by Lynne Graham
‘Lindy…wake up!’ She fought through the barriers of sleep and realised that her shoulder was being shaken.
She sat up with a start, her eyes flying open not on the scary scene which had been unfolding behind her lowered eyelids but on a lamplit and momentarily unfamiliar room. Bewildered, and very distressed by what she had recalled, she only then processed the reality that she was shaking and sobbing.
‘You were dreaming. You’re awake now,’ Atreus asserted, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Bare-chested, he had clearly only paused to pull on his jeans before coming in.
As Atreus entered her field of vision Lindy belatedly acknowledged his presence and stiffened in alarm. ‘Did I wake you up?’
‘You were screaming at the top of your voice. That must have been some bad dream,’ Atreus responded, his attention roaming to the ripe swell of her full breasts which were only just covered by the sheet and resolutely shifting upward again.
A violent shudder rippled through Lindy. ‘Because it wasn’t a dream,’ she shared, on the back of another heaving sob. ‘When I was f-four years old, I was in a house fire.’
Atreus tensed, frowning while he watched the tears drip off her chin and listening to her sniff. She was really crying, and not in a cute way either, for her nose had turned pink and her eyelids were swollen. But there was something extraordinarily touching about her genuine distress, and he closed an arm round her in an abrupt and almost clumsy movement.
It was one of those very rare occasions in life when Atreus felt out of his depth. Being supportive didn’t come naturally to him. He had grown up in a family famed for its reserve and formality. He had been taught to avoid emotion like the plague and he had no close ties with his surviving relatives. He had never had a serious relationship with a woman, and had always walked away when an affair threatened to become complicated.
The warmth of his arm was comforting. Lindy struggled to control the sobs and the tempest of emotion still rising inside her. ‘Afterwards, my mum told me that my dad must’ve fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand and the sofa caught fire. He’d been drinking—my mum was in hospital. I woke up and there was smoke coming under the door and a funny smell,’ she related shakily.
Atreus swore half under his breath in Greek. ‘And yet you went into a burning house to save a cat tonight?’ he breathed, in wrathful incredulity.
Lindy’s mind was still firmly lodged in past events. ‘I tried to go downstairs but I could see something was in flames at the foot. I was terrified, so I started screaming for Dad.’ Her voice cut off, and she twisted and buried her face in the warm living flesh of Atreus’s bronzed shoulder. ‘For a moment I saw him, but until tonight I didn’t remember that I had actually seen him. He was trying to come to me but the fire got him!’ she sobbed brokenly.
Atreus was appalled. A dark frown stamping his features, he wrapped his other arm round her shuddering body and held her close. He was thinking about the selfless way she had rushed to the fire at Chantry House and helped out in every way she could. Not by a word or even a gesture had she hinted at what that intervention must have cost her emotionally. ‘You’re a very brave woman, mali mou.’
‘I’m just ordinary.’ Lindy snatched in a sustaining breath and choked back another sob, fighting with all her might to get a grip on her flailing emotions. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying now about something that happened so long ago.’
‘The fire at Chantry last night brought it all to the surface again. How did you escape when you were a child?’
‘I believe a fireman rescued me, but I don’t remember it. I was incredibly lucky to survive.’ Her voice petered out in shock as she finally registered that the sheet between them had slipped. Her bare breasts were crushed against his hair-roughened masculine torso. ‘I’m so sorry I woke you up.’
‘You didn’t. I couldn’t sleep,’ Atreus admitted, long lean fingers lacing into the tousled tumble of her dark hair to turn her face up.
Smouldering dark golden-brown eyes assailed hers, and then he brought his handsome mouth down and captured her lips with a piercingly sweet eroticism that cut through her defences like a knife. Breathing in little fractured bursts, Lindy drowned in those hungry, drugging kisses, her body quickening and heating in response. There was a frantic driving edge to every sensation: the stingingly tight sensitivity of her nipples, the tugging pull of dissatisfaction at the heart of her.
Atreus closed his hands round the creamy magnificence of her jutting breasts and moulded them with a husky masculine sound of satisfaction. He used his thumbs to chafe the quivering pink tips until, in pursuit of closer contact, he pressed her back against the pillows and put his mouth to her breast instead.
A gasp was dragged from Lindy, who was reeling in sensual shock from the impact of his lovemaking. The tug of his lips and his teeth, and the brush of his tongue on her tormentingly sensitive nipples, made her squirm while desire flared ever higher and stronger inside her. That she had to struggle even to think straight, however, scared her.
‘We hardly know each other!’ she protested.
‘This is the very best way to get to know me, glikia mou,’ Atreus intoned with conviction
‘But I didn’t want to get to know you!’ Lindy objected, guiltily studying the clinging fingers she had knotted into the springy depths of his black hair.
‘You want me and I want you. Why should that be a problem?’
‘Because it is…I don’t do stuff like this.’
‘You don’t have to do anything,’ Atreus declared with single-minded purpose.
‘You’re not my type,’ she told him in desperation.
‘Why didn’t you say so sooner?’ Atreus levered back from her to gaze down at her with shimmering golden eyes full of enquiry.
Lindy crossed concealing arms over her breasts.
‘I love looking at you,’ Atreus confided, stroking an appreciative hand down to the point where her surprisingly small waist segued into the violin curve of her hip. ‘You have the most spectacular shape.’
The intensity of his appraisal convinced her of his sincere approbation and lessened her discomfiture. Without being aware of any prompting to do so, Lindy slowly, shyly parted her arms again, because she was discovering that she really loved the idea of him looking at her and admiring her. Not a single compliment on that score had ever come Lindy’s way. Until that moment her voluptuous curves had been a physical flaw and an embarrassment which she hid to the best of her ability. But, transfixed by the glow of bold appreciation in Atreus’s gaze, she felt like a goddess come to earth to mesmerise mortal man.
‘You looked at the riverbank,’ Lindy accused him.
‘Ise omorfi…you are beautiful…of course I did. The glory of you took my breath away, mali mou.’
He had barely finished speaking before Lindy stretched up and sought his wide, sensual mouth for herself again. She savoured the taste of him like a precious wine, parting her lips eagerly for the erotic plunge of his tongue while she quivered at the clenching tightness of response low in her pelvis. He had ignited a hunger in her that she could not resist.
‘Is this a yes?’
‘Yes…’Lindy whispered, feeling madly daring and sexy for the first time in her life while she defied the voice of restraint and reproach striving to be heard in the back of her head.
The pressure of his mouth on hers was an enticement of no mean order. Her head fell back against the pillows, her neck extending in a soundless sigh as he touched her where she had never been touched before. Little tremors of fierce response assailed her while he teased the honeyed folds of flesh between her thighs. The pleasure was exquisite, but as her excitement grew the pleasure came closer to sensual torture. The more he touched her, the more she wanted, and the less she wanted to wait. He suckled the distended peaks of her breasts and her spine arched, and she cried out as he probed the narrow passage at the swollen heart of her.
She was dimly aware of him removing his jeans and a mo
ment of panic claimed her. ‘Don’t get me pregnant…’ she warned him. ‘I’m not using anything.’
‘That’s not a risk I would ever take,’ Atreus imparted, donning protection and hauling her back to him with impatient hands. ‘I want you so much it hurts.’
‘Will it hurt?’ Lindy pressed awkwardly.
A look of bemusement clouded his smouldering gaze. ‘Why should it hurt?’
‘I haven’t done this before…I just wondered.’
Atreus studied her with frowning intensity. ‘I will be the first?’
Her body tingling, her face burning, Lindy nodded.
Atreus groaned out loud, recognising the anxiety in her violet-blue eyes, acknowledging that she continually managed to surprise him. ‘I’ll be very gentle, glikia mou,’ he swore—he a man who had never tried to be gentle before.
And he was: coaxing and teasing her responsive body until she was on fire with wanting him. She waited in an agony of anticipation and desire for the moment when he eased his rock-hard shaft into the velvet-soft sheath of her womanhood. She saw pleasure score his lean, hard features and marvelled at the extraordinary sense of intimacy a split second before a sharp pain provoked her into venting a cry of dismay.
He stopped, talked to her in husky Greek, kissed her until she relaxed again. And then it went on, the slow, deep penetration that made her gasp and moan with increasing fervour and excitement while he arched her up to receive him and plunged back into her again. Suddenly she was riding a high of erotic sensation, out of control and abandoned to the wild need he had incited. The orgasm, when it came, took her by surprise and stunned her, before the irresistible waves of shuddering physical satisfaction took over.
‘You were amazing,’ Atreus told her with a blazing smile of approbation.
‘So were you,’ Lindy whispered, feverishly trying to suppress the screaming fit of self-doubt, shame and incredulity ready to pounce on her. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, fighting the lingering shards of doubt and regret as hard as she could. She found him amazingly attractive and had acted on it, she told herself staunchly. There was no point beating herself up about what could not be changed.
Taken aback though he was by that affectionate kiss, and what has undeniably been a hug, Atreus still tugged her back to him when she attempted to back away. ‘I can’t wait until the next time, mali mou.’
Her eyes widened.
‘I don’t do one-night-stands,’ he told her in reproof.
‘Don’t you?’ Discomfiture was beginning to claim her, for she was feeling very much out of her depth.
A slashing grin curved his beautiful mouth. ‘And neither do you…’
CHAPTER THREE
SAMSON and Sausage gave Lindy a rapturous welcome when she returned home, while Pip picked at his food and snarled whenever the other dogs came within yards of his feeding bowl. Awesomely conscious of Atreus waiting impatiently indoors for her, Lindy ignored her usual tasks and went straight back inside with her pets in tow.
Samson, a Jack Russell terrier with perky ears and a cheerful propensity to treat everyone like a long-lost best friend, went straight over to greet Atreus. Sausage hung back, while Pip put on a burst of speed and, barking furiously, raced straight over to the interloper and sank his teeth into his trouser leg. Samson started to bark as well and, aghast, Lindy waded in, urging peace on all parties while she strove to detach Pip from his glowering victim.
‘I’m so sorry. He’s a very bad-tempered dog. Thank you for not kicking him away.’ Lindy removed a snarling Pip and then gasped, ‘Oh, my goodness he’s lost one of his teeth!’
‘Is it embedded in my leg?’ Atreus asked.
‘No, it’s lying here on the carpet,’ Lindy answered, deaf to his tone of irony. She peered into the cross little Chihuahua’s mouth and was shocked by the sight of his swollen gums. ‘I never realised he had such bad teeth. He must be in a lot of pain. Poor little thing.’
While Lindy soothed and quieted the canine attacker with copious sympathy, Atreus fumed in silence. He had never had anything to do with dogs, and now he had been bitten by one in circumstances guaranteed to bolster his repugnance. ‘Are you coming up to the house with me?’
Lindy froze, violet eyes locking to his lean, darkly handsome face. ‘I would rather not draw attention to our…er…new…er…’
As her voice trailed off without her finding an appropriate word, Atreus stepped in. ‘Intimacy?’
The word struck Lindy like a brick and she paled, guilt looming large, for the word seemed richly redolent of beds and tumbled sheets—imagery that assailed her conscience like a panic attack. ‘Yes. I don’t want anyone to know.’
That was not a request Atreus had ever received before. Women usually wanted to show off their association with him, not hide it. But he had always had a high regard for discretion and prudence. The Dionides family were, after all, famous for their dislike of publicity. Birth, marriage and death, and occasional references in the business press, were unavoidable exceptions for so very rich a family. But beyond that level Atreus and his relatives shunned public notice and abhorred the brash, extravagant lifestyle of the celebrity world.
‘I’ll be very discreet,’ he assured her. ‘We’ll see each other at weekends, when I come down here.’
Lindy studied him with perplexed eyes, for she could not yet accept that they could be a couple in any way, never mind a couple with an ongoing relationship.
‘We’ve got nothing in common,’ she pointed out.
‘Differences are stimulating,’ Atreus traded smoothly, averting his attention from the little rat-like dog baring its crooked teeth at him from the shelter of her arms before she put it through to the kitchen. The Jack Russell had dropped a rubber bone expectantly at his feet, while the short hairy one was fussing beside a chair and for some reason regarding him with equal anticipation. Atreus decided to spell out his feelings: ‘I’m not into pets—particularly indoors.’
‘I suppose you didn’t have any when you were a child,’ Lindy responded, giving him a huge look of sympathy and not one whit perturbed by his loaded statement. ‘That’s such a shame. But you’ll soon get used to my pets.’
She was trying to imagine seeing him at weekends, slotting him into her ordinary activities and failing abysmally to rise to the challenge. Even the idea of him becoming a part of her life struck her as astonishing. ‘I don’t know why you want to see me again.’
Atreus was bewildered by a response which had never come his way before. A faint stab of guilt assailed him because her lack of vanity and pure likeability shone from her. She was not at all like his usual lovers, he acknowledged wryly. She didn’t know the rules he played by and she would probably get hurt. He recalled the total lack of cool and control she displayed when she hugged him and he almost winced. But she would eventually learn, he reasoned steadily, squaring his broad shoulders.
She would have to learn—because he would not contemplate not seeing her again. The bottom line was that he wanted her in his life. Obviously he was ready for a change, for something different, and she would be a breath of fresh air. She was strong, discreet and honest, qualities which he valued highly and which were hard to find in her sex. He would relax with her at weekends, stepping back from the long, stressful hours he worked and the boring social occasions. He met her bewildered violet-blue eyes and realised that if anything he wanted her even more powerfully than he had some hours earlier. The strength of his desire made him uneasy, but it also propelled him forward to ease her into his arms.
Always more comfortable with the physical than the emotional, Atreus lowered his arrogant dark head and brought his mouth down on hers with passionate urgency. That kiss was like an electric shock, first stunning Lindy and then spreading tingling waves of reaction through her. The pressure of his lips and the plunging penetration of his tongue jolted her and made very fibre of her body sing with sexual awareness. Her nipples tightened, her tummy flipped, and looking up into his
smouldering dark golden eyes left her dizzy.
‘I want to take you back to bed,’ he admitted in a raw undertone of frustration, both hands splayed on her hips to hold her close enough to feel the hard male heat of his arousal. ‘Once was very far from being enough.’
Lindy reddened, struggling with the notion of herself as some sort of temptress but loving it—and the proof of it in his physical reaction to her too.
‘Unfortunately I have a meeting up at the house,’ he reminded her.
‘Several,’ she told him with a smile.
‘Either come with me or go back to the hotel. You can do nothing here without electricity.’
‘I may not be able to make candles, but I can cut lavender and make pot pourri,’ she contradicted.
‘But you don’t have to do any of that right now.’
The bell at the front door buzzed.
Lindy peered out of the window and saw her friend’s car. ‘It’s Ben,’ she said.
‘Ben?’ Atreus queried, moving to the window to note the BMW parked on the drive.
‘A good friend of mine. He’s here to collect Pip, the little dog that nipped you. Pip belongs to his mother,’ she explained.
Ben strode straight into the hall. ‘I’m on a day off so I thought I’d come down early. It interferes less with my social life,’ he confided, with a speaking roll of his eyes.
Lindy launched right into telling him about Pip’s swollen gums. She urged him to take the little animal to his mother’s vet for a check-up. ‘Painful teeth could explain why he’s so cross. He needs treatment urgently,’ she stressed. ‘I’ll go and get him for you.’
‘Aren’t you inviting me in?’ But Ben was talking to thin air, because Lindy had already hurried off to slot Pip into his travelling basket.
‘Where did the limo outside come from?’ Ben called in her wake.
A split second after Lindy returned with the basket Atreus appeared on the threshold of the sitting room. ‘It’s mine—’
