wave of need she couldn’t fight, didn’t want to fight, dragged at her and she let it pull her out to sea. It crashed against her, pleasure a rush of awakening that made breathing almost impossible.
She cried his name out, tasting it as she exploded in his arms, oblivious to the way he stilled, watching her, his eyes intent on her pleasure-creased face as she fell apart at the seams and slowly breathed herself back together again. He watched her and just as her breathing slowed he began to move again, so her eyes flared wide, locking to his, shock in them because her needs were already back, desire shifting inside her, greedily seeking more. He spoke to her in Greek, hushed words she neither recognised nor understood, words that filled her with pleasure just the same, words that were perfect in that moment, as he drove her to the heights of her pleasure anew.
This time, when the wave dragged her under, it dragged him with it, and she held onto him for dear life, as though everything she was depended on being close to him. They were adrift at sea, but adrift together.
Just that moment, just that night.
* * *
Alice stretched in bed, the silk sheets like gossamer against her well-kissed skin. She smiled at Thanos, not at all self-conscious in her naked state. How could she be? After they’d made love on the ottoman, he’d lifted her up and carried her to this sumptuous bedroom, laying her on the bed where he’d continued to pleasure and delight her body, kissing her most intimate flesh, tasting her, inviting her to explore his body, to look and learn, and she’d lost herself down the rabbit hole of sensual awakening, a hazy fog of lust pummelling her from the inside out.
It was now somewhere near dawn, but she wasn’t tired. Not even a little. She lifted her fingertips to his chest, tracing a line down the centre, her eyes following the gesture lazily. He was bronzed all over. She liked looking at his skin. She liked looking at him.
‘You know,’ she said, pushing up on one elbow so she could look at him properly, ‘you’re very, very good at that.’
Her fingers pushed lower, trailing the line of hair that arrowed down his abdomen.