‘You would stop me,’ Nico said, as there just beneath the hollow of her armpit he found the hidden prize and started to slowly pull down the zipper. ‘You would stop me, or wriggle, or warn me …’ he said, as slowly he slid it down.
‘Why would I stop you?’ Constantine said as his mouth kissed her neck deeper, as she felt the breeze of air on her torso, then the warmth of his hand slipping in. ‘Why would I stop you when it feels so sublime?’
And words should not have such an effect, but so blatantly pleasurable was her response he had to hold her back, for to press her into him now would end the dream in a matter of moments. He wanted her on the bed, he wanted so badly to be inside her, and yet he made himself wait. It was a long, hard wait that was threatened for a moment as he made light work of her strapless bra and a breast dropped heavy into his palm.
His warm hands caressed her, and indescribable was the pleasure—hands that were not hers on her body, moving in ways she would never have thought of, and then when she thought it could not be any better, when his thumb pressed into her aching nipple, when he stroked it till it felt as if he was stroking right inside her, when surely it could not be more pleasurable, the lips on her neck slid down. The lips that were the first ever to kiss her moved wet and warm to a nipple that hurt in anticipation, and the blow of air from his mouth should have cooled, but it produced a heat from a place where heat had never existed and he kissed her breast as expertly, as hungrily and deliciously as he had kissed her mouth. Her fingers pressed and knotted into his hair and she worried how she might stay standing, how she had lived a life without knowing the pleasure of this, how nearly she had lived a life where this pleasure was denied her. He moved away from her breast to her face, and she wanted him back there instead of the cool air on her wet skin.
Then she didn’t want, because she got.
She got what Nico had wanted but had withheld for longer than he could have imagined. With one definite move, looking at her, awaiting her response, he drew her to where she belonged, against him. He pulled her deftly in and he met the giddy height of relief from wanting, because now his aching groin had the support of her warm body; but it did not satisfy, not even for a second, for instantly it demanded more.
He saw her eyes widen as she felt the solid length of his arousal, saw her lips close and a nervous, excited swallow as he pressed in harder again.
And again, till she was pressing now into him.
And they both tasted for the first time real teenage kisses, willing the other on to a sweet forbidden place. He shrugged off his jacket and it was Connie who dealt with his tie and then somehow they were moving to the bed. Nico kicked off his shoes; Connie frantically tore at his shirt buttons till he lay there beside her, his bare feet sliding between her stockinged calves, her naked breasts against his exposed chest. To have skin on skin deepened their kiss, till he suckled on her tongue in a decadent disclosure of what he intended next.
His hand roamed over the curve of her bottom, scooped her hungry body right into his and she wanted her dress fully off, but he would not let her miss this lesson, would not, though he was tempted, deny her what long ago should have been hers.
How could he not want her?
As his fingers slid up beneath her dress, his question was not aimed at Stavros but at the fools who had feared her father, for had he been there, had he lived on this island, had they met before, then this moment would have been his a very long time ago.
She could feel his fingers, inching up the fabric and then sliding between the tender flesh of her inner thigh, and in reflex rather than refusal she clamped her legs together, could not fathom he wanted to touch her there.
‘Just,’ Nico breathed, and kissed as, despite her flesh’s protest, still he moved higher, ‘as a good girl would do.’
‘I don’t want to be good,’ Connie said, as contrarily her legs tightened, yet her mind willed his hand higher.
‘Then relax,’ Nico said, as the vice of her thighs tightened around his hand.
‘I don’t know how to.’
‘But you want me to carry on?’ Nico checked, though he was sure, quite sure of her answer.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Then all you have to do is trust me.’
Absolutely she did.
‘Where are we?’ she whispered. ‘Where have you taken me?’
‘For a drive,’ Nico whispered, ‘and soon you have to be home. We’ve stopped on the hill … and now,’ Nico said, ‘before I take you home I’m going to take you to heaven.’ And she was there in his car, and much younger, and so, too, was Nico. She forced herself to breathe, to not think just for a second of what he was doing, to rest her mouth on his neck and just breathe in his scent. When she parted her legs the necessary fraction, his hand crept higher and she braced herself, for what she did not know; but he was more patient than she dared hope, his hand rested on her panties. He kissed her as she accustomed herself to the weight and the warmth and then as he kissed her hair, her cheek, her closed eyes, her head was too heavy and it sank in the pillow, his hand slid into her panties and expertly explored her.
She was so tender that surely soon she would tell him to stop, especially as probing fingers stretched her, and then she went to halt him again as his thumb pressed harder, but there were tiny, almost imperceptible beats of pleasure as his hand worked on. Tiny pulses that mirrored a rhythm that was rising inside, and she tried to stop, to wriggle away, but her body refused to move from this masterstroke. So she stayed, and she found just how much she had been missing. She came to his hand and did not want ever to go back and then Nico stopped, kissed her breathless, and told the shell of her ear what would be next. How it could have happened in the different world they had created, one where youth was shared at the same time, one where he was nicer, kinder, more trusting, one where he cared intensely for the woman in his arms. He told her how then he might have progressed.
‘The next time we dated …’ he whispered, ‘I would want more from you. All week it would have been driving me crazy, trying to picture …’
He knelt up on the bed and pulled the dress down past her waist and removed it, and she made a small token gesture of modesty, gripped the fabric and then loosened it, because his gaze made her warm and utterly devoid of shame. All that was left was shoes and panties, and he dealt with the former, kissed her toes and then her soles till her feet curled around his hungry mouth. He found a sliver of flesh that was surely linked by a thread to where his fingers had just been because her hips rose from the pillow and he slid in between her calves. Nico had to pause and breathe a moment as he gazed at the pleasure that beckoned and the treasure that lay beneath the satin panties that were soaked from his earlier caress. He would wet her more with his mouth, Nico decided, would have her ripe and moist so as not to hurt her, except his virgin bride had different ideas.
‘I would have, too.’ Constantine said, and she saw him frown just a little as he tried to piece together a conversation when his mind was certainly elsewhere. ‘I would have been thinking about you, too—wanting to see you.’ Her hands moved up and slid down his open shirt, and she saw the shoulders she had leant on, the arms that had held her, the rise and fall of his chest and the lick of his lips as still he looked where no one had, as her body beckoned his mouth there, so badly she did want to see him. ‘Let me see you.’
Nico stood and undressed and Constantine watched—excited, curious and, when she saw him, filled with trepidation, but her mind quietened that, for he was too beautiful to fear.
‘And then?’ Constantine asked, because she wanted what came next.
‘And then …’ Nico said, as he knelt back on the bed between her thighs and looked down at her waiting body, and for a moment tried to think of what next to tell her, what the next instalment of their story might be. Then he found it, and no imagination was required, for it was all right here.
‘He waited,’ Nico said. ‘Till the night he took his bride to bed.’ He paused fo
r a moment, felt as if he had dated her, had lived his life here, that this moment, the future, truly was theirs. He looked down at her nervous, brave, but somehow trusting, and he felt like he would have had—had he loved her.
His hands slid down her panties and she moved her hand to hide herself, but there beneath such a tender gaze there was nothing Connie wanted to hide from.
He turned, annoyed with himself, for his jacket was on the floor, but she halted him as he went to climb from the bed.
‘I went on the Pill for my wedding.’
Foolish girl to say that. Later he would warn her to trust no one with that knowledge but him. But he did not want to think of others and later he wanted to stay in a place where this was their night.
And selfishly, too, he wanted.
Wanted her in a way he had never before, a way that made him disregard his own strict rules, but only for her.
‘Will it hurt?’ Connie asked, but did not require an answer, because she knew there and then that whatever the pain it would not compare to the pain of tomorrow when Nico was gone.
‘A little, perhaps.’ His mouth was on her ear and then on her mouth and he kissed her in a way that she wanted, a fierce, deep kiss, his arms wrapped around her. She could feel the roughness of his thighs between hers; but his kiss was so urgent it claimed most of her attention. It was a kiss she had to race to keep up with, a kiss that bruised her mouth and scratched at her face, and she would not have had it any other way for even a moment.
His kiss was so hard it took away her breath and demanded her mind, so much so she could not fear those first explorative probes, and then his kiss stopped and she felt a sear of pain as he entered and, even stretched by his fingers, still it hurt more that she had thought it would. Her breath clamped in her throat as she bit down a sob, and then he moved when she prayed that he wouldn’t and then he moved back and then in deeper again, and then it hurt, but not as much, and then his mouth was there at her ear and then she wasn’t hurting. His words soothed, his endearments real, said as if he were her husband, and then when he moved faster within, Connie moved, too, forgot forever that once she’d been hurting and rose and wrapped around him.
She welcomed him in deeper. The last rapid thrusts from Nico, a signal her body heeded, and with him she went to a place that would live forever in her heart. The sound of his release met her scream and she wanted to stay there, with Nico, in the place they had created. But the pulse of her body slowed and slowly she remembered to breathe again, and a little later, when surely she should go back to her room, surely it would be dangerous to fall asleep, she let her body rest when he rolled into her. She would sleep a while in his arms and be with Nico on her wedding night.
He could hear the clock chime five times and for once fought the instinct to instantly awaken. He wanted to pull her warm body towards him, to make slow predawn love, not face the morning and the thoughts that last night had plagued him.
Nico reached for her body and then fought to resist: there was something too intimate about making love in the morning. In the long run he had found it better to leave things at last night, and this morning he chose to uphold his finding, because if had her again, he might then persuade her, might encourage her to stand up to her family, at what cost to her, though?
He looked over to where she slept deeply beside him.
How could he tear her from everything she knew, even if she didn’t like it, with promises he knew he could not keep?
So instead when he moved it was to wake her.
‘You should go back.’
It was a cruel awakening.
She wanted to stay in her dream, her wedding night, with this gorgeous man beside her. She did not want to go back, but she knew that she had to so she climbed out of the bed, pulled on her clothes and the dress he had so lovingly taken off. She wanted him to halt her.
Wanted him to tell her that she didn’t need to go back, but she knew that it wasn’t his place to, that she could only make that decision by herself.
‘Thank you.’ It was a strange way to end such a passionate night, but when Connie thought how it could have been, how wretched she had felt on the stairs last night, how without him she might never have known such bliss, her words were indeed heartfelt.
‘Constantine …’ As she walked out of the door he called out and she froze for a moment, the silence in the air shifting, because if she turned around she would be back in his bed and somehow they both knew it.
It was not for him to save her.
‘It’s Connie.’ She opened the door and forced herself to walk out, to walk the agonising steps to her suite. In her bedroom she showered and put on the beautiful lace nightdress she had chosen for her wedding night, and climbed into the cold empty bed.
This would be her life if she stayed with the lie for even a day, Connie knew it. She was more grateful than Nico could ever know for their night. It had been so much more than sex—it had shown her how life should be.
Could be, Connie thought with a shiver of fear, but that would mean hurting so many people.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE WOKE before he jumped.
Had trained himself to open his eyes as soon as the lurch in his chest appeared, rather than have the beauty in his bed feel the jerk of his body beside her.
It was that or sleep every night alone, and Nico had no intention of doing that.
He hadn’t had the dream in ages, but when Constantine had left and he had drifted back to sleep he had almost anticipated it—for yesterday something had stirred within him. The walk last night through the streets of Xanos had felt like a return to his familiar dream.
Where he lay paralysed, yet watching himself walk, talk, breathe, live.
A dream where his arms and legs were motionless, yet there he was walking around.
He hated the dream, hated lying there motionless, unable to move, unable to communicate with the version of himself he was watching.
Nico rolled over and her scent was there in bed beside him—and there was regret for not making love to her this morning, for not breaking his steadfast rule. For once he was tempted to close his eyes, to give into his body and slip back to his thoughts, but he had trained himself too well and instead got out of bed and showered and dressed. He didn’t shave and neither did he dress carefully, just pulled on the trousers he had worn last night and topped them with a black fitted shirt.
He toyed, only momentarily, with joining his family for breakfast, but not exactly relishing the prospect he decided otherwise. Given London was two hours behind them, he was for once kind to the long-suffering Charlotte, who arranged all his travel and other things, and he rang down himself to ask the concierge to arrange transport to take him back to the mainland. He didn’t want to go to Lathira and he certainly wasn’t going back on that ferry.
‘To where?’ the concierge asked, ‘and will you need a connection?’ for he could arrange a helicopter or seaplane to Volos and then a flight to Athens. For a beat of a moment Nico wished he’d rung Charlotte, for he didn’t actually know where he was going. Always his time was accounted for and he did not like the feeling this unexpected day off gave him. He had properties everywhere but they were all investments. His job was so global he preferred hotels. His yacht was moored in Puerto Banus in Spain, which was perhaps becoming his base, for Nico was half considering buying a property there, not as an investment, though, but as a home.
‘Just get me to Athens,’ Nico said and rang off. He would decide later, because, after yesterday’s episode, a day on the ocean did not particularly appeal.
It never entered his head he would see her that morning—surely the facade should mean the happy couple breakfasted in bed, but as the lift doors slid open there she was with Stavros. She looked stunning and groomed, every bit a Lathira wife—her make-up immaculate, no trace of last night’s crying evident, the elevator fresh with expensive fragrance, when Nico would have preferred the scent of her sex.
‘Kalimera.�
�� Nico greeted them and for the first time in his entire life he felt heat in his neck, in his ears and, as the liftman pressed the button, Nico found out how it felt to blush.
Not that Connie saw it.
Her own face was surely purple, her eyes staring down at her brand-new shoes. Stavros, unaware of the new charge in the air, stood beside her—but there was absolutely no guilt on her part. Her so-called husband had, after all, been with a lover of his own on their wedding night. Instead the burn in her cheeks was solely down to Nico, her body flaming in instinctive response, her cheeks firing at the memory of his mouth, his hands and all he had, last night, taught her to be.
‘Kalimera,’ Stavros said and nudged her, the dutiful wife, who must, he had told her, always perform, always look the part, entertain … And she opened her mouth to extend the greeting, to speak as she should, to act as she should, to greet her lover as a guest, and in her first act of defiance this morning she decided she would not. Connie stood instead, eyes forward, and slowly she blinked. She did not want to open her eyes to how things would be if she played along with the charade. She felt the nudge in her ribs again from Stavros, an irritated prompt which again she ignored.
And Nico knew it.
Though he stood in front of them, Nico was acutely aware of what was going on, could hear Stavros’s angry breathing, could see, in the highly polished doors, him turn to his newly belligerent wife. There was an unseen hint of a smile on Nico’s lips as behind him the sleeping dragon within her awoke.
But as they stepped out of the lift he stood for just a brief moment and watched as Stavros took his wife’s hand and they headed to the restaurant. Now he was not smiling, for she was still, Nico noted, minus her wedding ring, the row in the bedroom spilling outwards, and he was worried for her. Not, Nico told himself, because of closeness they had shared, worried as you would be for anyone. For he had stood up to his family, had turned away from the family business, from the island, had refused the direction to take a suitable wife and deliver the promise of rapid grandchildren—and even for a man as mentally tough as Nico, it had been hard. How much harder for Constantine, for a married woman, for the golden only child of her parents, to turn the mighty tide now?
A Shameful Consequence Page 4
