Chapter Seven #2
Cassie was clinging onto Ares, any sense of trying to pretend to be nonchalant or cool or confident obliterated.
He was kissing her and she was fire and earth and water and air all at once.
An amalgam of nerve-endings and atoms and cells all mixing to turn her into one big sensation, throbbing with need as he stoked the flames.
Tongue to tongue. He tasted so good. And he felt even better, every rock-hard inch of him, and the part of him that she could feel jerk between them, against the denim of his jeans. Against her belly.
Between her legs felt embarrassingly hot and damp. Was it normal to be so…wet? Who cared? One hand was on her waist, gripping her, and the other was in her hair, tangling, tugging her head back so he could take the kiss even deeper.
Cassie wasn’t sure how she was standing. The earth was moving and vaguely she was aware of the storm outside.
When Ares pulled his head back, Cassie opened her eyes. Everything was blurry for a second and she was gasping for breath, heart hammering. Terrified Ares would let oxygen get to his brain and realise this was a bad idea, she said a little shakily, ‘Take your top off.’
He looked at her—eyes blurring, cheeks flushed. Hair drying and wild. He smiled and Cassie’s heart turned over because this man didn’t have a big repertoire of smiles, as she knew well, but she knew she hadn’t seen this one, even on that first night.
It was wicked and very sexy. It told her he was committed to this and something inside her eased and melted even more.
He arched a brow. ‘Please?’
‘Please,’ she said. What was wrong with her? It was as if she’d been stripped of everything civil and she’d become the most basic form of a woman wanting to mate with a man.
Ares reached behind him and pulled his damp T-shirt up and over his head and off, dropping it to the floor. Cassie’s eyes widened on his broad and muscled chest, with its smattering of dark hair.
‘Oh my,’ she breathed, hands itching to touch him.
He said, ‘Go ahead.’
She looked up for a moment. She must have spoken out loud. She moved closer again and put her palms on his chest, fingers spread out. She felt reverent, as if she were worshipping a god. A Greek god. She might have giggled if she hadn’t felt so serious about what she was doing.
His skin was warm, heart thumping under her palms. She moved her hands down and her nails scraped over his nipples, causing him to suck a breath in. She looked up. He shook his head. ‘I’m fine, keep going.’
She went back to her task of exploration. Her hands moved down to that tantalising line of dark hair dissecting his flat belly. And then disappearing under the top of his jeans. Her gaze travelled further down to where there was a very obvious bulge against the denim material.
Her mouth watered. Her fingers were on the button. She looked up. ‘May I?’
He said, ‘Yes, you may.’ There was a rough quality to his voice that sent a shudder of longing through her. She popped open the button and then slowly drew the zip down, releasing Ares from his confinement.
Suddenly it was too overwhelming. She took her hands away and stood back saying, ‘Can you…?’
He seemed to read her mind and put his hands to his jeans, tugging them down and off, taking his underwear with them. Cassie’s avid gaze was glued to Ares’s very hard and very big erection. It was beautiful. He was beautiful.
‘Now you.’
Cassie looked up and gulped. He was six feet plus of raw male beauty. An experienced man. How on earth could she hope to engage his interest? He’s interested, prompted a dry voice. Maybe for the moment, thought Cassie, but as soon as he realised just how little she knew…
He reached out and trailed a finger along her jaw. ‘If you change your mind, Cassie, it’s OK.’
Cassie hadn’t expected any of this. And she hadn’t expected him to be so…reassuring. She shook her head. ‘No, I want to… I just…no one has ever seen me naked, except for the women at the palace who dress me sometimes and even they…’ She trailed off. Even they hadn’t seen her fully naked. Exposed.
Ares found one of her hands and picked it up. He interlaced his fingers with hers and led her back through the space to her cabin. Her bed was a tangle of sheets. Oh God, would he think she was a spoiled brat? She didn’t want him to be reminded now that she was a princess.
As if hearing her thoughts he turned to face her and said, ‘Stop thinking.’
‘I… OK.’
He put his hands on the shoulders of her jumpsuit and said, ‘Is this OK?’
She nodded. Her skin was tingling where his fingers rested and then slowly he pushed the shoulders of the jumpsuit down her arms. She wasn’t wearing a bra and the material loosened on her chest, exposing her breasts. She freed her arms.
She could feel her damp skin springing into goosebumps. Her nipples were tingling. She couldn’t look at Ares but she heard his indrawn breath and then something like, Theé mou.
She glanced up and his gaze was fixated on her breasts. He said reverently, ‘You’re beautiful.’
Cassie blushed. Then Ares said, ‘Turn around.’
She did and he pulled the zip at the back all the way down to the bottom of her back. He tugged gently and the material came down over her hips and fell to the floor. She stepped out of the legs. Now she wore only her underwear. Knickers. Lacy.
Ares gathered her hair and brought it over one shoulder. The ends tickled the upper slopes of her breast. He put his hands on her shoulders and stepped close behind her. She felt his heat and smelled his unique musky scent. Musky and spicy and something more exotic.
He turned her around again and now their bodies were almost touching, nothing between them. His erection pressed against her belly. Cassie moved closer and Ares’s eyes flashed.
‘Lie down.’
Cassie really wanted him to kiss her again. But she did as he asked, pushing the sheets aside to lie down. He looked at her, that dark golden gaze travelling over every inch of her. She didn’t feel embarrassed or exposed now, just hungry.
Ares came down on the bed beside her and Cassie was unaware of the fact that they were in a small cabin on a boat that was being rocked and rolled due to the storm outside.
There was a storm gathering inside her and it grew under Ares’s appreciative gaze. He bent his head and answered her silent plea, capturing her mouth with his, fingers tracing her jaw and angling her head so that he could make the kiss deeper.
Cassie explored Ares, wrapping her hand around a bicep and glorying in the strength of him, then up and around his shoulder and neck, fingers funnelling through silky hair, holding his skull.
She touched his chest, and down, fingers trailing over rock-hard abs and that slim waist and then to the potent evidence of his arousal.
Instinctively she wrapped a hand around him, revelling in the sensation of all that power and strength under hot silky skin, the way it slipped up and down his shaft with her movement. Suddenly Ares reared back.
Cassie stopped. ‘Am I doing something wrong?’ Now she felt exposed.
His eyes were glittering and his cheeks were flushed. As flushed as Cassie guessed hers were.
‘No, you’re not doing anything wrong, but this will be over very fast unless you stop doing that.’
Cassie unpeeled her fingers from Ares’s erection. She bit her lip and put her hand on his ass. ‘Is this better?’
He huffed a laugh, making his whole face transform. Cassie wanted to make him laugh all the time. It made him look years younger. Less severe. Less…haunted.
Before she could dwell on that little revelation, Ares was squeezing the firm flesh of her breast and rubbing a thumb back and forth across one nipple.
Cassie’s head fell back and she let a moan come out of her mouth.
It felt…exquisite. As if a wire were directly connected from her breast to between her legs.
And then, as if reading her mind, Ares’s hot mouth closed over her nipple as he smoothed a hand down over her belly to between her legs.
She opened them, tacitly giving him permission, and her insides burst into flame when his fingers delved between the folds of her sex to find the throbbing core of her body.
Cassie opened her eyes as Ares’s wicked fingers explored how desperately ready for him she was. He lifted his head from her breast and watched her as he struck up a rhythm, fingers moving inside, massaging her body and then out again. His thumb circled her clitoris and Cassie’s hips jerked.
‘That’s it…’ Ares breathed. ‘Let yourself go, Cass.’
This man had already given her an orgasm without even penetrating her body and now his fingers were inside, where she’d wanted him that first night, and suddenly a wave of sensation exploded outwards, suffusing Cassie in a haze of pleasure, her muscles clamping against his fingers.
‘You’re so responsive,’ he said with obvious satisfaction, a look of stark hunger on his face.
Cassie was too dazed to do much more than let the waves of pleasure lap through her as Ares disappeared momentarily and then came back, rolling a protective sheath onto his body.
He came back down onto the bed, and pushed Cassie’s legs apart. She’d never been more splayed, more exposed…more vulnerable. And yet she felt strong and powerful. Ares knelt between her legs and ran his hands up over her legs, up to the juncture of her body where she was still sensitive.
‘OK?’
She nodded, and looked at his erection again. Had it grown? She suddenly felt trepidation that it would—
‘It’ll fit,’ came Ares’s amused voice.
Cassie scowled at him and he came down between her legs, nudging them even further apart. ‘Don’t worry, Cass. You’re ready to take me.’
His hair-roughened thighs rubbed against hers, creating delicious friction.
Everything about him was so unashamedly male, and Cassie had never imagined a man like him would turn her on so much, but right now she felt as if she’d been made just for him.
For this moment. Even if it was in a tiny cabin on a rocking boat.
‘Please, Ares…’
He came closer and the head of his erection teased the folds around her sex, where she was now aching for more.
‘Patience… I’ll have to take it slow.’
Cassie felt frustration and she growled, ‘I’ve been riding horses and motorbikes for years, I think I’ll be OK.’
Ares’s eyes widened and his amused look was back. ‘Greedy little thing, aren’t you?’
But before she could say another word, he was breaching her entrance and spreading her wide.
Cassie watched him as he slowly entered her fully, her body protesting at the invasion but then softening in increments around him.
It wasn’t painful, so much as uncomfortable.
She moved to try and ease it and wasn’t prepared for the flutter of pure electricity that shot all the way up to her brain. ‘Ooooh…’
‘That’s it, just breathe, Cass…’
Cass. She melted and Ares went even deeper.
She felt impaled, full. She couldn’t speak.
She could only feel. And then Ares pulled back out and her body didn’t want him to go.
She gripped his arms. But just as he was almost out, he slid back in again, and so began a slow and leisurely priming of her body to accommodate his.
And then as her body grew more fluid around him, an urgency built, unlike anything Cassie had ever experienced before.
Building from her core and tightening inexorably.
Brokenly she begged for Ares to do something to relieve this building tension and he bent his head and kissed her, saying, ‘Not long now, agapi mou…stay with me.’
Their skin was slick. Cassie put her legs around Ares, heels digging into his buttocks, to try and alleviate the tension. He palmed her breast, trapping a nipple between his fingers, pinching.
‘Your mouth…’ Cassie whispered hoarsely, half deranged with the fire inside her. ‘Put your mouth on me.’
Ares obliged, surrounding that taut peak in heat, teeth nipping at her tender flesh and it was that that finally pushed Cassie over the edge and soaring free, higher than she’d ever flown before.
Her body wasn’t hers any more, it was in the grip of something primal and timeless as she contracted around Ares’s body.
Her orgasm was the end of him. He pulled back, trying to hold on, every muscle and sinew taut, but he couldn’t do it, he fell too, joining Cassie in her sea of oblivion, bodies welded together, breathing hard.
Hearts pounding for long minutes until, finally, the last pulses of pleasure ebbed away and left them at peace.
Ares’s return to consciousness was slow.
He felt as though he were climbing through a million layers, and then he had the gut-emptying sensation that he’d never find his way out to daylight again.
He was aware he was half asleep and starting to panic.
An all too familiar sensation. Claustrophobia closing in around him, suffocating him.
He came to with a start, sitting up in a bed, breathing hard, sweating. In an enclosed space. Very dim light coming through the only window. It took him long agonising seconds to place himself. He was in the cabin. On a boat. Not that boat. A sliver of relief went through him but not enough.
He looked beside him to see Cassie in a sprawl.
Lying on her front, arms out beside her head.
Long back. Hair wild, spread out over the pillow.
Sheet covering her bottom. Not even that provocative sight could jolt Ares out of the increasing sense of claustrophobia.
It was testament to how much he’d wanted her that he’d been distracted enough to make love to her down here at all.
He needed air. Heart pounding, skin clammy, fighting the waves of panic threatening to pull him down into a nightmare, Ares left the cabin.