by Jennie Lucas
Stavros looked at her seriously. “A year.”
He carried her down the penthouse hall, then set her down gently beside the same enormous bed where, last Christmas Eve, they’d conceived their son. She glanced down at it, thinking how much had changed since then.
They had a future. They were a family.
Gently, he pulled off the headband of white silk flowers that held her long veil in place. He dropped it on the nightstand.
The gas fire caused flickers of white light to move against the dark shadows of his face. The room was black, gray and white. The Christmas tree lights. Through the windows, New York City at night.
Taking off his tuxedo jacket, he dropped it silently to the floor, along with his black tie. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt. Never taking his gaze off hers, he reached his powerful arms around her and unzipped her strapless wedding gown. It slid down her body to the floor, revealing her white bustier bra, tiny white lace panties and white garter.
She heard the low shudder of his breath, felt the tremble of his hands as he stepped back to look at her.
“You’re magnificent,” he whispered.
The heat in his gaze melted her. All she could think about was that she wanted to make him hers. Forever.
Reaching forward, Holly yanked on his white shirt, popping off buttons that scattered to the floor. She could hardly believe her own boldness as she reached inside his open shirt to slowly stroke down his hard-muscled bare chest, lightly dusted with dark hair.
With a low growl, he grabbed her wrists. For a moment, he just looked down at her, his black eyes searing her. Then without a word, he pushed her back on the bed.
Never taking his gaze off her, her husband took off his shirt, dropping it the floor. She had the sharp image of his powerful bare chest, all shadows and hollows in the flickering firelight. She reached toward him. She couldn’t wait. She had to feel his body, his weight. She had to feel him against her. Now.
“Stavros,” she whispered, arms extended.
He moved instantly, climbing over her on the bed in a single athletic movement. She exhaled as she felt his body over hers, his heavy weight pushing her into the mattress, felt the bare skin of his chest and arms against hers. Lifting himself up on one powerful arm, he cupped her cheek, looking down at her intently.
“You’re mine now,” he whispered. “And I’m never going to let you go...”
He lowered his lips to hers, softly at first. Then his embrace deepened, turning hungry, almost savage. Her nipples tightened beneath her white silk bustier as his powerful muscles moved against her. As he kissed her, he stroked down her cheek, her neck, her shoulder. He cupped her breast over the silk, then reached beneath it to caress her taut nipple, making her gasp.
Pulling away, he looked down at her, his eyes dark. Sitting up, he pulled the silk off her body as if it was nothing more than a thought. Lowering his head between her full breasts, he kissed down the valley between them, all the way to the soft curve of her belly. He ran his hands over the edge of her hips, where her white lace panties clung, digging into her skin. He kissed her belly button, flicking his tongue inside it, as he unbuckled her garters. His large hands caressed each cheek of her bottom before he slowly moved down her body. Sensually, he rolled down each white stocking, soft as a whisper and elusive as a dream.
As the silk slid slowly down her skin, he followed it with kisses down one leg, then the other, down her thighs to the curve beneath her knees, all the way to the hollows of her feet. She shivered on the bed, feeling vulnerable, wearing only her tiny thong panties. After tossing the stockings aside, he pushed her legs apart. She looked up at him in the silver-white firelight, which left dancing patterns across his powerful naked chest.
She looked at his trousers, then met his eyes as she whispered like a fearless wanton woman, “Take them off.”
He moved so rapidly he was almost a blur, ripping off his trousers and the dark boxers beneath. In half a second, they were on the floor, and he was on her.
Then her flimsy lace panties were gone, disintegrated beneath the force of his powerful hands. Cupping her breasts, he positioned himself between her legs. As he lowered his head, possessing her lips with his own, she felt the hard thickness of him pressing between her thighs. Her hips moved of their own volition, swaying against him, as her hands raked down his back, settling against his hard-muscled backside.
She felt his powerful body shiver. Lifting his head, he looked down at her face. For a moment, she thought he would say something, something that could either annihilate her or make her soul explode with joy—one or the other. Instead, he just lowered his head and kissed her fiercely. Pulling his hips back, he thrust inside her in a single smooth movement, making her gasp as he filled her, all the way to the hilt.
Her fingernails dug into his skin as she looked up at his handsome face. His eyes were closed, his expression one of ecstasy.
Drawing back, he pushed inside her a second time, this time very slowly, so she could feel him, inch by inch. She closed her own eyes, surrendering to the pleasure building inside her, spiraling rapidly out of control.
She gasped as he suddenly moved, rolling her on top of him. Her eyes flew open. She looked down at him.
He reached up and tenderly caressed her cheek.
“I want to watch you,” he whispered. His hands moved down the edge of her throat, lazily cupping her full breast, stroking his thumb against her taut, aching nipple. “I want to see what your face is like when you’re the one in control.”
* * *
Stavros looked up at his bride, naked astride him on the enormous bed in his penthouse bedroom.
He was telling her the truth. But not all of it. He watched the play of lights and shadows on her beautiful face. Across the room, the artificial Christmas tree sparkled in front of floor-to-ceiling windows revealing Manhattan at their feet.
He did want to see her in control. But only because, being inside her, he’d been about to lose his own.
She felt too good. She felt too tight. After a year of rampant hunger, of repressed longing, he’d nearly lost his mind pushing inside her once. For the second thrust, he’d applied the brakes, going as slowly as possible. But that hadn’t helped. He’d known, if he thrust a third time, that he would have exploded inside her.
Hardly the wedding night he wanted, or the one Holly deserved. And so he’d rolled on his back, thinking to give his willpower some respite. If she controlled the rhythm, surely he could make it last.
Instead, as he looked up now into her glowing emerald eyes, he saw the red blush on her cheeks as she bit down harder on her swollen lower lip, and his shaft, already so hard he groaned with need, flexed instinctively. She hesitated, glancing down at his naked body, now spread beneath her. She said uncertainly, “What do I do?”
“As you want, agape mou,” he said huskily.
Her face was uncertain. Then as she looked down at him, her expression changed. Lowering her head, she whispered, “Don’t move a muscle.”
She kissed him, entwining his tongue with hers. A shiver went through him and he started to lift his arms around him. Punishingly, she ripped her lips away. “No.” Grabbing his wrists, she pushed his arms down firmly into the mattress. “Don’t move. And don’t say a word!”
He started to reply, then saw her glare.
When she saw his surrender, she gave a satisfied nod and then kissed him again, lowering her lips to his. She was careful to let no other part of their bodies touch, teasing him.
It was hard not to move or speak, when all he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her. She kissed his rough, bristly chin, then down his neck, flicking her tongue over his Adam’s apple, caressing down his collarbone to his muscular chest. He felt the delicious warmth of her breath on each nipple. He held his breath as she lowered her head, swirling her tongue around him, drawing him further in
to her warm, sensual mouth as she suckled him.
And all the while, she was careful not to touch any other part of his body. His shaft was hard, bucking and swaying toward her desperately. Glancing down at him, she smiled: a very smug feminine smile. As if she not only accepted her total power over him in this moment, but she also relished it.
“Holly,” he breathed, reaching for her.
“No,” she said sharply, pressing down his wrists against the pillow. “If you move again...”
“If I do?”
A strange look came over her face, and she looked him straight in the eye. “You won’t feel what you’re about to feel.”
With an intake of breath, he blinked, then gave her a slow nod, keeping his wrists against the pillow, where she’d pressed them. Her intent gaze burned through him as she slowly lowered her head, sucking on his earlobes, then down the edge of his throat, nibbling on the sensitive corner between his neck and shoulder. She watched how his body reacted, and he saw her triumph. As she kissed her way down his body, he vowed that soon, very soon—
Then all rational thought disappeared as, never taking her eyes from his, she slowly lowered her head between his legs.
He couldn’t look away from the sight of her beautiful, angelic face as her full, swollen, ruby-red lips lowered to take in his hard, throbbing shaft. Her pink tongue snaked out to lick the drop of opalescent liquid at the tip. Then she licked her lips, and murmured, “Mmm...”
He sucked in his breath, staring at her in shock. What had happened to the shy virgin of last Christmas Eve? This woman seemed sure of herself, and ready and able to torture him with his own desire for her.
He held his breath as he watched her take the tip of him into her wet, soft mouth, swirling him with her tongue. Then she took him in deeper, and deeper still. He felt her small hand run exploratively beneath the shaft, juggling him as she sucked him more deeply into the sweet heaven of her mouth. She peeked up at him, and he felt, rather than saw, her satisfied smile.
He could take no more. With a strangled groan, he reached for her, ignoring her weak protest, “I told you not to move!”
He picked her up by the hips as if she weighed nothing, lifted her over his shaft, then slowly lowered her, impaling her inch by delicious inch. With a gasp, she swayed against him, and the sensuality of even that simple movement pounded through his veins. He released her hips, to give her freedom of movement, praying she wouldn’t move, praying that she would.
She answered both his prayers when she leaned forward, gripping his shoulders. She closed her eyes, holding still. But just as he started to exhale, she began to move, sliding over him, riding him slowly at first, but then with increasing rhythm. Watching her generous breasts sway over him as she moved, with their tight, deep pink nipples, was too much for him. He closed his eyes, tilting back his head, fighting to keep control. But the image remained. He was lost in the incredible sensation, in pleasure such as he’d never felt before, pleasure he’d never imagined.
She rode him harder and faster, pounding him, until he filled not just her hot wet core, but the universe itself, which began to spin all around him. Finally, gripping his shoulders, she gasped his name.
That pushed him off the edge, and catapulted him into the sky. He thrust one last time, then exploded inside her. He heard a low voice, rising to a ragged shout, crying out her name...and realized to his shock that it was his own.
She collapsed over him, their naked, sweaty, slick bodies intertwined and tangled on the bed. He held her, kissing her temple, and cradled her close. He was lost, he thought. He was found.
His eyes flew open in the darkness. As he held his wife, who’d fallen asleep cradled in his arms, all he could think was that he’d tasted the sweetest drug of his life. But if he consumed too much of it, it would destroy him. There was another name for something like that.
Poison.
CHAPTER TEN
MARRIAGE TO STAVROS was wonderful. Incredible. Better than Holly had ever dreamed.
At first.
After their wedding, they spent a few honeymoon days touring the city with their baby. They’d visited the big Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, drunk hot cocoa, seen all the festive lights. Stavros had insisted on taking them shopping. When she’d told him they wouldn’t need any winter clothes, since her former employer in London had promised to arrange for her possessions to be boxed and sent from Switzerland, Stavros had shrugged. “It’s my duty to provide for my wife and child. Not just my duty—my pleasure.”
He’d looked so serious and determined, it would have been churlish to refuse.
But instead of just buying her and the baby a few things, as Holly had expected, Stavros had gone as crazy as a contestant in a game show trying to throw as many items in his shopping cart as possible before the timer sounded. Only in this case, he wasn’t shopping in a discount mart, but the most expensive boutiques and department stores in the city, and there were endless supplies of carts with no buzzer to stop them.
Finally, after they had more clothes than they’d need in a lifetime of New York winters, he’d taken them back to the chauffeured Rolls-Royce. Even then, instead of returning to the penthouse, her husband had told the driver to take them to the biggest toy store in Manhattan, where, like some darkly sexy Santa, he bought cartloads of toys for Freddie—baseball gear, books, games, an expensive train set, a teddy bear bigger than Stavros himself.
“Freddie’s just a baby,” Holly had protested, laughing. “He can’t play with any of that stuff!”
“Not yet. But soon,” he’d replied, kissing her. As his driver arranged for the toys to be delivered to the penthouse, Stavros looked at Holly, his black eyes suddenly hungry. Leaning forward, he stroked through Holly’s long red hair beneath her pink knit cap and whispered in her ear, “Let’s also get some things we can play with now.”
Their exhausted baby had fallen asleep in his car seat by the time they’d arrived at a ridiculously expensive lingerie boutique. Holly had stared at the mannequins in the windows in shocked fascination, before ducking her head, blushing at the image of all the demi bras, garter belts, and crotchless panties that she might have called cheap, except they obviously were not. Aside from her wedding lingerie, which had been procured by the wedding planner, Holly had always purchased simple, sensible cotton bras and panties from places like Wal-Mart or Target.
Reluctantly walking into the French lingerie boutique with Stavros pushing a baby stroller, she’d felt nervous and out of place. When she’d looked at a price tag, she’d gasped and turned around, intending to walk straight back out again.
“Where are you going?” her husband had said, grinning as he grabbed the stroller handle.
She’d looked at him incredulously. “It’s two hundred dollars!”
“So?”
“For a pair of panties!”
“I would pay far more than that,” Stavros had said huskily, running his hand along the sleeve of her long, sleek black coat he’d just bought her at Dior, “to see you in them.”
Her blush had felt like a raging fire, and she’d glanced right and left, hoping the salesgirls, all as glamorous as French supermodels, hadn’t heard. Then her husband leaned forward and whispered what he planned to do to her later that night, and she was relieved that Freddie was still sleeping in the stroller so his innocent ears wouldn’t hear.
“And,” Stavros had said when he finally pulled away, “jewelry.”
“What could I possibly need more than this?” she’d blurted out, lifting her left hand, with its huge, bulky, platinum-set diamond on her ring finger.
Her husband had given a low laugh. “Oh, my sweet wife,” he’d said, cupping her cheek. He ran his thumb lightly along her lower lip, which was still swollen from their lovemaking the previous night. That simple touch made her tingle from her mouth to her breasts and lower still. “You will hav
e rubies as red as your lips. Emeralds bright as your eyes.” He’d looked at her with sensual, heavy-lidded eyes. “I will see you naked in my bed, wearing only diamonds that sparkle like Christmas morning...”
And he had.
Holly shivered now, remembering.
For the last three weeks, since their marriage, he’d made love to her every night. Somehow, each night was more spectacular than the last. She didn’t understand how it was possible.
Perhaps it helped that she was no longer so exhausted from waking up multiple times with their baby throughout the night. As if even Freddie felt the new stability and security of their lives, he’d started sleeping better and longer at night than he had before. And she also had Eleni’s help now.
So, almost against her will, Holly had found herself spending the holiday season as a princess in a New York penthouse, draped in jewels and expensive designer clothes, a lady of leisure whose only job was to cuddle her baby by day and be seduced by her husband at night. A life so wonderful it made her feel guilty, wondering what she’d done to deserve so much, when other people she knew had so much less.
So she’d asked Stavros if, instead of giving each other gifts for Christmas this year, they could donate money to charitable causes. He’d grudgingly agreed, seeing how important it was to her.
Holly was happy to make homemade Christmas gifts—knitted booties for Freddie, and a red felt star for Stavros, in the Marlowe family tradition. Whenever her former employer got around to sending her old Christmas decorations from Switzerland, Holly couldn’t wait to add her husband’s star to her family’s heirloom garland.
Wrapping his red felt star in homemade wrapping paper, Holly had hidden it amid the branches of the brightly lit white Christmas tree in their bedroom, and waited for the right moment to surprise him.
But after the first delicious week of their honeymoon, things seemed to change between them. Stavros went back to work. Instead of spending all day with him, she saw him only in the middle of the night, when he would wake her up to make passionate love to her. By dawn, when Holly woke, Stavros was gone again.
