by Olivia Gates
Without one more word, she ended the call.
There was nothing more to be said, anyway.
It was time for action.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, she was staring at the achingly familiar door of the Plaza’s royal suite.
It felt as if she’d been here only yesterday for yet another rendezvous with Andreas. The concierge had rushed to receive her, the same man from her visits four years ago. The one Andreas had entrusted with keeping his stays and their meetings a secret. With a gushing welcome that seemed genuine, he’d given her a key card to access the exclusive floor and suite. It seemed Andreas had never bothered to rescind his orders to extend to her the same privileges he commanded.
Putting the key card away, she rang the bell.
In a minute, the door opened. And all her systems almost suffered an instantaneous shutdown.
Andreas stood there, hair gleaming, white shirt wide-open and faded jeans hanging dangerously low on his hips. Everything she’d seen encased in his suit yesterday, then felt against her body, was on display. He seemed even taller barefoot, his shoulders so wide they blocked out her world. His torso and abdomen were a sleek, mouthwatering sculpture of muscle sheathed in polished skin dusted with the perfect amount of bronze silk. Everything else was a composite of pure power and masculinity molded to perfection.
His steel eyes penetrated her as he stood aside, his motion like a magnet pulling her across the threshold. He stalked barely a foot behind as she walked into the oval foyer that led to an array of social and private rooms. Soon she was walking into the living room, barely noticing its rich decorations, sumptuous textiles and exquisite furnishings that she vaguely remembered were inspired by the royal court of Louis XV. All she knew was that every inch of this place echoed with memories, of when he’d taken her and pleasured her, in its every nook, in every way.
Just inside the huge room, she turned around to face him, found him watching her with that intensity that had always melted her. It now made her feel besieged, fenced in, even in the almost five thousand square foot suite.
“I calculated you’d let a day pass before you came,” he said, his voice thrumming every inflamed nerve. “When you called, I adjusted that to an hour. You’re earlier than all my estimates. It’s a good thing I decided not to shower before—”
She slapped him. So hard her palm went numb with pain.
Horrified at her action, she watched the imprint of her hand form then evaporate on his chiseled cheek.
His only response was a calm “Don’t hit me again, Naomi.”
“Or what?”
His eyes told her exactly what.
Feeling as if it wasn’t her doing this, in slow motion, announcing her intention with absolute clarity, she raised her other hand and slapped his right cheek.
His eyes remained open, roasting her alive. “I’ll step out of your reach now, Naomi. Just in case you don’t know what you’re inviting.”
Her hands bunched in his open shirt, all her agony and dread and yearning boiling over. His gaze devoured her, but his body remained inert, refusing to respond to her fury, leaving it up to her to slam into him.
She did, and it was as if she’d hit a wall, one that buzzed with a million volts of magnetism and maleness. She yanked on his shirt, trying to get him to respond. He just looked down at her, doing everything to her with his eyes, but letting her know he wouldn’t give her what she was after...yet.
Taking her incursion further, she groped for his hair, sank her fingers in its silky depths and tugged. A hiss escaped his thinned lips, a testament to her roughness and his enjoyment of it. Surging on tiptoes, she dragged his head down, her lips gasping for his, parched, unable to withstand those last seconds before he quenched years’ worth of thirst.
But it seemed he still needed more. He would not accept any demonstration that would have him meet her halfway. Her offer wasn’t total enough yet for his liking, what would later make her fully accountable for her actions and decisions. By holding back, he was letting her know he would share none of the responsibility for them...as usual. His role was to tempt and inflame. It was up to her to throw herself into his inferno. Like that first time...and from then on.
Mind gone, body ablaze, she was ready to go to any lengths, whatever the consequences, just so he’d take her over, expose her to the full power of his passion. Not knowing what would satisfy him, she rubbed breasts aching for his possession against his chest, undulated the core weeping for his invasion against his hardness.
Suddenly, it felt as if his whole body expanded when he dragged her head back by her hair, and his breath, fresh and potent, filled her tight lungs as his snarl scorched her lips.
“That’s it, Naomi, that’s exactly it.”
Then he smashed his lips down on hers.
It was like a dam had burst, flooding her with what she’d never experienced except with him. Oneness. Need that sliced her open, left her begging for everything...everything.
Her senses went off like fireworks with the delight of reconnection as he gave her the ravaging she’d been starving for. Her whimpers became incessant as his teeth sank into her lips, as his tongue drove inside her mouth, occupying her, draining her.
Then he snatched his lips away. The letdown buckled her legs, but he was only taking his onslaught to the next level. Pressing her to the wall, his hands roamed all over her, tearing every stitch of clothes from her burning body, his every move loaded with the precise ruthlessness of a starving predator unleashed on a prey long kept out of reach.
His pupils flared, turning his eyes black as her breasts spilled into his palms. His homage to them was brief but devastating before he was on his knees, dragging her panties off, burying his lips in her core, diving into her flowing readiness. She hovered on the edge of orgasm; one more sweep of his hot tongue or graze of his teeth would finish her. But she didn’t want release. She wanted him.
“Please...”
He understood her need, as he always had. He heaved up, caught her plea in his savage mouth. He ravaged her lips as he lifted her, his large hands locking her feet around his buttocks, sending her heartbeat stampeding at his effortless strength. Then he freed his erection.
Another plea choked out of her depths as his length teased her swollen flesh, sending a million arrows of pleasure to her womb. He glided his incredible heat and hardness through the molten lips of her core, from her bud to her opening, just once. On the next sweep, he rammed inside her, sinking in her to the hilt.
The savagery and abruptness of his invasion was a shock so acute, her heart faltered and she collapsed in his hold.
He growled something ferocious, what she thought was “Too long...too damn long...” His teeth sank into her shoulder, like a lion tethering his mate for a jarring ride. Then he withdrew.
It felt as if he was dragging her life force out with him, and her arms tightened around his neck, her hands clawing at him, begging for his return. He complied, responding with an even harder, deeper plunge, blacking out all her senses with the searing fullness, the beyond-her-limits expansion around his girth and length. Then he set her on fire as his thrusts picked up the tempo.
Every withdrawal was maddening loss, every plunge excruciating ecstasy. Her cries blurred into wails, her flesh yielding fully to his invasion. He muttered her name in a litany, each thrust accentuated by the carnal sounds of their flesh slapping together. The scents of sex and abandon were like an aphrodisiac, the glide and burn of his hard flesh inside her stoking the inferno of pleasure until she felt she’d combust. She needed...needed... Please...please...please...
As always, realizing what she needed, when and how hard and fast she needed it, he hammered his hips between her splayed thighs, his erection pounding inside her with the cadence and force to unleash the conflagration that would consume
her, until one thrust breached her womb and shattered the coil of need.
Her body detonated, from where he was buried deepest outward, merciless currents of release crashing through her, squeezing her around him, choking her shrieks.
Roaring her name, he fed her convulsions with his own climax, jetting the burning fuel of his pleasure on hers, filling her to overflowing, sharpening the throes of release, until she slumped in his arms, sated, replete, complete.
Before consciousness fully returned, she heard him groan, “Not enough, agápi mou...”
Boneless in his hold, like a marionette with all her strings cut, her head spun as his endearment echoed inside her. My love...or my darling. What he only ever said during sex.
Then the world was thudding with the urgency of his strides. She drifted off for what might have been seconds or an hour, jerking out of the sensual stupor as she felt him laying her down on the bed where he’d once owned her. His scent rose from the silk sheets to wrap around her, compensating her for his loss as he left her body.
He retreated only to rid himself of his clothes, before coming back over her, impacting her with his demand.
Spreading her quivering thighs, bending her knees, he braced his at the bed’s edge and bore down on her, pinning her by the shoulders. Then, bending to thrust his tongue inside her panting mouth, he reentered her in a long, burning plunge.
She’d thought he’d drained her of every need, that she’d want nothing ever again. But as he forged inside her, and her sore, swollen tissues expanded around his daunting girth, urgency slammed into her once more, her awakened flesh clamoring harder, louder.
After that first frenzied coupling, he took her in a deliberate yet even more gloriously raw possession. Throughout, he exploited every inch of her body with hands and lips and teeth. And he watched her. Oh, the way he watched her.
His feral focus made it all more primal and mind-blowing, making every touch a bolt of ecstasy, every bite and dig and thrust a howling pleasure.
Soon, unable to stand any more stimulation, she climaxed again, four years of deprivation exploding into torrents of sensation, even fiercer than the first firestorm. At her peak, he rode her harder, faster, till he rammed himself into her recesses, roaring as he hurled himself after her into the abyss of abandon. Her whole body shook with ecstasy as his hardness pulsed inside her, shooting his essence, her over-sensitized muscles fluttering around him, greedily milking him for every drop of satisfaction.
This time, as her consciousness flickered, he sank on top of her, his breathing as labored as hers, his heart thundering against her sputtering one, completing her domination.
At last, he rose off her, swept her enervated form up to the pillows and contained her in the cloak of his great body.
After long minutes of lying there, savoring the descent, painting her savagely pleasured body with indolent caresses, he pulled himself up on one elbow and looked down at her, his gaze one of supreme male triumph and possession.
“Now that I’ve gulped you down twice, it’s time to savor you.”
She blinked dazedly up at him, shocked to find her body readying itself for him again. This sickness had never been cured. If anything, it had intensified.
He reached over her to his cell on the bedside table, suckled one marvelously sore nipple soothingly as he offered the phone to her. “Tell Mrs. McCarthy you won’t be home tonight.”
Naomi’s throat tightened. “I have to go home.”
“No, you don’t. And won’t. I’m just getting started.”
She pushed against him feebly, drowning as he resumed suckling and fondling her. “Andreas, stop. We have to talk.”
“Talking is definitely not on my to-do list tonight. I might consider it tomorrow. Or the day after.”
“Andreas...please, we must talk first.”
He lifted his head from her breast, smile indulgent. “About this?”
“About Dora.”
The heat in his eyes drained away. In two seconds, they were as cold as she’d ever seen them. Then without one more word or look, he released her and rose from the bed.
Every muscle feeling like jelly, she scrambled for the bedcovers as she watched him pull on his jeans.
Then he turned his unfathomable eyes to her. “Was that what this was all about? Dorothea? What did you think you were achieving here? Bribing me?”
“I gave you what you came blackmailing me for.”
“I don’t remember any blackmail.”
“It was implied, loud and clear.”
“Then you forgot all about me. Or never knew much about me at all. I never imply anything. If I wanted to blackmail you, I would have spelled out my ultimatum ‘loud and clear.’”
Feeling hope for a way out quickly fading, she gasped, “It was, to me. You made your sexual interest patent, then told me you’d take Dora. When you know I’d do anything to keep her.”
“Even throw yourself in the shark’s bed, eh? So what was your scenario? That I was here to extort you for vengeance sex, and once you gave me a mind-blowing send-off, I’d walk away and forget all about Petros’s will, which I never considered seriously, anyway, but was only holding to your head?”
“What else could I think? You can’t be considering taking on Dora for real,” Naomi cried, feeling her world being ripped from under her as his stony glance told her he considered nothing else. “For God’s sake, Andreas, you know you don’t want a baby, and won’t be able to give her the home and family life she needs and deserves.”
He shrugged. “Probably. Even definitely. That’s why I don’t intend to take Dorothea from you.”
Her heart surged with hope. “Y-you don’t?”
He moved then, coming back to where she sat stiff and tangled in his covers. Leaning down on one knee, he made the mattress dip, tumbling her toward him, and murmured, “I don’t.”
Before she collapsed back with relief, his hand slipped beneath the sheets and cupped her breast, giving it a delicious squeeze. “I do intend to take you, though.”
Her breast swelling in his large, warm palm, she moaned, “Don’t you have it in reverse? I already slept with you.”
He removed the sheet, engulfed the nipple that had been envying its twin in his hot mouth and pulled hard, making her moan and arch up. “You thought a couple of rolls in the royal suite would be all it took?”
Resigned that she’d end up giving in to his conditions, and temptation, she asked, “How many ‘rolls’ would it take?”
He raised his head and one eyebrow. “I can name any number?” At her grudging nod, his lips twisted. “How many would do it, do you think? Considering my record of insatiability with you? I must have had you over a thousand times during our time together, and it failed to sate me.”
“It sure won’t be anywhere near as many as that!”
“You won’t consider an unlimited usage arrangement? Pity.”
“Oh, fine. Whatever you want.”
At her sullen capitulation, he withdrew, rose from the bed and stood over her, studying her molten pose.
Then, thumbs hooked into his jeans, eyes enigmatic, he exhaled. “The thing is, Naomi, what I want is something a bit more significant than even your limitless sexual services.”
She struggled up, numb with dread, cold with outrage and flaming with desire all at once. “What could that be? My soul?”
He waved his hand. “You can keep your soul. I only want everything else. What you’ll give me when you remarry me.”
Five
Where the hell was her other shoe?
Naomi limped around, frantically looking for the damned thing. Where had that damned man tossed it?
She might be looking right at it and not seeing it. And that wouldn’t be strange. Everything had been a blur since Andr
eas had made his outrageous proposition.
Following an interminable period of gaping at him, she’d exploded from the bed and run out to retrieve her clothes. She was one shoe away from fleeing this place, and hurtling in search of any way to keep that tormentor at bay.
Remarry him, indeed!
Her sanity and self-respect had barely survived marrying him the first time.
What shocked her most was that he’d never wanted to marry her at all. He’d wed her only as a means to keep an “accommodating” sexual partner placated so she wouldn’t leave. He didn’t view marriage as other human beings did. So why would he—
“It’s beneath the divan. The three-seater.”
Whirling around at the sound of his calm voice, she found him still in only his jeans, leaning one formidable shoulder against the archway into the expansive room.
A stifled imprecation escaped her as she lunged for the shoe she only saw when he’d told her where to look. She had looked there before and hadn’t seen it.
In seconds she had it on, then snatched her purse off the same divan, where he’d thrown it what felt like a lifetime ago. Cursing under her breath again, she headed toward the escape route he was blocking.
He let her come within a foot before he uncoiled and filled the archway. It would be impossible to pass him without physical contact. She knew full well where that would lead.
She raised her eyes to his. “Move aside, please, and let’s not turn this into a worse mess than it already is.”
“I take it all this flouncing about is your way of saying ‘hell, no’?”
“Flouncing!” She reined back her indignation. This man was turning out to be an expert provocateur, a quality he’d never demonstrated before, but seemed to be taking much pleasure in now. Since it was so unexpected, she’d been an easy mark, letting his every yank pull her wherever he wanted. But this stopped now.
Exhaling, she tried to access her control, as fractured as it was, and attempt to do what she hadn’t done so far—take her emotions out of the equation and talk pure sense.
