Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
T HANASIS’S CHEST HAD never felt so tight.
Far from their evening with Leander and Kate giving him space to breathe whilst enjoying Lucie’s company, all it had done was bind him closer to her. Bind him closer to the truth of her, which was that Lucie was the fiercest, funniest, most unique person in the entire world.
It was a truth that had been peeling away in slow increments since Lucie had screeched away from his house in utter distress, but he’d been too blind to see her anger for what it had really been. He’d seen what he’d wanted to see. Seen what he’d needed to see.
Too blind to accept the truth.
He’d been in love with her from the start.
He suspected she’d been in love with him from the start too.
They rode in silence back to the villa he already knew he could not imagine living in without her.
He needed to think and work out what the hell he was going to do. God damn it, they were marrying in two days.
Inside, she reached for his hand.
‘Thanasis…’
The emotions spilled over. Clasping her cheeks, he kissed her deeply, pouring into it all his passion and desire for her and selfishly helping himself to a taste of her passion and desire for him.
He broke away and gazed intently into the stunned black eyes. ‘I love you, Lucie. Now get some sleep and we will talk in the morning.’
He took the stairs two at a time, her dazed stare following his every step.
* * *
Lucie pressed her back to the nearest wall and her hand to her heart.
Her legs felt like soggy noodles.
The butler appeared. Offered her a drink.
‘Your smoothest Scotch,’ she whispered. ‘No ice.’
She swallowed it in one and then looked up the winding staircase.
The liquid medicine wound its way into her chest and with it came the clarity she’d been searching for.
All her life Lucie had known that to get what she wanted, she had to work at it and take it for herself because no one else was going to help her. She’d never wanted anyone’s help. Everything she’d achieved in her life had come off her own hard work, so why was she still letting Thanasis dictate all the terms when she’d resisted being dictated to since hitting double digits?
Because deep down had been the fear that he was right and none of her feelings were real.
But they were real. As real as the air she was breathing and as real as the cool tiles beneath her feet.
He wanted her. She wanted him. He loved her…
She laughed.
He’d never said those words before. Not to post-amnesia Lucie.
Kicking her shoes off, she ran up the stairs.
* * *
Thanasis stripped off his shirt in front of the mirror. He swore he could see the thrashing of his heart against his chest.
He unzipped his chinos and let them fall to the floor.
He felt sick. Sick with himself. Sick with what he had to do and what the ramifications could be.
He needed to press the nuclear button.
He couldn’t marry her. Not like this. Lucie deserved to know the truth before they made their vows.
But not now. In the morning. First thing in the morning. Let her have peace for one more night before her peace of mind was shattered for ever. He owed her that much.
So caught up was he in his despairing thoughts that the first tap on his door didn’t penetrate.
It was the hairs rising on the back of his neck that told him.
On legs that didn’t feel like they belonged to him, he crossed the room.
He could smell her perfume before his hand touched the door.
Swallowing hard, he opened it, and then sucked in a breath.
It was the last breath he was capable of making for a long, long time.
Lucie was naked.
Heaven help him, she was fully, proudly naked and far more beautiful than his wildest imaginings, her chin lifted, her hair loose and as wild as the expression in her eyes.
She took a step towards him.
Oh, God help him.
‘Lucie…’ He lifted a hand to ward her off and tried to speak through his clenched teeth. ‘Please.’
She took the hand gently with both of hers and placed it flat on her left breast. Held it there.
His fingers reflexively tightened around it even as he fought harder than ever to hold on. Theos , he could feel the heavy thrum of her heart. Feel the jut of her nipple against his palm, not a whisper of barrier between them.
He closed his eyes and groaned. Blood was pounding in his head.
God help him, please.
Lucie drank Thanasis in with a greed she’d never known was possible. To see the rise and fall of his chest and the expression in the green eyes before he’d closed them to her…
She rose onto her toes and palmed his cheek.
His nostrils flared.
‘Lucie…’ His voice was ragged. Tortured. ‘Please. Go back to your room. We can’t .’
Thick stubble had sprung out on skin that only hours ago had been baby smooth from his shave, and the pads of her fingers tingled madly in reaction to the sharpness. Her longing for him intensified.
Slowly sliding her fingers across his jaw and down the strong throat, touching him as she’d done so many times in her fantasies, she whispered, ‘I might not have past memories to pin my feelings on, but I do have my heart and my gut, and both have been telling me since I woke in that hospital bed that you mean something to me. Those feelings have only grown stronger.’ She trailed her trembling fingers over his chest and tipped her nose into the base of his neck to breathe in the musky scent of his skin.
Other than the flexing of his fingers over her breast, he’d barely moved a muscle, but she could feel the internal battle he was waging against himself and it filled her thrashing heart with fresh tenderness for him.
Excitement building, she skimmed her fingers over the plane of his hard abdomen and thrilled over his latent power.
It felt like she’d been waiting her whole life for this moment.
His throat moved. She pressed a kiss to it before tilting her head back and cupping his cheeks, willing him to look at her.
Tremulously, she said, ‘I saw you across that room all those years ago and something moved in me, and I have carried it in me all this time. I don’t want to wait any more. I want you , Thanasis, the man I’ve got to know here, exactly as you are here with me right now.’
Thanasis’s groan escaped his mouth before he could stop it and, before he could stop himself, his hand fell away from Lucie’s breast to slide behind her back and his hungry lips fused hard against hers.
The relief at finally letting himself go was dizzying, and he held her even tighter to him and kissed her even harder, groaning as her breasts pressed against him and her arms slid around his neck, the passion in her response scorching him with a heat that melted the last of the mental shackles binding him and unleashed all his hunger in one long surge of passion.
He couldn’t fight something this strong and this essential. God help him, he needed her, needed Lucie with a hunger he’d never believed existed.
Let her feel it all, all his passion and love for her. Let her feel everything she was and everything she meant to him.
Lucie sank into the ravenous kiss with a sob of pleasure, her lips parting as her senses overloaded with the dark, addictively intoxicating taste and scent of Thanasis. Flames erupted inside her, licking her into a furnace and liquefying her, and it was all she could do to bite her fingers into his neck to hold herself upright and sink even deeper into the possessive demands of his mouth.
Without a single word being uttered, he swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. There, he laid her down and then, his hooded eyes fixed on her, removed his underwear…heavens, he was huge …and climbed on top of her.
For the longest time he just stared at her, breathing heavily, drinking her in as if she were the goddess of his dreams.
The swell of muscles in his shoulders bunching as he supported his weight to lower himself onto her gave another hint of his innate masculine power, and the most feminine part of her revelled to see it and thrilled to see the wonder in his stare. If there had been so much as a fleck of doubt that she was doing the right thing, it had vanished. This was exactly where she was supposed to be. In Thanasis’s arms and in his bed.
And then their mouths fused back together, hot and greedy, a primitive hunger that burned through sense and logic and burned through the last of her thoughts.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, Lucie scratched her nails into the soft bristles at the nape, closing her eyes and her mind to everything but the sensory pleasure of Thanasis, keeping them closed when his mouth moved from hers and razed its way down her neck, would have cried her disappointment when he left her neck if he hadn’t cupped her breast and sent a gasp flying from her lips, a gasp that turned into a sob when his mouth closed over the tip.
She was on fire, writhing with him and against him, her body gripped with such intense excitement it was impossible to still herself until he clasped hold of her wrists. Flames were licking her skin, heat bubbling deep within her, no longer some distant squirmy feeling between her legs but a pulse beating hard, and when his tongue licked and then suckled, rousing her nipples into hard peaks that had her whispering incoherently, the pulse tightened and she instinctively arched into his mouth.
The grip on her wrists didn’t lessen as he snaked his way lower, and she spread her thighs for him without a moment of hesitation, surrendering herself to him in her entirety, desperate for the ache between her thighs to be relieved, and when his tongue found her swollen arousal, any sense she had left in her was lost in the thrills of what Thanasis was doing to her.
The flames were suffusing her, throbbing and pulsing, building into something entirely and solely within his control, and she cried out to him, pleading and begging until she spiralled over the edge and spasms of unrelenting pleasure flooded her with a force that sent white light flickering behind her eyes.
By the time the earth reclaimed her and she blinked her eyes open, there was no time to recover before Thanasis crawled up her body to kiss her, and suddenly her mouth was filled with an exotic taste…her taste.
Fresh hunger filled her and suddenly she was consumed with the need to worship him with the same heady attention he’d just gifted her, and she pushed at his chest to roll him onto his back.
With the taste of Lucie’s climax still on his tongue, Thanasis submitted to an assault of his senses that would have lost him his mind if it wasn’t already gone. Every touch and mark of her mouth and tongue scorched him. Never had he been on the receiving end of such pleasure, but it was much more than that, more than a bodily experience, this transcended everything…
He groaned and had to grit his teeth when she took hold of his erection, then gritted them even harder when she took him in her mouth.
He lifted his head to look at her at the same moment her gaze lifted to his.
His heart punched through him to see the desire-laden wonder in her stare.
Closing his eyes, he gathered her hair lightly and let her take the lead, throwing his head back on the pillow as her movements, tentative at first, became emboldened. The fist she’d made around the base tightened and she took him deeper into her mouth, moaning her own pleasure at the pleasure she was giving him.
If heaven existed he’d just found it. This was like nothing…nothing…
The telltale tug of his orgasm began to pull at him, and with an exhale of air, he flipped her back round, pulling her up the bed to pin her back beneath him.
Throat too constricted to speak, he kissed her deeply, the tip of his erection jutting and straining against her slick heat.
Lucie felt possessed, that there was every chance she would go insane if Thanasis didn’t take possession of her. She had never wanted anything as badly as she wanted this. Every inch of her body was alight with the flames he’d ignited, her senses consumed with him. His beautiful face was all she could see, his ragged breaths all she could hear, his musky skin all she could smell and all she could taste, the smoothness of his skin all she could feel.
Shivering with longing, she rocked her hips, encouraging his possession, her breathing rapid as he stilled himself to drive into her, and with a long, drawn-out groan he was deeply and fully inside her and it was the most incredible sensation she could have dreamed of.
Limbs and tongues entwined, he drove in and out of her, the burn in her core reigniting and deepening and then uncoiling like tendrils through her very being until she was nothing but a mass of nerve endings, and the burning pressure deep inside of her exploded.
With a long cry, she buried her mouth into his neck and held tight as rolling waves of bliss flooded her. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she heard Thanasis shout out, and then there was one last furious thrust that locked their groins together for one final time.
Buried as deep inside Lucie as he’d ever dreamed it was possible to be, Thanasis felt his climax roar through him. And still he tried to bury deeper, still she tried to pull him deeper, both of them desperately drawing out the pleasure for as long as they could until there was nothing left but stunned silence.
* * *
Thanasis, eyes closed, stroked the smooth back of the woman cuddled so tightly into him. Their legs were entwined, her soft curls tickling his throat and chin.
If not for the weight in his heart, this would be the deepest contentment he’d ever known.
He’d never experienced anything like that before. Nothing close. That had transcended everything .
He pressed a kiss into her hair and breathed her in, wishing they could just stay like this.
A little longer. Let them have this moment. Let all the feelings seep through them and work their magic long enough that when he made the confession that he must, Lucie would understand their lovemaking had been separate from everything else.
God, please make her understand.
She sighed and then lifted her head to rest her chin on his chest. ‘I’m hungry.’
He ran a finger through a curl and smiled to watch it magically turn into three separate curls. ‘You’re always hungry… What did you eat while I was in Athens?’
‘Not much. Elias made me a couple of flatbreads with that lovely feta and yogurt mousse.’
‘Again?’ They’d only had that for their lunch the day before. Each flatbread was the size of a dinner plate.
She gave him that mischievous grin but her eyes were still soft from their lovemaking. ‘I asked him very nicely. Oh, and I had a bowl of pistachio ice cream too, which I think is the nicest ice cream I’ve ever had. I would seriously advise locking him away for the wedding or one of your guests is going to steal him.’
His throat constricted. He swallowed hard to clear it. ‘I will give your advice the serious consideration it deserves.’
‘Good. Because if you don’t, you’ll need a new wife as I’ll be off tracking Elias down.’
Now his heart constricted too before expanding heavily, compressing him with its weight, a sluggish pulse beating in his head.
‘Are you okay?’
Lucie’s voice seemed to come from far away but her face had closed in, concerned black eyes hovering right before him.
‘Earth to Thanasis.’ Her concern was mirrored in her tone and it came to him with a sickening thud that he didn’t deserve her concern.
Reverently tracing the line of her jaw, he gazed into the most beautiful eyes in the world and knew the moment he’d wanted to stretch for eternity was already over.
‘There is something I need to tell you. Something you need to know.’
Her forehead creased.
‘Lucie…’ He closed his eyes briefly before fixing them back to hers. ‘What I’m about to tell you… Know that I love you. Hold that thought. I love you.’
Apprehension written all over her face, she lifted herself up, hugging the sheets to her breasts. ‘You’re scaring me,’ she whispered.
‘I’m sorry.’ Deep in the very pit of his being, the weight of dread was pulling at him. His next words would determine the remaining course of his life. ‘I’m sorry, Lucie, but our past, what you’ve been told, it’s all a lie. You and I were never in love.’
For the longest time she just sat there looking at him blankly. And then she seemed to shrink, the colour draining from her face, eyes dulling with comprehension.
‘Forgive me,’ he said quietly, knowing as he said it that he didn’t deserve her forgiveness, ‘but we were never lovers. We were as far from lovers as it is possible for two people to be.’