by Penny Jordan
She had a lot to think about over the next twenty-four hours. She and Thea were tentatively re-establishing their friendship. By the following evening, after dinner and when Thea had gone to bed, Kallie sat up, determined to wait for Alexandros to come home. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, or say. She felt as if a protective layer of skin had been ripped off and she didn’t know if she could hide it from him.
It got so late that Kallie felt herself falling asleep. Giving up, she went to bed. She’d see him in the morning, or perhaps he wouldn’t be back for another few days. She felt hollow at the thought.
Kallie woke with a start. She’d been having a dream of some sort. Her heart was racing and she felt hot all over. Bleary-eyed, she got out of bed and went into the bathroom to get some water. Everywhere was quiet. She immediately thought of Alexandros. Had he come home? She knew she’d only been asleep at most for a couple of hours. About to go and get back into bed, Kallie stopped and looked at the knob of the adjoining door. In her fanciful imagination, it seemed to glow slightly in the moonlit room. She hadn’t pulled the curtains earlier.
She felt herself walking towards the door as though compelled. He probably wouldn’t even be there, she assured herself. She touched the knob. Her breath was coming in shallow bursts…and she hadn’t even turned it yet! With a disgusted shake of her head at herself, she twisted it and the door fell back towards her, surprising her with how heavy it was.
The room was dark. She crept in. The bed was flat. No one there. In the half-light, like her own room, she could just make out shapes. It was stark and masculine. Fitting for someone like Alexandros. And yet there were paintings on the walls, not abstract, as she would have expected, but small exquisite studies, portraits…landscapes.
She suddenly felt like a voyeur and turned to go back to her own room, and in that very instant the bathroom door on the other side of the room opened, light spilled out and Alexandros walked out, rubbing his hair with a towel, stark naked.
She must have gasped, or something, because he stopped, every line in his body rigid, and looked up, seeing her instantly. He didn’t drop the towel, just stood there, unashamed and magnificent. She didn’t know how long they stared at each other. She was only aware of the drumbeat of her heart, the way her whole body seemed to be melting, igniting…
‘Kallie…’
He was real, wasn’t an apparition. Kallie finally moved. She turned and would have run back to her bedroom if she’d had the co-ordination, but she didn’t. She stumbled at the door and it slammed shut in her face, keeping her inside the room. She could have stamped her foot in frustration. No doubt he was thinking that she had heard him come back and was fulfilling her wifely duty.
Her hand had gone sweaty in seconds, the knob wouldn’t turn and she let out a small whimper of frustration. And then stopped. The carpet had muffled his approach but she could feel body heat behind her and she closed her eyes. And all she could see was him. Without even really looking, she’d made an imprint on her retinas of his body and it was all she could see now, every toned, muscled, perfectly formed part of him. Not an ounce of fat, not a blemish on that smooth, olive, silky skin.
Heavy hands dropped to the bare skin of her shoulders and she couldn’t repress a shudder of reaction. He turned her to face him and she couldn’t resist. She kept her eyes closed, knowing if she moved even slightly that she’d come into contact with that hard body.
‘Kallie…’ A thread of something laced his voice—was it amusement? Irritation? ‘Open your eyes, dammit.’
She opened them. And was surprised to see that the room was lighter than she’d thought, the moonlight stronger. The lean lines of his face were starkly outlined, as was the need in his eyes. She couldn’t look down to see if he’d put on the towel, the thought of him naked nearly made her legs buckle. That tiny movement had him pull her into him. She felt the towel, but it was a feeble barrier against the hot, hard erection underneath. Her legs were trembling in earnest now, his arms the only thing holding her up.
Her own silky vest and lace panties were no sort of barrier either. She felt the door against her back and his arms slackened, hands coming around her face. He was crowding her, nudging her thighs apart with his own hair-roughened one. Like a deadly inevitability it washed over her. This was it. No going back. This is what she was here for, what had sparked between them when they’d first looked at one another again.
And suddenly it didn’t matter right at that moment why she was there, because all Kallie was aware of was his thigh between hers, and how she ached to feel more, experience him fully. She could have tried to run away but she might as well be running from herself. Maybe if he’d come out with clothes on…maybe this heated insanity wouldn’t have taken her over body and soul…But to have seen him naked…
With a guttural, broken moan of something in Greek, he bent his head and took her mouth in an onslaught so savage, so passionate that Kallie’s head almost exploded with the feeling. Electricity coursed through her body. Unable to resist the overwhelming need, she strained to meet him on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around his neck. She ached to be closer and welcomed his thigh between hers, trapping it. She could feel the moist expression of her lust between her thighs, moistening her panties, and moved subtly against him. The pulse between her legs beat for release.
He tore his mouth away and moved it down, trailing kisses along her jaw, down to her neck. Kallie’s head fell back and hit the door but she didn’t even notice the brief pain. All the muscles in her neck corded as she felt his hand move to cup one silk-covered breast, feeling, caressing through the fabric and then, with his thigh still holding her in place, his mouth touched her, surrounded the distended peak and suckled through the fabric. Her back arched and she could feel herself starting to splinter into tiny pieces. Nothing had ever prepared her for this wealth of feelings and sensations.
Before she could lose it completely he pulled back. Kallie opened glazed eyes and looked into his, which burnt with the glowing embers of his desire. For her. It was too huge a moment to take in. All she could do was…experience, feel.
She stretched up and took his face in her hands, bringing it down, and when his mouth touched hers again she sighed with deep satisfaction. Moving her hands down, she revelled in the feel of his skin, his broad shoulders, down over biceps, bunched from holding her waist, spanning it with his hands. Her hands moved all the way down until she came to the towel and she slid them around the back, underneath and snagged it off, her hands running over the taut globes of his bottom.
His big frame shuddered as his erection pressed against her belly. ‘Kallie, Kallie…this is all I’ve thought about…since seeing you…I want you so much…’
She kissed his neck, his shoulder, the words slipping out easily. She didn’t even have to think about them. ‘I want you too…’
‘Then why did you try to leave?’
She was breathless, half-incoherent. ‘I…I didn’t know you were here…I didn’t want you to think that I was giving in…’
Something about the way she said it, some kind of defiant independence, made her seem unbearably vulnerable. He had to drive it down. ‘Well, you’re here now. It’s too late to go back.’
He lifted her up in a graceful movement and carried her over to the huge bed, laying her down with surprising care. She lay back and watched as he rested on strong arms over her. Like his namesake, one of the fabled Kouros statues. For a split second clarity and sanity rushed in. This man despised her…was bedding her as a form of punishment. Yet how could it feel so good? Going against her instincts to just say nothing, Kallie felt something inexorable rise up within her.
Alexandros felt himself close to exploding with how tightly this woman had him wound. But just then she came up on her elbows, her eyes darkened with passion but glittering with something else. Something he couldn’t define.
‘Alexandros…how can you…? How can we do this, when you hate me so much?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Something in his body went cold. Not his desire. Nothing could put that out now. His thoughts raced even though he didn’t want to think. He had to admit that since he’d been gone, he’d found himself thinking of her, the past…wanting to come back to her with a hunger that had to be purely physical. It certainly felt that way now when she lay on his bed, in front of him, eyes darkened, lips plump from his kisses. Anything else, anything more, had to be their history, that was all.
That was complicated. But this wasn’t. This was simple.
When he’d walked out of the shower and seen her there, every muscle had clenched in reaction. She looked like a young goddess. Pale and glowing in the moonlight, her firm breasts upthrust and enticingly visible under her flimsy vest. The shaded darkness that hid her sex a shadowy promise of paradise.
Enough thinking, enough talking!
‘No, Kallie.’ He was hoarse. ‘I don’t hate you. I told you once, love is the other side of that. For one, you must have the other. I desire you, I want you…that’s all.’
And with a ruthlessness that made him feel on safer ground, he bent over her supine body, found her mouth and took it. Cruelly, to sate his hunger and to ignite hers. She lay rigid at first, as if in rejection of his words, but then slowly he could feel the tremor build until she was his again.
Kallie tried to hang onto his brutal words, tried to keep them in her head so that she’d stay rigid, stiff, unresponsive. But she couldn’t. She was too weak. When he’d spoken them, coldness had flooded her, she’d seen the way his eyes had turned calculating. The passion still burned but when forced to think about it, when she’d forced him to think about it, his distaste for what he was doing was palpable.
But the wish to hang onto his words was beyond Kallie’s weak grasp. At this moment only one thing was clear in her head. Only one thing she wanted more than his forgiveness, more than his acceptance, right now, was him.
Tearing his mouth from hers, he pulled her up, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, her long fringe covering her eyes. With one knee on the bed, he lifted her arms and pulled up her top, slipping it over her head. He pressed her back down. She looked away for a second as if she couldn’t bring herself to look at him, and he brought her face back with a hand on her jaw. He looked deeply into her aquamarine eyes, that shone dark green now with her arousal.
‘Kallie, don’t turn away from me, you want me…Say it…’
As if the words were pulled from her. ‘I…want you.’
He saw a glistening in her eyes and then she reached up and pulled him down on top of her, her hands on his shoulders, blindly searching for his mouth.
When he pulled back the brightness was gone from her eyes as though he’d imagined it. Length to length they touched. He was careful to keep his full weight off her. One thigh was a possessive heaviness between hers. He skimmed a hand down her chest, fingers circling her breasts. They thrust upwards, two perfect mounds, small pebble-hard tips. He could see her back arch, her stomach contract as his hand closed around one, fingers teasing, pulling at the peak. ‘Alexandros…please…’
He bent down and his mouth and tongue laved and suckled. First one breast, then the other. Her hands clutched at his head, directed him, guided him. With his other hand he reached down over the soft mound of her belly, felt the flare of her hips and went under her knickers. The hair was soft and springy. He took her knickers with him and could feel her lift her legs to help him guide them off. They were wet with her arousal and his penis jumped in response. It ached he was so hard and he wanted to thrust in so far and so deep that he’d have immediate release. But he knew that slowly would bring the biggest, sweetest release of all, and she’d made him wait. Now it was her turn.
Pulling her into him, chest to chest with one strong arm, her breasts crushed against him, his hand cupped her bare bottom, the cheeks round and voluptuous. His thigh nudged her legs apart and his hand found its way, from the succulent cheeks, around her silky flank and to the soft curls. Fingers threaded through the softness and then he was stroking back and forth, back and forth. Her mouth was an open gasp that she pressed against his shoulder, teeth biting gently as she fought to keep her moans back.
She threw her leg over his thigh, opening herself up even more, and reached a hand down, searching for and finding his aching erection, which was so hard and full that she opened her eyes wide.
‘All for you…’ he whispered, and kissed her, his fingers still stroking, finding the small hard nub and relentlessly flicking, circling, before dipping back. Now he was moving three fingers in and out. Her head fell back, she moaned aloud and her hand on his shaft moved up and down, the satin skin slipping over and back. His hand stalled for a second as he had to contain a shudder of pure blinding arousal. She’d almost pushed him over the edge.
‘Kallie…’
‘Alexandros…’
‘Stop…’
‘But…I want you…I want more…’
He took his hand away and her sex throbbed. She burned to have him fill her completely. As tangled as everything between them was emotionally, as tangled as their histories were, and as inexperienced as Kallie was, this felt like a dance she’d choreographed a long time ago. She knew exactly what to do. And it felt amazing. Stupendous.
He pressed her down on her back and she felt him shift his weight. She kept her hand on his penis and he came off her slightly and on both arms was poised over her. She arched her back, her hips up towards his, until the head of his penis nudged her entrance, its length in her hand. She’d never felt anything so erotic, never been so focused on one thing, one moment. Here and now. Nothing else mattered. Not the past, not the future.
He was poised to move inside her. Kallie finally took her hand off and arched up even higher. Her hips off the bed, she tried to reach around to his behind but couldn’t and put her hands on his waist, feeling the hollowed ridges that delineated the juncture to his thighs. Running soft hands, small fingers up and down. He pulsed and jumped between them.
She bit her lip, about to beg, and then, in one cataclysmic moment, he was there, sliding in…pushing into her moist welcoming heat. Her muscles clenched around him, drawing him in, all the way. Until they were completely joined, until she didn’t know where he stopped and she began, and when he started to move that she lost all semblance of control and sanity.
Alexandros was in another universe. A place he’d never been. Entering Kallie was like entering a foreign kingdom. Yet somewhere he already knew. The way she rose up to meet him, the subtly innocent twitch of her thighs against his that rocked her against him made him press down and into her fully, deeper and deeper. Slowly, enjoying every moment of feeling himself enveloped in her lush warmth, he pulled out and then pushed back in again. And it felt like coming home.
Sweat beaded on his brow, his upper lip. Kallie’s head was thrown back and as he thrust in again she looked up, reached hands up to his shoulders, then slid them down, reaching for and finding his buttocks, urging him deeper, longer, stronger, harder. One slim shapely leg caressed up and down the back of his thigh and he was losing it. All will for patience and finesse gone. He needed to have her now. Abandoning all control, he went with her urgings, incoherent mumbles, breathy whispers and thrust in, taking her hard and fast.
Her body arched up again, her hips rocked against his and with her breasts crushed against his chest, he felt her come apart in his arms, only managing to hold on himself until the last moment with a control he’d never had to call on before. And only then did he join her in his own blissful, incandescent climax.
Kallie woke with the first tentative light of dawn streaming into the room. She was on her side, facing Alexandros. Just a hair’s breadth away from touching, they were so close that if she sucked in a deep breath, her breasts would touch his chest. She looked at his face, which looked so much younger and vulnerable in repose. None of the hard phenomenally successful businessman was in evidence and it reminded her so much of
the young man she’d known that a lump formed in her throat. A completely unbidden, monumental wave of tenderness and something else washed over her and she went stiff with instant panic. No, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow it to rise. She knew if she did that it would be to admit something that would have the potential to devastate her life even beyond what she already knew to be possible.
She reasoned with herself that it was completely understandable that all these feelings would be emerging. How many people got to realise their dreams, long-held fantasies? And what a dream…She closed her eyes briefly as the memory of what had happened last night washed over her. He had been everything she could have ever fantasised about and then some. A lover beyond compare, a master of the art, more in tune with her body than even she had been. Eliciting a response that made her dizzy with desire all over again. He’d taken her to the brink and past it over and over again. She had been as insatiable as him.
She opened her eyes again and studiously avoided looking down that tempting body stretched alongside her. Thea’s words came back into her head like poison. Insidious and spreading throughout her body, tainting what had happened. Things were so much worse than she could have ever imagined. What would his reaction be when he woke up? Perhaps a mocking, triumphant smile? She didn’t want to wait and find out, as myriad scenarios flooded her brain, all of them leaving her feeling exposed and far too vulnerable.
She cringed when she thought of the pitiable fight she’d put up. She may as well have just been waiting on his bed, gift-wrapped. That finally gave her the impetus to move. With stealthy grace Kallie slid from the bed and paused to pick up her strewn bits of nightwear, a blush staining her cheeks as she did so and quietly let herself out of the room.
When Alexandros woke up, he let himself lie there without opening his eyes for a few moments. He was feeling…replete, complete. For the first time in his life. The memory of Kallie’s body under his, so responsive, made a smile curve his lips. Never before had he had the experience of feeling like this afterwards. And as he woke a little more, the sated feeling was there but another feeling superseded it, which surprised him with its strength. A hunger. A craving, aching hunger of a body having tasted paradise and wanting more—now.
