‘So how were you raised?’
He eyed her across the table and she met his censuring look with a radiant smile of utter innocence. Yeah, she knew what she was doing and he knew she wasn’t about to let up.
‘Strictly,’ he muttered.
‘You said they were absent.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Do you see them now?’
He didn’t think of his parents much and he certainly never discussed them. Why would he? But he had to give her something—she was like a dog with a bone. The bald facts would do. ‘We have dinner once every six months. It’s scheduled—the full year in advance. We discuss returns, hotel occupancy rates, the stock market.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Twice a year?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘Yes.’ He could see her mind working overtime.
‘Do you ever take a date?’
‘Never. It’s an obligation on both sides. They never doubted I would do anything other than succeed. And they ensured I was never spoiled by the wealth I was born into.’
He pointedly stabbed a chunk of steak and shoved it into his mouth. That was enough, surely? She was more curious than a barn full of cats. And the meat tasted like sawdust and glue. He made it go down with a hard swallow. ‘Look, I know you’re worried about how little we know of each other, but it isn’t something that can be forced, or hurried,’ he said, closing off the conversation. ‘Time will take care of it.’
She still looked thoughtful. And utterly unconvinced. ‘Most people wouldn’t work as hard as you if they didn’t have to.’
‘Why not? Don’t we all need a purpose? A sense of dignity from a job well done? What makes you think I wouldn’t need that too?’
‘But to be so driven... When is it enough?’ She gestured at the furnishings in the large room. ‘What is it you have to prove?’
‘I don’t need to prove anything,’ he growled. ‘Perhaps it’s just that the goalposts shift. I make a plan to achieve one thing, when it’s knocked off I feel like a challenge for something more. Isn’t that human nature?’
A shadow crossed her eyes. ‘So you’re never satisfied with what you have?’
His chest tightened and he laughed and groaned at the same time because her effervescent curiosity was going to be the death of him. But she was irresistible. It was that manner that made her so popular with the residents at Cavendish House. She made you feel like you could confide everything in her and she’d sort it all out for you. ‘I’m satisfied,’ he growled. ‘I just want more.’
Right now he was greedy for her. She was wearing a thin old T-shirt and jeans that hung a little loose. But she was still flushed from that bath and her skin looked luminous and silky soft. She smelled tantalising and her hair was a wild, damp mess down her back and he just wanted to thrust his hands into the gorgeous length of it and bind her close beneath him.
‘I’ll tell you something, Ettie,’ he said bluntly, shoving those X-rated thoughts to the back of his mind, ‘when you come from a background like mine, you swiftly learn that people only stick around because they want something from you.’
She perked up. ‘Is that true, really?’ She looked at him keenly, a teasing smile flicking at her mouth. ‘Aren’t there any uncomplicated, nice people out there who just want to be friends?’
He couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Perhaps I’m too prejudiced to be able to spot them.’ He leaned closer and called her out on it. ‘Even you wanted something from me.’
‘But you wanted the same thing from me.’ She wagged a finger at him. ‘So that makes us even.’
‘I’m as bad as you?’ he asked in mock-outrage.
‘Possibly worse. Because you took advantage of everything you have to seduce me.’
‘And you didn’t?’ He scoffed. ‘With your wild ponytail and passionate eyes?’
‘My what?’ She looked astounded.
‘All the emotions.’ He pointed to her eyes, suddenly quite serious. ‘Here.’
‘What are my eyes expressing now?’ she asked, still but breathless.
He stared at her intently—searching those beautifully clear eyes for the signal he’d wanted for so long. And then it was there.
‘Your desire for me to take you to bed.’ He simply snapped. He didn’t want to think any more. Didn’t want to try to solve unworkable problems. Damn well didn’t want to talk around the issues or, heaven forbid, his freaking past. He didn’t want to think of her being hurt by some jerk and her mum dying and leaving her to raise her sister alone. He wanted to relax, damn it. Eat good food and kiss the beautiful woman in front of him over every inch of her delectable body until she arched and begged him to finish her hard and fast. Everything else be blowed.
Her mouth opened, then shut and he could see her deciding how to handle her reply.
‘Wow. Impressive.’ But her sass was all bluff because what he’d said was true.
He clocked her rising colour, her quickening breath, her widening eyes. And he really didn’t want to talk any more. Talking wasn’t anywhere near as effective as action. He’d thought he should back off, especially after she’d been so mortified about that woman catching them in the lift. But they needed to clear the air of this tension that kept building. There was only here and now. Together they’d find oblivion.
He pushed back from the table and stalked around to where she now sat bolt upright. He grabbed her hand and tugged her to her feet.
She thought he’d seduced her that night? That was nothing on what he was about to do. He wasn’t waiting. He wasn’t taking this slow. He wanted her beneath him, about him. He craved the welcome of her soft heat. He pulled her against his body and gazed into her green eyes. For a moment it was as if they’d romped back to that first night—soft laughter, whispered desire, sensual freedom. It didn’t need to be anything more than that.
But there was no time for whispered words and soft laughter tonight. His need was too raw. He kissed her, and in that moment it was all over.
Unrestrained, ruthless, he stripped her bare right there in the formal dining room, boldly touching every spot he revealed. The emerald and diamond ring caught the light, sending small, sparking chinks of light onto the ceiling. His pleasure intensified at seeing her wearing it—the time-worn signal that she was taken. For a second he stilled, paralysed by the sudden ferocious anticipation of seeing her belly swell with her pregnancy over the coming months. She’d be softened and ripe with his child. His mark. He wanted to mark her all over—suddenly possessed by a primal, appalling need to stamp her as his. And he gave way to it in that instant, curling his arm around her waist to lift her up and carry her to his bed.
He wasn’t making her come in five different ways before filling her this time. He wasn’t letting her come at all. Not until she was unable to bear it a second longer. Not until she begged for mercy. Not until they were both at the end of their sanity. In the cage of his arms he caressed her, alternating with licks, love bites, kisses—he teased and tasted every inch of her glorious body. She was pregnant. She was hot. And she was his.
He laughed roughly as she moaned, her hips circling, her hands seeking to touch him too. He suffered the tormenting slide of her fingertips, the delight of her hard grip, and moved to retaliate. He relished the way her muscles quivered under his onslaught. But nothing pleased him more than the look of hunger in her eyes. She was as willing, as craving, as he.
‘Leon, please. Please.’
He paused above her, soaking in the moment he’d been aching for.
‘Why have you stopped?’ she asked, her expression edged with desperation.
‘I don’t want this over too soon,’ he answered with rough honesty.
‘I’ve wanted this for weeks,’ she moaned. ‘So much.’
Satisfaction and frustration split him. Fire and fury. ‘Then why did you deny us?’ Why h
ad she put up those barriers? He was making her pay for that. ‘Why did you resist?’
How had she? But he couldn’t wait for her answer—the demand of his own body, his own need, was too strong. She moaned in soft, earthy surrender as he thrust hard, fiercely claiming his possession. He arched, his eyes closing as pleasure sent sharp bursts down his back. His body tightened more, wanted more—deeper, harder, for longer. But she lost it beneath him, about him, crying out as her sweet body was wracked with the feral convulsions of one hell of an orgasm. But this wasn’t over yet. He simply refused to let it be over yet. So he held still, his will stretched to the point of pain.
‘Leon, it’s so intense,’ she gasped. ‘So intense.’
‘All the more reason to embrace it,’ he growled, still furious with her for making them wait all these weeks.
‘Please,’ she begged, breathless and twisting and fierce beneath him. ‘Please, Leon.’
It was as much a desperate plea as a forceful command. And now he could do nothing but surrender to both. He felt torn in two by the fierce, unrelenting urges to both master and worship her body.
‘Ettie,’ he growled. Demanding. Devoted.
The give and take, the push and pull was mirrored in his hard thrusts, in the buck of her fiery hips. He roared as his shy lover responded with that fight. She was that desperate for him. Which he adored because he couldn’t get enough of her either. She made him both weak and strong. He was almost rendered unconscious by the ferocity of the pleasure as he pushed her to climax again. Yet her scream was silent, her body so taut with tension, shaking with intense delight, it couldn’t render it vocally. The sight of her in that moment stopped his heart. His release came, instant and savage and so intense he all but blacked out.
When he returned to reality and summoned the energy to lift his head, he was horrified to find her face pale, her eyes simply huge and—glistening with tears?
‘Are you okay?’ he asked warily. Guilt hit him anew.
She was exhausted and he’d just subjected her to the roughest of rides. ‘Sleep.’ He drew the coverings over her, partly to hide the resurgence of his own desire, impossible as it ought to have been. He’d wanted her too much for too long. But surely he could wait until tomorrow before having her again?
Shadows crept into her beautiful, clear eyes. ‘I can go back to my room.’
An ice-cold storm brewed in his belly. ‘You want that?’
She licked her lips and glanced away from him. ‘If that’s what you’d prefer.’
Of course he wouldn’t. ‘What’s going on, Ettie? Was I too rough?’
‘No.’ She wiped her eyes and turned away.
Not good enough. He turned her back towards him and gazed into her eyes. ‘Then what?’
Her colour mounted and she seemed to be holding her breath. ‘That other night you couldn’t seem to get enough...but if you don’t really want me any more, we don’t have to...’
If he didn’t really want her?
‘Ettie,’ he huffed out a relieved laugh, ‘I thought you were exhausted. I didn’t want to be too demanding...’ He lost his train of thought as he saw the shadows shift to smoke in her eyes. ‘Glykia mou.’
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, colour flooding her face.
‘Why?’ He pulled her closer. ‘I’m not sorry that my new fiancée is a nymphomaniac.’
He laughed at her gasp of outrage and thrust back the coverings so he could satisfy his need to see her naked beauty all over again.
‘We do have to, Ettie.’ He bent over her uncompromisingly. ‘We damned well do.’
He angled her so he could see right into her eyes as he swept his hands over her soft curves and watched the ebb and flow of her tension. To his relief and pleasure, her smile returned. A more feminine, more feline one than he’d ever seen on her. He growled and surged into her—slower this time, tormenting them both to the point of madness. And it was utter bliss.
‘I didn’t know it could be this much fun.’ She almost laughed a long while later.
Fun? Had she thought that was fun?
He’d thought it was devastating. But he cleared his throat and pulled his brain back from its fanciful, post-orgasmic superlatives. ‘It’s supposed to be fun.’ And now he was looking, he couldn’t tear his eyes from the satisfied glow enveloping her. ‘You look better than you have in days.’
‘I feel better.’ Her cheeks were rosy and there was a relaxed softness in her expression. She was stunning.
But he cocked his head and aimed to tease them both back to lightness. ‘Orgasms for medicinal purposes?’
‘Who knew, right?’ She giggled.
‘What happened with your ex?’ The question just slipped out at that most appalling moment. He hadn’t meant to ask it—not ever. But the idea that she’d cared for another man enough to want to marry him had grated on his deepest-set nerves. What had been so special about the jerk? Why had he let her go?
Leon gritted his teeth—why did he even want to know? But he did. Desperately.
Ettie was too quiet. He rolled to his side and propped his head up on his hand, studying the return of those shadows. They flickered across her face—resistance, sadness. He hated that some guy had hurt her. He didn’t mean to hurt her more by asking about it now. Were the memories that painful? Had the bastard mattered so much she could barely bring herself to speak about him?
‘He jilted me just before our wedding,’ she finally answered.
‘At the altar?’ His skin tightened.
‘Almost.’ She seemed to shrink deeper into the mattress. ‘His family had arrived. My friends. Ophelia was so excited about being bridesmaid...it was so humiliating...’
‘Why did he do it? Was there someone else?’ He couldn’t fathom it. What man wouldn’t want Ettie in his life? She was sexy, she was funny, she was sweet.
She looked away from him.
‘We hadn’t been intimate,’ she said huskily. ‘I’d wanted to wait.’
Leon’s brain malfunctioned for a moment. Not intimate? Wait? ‘You hadn’t been intimate at all?’
She shook her head. ‘We’d kissed but...’ She shrivelled lower into the mattress and tugged the sheet higher. ‘I wanted to wait.’
‘For your wedding night?’ He stilled as a bubble of something hot and fierce and frankly savage bubbled in his gut. That she’d wanted to do that—gift the guy her virginity—made his innards twist.
‘I know, it’s quaint, right?’ She wouldn’t look at him.
He shook his head. ‘Sweet,’ he corrected gruffly.
‘I should have known it wasn’t right.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It wasn’t hard for me to want to wait.’ She lowered her chin and all but talked into the sheet covering her. ‘I thought I had a low sex drive. That it was just me.’
His eyes widened. The woman didn’t have a low sex drive. She was the hottest, most insatiable lover of his life. ‘But your fiancé didn’t want to wait any more?’
‘He said it was so close to the wedding...that we should.’
He’d applied pressure and manipulated her innate desire to please. Leon tensed. ‘And how was it?’
Her face burned red again. ‘He didn’t stick around for the wedding, so I guess it wasn’t that good.’
So it had been just the once? He had to snap his mouth to keep his jaw from hitting the floor. ‘And there’s been no one since?’
Her blush built to beetroot, making it easy to read the deep embarrassment and insecurity all over her expressive face. She thought she wasn’t sexy, that she didn’t know what she was doing. That she’d not been able to satisfy her selfish ass of a fiancé. So there’d been that one let-down of an experience followed by appalling betrayal and rejection after.
And then there’d been him.
‘That’s why I was
so reckless when you... It was so different...’ She fell silent, that mottled rosy pink slowly washed from her skin.
He was savagely proud it had been so different. ‘Poor Ettie. You finally let go enough to have some fun, and then—’
‘I end up pregnant,’ she mumbled.
One night. Massive consequences. It wasn’t exactly fair.
‘I guess mindless, meaningless, fantastic sex just isn’t for me,’ she attempted to joke.
‘No, it is,’ he replied, utterly serious. ‘It just needs to be with me.’
She flushed deeper and her smile faded. ‘Is it good for you?’
Was she seriously worried about that? He couldn’t keep his hands off her. But that jerk had hurt her, striking an insecurity within.
‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ he whispered. ‘Nothing wrong with what you do, how you respond...’ He ripped back the sheet from them both. ‘Look at what you do to me.’
She turned her face away but he tenderly cupped her chin and made her look. And then he kissed her—long, deep and lush—and felt that fire between them crackle.
‘He was a jerk, Ettie,’ Leon muttered, filled with protectiveness.
‘He was. I just wanted to please him.’
He hated the bastard who’d had no idea of the treasure he’d had in his hands. He hated the damage he’d done to her. But he had to ease up on releasing that rage. She was more vulnerable than her ultra-efficient, all-smiling concierge persona revealed. ‘You left school early and had to work?’ He talked, trying to contain his anger and ease the tension gripping his muscles.
‘Initially I left because Mum got sick. I needed to care for her and Ophelia.’
But she’d been a kid herself—just a teen. He hadn’t wanted to listen earlier, but now he wanted to know everything. ‘There was no one else?’
‘She was young when she got pregnant with me. She was estranged from her parents—I never had a relationship with them or my father. Ophelia was the result of another doomed-to-failure fling. She’d wanted it to work out with him...’
‘But that didn’t happen either.’
Pregnant by the Commanding Greek Page 11
