“Come here, agape mou.”
Her shoulders tensed, and he thought she would flee in a streak of white and black.
Instead, she walked toward him, her gaze unmoving from his.
Doubts and questions pummeled through him with every step she took. They were as strange to him as the strength of his desire.
There was no shyness in her gaze, but there was no boldness, either. This was important to her, whatever lies she spouted. And that realization tempered his desire. She didn’t know how to play by his rules.
He fought the protective urge that rose up inside him, shoved it away with a ruthlessness that had helped him survive, and win, against all odds.
He needed to stop making this moment more than it was. She wanted him. He wanted her. He wasn’t going to change himself, wasn’t going to start wondering about her feelings just because she was different.
That was the cause for his conscience ringing like a bell inside him.
She was different from the women he usually slept with.
Not one of them had made an effort to know what was beneath his ambition or his drive. Or maybe there hadn’t been anything worth knowing before. She was the first person who had looked beneath the surface, who had realized that a man, with fears and wishes no less, existed beneath it all. Even after everything he had done to manipulate her, made her face, she wished him well, she worried about him.
He took her hand in his and pulled her down to the sofa. He leaned back on the wide sofa bed so that she sat between his legs. His gut felt tight with want, every muscle in him poised for pleasure and possession. He wrapped his hands around her midriff, and kissed the crook of her neck. She tasted of lemon soap and vanilla. He closed his eyes, praying for control. She was so delicate under his touch, she felt breakable in his hands. And even through the anticipation coiling within every inch of him, lust heating through his blood, Nikos admitted one thing to himself.
He didn’t want to hurt her. The sentiment was both strange and strong.
* * *
The soft flick of Nikos’s tongue against her neck knocked the breath out of Lexi’s lungs. He was like a tightly toned fortress of need. And yet he held her loosely, as if she would break.
Every press of hard muscle, every caress of his fingers, fueled her own need. She laced her fingers through his and held on tighter. Throwing her neck back, she gave him better access, liquid longing bursting into life inside her. “Kiss me, Nikos.”
With agility she couldn’t believe, he flipped her easily until she sat astride him. His hands remained on her knees. She moved to steady herself, and instantly, her aching sex rubbed against the hard ridge of his erection.
The sound of their mingled moans, desire and need, lust and want, reverberated in the room around them.
His mouth found hers in a fury of want; his hands on her thighs limited her movement severely. She struggled in his hold and moved over the hard ridge of his arousal.
“No, thee mou,” he said, before capturing her mouth again.
He didn’t kiss her like he had done at the pool. He kissed her softly, slowly, as though he had all the time in the world, as though there was no intensity to his need at all.
His tongue licked her lower lip and pressed for entry. Sinking her hands into his hair, Lexi let him in. Pleasure, unlike she had ever known before, bloomed in the pit of her stomach and arrowed downward.
Needing more than he was giving her, she clasped his jaw and forced him to look at her.
“More, Nikos,” she whispered, her words falling over each other.
In response, he sucked her lower lip into his mouth with incredible gentleness. She sneaked her hands in under his shirt and found hot skin. The minute she touched his nipple, he jerked back and pulled her hands out.
Every time, she got closer to him, he held her off.
Lexi pressed a desperate kiss to his mouth and slipped out of his lap. She swayed on her feet before she found her bearings, her body thrumming with unfulfilled desire. Color streaking across his cheeks, Nikos looked up. A stamp of lust tightened his features, but it was just that. A shadow.
Because it was control that reigned over him.
Something snapped inside Lexi. She had wanted to start living her life; she wanted to take a risk. And going to bed with Nikos Demakis was one. On every level there was. He had a hundred lovers where she’d had one. But even more than that, Nikos was a risk because he refused to let her hide, because he refused to let her shrink away from the truth, he didn’t coddle her.
And she didn’t want that to change.
She hugged her arms, and forced the words out. “This isn’t what I want.”
He stood up from the couch like a coiled spring, his face a tight mask. She kept her gaze on his, amazed at how steady he looked. His jaw was granite. “We will leave immediately.”