CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
N IC HAD EXPERIENCED every possible type of encouragement from women since he was around fourteen. But...
‘Nobody has ever called me pretty before,’ he heard himself say, regardless of his previous desire to conclude that dialogue. Lexy was now busily slamming through kitchen cupboards, checking the extensively stocked pantry and investigating the contents of the fridge in a sudden surging hive of industry.
‘Well, they mustn’t have taken a real good look at you, then,’ Lexy mumbled, cheeks on fire as she established that Nic had a surprisingly refined spice rack and every possible tool in what was probably her dream kitchen.
Determining that he had no allergies, she pulled out vegetables, washed them and began to chop them up.
‘I’m not pretty,’ Nic informed her with huge conviction.
‘Whatever you say.’ He so was . She was mortified that she had said what she was thinking out loud, but she knew in her bones that she was safe with him because he had gone out of his way to ensure that she felt secure by allowing her to take those photographs with her phone.
She was ashamed that she didn’t have any of the flirtatious chatter that women of her age usually had. She felt clumsy and unfeminine in his presence even though he had labelled her impossibly pretty. And that statement alone made her entire body sing a chorus of appreciation because compliments of that magnitude did not come her way. Not when she had grown up with a father who had once derided her because she lacked his height and, even though she had inherited his colouring, had failed to shine at maths or sports. Those criticisms had hurt like so many other of her father’s little asides had done over the years, whittling away at her self-esteem, driving a need in her to support her loving mother in any way she could.
Nic stood in wonderment while she chopped at the speed of a professional chef and expertly threw together a beef stir fry flavoured with spices he had never used. Yes, he could cook, but not as it seemed she could.
‘Did you learn to cook in South Korea?’ he asked.
‘No, I learned in the UK. You’re seeing the results of seven years of part-time off-the-books employment in a restaurant kitchen. I started out washing dishes and peeling veg and by the time I left, I was good enough to function as a junior chef.’
‘What age were you when you started?’
‘Fifteen... Yeah, I know it was illegal, but my mum and I needed the money.’
‘Didn’t she work?’ Nic was frowning.
Lexy shrugged a thin shoulder. ‘She wasn’t really able to. She was depressed after her divorce.’
Nic groaned. ‘I know the damage a bad marriage does,’ he surprised her by admitting. ‘I used to urge my mother to divorce my father, but she thought divorce was a fate worse than death, so I can relate to some degree. But your mother was the adult, she shouldn’t have left you to take care of the problems.’
‘Why not? Mum had never worked a day in her life. She got married at eighteen and went straight into a set-up where a housekeeper did everything for her and my dad told her what to do the rest of the time. She couldn’t cope without money... She didn’t know how,’ Lexy confessed as she drained the rice.
Seated at the kitchen island on a bar stool, Nic looked at the colourful plate of food set before him and accepted the implements she passed him. ‘This looks amazing.’
‘No need to over-egg the pudding,’ she quipped. ‘A guy like you living in a house like this...well, I bet you’re not used to bad food.’
For the first time in his life, Nic wanted to deny that reality, wanted to be able to sincerely empathise with a woman, and yet he, a Diamandis from birth, couldn’t. He had been born into a very wealthy Greek dynasty of high achievers. He had developed his first app at university and made a fortune out of it. He might have learned to cook as a student, but he had never in his life had to worry about paying for anything. Everything he had ever wanted was his...except a happy family, something he had longed for as a kid, growing up in a very tense and often hostile atmosphere, striving to avoid his perpetually angry and argumentative and violent father and his demands as best he could. But that was something he could share and at least it would get them off the controversial money topic.
‘My father ruined my childhood by continually demanding that I compete against my half-brother from his first marriage. He was obsessed with me surpassing him and my brother is a clever guy and that wasn’t easy,’ he confided.
Her delicate brows pleated, blue-green eyes as wide and open as the Greek sky. She struck him as strangely blunt for a woman, unsophisticated, and yet she had a charm all of her own because he knew he was fascinated and he had always believed that it would take a very special woman to fascinate him. Yet here she was, the very first to do so and she appeared to have no womanly wiles whatsoever, which Nic considered even odder. He was accustomed to women who were only frank about sex but quite happy to lie, blur the truth and fake everything else in an effort to impress him. The name Diamandis was like a dramatic price tag wherever he went, signifying the riches his family had acquired over generations of inherited wealth.
‘Why would he have wanted his two sons to compete with each other?’ she asked in confusion.
‘Because he didn’t raise my brother and he didn’t see him either. In fact, he acted like he hated him, yet it was very important to him that I performed better than my brother did, which was a serious challenge.’
‘Parents can be weird,’ she acknowledged as she ate and sipped her water, having refused more wine. ‘When my father divorced my mother, he tried to rid himself of responsibility for me as well, telling the judge that he shouldn’t have to pay support for me because he had never had much of a relationship with me. Of course, that didn’t fly, but the money he did have to pay was a drop in the ocean to him. It was as if, once he decided on the divorce, he wanted to put Mum and me both behind him as if we’d never existed.’
‘How did we end up talking about deep stuff like this?’ Nic enquired, elevating one ebony brow like a question mark. ‘More wine?’
‘No, thanks.’ Lexy busied herself filling the dishwasher, wiping up.
‘You cooked. I should clean up.’
‘But you’re still sitting there so you’re not that keen to muck in!’ Lexy shot back at him without hesitation.
His amused dark eyes danced like black diamonds in starlight and he grinned. ‘Rumbled,’ he conceded, wondering when a woman had last treated him like a regular man and indeed if it had ever happened before. Billionaires didn’t get teased or mocked by women very often.
In fact, thinking about it, Nic could not recall a single woman treating him with anything less than deadly gravity when he spoke. He got special treatment. He didn’t get called out on his quirks, his oversights, his short temper or his impatience. Everybody handled him with kid gloves as though he were a precious fifteen-carat diamond.
Lexy felt as though she was reeling from that wicked grin of his. It wasn’t just his striking good looks, she reasoned hesitantly, it was more something to do with that insanely compelling smile of his. It unleashed girlie butterflies in her tummy, left her strangely breathless and just about destroyed whatever brain power she possessed. Disconcerted by her own reaction, she turned away again and began to clean the counters, finding occupying her hands a great remedy for her increasing self-consciousness.
Her reactions made her feel like a stupid adolescent, too innocent for her own good. But she wasn’t innocent, only in the most basic physical way, she thought ruefully. Being a virgin who had never even been on a proper date was humiliating. Sooner or later, she would have to move her life on in that line, but it would have to be with someone who was genuinely interested in her, someone with some even small degree of caring towards her. She had no plans to waste her time or her body on some guy looking only for a one-night stand. Or had she? Shooting a sidewise glance at Nic, she reckoned that if it were him, she could probably consider the idea, because she had never been so attracted to anyone before and opportunities didn’t exactly come knocking on her door.
‘Let’s move upstairs. I have a cosier reception room up there with a terrific view.’
Lexy laughed. ‘Is this your “come up and see my etchings” speech?’ she joked.
‘No, those immortal words have never passed my lips.’ Nic grabbed the wine and a couple of glasses. ‘More in the realms of Netflix and chill.’
‘Well, it’s not like your terrific view is likely to be visible in the dark,’ she pointed out quietly.
‘I don’t tell lies,’ Nic declared as they reached the top of the imposing staircase and she was shocked enough by the room that lay before her to gasp in delighted astonishment.
With only the flickering light of the log burner in one corner, the room was basically all glass, all view, and she could see the snow and the stars and the moon. It was absolutely beautiful, like some surreal dream. ‘This is amazing.’
‘I built it for the view.’
‘Yet you don’t live here the whole time, do you?’ she said quite naturally.
Nic flashed shrewd dark eyes to her tranquil face. ‘Why do you have that idea?’
Lexy shrugged, quite blind, it seemed, to his suspicion. ‘It doesn’t seem that lived in. It just doesn’t have the vibe or any existing clutter. Initially I thought it could be a luxury let but then you had said you planted the trees, so I knew that wasn’t right. So I thought maybe you travelled a lot for work.’
‘I do,’ Nic conceded, relaxing again as he hit a button to reveal the television screen and handed her the remote. ‘Pick your own personal poison. I’m feeling generous.’
Nobody could have been more surprised than Nic when she put on an ancient episode of Friends . ‘I thought for sure you’d put on a reality show... This is really old,’ he complained.
‘But this is more relatable than gorgeous chicks in bikinis at exotic locations...or baking or fashion. I watched it growing up. It’s my comfort choice.’
‘I wasn’t allowed to watch TV growing up. My father was convinced it would interfere with my studies.’
‘Sounds like he was...a bit of a pain?’
‘A lot of a pain,’ Nic countered, sinking down on the sofa beside her.
Every so often, Lexy’s attention strayed from the giant screen to the snow still falling heavily beyond the glass.
‘Stop worrying. We’re not trapped.’
‘Your car is getting buried,’ she contradicted.
‘I’ll leave next week regardless of how deep the snow is,’ Nic murmured soothingly.
‘Next week isn’t tomorrow.’
‘But you don’t work at the weekend, do you? I assure you that you won’t be trapped here for days,’ he responded calmly.
‘You don’t freak out often, do you?’
Nic sent her another brash grin. ‘How did you guess?’
His lack of concern soothed her. Her mother had fretted constantly about every little thing after the divorce and to some extent that habit had threatened to infiltrate Lexy as well.
‘Is Lexy short for Alexandra or Alexandria?’ he asked.
‘Neither. It’s Alexander on my birth certificate.’
‘Assuming that you were born a girl—’
‘I was. But my father was wanting and hoping for a boy and he wouldn’t change the name he had chosen,’ she admitted stiffly.
‘This is actually quite funny,’ Nic conceded of the programme, choosing not to comment on what he could see was a sore subject.
‘I hate to say I told you so,’ she teased.
And then Nic convulsed over one of Joey’s lines and Lexy bounced on the seat and punched the air. ‘Told you so...told you so!’ she crowed like a kid.
Nic rested his hands on her slight shoulders as she turned to him. ‘Smug, aren’t you?’
Her eyes widened as she looked up at him. Even sitting beside him, she was still looking up and just as suddenly she was almost drowning in the velvet darkness of his spectacular eyes. There was nothing else in the world at that particular moment. It was as if time just stopped dead for her, freezing her in place.
Long brown fingers lifted to her cheekbone and spread at a slow cautious pace. ‘Is this all right with you?’
A helpless giggle erupted from Lexy. ‘Is this what happens when you tell a guy he’s impossibly pretty?’
Nic’s wicked smile flashed out. ‘I think it must be...’
His mouth covered hers and his lips were unexpectedly soft. Not rough, not aggressive. But who was she kidding? It was only her third ever kiss. There would have been more had her mother not had hysterics when Lexy had tried to leave their little rental flat in male company. In the end men had proved to be too much hassle for her when she had already been struggling to cope with her mother. And why was she even thinking about such stuff when Nic was kissing her? Presumably he couldn’t tell that it was only her third kiss.
‘You taste amazing,’ he said thickly against her parted lips.
Yes, amazing just about covered him as well, she thought helplessly as he pried her lips apart and went off on an exploration that made her shiver and sent a wave of heat she had never experienced before shooting up through her. His lips teased, his tongue stroked her lip line and then delved inside to provide more intense sensations. She was feeling way more than she had ever expected to feel from a single kiss. Her breasts felt heavy, swollen, her nipples prickling points and that wicked growing heat pooled in her pelvis.
‘You’re good at this...’ she framed, struggling to catch her breath.
‘I’ve been on a learning curve since I was fourteen.’
‘That’s young.’
‘It wasn’t in my circle,’ Nic husked, gathering her slight body close, edging her carefully onto his lap, gripped by a seething desire as ironically new to him as it was to her and faintly spooked by it. In one strike, she hit every one of his sexual buttons, unleashing a craving that inflamed him, and it was infinitely more exciting than any female possibility he had met with in years.
But he was a playboy, like his big brother, Jace, he reminded himself. He did not have the yacht that his late father had dubbed ‘the whorehouse on the seas’ but he was far from being boyfriend material. And yet the appeal of those ocean eyes when she looked up at him? In a weird way it knocked him sideways. Even so, he was only twenty-seven and he had no plans to settle down for years and years... There, death of that worrying thought train of association.
He slid a hand below her loose tee shirt and discovered that she wore no bra. He cupped the warm, soft weight of her pouting breast and rubbed the pointed nipple greeting him. She gasped out loud and it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. It turned him on so hard and fast he pushed against the zip of his jeans. He could barely credit the strength of his own response.
Lexy was being engulfed by a tangle of conflicting reactions. Her body was so on board with his every move that it was simply willing him on to the next step. Her brain was dimly echoing her mother’s warnings about men, something crazy about why would a man buy a cow when the milk is free, a hangover from her mother’s generation and out of step with current mores. But at the end of the day, it was simply sex, she reminded herself even though her emotions felt much more intense than that belief suggested. It was a bodily thing, not a mental thing.
She didn’t need to tie herself up in knots about something so basic and naturally she was curious because the touch of his fingers on her breast was magically arousing. And when he used his mouth there as well, it was even better, like a hot wire tightening between her breasts and the juncture of her thighs. It made her squirm, it made her needy and she was entranced by those responses.
Her tee shirt glided over her head and vanished. He laid her down on the wide, soft sectional sofa and began to gently divest her of her remaining clothes. If it hadn’t been so dark, she would have felt more exposed and shyer, but the only light in the room was the flickering flames of the log burner because he had switched off the TV. Outside the snow was falling in the most hypnotic style, big fluffy flakes drifting down beyond the glass, while all was cosy and warm and calm indoors. It felt magical to Lexy, absolutely magical, just as a dream would be with a gorgeous guy, a gorgeous house, and that gorgeous guy miraculously wanted her .
‘This feels special,’ Nic murmured softly, spectacular dark eyes locked to her. ‘ You feel special. Do you want me right now? Or would you rather...wait?’
And Lexy stared up at him in wonderment, it being her conviction that no man would ever offer to defer his own pleasure to please a woman. She smiled, wide and bright then, at being proved wrong. ‘I want you now,’ she told him gently.
‘Contraception?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m not on anything.’ Lexy could feel her cheeks burning as he leant down to her. ‘And I haven’t done this before.’
His perfect ebony brows drew together. ‘Haven’t done what before?’
‘Sex,’ she said simply.
Comprehension tautened his lean bronzed features, followed by bewilderment.
‘Don’t look at me like that!’ she said sharply. ‘I just never had that freedom until Mum passed.’
Nic lowered himself down to her and kissed her breathless, struggling to slow the pace down to give her the treatment she deserved. ‘I was surprised, not critical.’
That kiss connected Lexy again. She stretched up to him as he began to remove her last garments, hunger twisting through her, making her restless. He shimmied down over her body and spread her thighs and she just about had a heart attack when she realised what he planned to do. It was something she had read about in steamy books, not something she had ever fancied on her own behalf, and she went rigid.
‘No,’ she told him shakily.
‘You’ll like it,’ Nic swore with sensual resolution. ‘Please...’
It was the ‘please’ that seduced her. If he was willing to say that word in return for doing that , she couldn’t say no. In any case, shouldn’t she explore every possibility? This night was one night out of time between two strangers and it would never be repeated. Ten to one, during the night, the snow would vanish and he might drop her off somewhere and she would never see him again... ever . The prospect of never ever seeing Nic again left her chest feeling scarily hollow and she suppressed the thought of that scenario as soon as it appeared.
Breathtakingly exquisite sensations seized her. Yes, just as he had forecast, she liked every glide of his tongue, every lingering attention to the most sensually aware nub in her entire body. Her heart thundered in her ears and the cascade of feelings rose in a blinding wave and a climax shuddered through her, shaking her inside out.
‘Don’t you dare say I told you so,’ she warned him breathlessly.
Nic grinned that smile that whipped her into the clouds and back with its charisma. ‘I’m not stupid... I simply want to make this as good for you as it will be for me,’ he murmured soft and low.
His sensual lips descended on hers again and a big hand curved over the pouting mound of her breast, skilful fingertips stimulating the beaded tip. The first spark of anticipation was rekindled at that moment. Lexy drew in a stark breath and surrendered to sensation.
When he slid between her slender thighs, she was on a high. His sensual attentions had provided her body with a slick welcome and he eased into her with care. Initially that feeling of fullness stretching her untried depths was both unnerving and stimulating and then he settled deeper and there was a sharp, tearing pang of pain that made her gasp in dismay. He stopped, gazed down at her with those incredibly warm dark eyes and leant back from her and shifted position to kiss her again, carrying her through that moment.
She felt his heartbeat. She felt him move inside her and the thrill of anticipation gripped her when she discovered that there was a wild hunger within her demanding more. It was a need, a desire she had never known before, and it was remorseless and overwhelming. His every potent thrust sent sensation shimmying through her taut body and a pool of liquid heat began to burn at her core. Her heart slammed inside her chest. She couldn’t catch her breath as the wild tension built into a fierce, driving need. The excitement seething through her climbed to an almost unbearable level and then, with no warning, as it seemed to her, she was suddenly hurtling over the edge into wave after wave of glorious pleasure again. Nic shuddered in the circle of her arms and groaned.
In the silence of the aftermath, she couldn’t quite credit what she had done or what she had just experienced. ‘That was...’ Words failed her.
‘Wonderful,’ Nic slotted in thickly, releasing her from his weight only to tug her back into his arms and drop a kiss on her brow that made her smile drowsily. ‘You’re about to fall asleep on me now.’
‘Trying not to,’ she mumbled. ‘But it feels like it has been the longest day of my life...’
‘You’re sleeping in my bed with me tonight. I’m telling you now while you’re still awake and capable of objecting.’
Lexy tried to lift eyelids that felt as though they had weights attached to them and swallowed back a yawn. ‘Don’t care where you put me,’ she framed. ‘As long as it’s not out in the snow.’
Nic laughed but she was already going limp in his arms. He studied her tranquil face in helpless fascination because he was feeling things he had never felt before. Selfish though it would be, he was actually tempted to wake her up because he wanted to get to know her better. He wanted her company. When had that ever happened to him with a woman before? Or when had he ever felt so protective that he refused to wake up an exhausted woman? When, furthermore, had he ever cuddled one after sex? The more he thought about his own behaviour, the more bothered he was by it. What had happened to playing it cool? His normal approach? And why had it seemed so important to get her into his bed? After all, he always slept alone and never gave any woman the chance to assume that anything more than sex was on offer.
He stood upright, naked, tugged his jeans back on and then lifted her limp body up into his arms. He wanted her to sleep in comfort. Why did he care about that? Frowning, he headed through the connecting door into the master suite and carefully laid her on his giant luxurious bed, where he surveyed her from all angles with frowning curiosity. He didn’t even want to leave her alone, which shook him even more. She was definitely making him feel weird.
Lexy woke up during the night and slid out of bed, pulled on Nic’s discarded tee shirt and crept quiet as a mouse through the house to pour herself a glass of cold water. One glass of wine and tiredness had wiped her out very early in the evening, she thought in embarrassment. But she had no regrets, none at all. What if it wasn’t to be only one night that he wanted? The thought slunk in and as quickly she squashed it again, afraid of being na?ve. She was cautious in acknowledgement of her inexperience with men.
A sound behind her made her spin nervously. Clad in only his unbuttoned jeans, Nic lounged in the doorway. Her disconcerted gaze collided with liquid black enticement and she could feel her face burning as if it were on fire.
‘You are so shy,’ he breathed in amusement.
‘I’m not... I’m not!’ Lexy protested, throwing her head high, bringing up her chin as he slowly folded his arms round her and drew her close. The scent of him flared her nostrils. Clean, warm, masculine, already achingly familiar, as if he had somehow imprinted his being on her.
‘I don’t even know your surname!’ she shot at him, discarding the cool front she would have preferred to show him.
‘Diamandis.’
‘Well, how do you spell that?’ she asked huffily into his chest, knowing that it didn’t really matter what his name was as long as he was there for her.
He spelt it out with precision. ‘You sleep like the dead,’ he informed her.
‘I’m not going to argue about that,’ she agreed with a flare of amusement driving off her previous drowning discomfort with him.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘No...but I’m not sleepy either. I must’ve slept for eight hours,’ she pointed out.
Nic stared down at her with brooding intensity. ‘Women don’t usually fall asleep on me.’
‘I can only suppose that’s because they didn’t have to get out of bed at four in the morning the day before yesterday to make a flight to work,’ Lexy told him cheerfully. ‘And then miss out on essential meals because my language skills were required during those hours as well, work late that night and present myself at seven a.m. for another shift yesterday. No, I’m not about to apologise for sleeping like the dead.’
Nic grinned in delight at that pithy comeback. ‘I’m getting that message.’
‘And I’m getting the message that you’re one of those terrifying high-maintenance guys, who expects to be the centre of attention at any hour of the day.’
Faint colour darkened his sculpted cheekbones and his eyes narrowed. High maintenance? ‘Of course I’m not.’
‘Don’t believe you,’ she told him truthfully.
An involuntary grin slashed Nic’s wide sensual mouth. Surprisingly he liked her sass, the insistence that she wasn’t overly impressed by him, and not a flicker of recognition had crossed her face after he’d told her his name. ‘I can see I’ll have to get persuasive,’ he teased, bending down to lift her off her feet.
‘What on earth?’ she exclaimed.
‘I’m carrying you back to bed to prove that I’m not high maintenance.’
‘All that proves is that you’re bossy and you like your own way.’
His dark eyes glinted like molten honey and he frowned. ‘No points for romance?’
‘You’re trying to be romantic?’ she exclaimed in disbelief.
‘For the very first time in my life and... Thee mou , you make it a challenge, chriso mou .’
‘What language is that?’ she prompted as he carried her up the stairs and he noticed that she wasn’t objecting and that made him smile again.
‘Greek. I’m half-Greek, half-Italian,’ Nic imparted. ‘But Greek comes most naturally to me.’
As he came down on the bed with her still gathered in his arms, she rested her cheek momentarily against his bare chest, revelling in the scent of his skin, the soft brush of the black curls of hair sprinkling his pectoral muscles. ‘We have one small problem,’ he divulged.
‘What is it? Oh, my word, are you married or something?’ she demanded in sudden horror, already striving to move off his lap.
Strong arms tightened round her to hold her in place. ‘Don’t be silly. I’ve never been married, engaged or committed to any woman.’
‘Ever?’ she stressed in stricken consternation at that admission.
‘Not committed, but...’ Nic shrugged a smooth brown shoulder, suddenly at a loss for words because it was way too soon to say anything even though he already knew that, come the dawn, he wouldn’t be done with Lexy ‘...that could change at any time with the right woman.’
‘The problem you mentioned,’ she reminded him, relaxing a little more again, knowing in her bones, without knowing how, that he was referring to her.
‘I only had one contraceptive in my wallet. I don’t bring women here. You’re the first. So, we will have to practise extreme caution when we get back into bed together again,’ he warned her.
‘Caution is fine,’ Lexy told him sunnily. ‘You get het up about the silliest things.’
‘If you say so.’
And then he was sliding her into the bed while kissing her breathless and that fast, she wasn’t thinking any more. It was the burn of his mouth on hers, the sizzling heat and growing ache at the heart of her and the wondrous caress of his hands that drove everything else out of her head. Although she had sworn she had had sufficient sleep, at some stage of their prolonged intimacy she drifted off again, comfortable and secure in his arms. The one thing she would later remember in detail, and loathe, was that at that moment she felt incredibly safe for the first time in years and quite ridiculously happy.