Greek's Pride: The Stephanos Marriage / A Passionate Surrender / The Greek Bridegroom. HELEN BIANCHIN
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harbour, providing a startling background for brightly lit venues along the famed tourist strip. Outlines were crisp and sharp, and a pinprick sprinkling of stars lent promise of another day of sunshine in a sub-tropical winterless climate.
Aleksi chose the waterfront road, and Alyse wondered darkly if he was deliberately giving her temper an opportunity to cool.
Georg hadn’t even murmured, Melanie reported, accepting the notes Aleksi placed in her hand before departing with a friendly smile.
‘I’ll check Georg,’ said Alyse hastily.
‘An excuse to escape, Alyse?’
‘No, damn you!’
His eyes gleamed with latent mockery. ‘I’ll make coffee. Liqueur and cream?’
Resentment flared as she turned to face him. ‘I’m going to bed—I’ve done my duty for the evening. Goodnight.’
There was a palpable pause. ‘You consider an evening spent with Rachel and my father a duty?’
Alyse closed her eyes, then opened them again. ‘They’re both utterly charming. Their son, however, is not.’
‘Indeed?’ His voice sounded like velvet-encased steel. ‘Perhaps you would care to clarify that?’
‘You act as if I’m your wife!’
One eyebrow rose in cynical query. ‘My dear Alyse, I have in my possession a marriage certificate stating clearly that you are.’
‘You know very well what I mean!’
‘Does it bother you that I accord you a measure of husbandly affection?’
‘Courteous attention I can accept,’ she acknowledged angrily. ‘But intimate contact is totally unnecessary.’
His smile was peculiarly lacking in humour. ‘I haven’t even begun with intimacy.’
Her hand flew in an upward arc, only to be caught in a bonecrushing grip that left her gasping with pain.
‘So eager to hit out, Alyse? Aren’t you in the least concerned what form of punishment I might care to mete out?’ he asked deliberately, pulling her inextricably close.
‘Do you specialise in wife-beating, Aleksi?’ she countered in defiance, and suffered momentary qualms at the anger beneath the surface of his control.
‘I prefer something infinitely more subtle,’ he drawled, and she retaliated without thought.
‘I hardly dare ask!’
‘Sheer bravado, or naïveté?’
‘Oh, both,’ she acknowledged, then gave a startled gasp as he slid an arm beneath her knees and lifted her into his arms. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
The look he cast her cut right through to her soul. ‘Taking you to bed. Mine,’ he elaborated with icy intent.
Her eyes dilated with shock. ‘Don’t! Please,’ she added as a genuine plea to his sensitivity, rather than as an afterthought.
‘You sound almost afraid,’ he derided silkily.
Afraid I’ll never be the same again, Alyse qualified silently, hating the exigent sexual chemistry that drew her towards him like a moth to flame.
‘I hate you!’ she flung desperately as he carried her through the lounge, and she was absolutely incensed at the speculative amusement apparent in the depths of his eyes.
In the bedroom he let her slide to her feet, and she was powerless to do anything other than stand perfectly still beneath his dark penetrating gaze.
‘You react like an agitated kitten, all bristling fur and unsheathed claws.’ His smile was infinitely sensual, his eyes dark and slumbrous as he took her chin between thumb and forefinger to tilt it unmercifully high. ‘It will be worth the scratches you’ll undoubtedly inflict, just to hear you purr.’
‘Egotist,’ she accorded shakily. ‘What makes you think I will?’
He didn’t deign to answer, and there was nothing she could do to avoid his mouth as it took possession of hers in a deliberately sensual onslaught that plundered the very depths of her soul.
With shocking ease he dispensed with her clothes, then his own, and she gave an agonised gasp as he reached for the thin scrap of lace-edged satin covering her breasts.
‘Aleksi—’
‘Don’t?’ he taunted softly, releasing the clasp and letting the bra fall to the carpet.
It was impossible to come to terms with a mixture of elation and fear, so she didn’t even try, aware even as she voiced the protest that there could be no turning back. ‘You can’t mean to do this,’ she said in agonised despair.
His hands cupped the creamy fullness of her breasts with tactile expertise, and the breath locked in her throat when his head descended and his mouth closed over one vulnerable peak. Sensation spiralled from the central core of her being, radiating through her body until she was consumed by an emotion so fiery, so damnably erotic, that it was all she could do not to beg him to assuage the hunger within.
His tasting took on a new dimension as he began to suckle, using his teeth with such infinite delicacy that it frequently trod a fine edge between pleasure and pain.
Just when she thought she could bear it no more, he relinquished his possession and crossed to render a similar onslaught to its twin.
Unbidden, her fingers sought the thickness of his hair, raking its well-groomed length in barely controlled agitation that didn’t cease when he shifted his attention to her mouth and began subjecting that sensitive cavern to a seeking exploration that gradually became an imitation of the sexual act itself.
Alyse was floating high on a cloud of sensuality so evocative that it was all she could do not to beg him to ease the ache that centred between her thighs, and, as if he was aware of her need, his hand slid down to gently probe the sweet moistness dewing there.
Like a finely tuned instrument her body leapt in response, and she became mindless, an insignificant craft caught in a swirling vortex beyond which she had no control.
It wasn’t until she felt the soft mattress beneath her back that realisation forced its way through the mists of desire, and she could only stare, her eyes wide with slumbrous warmth, as Aleksi discarded his shirt, then his trousers and finally the dark hipster briefs that shielded his masculinity.
There was a potent beauty in his lean well-muscled frame, a virility that sent the blood coursing through her veins in fearful anticipation, and she unconsciously raised her gaze to his, silently pleading as he joined her on the bed.
Her lips parted tremulously as his eyes conducted a lingering appraisal of their softly swollen contours, before slipping down to the rose-tipped breasts that burgeoned beneath his gaze as if in silent recognition of his touch.
Her limbs seemed consumed by languorous inertia, and she made no protest as he began a light, trailing exploration of her waist, the soft indentation of her navel, then moved to the pale hair curling softly between her thighs.
A sharp intake of breath changed to shocked disbelief as his lips followed the path of his hand in a brazen degree of intimacy she found impossible to condone.
Liquid fire coursed through her body, arousing each separate sensory nerve-end until she moaned an entreaty for him to desist. Except that nothing she said made any difference, and in a desperate attempt to put an end to the havoc he was creating she sank her fingers into his hair and tugged—hard.
It had not the slightest effect, and her limbs threshed in violent rejection until he caught hold of her hands and pinned them to her sides, effectively using his elbows to still the wild movements of her legs.
For what seemed an age she lay helpless beneath his deliberate invasion, hating him with a fervour that was totally