She cried into his mouth, a sob that was wrenched from her body. This was so wrong. On every level. But it was a tsunami that was dragging her out to sea, taking her deep underwater, removing the possibility for breath and survival.
“I’m not what you think, Stavros,” she kissed the words into him, as his hands found her rear and lifted her, wrapping her legs around him.
“Don’t lie to me.” He pulled his head away, just enough for his dark eyes, glistening like chips of black metal, to show their condemnation and swirling desire. “Right now, I don’t care who you’ve been with. Right now, you’re mine.”
She stared up at him, completely stricken. Because it was true. It was an indisputable fact. She always had been.
“Say it,” his hands lifted up higher, finding the strings of her apron and untying it, so that he could lift it over her head and toss it across the room. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
She was wearing a simple black sweater. His fingers sought the hem and pushed it up her body. She wore nothing beneath it, so that when he lifted it over her head, she was naked from the waist up. Her long hair fell over her breasts.
He sucked in a harsh, ragged breath, his eyes almost accusing when they landed to hers.
“Say it or this stops.”
Claudia nodded, and darted a tongue out, licking her lower lip. “Say what?”
“Say you are mine.”
She groaned and nodded, and felt the angry throb of tears mixing with lust low in her abdomen.
“I am.”
His eyes showing triumph in their flaming black centres and then his head dipped forward, swiftly, his mouth moved over one of her nipples, sucking its erect peach tip into his mouth, rolling it with his tongue and assaulting her with sensations she had never before experienced.
No man had ever touched her like this. No man had ever kissed her like this.
She made a keening noise of surprise and need, and tilted her head back, but it bumped against the door. She didn’t care.
Her legs were wrapped around his waist and he rolled his hips, driving his erection against her, so that she felt the strength of his need through their clothes.
Something like flame was moving through her, bringing with it the blinding brightness of fireworks detonating at close range. They were popping on the periphery of her vision. She was a being of lava and heat and she feared her whole body was changing into something else. Like a phoenix, she was rising from the ashes of the little girl she’d once been.
“The other one,” she cried out, as something dangerous slithered through her, making her legs shake and her breath rushed.
He laughed, but transferred his mouth, punishing this nipple now, while his fingers lifted to her other breast and he palmed it in place of his mouth, feeling its weight in his hand, his fingertips massaging the peach aureole of her nipple.
“Stavros,” she cried out, terrified by what she was feeling, but addicted to it at the same time.
Pleasure burst around her, an orgasm – her first. She tilted her head back, banging it against the door, crying out in waves as sensations lifted her up, carrying her away into the shiny, shiny sky.
“So responsive,” he murmured with an approval that made her toes curl. “Just like I’ve dreamed.”
It was a tiny admission but one that meant everything to Claudia. He’d dreamed of her, as she had of him.
“Please,” she whispered, pleasure still holding her high above the earth. She didn’t know what she was asking for. Only that she was incandescent with the newness of what she was feeling and that he was the only answer to the question that lay in her mind. “Stavros.”
He groaned, moving away from the door and carrying her to his desk. She was wearing an ankle length skirt, long and floaty, and when he propped her arse on the edge of the desk he pushed it up around her hips, his fingers demanding as they sought flesh. He found the lace of her underwear and pulled at it; Claudia wriggled her bottom up so that he could slide them off her more easily.
Knowing that she was exposed to him was a heady, intoxicating rush of pleasure. His fingers found the apex of curls at the top of her legs and brushed over them. She cried out at the intimacy of his touch, at the promise of what was to come.
“Stavros,” she whispered, her eyes meeting his. She couldn’t do this unless he knew the truth. Could she?
But would he still want her if he knew she was a virgin?
Or would his code of honour reassert itself? Would he walk away from this?