by Lynne Graham
‘I don’t drink when I’m working—’
‘If I’m not working, you’re not working either,’ Alexei traded and slowly the stiffness in her bearing eased.
‘Rosé wine…’
‘Rosé? You’ve got no class,’ Alexei groaned from indoors.
‘I only like sweet drinks,’ she confided.
‘Relax, take off your jacket,’ Alexei told her.
And she did because she was too warm. Her sleek grey silk T-shirt complemented her tailored skirt. She had learned how to put together an outfit for work and was satisfied that she looked elegant, while being less confident of what she wore outside working hours. A moisture-beaded glass clasped in her hand, she studied Alexei, long dark lashes veiling her anxious green eyes from the disturbing penetration of his.
‘You put on a hell of a show for my family today. I appreciate it.’
Her cheeks warmed. ‘Thanks.’
‘I just wish I felt a little happier about having left my mother in her final resting place down by the church.’
Billie frowned. ‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘I’d always planned to take her away travelling once my father was gone,’ Alexei confided with a raw, roughened edge of emotion to his voice. ‘I waited too long. It never occurred to me that they might die at the same time. When she married my father she gave up her youth. She spent thirty-odd years withering with boredom and frustration on this island. Speros was her cage, her punishment for marrying a man in his fifties who was afraid that she would meet someone else if he let her have more freedom. She deserved better.’
‘Your mother always seemed happy.’
‘She was a great wife and mother.’ Alexei downed the contents of his glass in a salute. ‘But she got very little pleasure out of being a Drakos.’
‘You and your father—her family—meant everything to her,’ Billie responded softly, and then she set down her empty glass. ‘I’m going to turn in now.’
‘You have to be the only woman in my life who continually tries to walk out on me,’ Alexei remarked with a wondering shake of his handsome dark head. ‘Any idea why that is?’
And all over again Billie felt the intense charismatic pull of him tugging at her senses. He was gorgeous and she would have had to be bereft of her senses not to appreciate him. His high-voltage sensuality was like a honey trap, she reasoned feverishly, and not one she could afford to fall into again.
‘Working for you is tiring,’ she fielded awkwardly.
‘What a drab description of being in my employment,’ Alexei countered, his Greek accent and possibly the amount of alcohol he had consumed making the words slur together.
Meeting his brilliant golden gaze, Billie felt like a rabbit caught in car headlights: paralysed, trapped and befuddled by the blinding brightness.
‘It’s never boring and I enjoy the travel and all the different people I meet,’ she conceded in a small tense voice. ‘Perhaps you should have allowed Brigitte to stay on today to keep you company.’
‘The French one who screamed abuse at you when you told her she couldn’t stay? You’ve got to be kidding!’ A familiar pulse of arousal was making Alexei uncomfortable. There was something about Billie that turned him on and he had long since given up trying to work out what it was. Yes, she had beautiful green eyes, clear fine skin and a peach of a mouth, but she wasn’t in his class and he knew it. She had nothing in common with his other lovers either—that would be a ridiculous comparison to make. Yet, somehow, he was always aware of the movements of that small, delightfully curvy body when it was in his vicinity. He never failed to notice the luscious curve of her breasts and the firm feminine swell of her bottom below a fitted skirt. And, just at that moment, with his blood running insanely hot and making him hard as steel, he wanted to strip off her clothes and sink hard and long into the silky welcome of her virginal body.
‘You shouldn’t be alone tonight.’
Alexei reached out and closed his lean brown hands over hers to tug her closer. ‘Ah-h-h, that’s sweet, Billie. Do you really think I need emotional support from anyone?’
‘Well, you’re unlikely to find it at the foot of a bottle,’ Billie told him with unhesitating disapproval.
Lounging back on the edge of a stone table with his long, lean, powerful thighs spread wide, Alexei flung back his handsome dark head and laughed with rich appreciation of that reprimand. His hands tightened over hers swiftly when she made a move to break free. ‘Only from your lips, moraki mou. The unblemished truth.’
‘Don’t call me “my little baby”,’ Billie urged with complete seriousness. ‘It’s that sort of talk which gives people the wrong idea about our relationship.’
‘But you are very small,’ Alexei riposted with dark amusement, his rich drawl running the syllables of the words together as he thought it was funny that she never seemed to notice the effect she had on him. ‘I’m not accustomed to little women.’
‘That’s not the point.’ Lifting her head, Billie encountered scorching golden eyes framed by luxuriant black lashes and registered that looking at him directly was seriously unwise. She felt the heat of that appraisal right to the very core of her, setting up a string of little sensual shocks that tightened her nipples and made her uncomfortably conscious of the uniquely sensitive area between her thighs.
‘The point here…’ Alexei breathed silkily as he flexed his strong hands and inexorably drew her closer still ‘…is that I want you and you want me and we’ve been dancing round that fact for far too long.’
Billie was as unyielding as a cliff face being buffeted by a high wind. ‘That’s not true.’
‘Stop being stuffy,’ Alexei urged, his intonation soft and sibilant, black-lashed stormy golden eyes threatening to reel her in like a fish on a line.
‘I’m not being stuffy. I’m just stating a fact,’ Billie told him tartly. ‘Last year I got a bit of a crush on my boss but I got over it—I’m sure you’ve had loads of female staff who over time became attracted to you.’
‘But none who tasted as hot as you,’ Alexei slotted in dangerously. ‘So you got over me?’
Billie nodded vigorously, glad he had made that very basic but crucial connection. ‘Totally.’
Alexei leant forward and slowly, sensually captured her lips, suckling their ripe curves before sliding his tongue moistly into her mouth in an explicit thrust. And she couldn’t breathe for excitement and felt her legs wobble like crumbling supports. He caught her to him with strong arms, hands splaying across her bottom. Trembling she came up for air and gasped, ‘We can’t—’
‘Ne, ne, we can,’ Alexei asserted thickly. ‘No more games.’
Resistance had hitherto been ingrained in Billie, but, although she dug deep, this time she couldn’t find a trace of her usual caution. Games? The very word offended her. Was that what he thought? That saying no had merely been an exercise cynically staged to increase his desire for her? She refused to believe that he could see her in that light because her own feelings were so different. In his arms she ironically felt ridiculously safe. There had been no other man in her life for three years. She loved him and he would never need her more than he needed her now. Like a battery-operated doll able to go in only one direction, she let her swollen mouth brush back across his, her entire body tingling with sexual longing. Being touched by him, even having the right to hold him close, lent a whole new exciting dimension to her feelings for him that went to her head like strong drink.
He carried her past the swimming pool terrace to the guest suite she was occupying until her house was ready for her. Automatic lights flashed on at every step to illuminate their progress.
‘What about tomorrow?’ Billie asked with sudden urgency.
‘Who knows?’ Alexei breathed in a tone of dismissal. ‘Right now I don’t want to think about today or, for that matter, tomorrow, moraki mou.’
Her slim fingers brushed his cheekbone in a soothing gesture of tenderness. ‘Then don’t
think about them,’ she whispered softly…
Chapter Six
‘IF YOU only knew how long I have dreamt of doing this with you…’ Alexei groaned, settling Billie down on the bed and pausing only to shed his jacket and shoes before joining her there.
Billie was mesmerised by his intrinsic poise, for he seemed as at home in her bedroom as in his own. Indeed, lounging back against her pillows, Alexei was a beautiful fantasy that didn’t seem quite real to her. His black hair and sun-darkened olive skin were an eye-catching contrast against the pale bedding. It was a challenge for her to drag her gaze from the exotically high cheekbones, dramatic deep-set dark eyes and arrogant nose that gave such strength and character to his lean, handsome face. The sensual side of her nature had finally run away with her, she acknowledged in a rush of dismay. Did that mean that she was more like her highly sexed mother than she had ever appreciated? That fear tormented her but one kiss had mown down her defences and turned her into a pushover.
‘You don’t believe me,’ Alexei accused.
‘Does it matter?’ Billie wouldn’t look at him. Thoughts of her mother’s chequered love life had cast a sleazy shadow over her. Perhaps Lauren had also thought that she loved the first man in her life. Would Alexei simply think she was cheap and easy if she slept with him? With a past like his, she could hardly expect to stand out from the crowd.
‘With you? Yes,’ he told her bluntly in English for emphasis.
‘I don’t need empty words and promises.’ Billie made a valiant attempt to suppress her insecurity and turned towards him, green eyes darkened to emerald by her yearning and the terrible guilty sense that she was breaking every one of her rules. Yet when she met those heavily lashed golden eyes, it struck her that rules were made to be broken and that, for her, Alexei Drakos would always be an exception. He laced long brown fingers slowly into the tumbling fall of her red hair, smoothing and fanning the vibrant strands across his palm in the lamplight in a move that accentuated the different shades.
‘I never found red hair attractive until I saw yours glowing in the sunlight with all those crazy streaks of copper and gold and bronze,’ he admitted, before he jerked her head back and took a hungry driving kiss that exploded through her wound-up body like a depth charge.
The renewed taste of him was a wake-up call to her slumbering senses. That kiss was insanely stimulating. Indeed the probe of his tongue sent a spasm of fierce sexual need spearing right to the heart of her, releasing a feverish energy that pulsed through her receptive flesh in a sensual wave. Alexei pulled back from her to remove her T-shirt, an action that left her blinking in surprise like an owl suddenly thrust into bright light.
‘You’re always wearing too many clothes, moraki mou. I can’t wait to get them off,’ he confided thickly, one lean hand already engaged in unzipping her skirt so that he could slide it off her as easily as if she were standing up.
Uneasily conscious of her body’s semi-clad state in a serviceable black cotton bra and panties, Billie went stiff and self-conscious. She was hopelessly convinced that he was sure to notice his mistake now when he discovered that—shock! horror!—her garments did not miraculously conceal a designer-thin body with dainty breasts and legs as long as a giraffe’s. She knew that though there was nothing wrong with her figure it was very ordinary, and while she might be undersized in the height department she certainly wasn’t in her bust or hip measurements. Her face was scarlet with self-consciousness.
‘I have a huge sense of anticipation,’ Alexei revealed, reaching for her bra, his attention welded hungrily to the snowy hillocks firmly encased in black cotton.
‘But anticipation often leads to disappointment,’ Billie warned him worriedly, pushing his arms back so that she could start unbuttoning his shirt and occupy her trembling hands. She was desperate to conceal her nerves and her sheer embarrassing ignorance of such intimacies. ‘It’s my turn.’
‘Always the pessimist and so democratic,’ Alexei mocked.
Billie was very well aware that she was dealing with an autocrat, who had learned in the cradle that he had no need to share anything with anyone. Her fingers were clumsy on the buttons of his shirt and to complete her task she daringly yanked the garment free of his belt. Deep down inside her head, a frightened voice was wailing, ‘What on earth are you doing?’ over and over again. Black hair curled over Alexei’s powerful pectoral muscles and arrowed down over his taut abdomen to vanish from view below his waist. He was a hot but sexually intimidating vision and he took her breath away.
With an unhurried hand he unhooked her bra and trailed it off. Billie had to fight a powerful urge to try and cover her breasts with her hands like some shocked maiden from an old comedy film; her skin had never felt so naked or exposed.
‘You’re magnificent,’ he told her in Greek ‘Lush…’
And the taste of that word resonating in the silence made her tremble, while his almost reverent finger brushed the prominent bud of a pouting pink nipple adorning her voluptuous blue-veined flesh. He bent his dark head and closed his mouth to that tantalising peak, rolling the unbearably tender bud between his lips while he used skilled fingers to administer similar pressure to its neglected twin. Pushing her back on the pillows, he cupped and squeezed her plump breasts, stroking them while he suckled ever more strongly. Swiftly he plunged her straight into a storm of new and almost painful sensation. Her nipples throbbed from his attentions and tugged internal strings that seemed to be connected to even more intimate places. Her hips lifted, her thighs pushing together to contain the tension between them. Little animal sounds escaped low in her throat. All of a sudden she was in a place she had never been before and feeling things she had never dreamt she might feel. That it should be Alexei taking her to that place blew her away.
‘You’re so different from the women I’m used to, moraki mou. And differences are always exciting,’ Alexei husked, tugging up her knees and skimming off her panties in one easy movement before dispensing with his trousers and casting them aside.
That statement had unsettled Billie as much as the all-male bulge of arousal defined by his silk boxers. ‘How am I different?’ she pressed in a small voice.
In the midst of an assessing visual sweep of her body, Alexei suddenly smiled down at her with the wicked charisma that was so much his own. He made no attempt to hide the hungry appreciation in his dark golden eyes. ‘Everything about you is one hundred per cent real…the colour of your hair, your breasts. Nothing is fake and nothing has been remodelled.’
Beneath that powerful appraisal, Billie could still only blush and she was so painfully uncertain and shy that that betraying tide of colour even engulfed the pale upper slopes of her breasts. ‘Here I am, flaws and all,’ she said valiantly. ‘I can only assume I take after my father for, let’s face it, I inherited none of my mother’s genes!’
‘Your attributes are much more subtle,’ Alexei interrupted, discarding his boxers.
‘But I really would have loved the blonde hair and long legs,’ Billie confided shakily, using humour to try and hide her vulnerability while trying not to stare fixedly at his manhood, which was of more threatening masculine dimensions than she had expected.
‘Blonde hair and long legs are easily found. I prefer you just as you are,’ Alexei husked, running a forefinger down between her breasts and over her quivering stomach to the triangle of dark red hair at the junction of her legs.
Billie stopped breathing while her heart hammered at a frantic rate. He found the sensitive swollen bud below the curls and gently massaged it, releasing a rolling tide of sweet sensation that stole the breath from her lungs. She could feel her insides dissolving to honey even while a burn of greater need flamed into being. Her slender thighs parting, she shifted against his knowing hand, her hips developing a motion all of their own because she could not contain the intensity of what he was making her feel. As he explored the delicate pink folds of flesh she had exposed and pleasured the hidden opening to her wom
anhood she writhed, out of control and breathless.
‘You’re so tight and wet,’ Alexei growled with raw satisfaction. ‘Are you still a virgin?’
Eyes wide and green and feverish against the hectically flushed oval of her face, she nodded confirmation. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Oh, yes. It matters to me, moraki mou,’ Alexei told her in Greek. ‘A more honourable man would walk away, because I’m not making you any promises.’
‘I know that.’ Billie was quick to dispel any suggestion that she had such expectations, yet the denial was like a stab at her heart.
Simmering golden eyes fringed by inky black lashes assailed her. ‘But, for what it’s worth, I feel more of a connection with you than I have ever felt with a woman. Somehow we fit, khriso mou. I respect you. I like you. Everything feels natural with you, nothing forced or false.’
‘It’s just all the emotion of the last few days,’ Billie protested, fearful of allowing herself to believe that anything was happening between them that could mean something to him, because she thought that such a conviction could only lead her to the madness of false hope and disillusionment. ‘And the alcohol.’
‘The…alcohol?’ Alexei carolled in disbelief. ‘Are you suggesting that I might not know what I’m doing?’
‘I don’t want to take advantage of you,’ Billie said deadpan.
Laughing uproariously, Alexei pulled her to him and held her close to kiss her with a hungry passion that was passionately free of restraint. The sexual heat flowed through her again while he strung a line of provocative kisses down the extended length of her throat and across the alabaster slopes of her breasts. She was boneless, breathless even before he returned to the hot dampness between her legs. With exquisite skill, he toyed with the satin flesh, probing the delicate entrance where she ached for a fulfilment she had never known before. His sensual onslaught was a sweet torment, lighting up her every nerve-ending with longing. Her excitement built and built to a towering height and she couldn’t stay still or silence the tiny gasps and whimpers breaking from her lips.
