She smiled. In sleep he looked curiously vulnerable.
For the first time in her life she felt complete. Like a woman. Like she’d discovered a glorious secret. And at that moment she was happy to savour it and hold it close.
Talos stirred, his hand groping. He lifted his head.
‘Bonjour,’ she said softly, resting her chin on her knee.
He stretched onto his back and smiled lazily. ‘Kalimera, little songbird. Did you sleep well?’
She gave him a coy smile. ‘No.’
‘You should come back to bed, then.’
‘I should,’ she agreed, adopting the same mock serious tone.
He threw the sheets off him, unabashedly displaying his large erection.
Moisture filled her mouth and pooled down low. Sliding off the ledge of the bay window, she padded over to the bed. No sooner had she climbed on than Talos’s huge hands were at her waist, pulling her over to straddle him.
He stared into her eyes, trailing a hand down the valley between her breasts. ‘No regrets?’
She shook her head and sighed as his fingers found her nipple. ‘No regrets.’
‘Then make love to me, you sexy woman, and prove it.’
Sexy? Her? Sexy was a word she’d never associated with herself before.
Yet as she sheathed him, then sank down onto him, taking the whole of him inside her, she realised she’d never felt as sexy and as alive in her life.
And, dear heaven, it felt amazing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WAS IT TRULY possible to become addicted to sex?
The question played happily in Amalie’s mind as she sat beside Talos in his Maserati, making polite noises as he pointed out a pile of stones he assured her had once been a monastery. Because there was no doubt about it—she was in lust. Glorious, incredible, beautifully reciprocated desire. It was basic biology at its finest. And it didn’t frighten her in the slightest.
He’d taken her out for lunch in Resina, the main town on the island, and now they were driving back to her cottage, taking the scenic route through Agon’s verdant mountains, avoiding wandering sheep and goats who seemingly had no sense of the danger posed by moving vehicles.
The view on this blue, cloudless day was spectacular, the Mediterranean was gleaming in the distance, and the temperature was sitting comfortably in the mid-twenties. She was mostly oblivious to it, too busy anticipating the moment they’d return to the privacy of the cottage to concentrate on nothing so mundane as scenery.
In the two weeks since the ball they hadn’t spent a night apart. They’d returned to her cottage on the Sunday, leaving through Talos’s private exit so at least she’d been spared the embarrassment of bumping into his brothers, and had more or less lived there since.
Amalie would work on the score during the day, while he went to his villa or the palace to do his own work. In the evening he would collect her and take her to the gym, then they would return to the cottage and make love, and would often still be awake when the sun came up.
She could now play her violin for him with hardly any nerves at all, although she still didn’t feel ready to play his grandmother’s piece. She wanted to be note-perfect for that. Her orchestra would arrive on Agon tomorrow morning; her first scheduled rehearsal with them was in the afternoon. They would know then if she had truly made progress.
For today, Talos had insisted on taking her out and showing her Agon, arguing that it was a Saturday and that in the three and a half weeks she’d been on his island she’d hardly seen any of it. She would have been happy to stay at the cottage and make love, but he’d brushed her arguments aside with his usual authority, claiming her lips to whisper, ‘We’ll only be gone a few hours.’
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked now, casting a quick sideways glance at her.
Her gaze drifted to his hands, holding the steering wheel with deft assuredness in much the same manner as he handled her.
‘Sex,’ she answered, tingles racing through her at the thought of their imminent return to privacy and all the things they would do...
He burst into deep laughter. ‘Do you ever think about anything else?’
She pretended to think about it before shaking her head. ‘No.’
‘I am tempted to ask exactly what you’re thinking about in connection to sex, but if I crash the car it will take us longer to get back,’ he said drily. ‘You can tell me in graphic detail exactly what you’re thinking later.’
‘I will,’ she murmured, her eyes drifting to his muscular thighs, barely contained in his chinos.
‘Can I ask you a personal question?’
His voice had taken on a serious hue that made her twist on the seat to face him properly. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Why did you wait until you were twenty-five before having sex for the first time?’
It was the question she’d been waiting a fortnight for him to ask. She was still no more prepared with an answer.
She pressed her cheek to the back of the seat. If she couldn’t touch him she could at least look at him.
‘I never set out to stay a virgin, but I avoided relationships where lust and desire were the driving forces—I’ve seen my mother’s heart broken too many times to have any faith in passionate love. The flame is too bright and burns to ashes too quickly. I didn’t understand it was possible to have a passion for someone that is purely about sex.’
‘Is that all this is to you?’ he asked, a surprising edge to his voice. ‘Sex?’
‘Isn’t that all it is to you?’ she asked right back, momentarily confused.
He was quiet for a moment, before laughing. ‘You’re right—what we are sharing is just sex. I admit I find it disconcerting to hear that coming from a woman, and even more disconcerting to actually believe it.’
‘Do all your lovers say it’s just sex?’
‘I set out the ground rules from the beginning. I make it clear I only want a physical relationship and they all agree.’ He pulled a mocking face. ‘It never takes them long to change their minds and think they can be the one to tame me.’
‘I don’t think anyone could tame you,’ she commented idly, and swallowed away the strange acrid taste that had formed in her throat. It was no secret he’d enjoyed numerous lovers before her, and would enjoy more when she returned to Paris in little more than a week. ‘You’re as tameable as a fully grown wolf with territory problems.’
Now his laughter came in great booming ricochets. ‘I enjoy my life. I have no wish to be tamed.’
She eyed him shrewdly, wondering why she didn’t quite believe him. She believed his words, but there was a part of Talos he kept closed off. Physically, he was the most generous and giving lover she could have dreamt of, but he had demons inside him she couldn’t reach—demons she caught glimpses of when he would shout out in his sleep, cries in Greek she didn’t understand.
She’d asked him about it and he’d affected ignorance, saying he didn’t remember his dreams. She didn’t believe him but hadn’t pushed the subject. If he wanted to open up to her, he would. And, really, she was hardly in a position to demand to learn all his secrets when their whole relationship was based on sex and getting her performance-ready for the gala.
‘So you’ve never had a relationship of any kind?’ he asked.
‘I’ve had boyfriends,’ she corrected him, ‘Quite a few of them.’
‘And they didn’t try to get you into bed? Were they gay?’
She gave a bark of surprised laughter. ‘I suppose it’s possible, but the relationships weren’t like that. It was more about a meeting of minds than physical chemistry.’
‘Isn’t that what normal friends are for?’
‘Probably.’ She swallowed. ‘We would kiss... But my boyfriends were the t
ype of men who were happier to spend an evening discussing Mozart’s eccentricities and how it affected his music rather than trying to get me into bed.’
He flashed her a grin. ‘I don’t pretend to know anything about Mozart, but if I did I can assure you I would be happy to discuss him with you—provided I could be stripping you naked at the same time.’
‘But that’s what I was hiding from,’ she confessed.
‘You liked those men because they made you feel safe?’ he asked.
For such a physically imposing man Talos was incredibly perceptive—something she was coming to understand more on a daily basis.
‘I...’ She stopped to gather her thoughts. ‘Yes. You’re right. After my parents divorced my mother fell head over heels for so many different men that I lost count, but she couldn’t hold on to any of them. Her heart was broken so many times it was painful for me to watch.’
‘Why couldn’t she hold on to them?’
She shook her head and inhaled deeply. ‘I don’t know. I think it was because my father spoilt her during their marriage. He adored her, you see—worshipped her. He treated her like his queen for fifteen years. It was what she was used to and what she expected. And I think it’s what pushed her lovers away—they would fall for her beauty and fame, but as soon as they found the needy woman inside they would run a mile. It hurt her very badly. She would smile and sing to the world, pretend nothing was wrong, but behind closed doors she would wail like a child.’
‘And you witnessed this?’
She nodded.
‘I can understand why that must have been painful for you,’ he said quietly.
Hadn’t he witnessed his own mother’s pain enough times to know how damaging it could be? Especially to a child? The helplessness of being too small and insignificant to offer any protection—either an emotional or a physical sort.
‘I know you must think my mother is a brat, and she is. But she’s also funny and loving and I adore her,’ she added with defiance.
‘I can tell,’ he said wryly, turning the car into the road marking the start of Kalliakis land. ‘But you have to admit that it isn’t fair of her to place all her emotional problems on your shoulders.’
‘She can’t help the way she is. And, fair or not, it’s no less than I deserve.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
She didn’t answer, turning her face away from him to look out of the window.
‘Amalie?’
She placed a hand to her throat, her words coming out in a whisper. ‘Her misery is all my fault. If it wasn’t for me, my father would never have divorced her.’
A lump formed in his throat at the raw emotion behind her words. ‘I don’t believe that for a minute.’ How could a child influence its parents’ marriage? ‘But I am surprised to learn that your father divorced her. From what you’ve said, I assumed your mother had divorced him.’
‘My father worshipped the ground she walked on but to protect me from her ego he divorced her when I was twelve.’
The pieces were coming together. ‘Which was around the time you were pulled from the spotlight. I assume the two things are connected?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted hoarsely, before closing her mouth with a snap.
He brought the car to a stop outside her cottage and reached out to stroke the beautiful hair that felt like silk between his fingers. He wanted to gather her in his arms, not just to devour her body but to give her comfort. It was a feeling so alien to him that the lump in his throat solidified.
Giving comfort implied a form of caring, and if there was one thing Talos avoided with the zeal of a medic avoiding the plague it was caring. Sex wasn’t meant to be anything but fun; it was an itch to be scratched. Nothing more.
Before he could withdraw she turned her face back to him and raised her hand to palm his cheek. Helpless to resist, he brought his mouth down to hers and breathed her in, his heart thundering as he felt her own inhalation and knew she was breathing him in in turn.
Being with her was like living in a fugue of desire—a constant state of arousal that needed no encouragement.
It struck him that touching her and being touched in return was becoming as necessary to him as breathing.
Theos.
He had to keep his mind focussed on the bigger picture.
No matter how good the sex was between them it didn’t change the fact that Amalie was in Agon for the gala and that it was his job to get her on the stage and performing for his grandfather. She had come on enormously in the past fortnight, but still she wouldn’t play his grandmother’s composition for him, although she would perform other pieces. She swore she knew it by heart and only wanted to perfect it, and he believed her, but the clock was ticking painfully. The gala was only a week away.
Where had the time gone?
He could sense she was close to unbuttoning the secrets she clutched so tightly, and knew it was the key to unlocking what she kept hidden—the thing at the very centre of her stage fright.
A creamy envelope lay on the welcome mat of the cottage, the sight of which made him blink rapidly. It was an official royal envelope.
Amalie opened it as she walked into the living room. ‘I’ve been invited for dinner with your grandfather,’ she said, passing it to him.
His heart accelerating, he read the invitation, which was for dinner that coming Wednesday.
‘Did you know about this?’ she asked.
‘No.’
He hadn’t been told a thing. Naturally his grandfather’s permission had been sought before Talos began his quest to find a soloist, his only wish concurring with Talos’s—that the soloist had to be special. Other than that, his grandfather had been content to leave all the organisation for the gala in his grandsons’ capable hands, his energy reserves too limited for him to want any part in it.
Talos shouldn’t be surprised that he had sought out Amalie before the gala, and made a mental note to tell his grandfather he would be attending too. Astraeus Kalliakis still grieved the love of his life, and would want to meet the woman chosen to step into her footsteps on the stage.
He knew he should take the opportunity to tell Amalie the truth about his grandfather’s condition. Prepare her. But the words stuck in his throat, a cold, clammy feeling spreading through his skin as it always did whenever he thought of what the coming months would bring.
The death of the man who had raised him from the age of seven. The man who had come into Talos’s bedroom and woken the small boy from his sleep, had taken him into his arms and told him in a voice filled with despair but also with an underlying strength that Talos’s parents wouldn’t be coming home. That they were dead—killed in a road crash on their way to an event at the Greek Embassy.
It was the only time his grandfather had ever held him in such an informal manner. He’d then left Talos in the care of his Queen, Talos’s grandmother, and flown to England so he could personally tell his two other grandsons at their boarding school.
Talos thought back to how it must have been for his grandfather, having to break such tragic news while grieving the loss of his own child. His quiet strength had been something for Talos to lean on in those dark few moments when he’d learned his whole world had been turned upside down and inside out. It had been the last time Talos had ever allowed himself to lean on anyone.
And now his grandfather was nearing the end of his own life.
And there wasn’t a damn thing Talos could do about it.
He could no more protect his grandfather from death than he’d been able to protect his mother from his father’s fists and infidelities.
‘Is something wrong?’ Amalie asked, peering at him closely. ‘You look a little pale.’
He swallowed and returned her stare, suddenly wishing he could throw his arms around her w
aist and rest his head on those soft breasts, feel her gentle fingers running through his hair, soothing all the pain away.
He wrenched his thoughts from such useless wishes.
To vocalise it...to reveal the truth about his grandfather... Theos, he couldn’t even speak of it to his brothers. They skirted around it in conversation, none of them prepared to be the one to speak up, as if saying it would make it true.
He ignored her question, reaching out to stroke her cheek, to have one quick touch of that beautifully textured skin before he continued the conversation they’d started in the car. Except Amalie leaned in and hooked her arms around his neck, her breath on his skin as she razed his throat with her mouth before stepping onto her toes to claim his lips.
Her tongue swept into his mouth, her warm breath seeping into his senses. Wrapping his arms around her, he selfishly took the solace of her kisses, the place where all thought could be eradicated in the balm of her mouth and the softness of her willing body.
The last coherent thought to go through his mind as he carried her up the stairs to the bedroom was that he was nothing but putty in her hands.
* * *
Amalie stretched luxuriantly, then turned onto her side to run her fingers over Talos’s chest, tugging gently at the dark hair that covered it, brushing the brown nipples, pressing her palm down to feel the heavy beat of his heart.
He grabbed her hand and brought it to his mouth, planting a kiss to her knuckles.
She stared into his eyes, those irresistible brown depths, and a feeling of the utmost contentment swept through her. She could stare at him and lie in his arms for ever...
His hand made circular motions in the small of her back. She raised her leg a touch, pressing her pelvis into his thigh. It didn’t matter how deep her orgasms were, still she wanted more. And more...
‘You’re insatiable,’ he growled.
‘That’s your fault for being so sexy,’ she protested with a grin, moving her hand lower.
His eyes gleamed, but he grabbed her hand and brought it back up to rest at his chest. ‘You, my little songbird, are the most desirable woman alive.’
Talos Claims His Virgin Page 13
