Irresistible Greeks: Passion and Promises: The Greek's Marriage Bargain / A Royal World Apart / The Theotokis Inheritance. Susanne James
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was warmth and weight and an odd, aching feeling.
And a sound.
Her eyes fluttered open to see Xenon fast asleep beside her. The bed was huge but he was managing to take up most of it with his long limbs sprawled languidly over the ruffled sheets. Against the pristine whiteness of Egyptian cotton, his hair was as black as night and his olive skin looked like burnished gold.
She realised that the sound she’d heard had been his breathing—steady and slow—and the weight was one hair-roughened thigh imprisoning her own pale leg beneath. And the aching? She felt the sudden rush of colour flooding into her cheeks as she remembered.
Xenon making love to her.
Xenon lifting her up as if she’d been weightless and thrusting into her.
Xenon pinning her against the wall on her way back from retrieving her glasses from the sitting-room floor. A kiss which had turned into something more. She remembered the cool wall pressing against her back and one very hot, aroused man at her front.
She turned her head to stare at the blurred outline of the ceiling light, knowing that if she reached out for her glasses she might wake him. And she didn’t want to wake him; she badly needed a moment to be alone with her thoughts.
She closed her eyes. It had been amazing. It always was. He’d made her feel as if she’d come alive—properly alive. As if her body had been designed for Xenon to make love to her. As if she’d been empty without him.
But nothing had changed, she reminded herself. She mustn’t make the classic female mistake of thinking that an afternoon of incredible sex was going to make any real difference to them.
‘Kiss me.’
His murmured entreaty broke into the silence and Lexi stilled, not knowing how to react to him after what had happened. Clearly unwilling to wait, he reached out a strong hand and imprisoned her, locking his arm tightly around her waist as he levered her close so that she was confronted by the gleam of a pair of bright blue eyes.
The eyes narrowed and his lips curved. ‘I said, kiss me.’
‘Is that an order?’
‘Would you like it to be?’
Reluctantly, Lexi felt her own smile tug back. How could you stop yourself from doing something you really wanted even though you knew it was probably wrong? She leaned forward and drifted her mouth over his. ‘You’re incorrigible.’
His hand moved from her waist to her bare bottom. ‘Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?’
‘I can’t decide.’ The temptation to continue flirting was close to irresistible, but Lexi forced herself to remember what was happening in the world outside this bedroom. The household would be gearing up for tomorrow’s christening and later today she was going to meet the baby who was still theoretically her niece. It wasn’t going to be an easy situation given her wobbly emotions around babies and especially now that she had complicated matters by having sex with Xenon.
But this wasn’t about her and what had happened in the past. It was about Kyra and her family and Xenon’s beloved grandmother.
She grabbed her glasses from the bedside table and turned to him. ‘Do you think I should offer to help with the christening preparations?’
‘I suspect that my mother probably has everything in hand. And since a lot of the tradespeople will be speaking Greek and your vocabulary is still in single figures, it’s probably best...’ he traced a finger from neck to breastbone, where he spread his hand out wide so that his fingers brushed against both her peaking nipples ‘...if you use your time more constructively by devoting it to me.’
This is what he does, she told herself as she felt her body responding to his touch. He fashions the world to suit his needs. And he does so by making you want him—even though you know you shouldn’t. She gave a half-hearted wriggle.
‘I need to shower and change before your sister arrives.’
He cupped her breast, and bent his head to kiss it. ‘Anyone would think you were running away.’
‘I need a shower,’ she repeated stubbornly, even though his tongue was cleaving a delectable path over the puckering nub.
He looked up from her breast. ‘You don’t think we need to talk about what’s just happened?’
‘And what has just happened? We had sex. It was good sex...’ She saw the look on his face. ‘No, amend that. It was great sex. It always is. You don’t need me to tell you that, Xenon. But it doesn’t change anything.’
‘On the contrary—I think it changes everything.’ He pushed a spill of hair away from her face. ‘And it’s not just “great sex”—if it were that simple then don’t you think I might have found it elsewhere?’
‘Oh, I see.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘So suddenly this has become a boastful testimony about your general irresistibility to women?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that.’ He coiled a strand of hair around his finger. ‘Because since the moment I met you, you’ve been the only woman I’ve ever wanted.’
She looked at him warily. ‘You mean...you haven’t been to bed with anyone else?’
‘No, I haven’t been to bed with anyone else,’ he growled. ‘I haven’t wanted to and I took my marriage vows seriously when I made them. I thought you did, too.’
‘I did,’ she said in a small voice, but now she was left wondering whether she had really believed in them. Hadn’t she felt a sense of disbelief that someone like Xenon should want someone like her?
Because beneath all the outward trappings of being a famous pop-star, she had always felt like the insecure outsider who nobody would really want. The girl in glasses who’d been laughed at whenever she’d actually made it into school. The girl with the shabby second-hand clothes and the promiscuous mother. Her view of life had been warped by her experience and she guessed that had been inevitable. She had never seen a relationship which worked and she had certainly never seen one which lasted. Was it any wonder that she’d had no idea about how to proceed with her own marriage?
She had tried to accept Xenon’s overwhelming control of their lives—her life—as something normal within a marriage. But she hadn’t really known what ‘normal’ was. She remembered how eager she’d been to please. How terrified she’d been of doing the wrong thing. Like a tightrope walker, she had stuck to the route he’d set out for her, never daring to deviate nor to look down in case she might fall.
And by doing that, hadn’t she made herself yet another responsibility to add to the load already pressing down on his shoulders?
‘I tried as hard as I could to make it work,’ she said. ‘But I can see now that I allowed myself to become completely dominated by the force of your personality and your power. And that wasn’t fair—not to either of us.’
‘We should have talked about it.’
‘But it’s impossible to communicate with somebody who’s never there.’
Their eyes met and when he spoke his voice was grave. ‘So what if I tell you that I recognise I wasn’t there for you? Not just when you lost the baby but afterwards. And maybe some time before that, too.’ He saw the way she flinched. ‘And what If I told you that I will ensure that never happens again? That I will learn to accept the things over which I have no control—what then, Lex? Are you really willing to just give up on all the good things which still exist between us? The compatibility and the chemistry and the...’ His blue eyes blazed a slow trail over her face. ‘The unbelievable fire.’
For a moment Lexi didn’t answer. Her mind was buzzing as she tried to find the right response. He was so clever with words and she was not. Years of negotiating at the top end of the business world had guaranteed him the slick gift of persuasion. He could probably sell hot chocolate on a baking hot beach