Chapter Nine
Zervou was hard and aching and maintained control only because he was determined not to be some sex-crazed teenager. He was made of sterner stuff, no matter how alluring, desirable, enticing and unexpected his little boxing siren was.
He considered finding a private room here in the club, but that would be quick. Enjoyable but quick.
No, he’d rather like to spend his time on Ariadne Malis. Explore that fascinating athlete’s body of hers in the light. In his bed. She would not change her mind. It wasn’t in her nature. She had decided she wanted to explore the heat between them, so he could take his time.
Drinks forgotten, he led her right back out the way they’d come. He’d leave a hefty tip for the waitress. Later.
He didn’t wait for the valet, found the car himself and eased it out of the parking garage.
“We weren’t there for very long,” she said. She sounded so much like herself, not winded or breathy or moved by the moment while they were dancing. But her eyes were a little wild.
He focused on her eyes. Then the road as he sped through Corfu and back to his estate. Yes, he would have her there. All night. “Long enough to be seen. That’s what is necessary.”
“And what is this?” she asked.
“It feels rather necessary, does it not?”
She let out a slow breath. “It does,” she agreed.
And then said nothing else as they drove back the way they’d come, with perhaps a little shred of recklessness.
When he pulled the car into the garage, nothing had changed in the raging swirl of sensations inside of him. She got out without waiting for him to come around and open the door for her. So they met in the middle.
There was a moment, yet another moment he could not articulate to himself, of standing here in the dim light of a garage staring at her. Her staring back.
He wanted his hands on her, and yet here they stood. Separated by space and something else he couldn’t identify. Like they were standing on opposite sides of a line that they had to choose to cross. A line that couldn’t be uncrossed. That could change everything.
But how utterly ridiculous. He was Zervou Kritikos. He had built himself up into a billionaire. Impenetrable. Unstoppable. He crossed whatever lines he chose and uncrossed them just as decisively.
So he moved to her and felt vindicated when the usual wariness she regarded him with did not appear. Because this was something besides their…business deal, their pretend for the world, for Erjon.
This was just them.
So he took her hand once more and led her through the garage, into the peaceful estate that had begun to grow on him.
This wasn’t wrong or a distraction, because this had been simmering from the very beginning. Always an option. Always a nice little detour possibility. It changed nothing.
He wouldn’t let it, no matter how seismic everything felt inside of him.
Once inside, he pushed her up against the wall. He was bigger than her, no doubt stronger simply because of the size of him. But she knew how to fight. She knew how to land a punch.
But she acquiesced to him. Her mouth, her body. Accepting him, softening around him.
It was a thrill to possess her, to control her. This woman who delivered and accepted punches for a living, writhed against him as though he had all the answers. As though her pride did not matter because she would allow him to take care of everything.
Everything.
“I chose this dress specifically,” he told her, surprised at the unfamiliar edge to his own voice.
She blinked up at him, lips swollen from his kiss, eyes foggy with desire and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but he put that aside for the moment. He lowered to his knees in front of her.
“Did you know I cannot stop thinking about this? Just a tiny little hoop. And it haunts me.” He pressed a kiss at the bared midsection, just below her navel.
She made a noise in the back of her throat. Pleasure and need. And while his mouth played with the soft skin around her belly button, the impressive muscle beneath, his hand slid up her inner thigh, until he felt her tremble. For a moment, she stiffened, clenched her legs together before relaxing.
It was the first little alarm bell, easily flicked away when he reached the heated apex of her thighs. So sweet. So ready.
“I can feel how much you want me. Tell me.”
“I…” She couldn’t seem to get the words out, but she moved against his hand, held onto him. Gave over to him as his fingers found his way around the fabric covering her and into the molten heat of her.
It was a power unlike any he had ever experienced. The sounds she made, how easy it was to stir, tease, then send her quick and sharp over that glorious edge.
He looked up at her. She was dazed. Disoriented. Like she didn’t quite know what she’d gotten herself into. Like no one had ever touched her quite like that.
He could have her, right here. Its own bout of rough and quick and shocking. But he’d left the club for something in particular. Quick and needy had its place, but not this first time.
Perhaps only time. Perhaps it was all they’d be given, all they’d need.
He doubted it, and still…
“No, not here,” he muttered, more to himself than her. He took her by the hand and led her deeper into the house. It would be in a bed. He would take his damn time.
In the bedroom, he kissed her again. Hungry gulps of that taste he’d never before found anywhere.
She kissed him back, but as his hand roamed, explored, hers…
didn’t return the favor. She didn’t seem to know what to do with them, even as she pressed her body to his, kissed him back with the same intensity, but something was just not… quite right.
He’d expected graceful, like she was in the boxing ring. Maybe combative, but certainly at ease. And yet there was some…odd tension in her.
He pulled his mouth away, stared down at her.
Her cheeks flushed, her pulse scrabbling as she breathed heavily. She appeared every inch the interested and willing participant, but something was…off. Unpracticed. An uncertainty she showed in almost nothing else. Except that which she’d never done before—balance on a boat, eat lobster and…this.
“Surely not,” he muttered, as the idea took root in his mind.
She looked away. “Why are you stopping?” she demanded. But she did not meet his gaze anymore.
His body raged, ached. A part of him wanted, with no concern for what he might be taking. But there was a larger part of him too aware of the power imbalances in the world. He would take care of everything for her, but did she trust that, believe that?
“I do not despoil virgins.” It came out harsher than he intended, but it seemed the only way to find his control. His sense.
She rolled her eyes, managed to glare at him, but the color in her cheeks spoke of more than passion now. “Despoil? Get a grip. I hardly consider myself spoiled should I let you put yourself inside me.”
It was a bit crude but not wrong he supposed. And confirmation of what he was concerned about. Concerned, though not…altogether against. “Then why have you not…?”
“Are you so sheltered you cannot say the words, Zervou?” she asked, mocking him. “Why have I not had sex before?”
He was shocked into having absolutely no retort for that. Not the words, but the distasteful mocking in her tone.
“Because the world is a dangerous place,” she told him, with a flatness that definitely spoke of experience in danger. “And I have only had myself to protect me from this world. I suppose it might be smarter to protect myself from you, but I was rather looking forward to…not having to for once.”
Because she would let him protect her, this fierce creature. That was what she meant. She trusted him enough to allow him to protect her. That thing he’d always desired.
It made his decision for him. And it was a decision, a choice. He was in control. And he would protect.
“You said you I could use you. And you would use me.” She made a gesture to the space between them. “Is that not what this is?”
Use. It was not the right word at all, but he hardly knew what the right word would be. So he ignored it. “Be sure this is what you want,” he told her, commanded her.
She met his gaze. Direct and fierce. “I am always sure.”
It was only the tiniest bit of a lie. Ari was mostly sure. Almost totally. She wasn’t certain there wouldn’t be a regret or two on the other side of this, but she could live with regrets.
She herself was the embodiment of her mother’s regrets, was she not? Regret was simply an act of living. Like breathing. There were no choices, really.
Depressing thought. She wanted to go back to what she’d felt at the club. Somehow both powerful and entirely taken care of. That she was in charge, but he was handling everything, and she was free to simply enjoy.
The fact he’d seen the virgin on her was embarrassing. Not that avoiding engaging in sex was embarrassing—she knew her reasons. They had been good reasons and choices. The embarrassment was…something else.
Not shame. Perhaps just the discomfort in it being obvious she didn’t know how to do something when she had to know how to do everything.
And she didn’t like that at all. But if they could go back to the way he’d touched her in the crush of bodies, if she could feel that hard line of his body atop hers…
the embarrassment would fade. The pleasure would return.
And she could chase all these physical sensations to what people claimed was quite the end result.
So she moved into him again, wrapping her arms around his neck and throwing everything she had into the kiss.
It erupted, exploded, ebbed and flowed again and again, his hands streaking over her. She didn’t quite know what to do with her own, but she had a flash of him running on that beach in Mykonos. Of the way his muscles moved. She wanted to touch. To see.
So she began to unbutton his shirt as his mouth devoured hers. The heat and reaction to his hands in her most intimate places in his entry way overwhelmed every rational thought.
She hadn’t even made it down the row of buttons when he wrenched his mouth from hers, then turned her, hands sure and certain and in control.
She liked that, too. She was so used to being on edge, waiting for someone to land a blow, but she didn’t have to worry here. He had her.
He undid the tie on the back of the dress, smoothed it off of her as his hands followed the trail of fabric all the way down. There’d been no way to wear a bra under the dress, so she was in nothing but her underwear, and he was still fully dressed, only his shirt unbuttoned.
Not that she could see him. He stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders.
“You have bruises,” he said, and she could not quite read his tone. Almost accusatory, but she did not think he was accusing her.
“Pretty much always. Comes with the job.” For the first time in ages, perhaps ever, she wondered what it would be like to walk through the world without some kind of ache or pain or mark from what she’d chosen to do.
He made a sound, somewhat frustrated, then brushed a featherlight touch against the one on the side of her rib cage.
She shivered, leaning back into him once again.
He held her upright, gentle pressure on her hips.
Then he brushed his mouth across one of the bruises on her side, just above her waist, and her breath caught.
So gentle. So strange. So wonderful. She couldn’t see what he was doing, and it heightened the touch, the anticipation.
A featherlight touch across her lower back, along the row of hoops in her ears, then his lips along the side of her neck, then teeth.
“Zervou.” She didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t have the vocabulary for this, for her wants, her needs.
But he did. Surely he did.
“Lie down.”
The order sent a delicious thrill through her, but she was also not very used to taking orders. “Aren’t you supposed to be naked, too?”
“Lie down, Ariadne.”
There was a warning note to his voice that echoed inside her like a throb. So she did as she was told. She crawled onto the bed and lay down.
He stood on the side of the bed, surveying her.
His eyes hot and fierce and as weighty as any touch.
But he didn’t touch her, and she didn’t reach out to touch him.
Something about the anticipation made the ache dig deeper, want more.
Something about waiting for him to set the tone seemed like it would make everything that much more… explosive.
After excruciating, wonderful moments of his eyes touring her body, he shrugged out of his shirt. Then undid his pants and pushed them off. He said nothing, but his eyes never left her as he took all of his clothes off.
Unreasonably handsome. Sharp as any blade. Strong and broad and so…big. She had no experience with size, but this felt…impossible.
Wonderful.
He sheathed himself in a condom, never taking his eyes off of her. She felt that gaze like a weight. For a brief moment, the sheer size of him made her wonder if she knew what the hell she was doing.
And then he was ranging over her, that dark, fierce gaze as potent as any alcohol, she was quite sure. Because she forgot her concerns. She forgot everything except the vibrating want in her body.
He’d made her fall apart with just his hand, and that had been a revelation. What might this be?
He did not ask her if she was sure again. Perhaps he could see it in her. Perhaps he did not care. He was just suddenly there, nudging his way in.
Ari knew all about pain, about letting her body relax and accept. And in doing so, the intimate stretch, the sensuous, slow move from two to one, did not so much hurt as settle. From the knee-jerk I can’t to yes. This. Always.
And he moved into her, with her. So that they were a wave together, crashing slowly, passionately into shore, into pleasure and dazzling, exquisite falls. Up and over again, and again, and again.
He said her name, a low growl in her ear. She was shuddering, overwhelmed by sensation, by something akin to joy. He pushed deep inside her one last time, shuddering himself.
She had brought a man like Zervou to shudders, and that was power.
She closed her eyes. She had put her body to the test time and time again in boxing, pitted herself against others bigger and stronger who had done damage. She knew what it was like to take her body to new heights, new lows.
But never this. Never like this. She didn’t have the vocabulary for any of it, and quite unfortunately felt a bit of an ache, knowing that it could not stand. It was just a rest, a holiday, a little blip in her otherwise hardscrabble life.
So enjoy it while you can, a little voice urged her.
And she decided to do just that.