Chapter 9
9
Ari fell back, groaning as she slowly swallowed him up, her moan of satisfaction lighting a fire in his belly as his fingers closed convulsively around her hips. She fell forward, gasping ‘So good’ as she took him all the way to the hilt, her forehead pressing to his chest.
Then she raised herself up, anchoring her hands on his shoulders and leaning all her weight forward, her jaw set, her gaze locking on his like a heat-seeking missile. Raising a hand to her hair, she pulled it out of its knot and sent it cascading around her shoulders.
‘Don’t move,’ she whispered. ‘Let me.’
The instruction went straight to his balls and Ari’s hands tightened on her hips as he let her take control. She rocked against him then, a glaze in her eyes that told Ari all he was going to need to do was to hang on. And hang on he did as she set up a rhythm, her full breasts swaying hypnotically to the rock of her hips.
Her tightness undulated along his shaft in an erotic grip that ratcheted up his heart rate and squeezed the muscles of his thighs and ass and belly in a vice. But it clearly wasn’t enough for Kelsey, a frustrated grimace marring her features as she leaned forward, leaned into the hands that were gripping his shoulders.
But still it didn’t seem enough as she half growled, half whimpered, shutting her eyes and sinking her teeth into the cupid’s bow of her top lip, her hair forming a curtain around her face.
She was magnificent. Like an avenging angel hunting down an orgasm it seemed she couldn’t quite reach.
She stole Ari’s breath.
He slid his hand from her hip to the slick heat between her legs. ‘No,’ she said, panting as her hips flexed faster. ‘Too sensitive.’
‘Tell me.’ He withdrew his hand. ‘Tell me what you need.’
Anything. He’d do anything.
An aggravated little mewling noise slipped from her lips as her eyes blinked open and zeroed in on his. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her tone desperate as one of her hands turned from gripping his shoulder to pummelling it a couple of times. ‘It’s… just… there.’
Her arms trembled and her thighs trembled, and her face was flushed and he could see the mad flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat. Air chugged in and out of her lungs in breathy gasps.
‘What about this?’
He thrust then as she sank down and she cried out, her green eyes widening, her fingernails sinking into the flesh of his shoulders. ‘Oh God.’ She moaned and her eyes almost rolled back in her head. ‘Yes.’
Her guttural approval was like petrol to the flame burning in his loins and Ari thrust again, harder this time.
She gasped as her head rocked. ‘Yes. Just like that.’
Grunting as he leashed the relentless pull of his own orgasm, Ari gave it to her again, just like that .
‘Please, yes…’ Kelsey bore down harder through her arms, moaning loud. ‘Don’t stop.’
Stop? He never wanted to stop.
Ari slammed his cock into her, revelling in the tight sheath of her pussy. Three more thrusts and Kelsey’s eyes flew open, her lips parting on a gasp that ricocheted around the cabin. She cried out then, the sexiest damn banshee noise he’d ever heard.
‘Yesss!’
Her entire body tightened, her fingernails sunk into the flesh of his shoulders, her back arched. Their gazes held as she ground against him, her pussy fisting his cock, squeezing hard as her body trembled and shook to the pulse of her orgasm, her wild moans a powerful aphrodisiac.
He joined her, the orgasm he’d been holding back breaking like a dam. Their climaxes intertwined, the rhythmic squeeze of her pussy and the hot pulse of his cock locking them together as Ari spilled inside her until they were both spent and he collapsed onto the mattress, pulling her down on top of him.
‘ Theé dóse mou dynami ,’ Ari said eventually as he stirred beneath her, his hands sifting through the fan of her hair. ‘We’re good at this.’
She laughed but it sounded heavy and sleepy. ‘I think phenomenal is more accurate.’
Her warm breath was like a lightning rod against his skin, goosebumps erupting across his scalp and prickling down his nape. She was right; their chemistry was phenomenal.
Propping her chin on his chest, she traced his bottom lip with her finger. The sensation slid all the way down to pool in his groin. ‘I missed you,’ she murmured, her voice sounding sleepy, and before he could respond, she laid her cheek on his chest again and he heard her yawn.
Ari’s heart thunked in his chest. He’d missed her too. He’d known her for only a handful of days but it was the truth.
When he’d told her to go yesterday, it hadn’t been churlish. He hadn’t been angry or annoyed. He understood the risk Kelsey was taking and that pushing her to stay had been wrong. Not to mention unethical on his part. He was supposed to be working undercover investigating the ship’s failings, not putting Kelsey in a compromising situation all whilst deceiving her about his actual identity.
It’d been the wakeup call he needed, a resetting of his boundaries.
But her voice on the phone had reached inside him and swept them all away as he’d throbbed with the need to see her one more time. Being like this with another woman hadn’t been on his radar. Hell, it hadn’t even been on his wish list, and that was confusing and confrontational, but he wanted Kelsey and she wanted him.
And the world hadn’t ended. He hadn’t fallen apart.
Ari didn’t think for a moment he’d been cured of grief – he still wasn’t ready to let go of Talia – but maybe he was finally emerging into the light?
Thanks to Kelsey.
‘I missed you too,’ he said, but she was already asleep.
* * *
Kelsey woke the next morning to the trail of fingers at her hip, a warm solid body spooning her from behind and a seriously large erection making itself felt in the cleft of her butt cheeks.
‘Mmmm.’ She stretched a little but didn’t open her eyes, just luxuriated in the feel of Ari and the certainty that she didn’t have to go anywhere today. She snuggled into the cradle of his thighs and the virile length of his cock.
‘ Kalimera .’
The greeting rumbled around her, low and sexy, as Ari dropped a kiss on her shoulder. Kelsey had heard Ari curse, come and mutter dirty words in his native tongue, but there was something nice about his innocent morning greeting, and the way it slid out, all rough and sleepy, caused a glow deep inside her chest.
His hand moved steadily north to her ribs and she smiled. ‘Good morning to you too.’
Lips buzzed their way across her shoulder blade to the bony notch where nape met spine and Kelsey wriggled against his dick suggestively. ‘What time is it?’
The cabin was as dark as ever but she could hear the distant shutting of doors and the muffled chatter of people as they walked past the cabin, so it had to be morning.
‘Eight thirty.’
Kelsey’s eyes flashed open. ‘Really?’ She hadn’t slept this late since her last stint home between contracts.
Not that there’d been a lot of sleeping going on.
‘Uh huh.’ A hot tongue swiped up the side of her neck as his fingers traced the ruts of her ribs. ‘We wore each other out.’
‘Mmm.’ She sighed as she shut her eyes again. They had fucked like demons after she’d taken a little nap. But his body didn’t seem that worn out. Nor was hers if the heat smouldering between her legs was any indicator.
‘Doesn’t feel like it.’ She ground against him, her heart skipping a beat or two as his breath caught. The smoulder flickered to flame. ‘We should do something about that.’
Ari had been delighted to hear about her day off and had suggested they spend it in his cabin. Kelsey knew she shouldn’t be encouraging whatever the hell this was. Prior to meeting Ari, her rule had been to never stay the night with a guy – to do the deed and leave. But she’d now stayed with him twice .
And was going to spend the day with him, too.
She was stepping over lots of lines here. Pushing boundaries. Work related and personal. And, for someone as goal orientated and disciplined as Kelsey, that was big. But in a few days, she’d never see him again and she just didn’t have the willpower to deny herself the sex or the snuggles any more.
It seemed to her that he’d given up trying to deny it too.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, his teeth grazing the spot where her pulse beat unsteadily in her throat, his fingers stroking the underside of her breast.
Her nipple burgeoned at the touch. ‘Oh?’
‘Come into Mykonos with me.’
Kelsey’s eyes blinked open. Okay… that she hadn’t been expecting. She remembered he’d expressed an interest in only seeing Mykonos, so she supposed it shouldn’t be surprising he wanted to go. This was his holiday after all. But…
‘I can’t. I can’t be seen with you even off the ship.’
Not to mention it felt like another boundary she was pushing. Surrendering to this crazy impulse on the ship was one thing. Something in her blissed-out state she was just managing to justify. Taking this thing to a second location?
That felt like something more than a cruise ship fling.
His whiskers spiked against her shoulder blade as he anchored his chin there. ‘I know. I’m not talking about walking the streets together. My boss owns a house on Mykonos. He said I could use it when the ship docked for the day if I wanted. You should see it, Kelsey, it’s beautiful with this infinity edge pool that looks out over the sea. You can join me there and no one need know. Just you and me skinny dipping and?—’
His hand finally quit teasing around her breast and slid over the top. Kelsey shivered and her belly pulled tight.
‘Making out.’ His thumb teased her nipple. ‘Plus, the housekeeper there makes the best spanakopita.’
Kelsey’s eyes shut as his fingers strummed at her nipple, sparking sensation to all her erogenous zones, blowing away all her very sensible reasons for staying on board. They floated away like dandelion puffs in her mind’s eye as the lure of spending a day away from the ship with Ari beckoned.
No hiding, no sneaking around. Just… normal. It didn’t have to mean it was something more, right?
‘Well… I do like to eat,’ she said, surrendering to the temptation, her voice raspy as his fingers grew rougher with her nipple.
‘So do I.’
Kelsey snaked her arm up and behind her, anchoring it around his neck as she arched into the palm of his hand. ‘I’m not talking about food.’ Right now she was only hungry for his dick.
‘Neither am I.’
* * *
Ari stood on the terrace squinting against the vicious sparkle of morning sun on the calm blue of what was now the Aegean. It was blindingly blue. As blindingly blue as the building behind was blindingly white and the bougainvillea creeping over the facade was blindingly purple.
It was all blindingly fucking perfect.
Not even the large white monolith of their cruise ship at anchor, blindingly modern in this ancient vista, spoiled the beauty.
It had been too long since he’d been here and he’d forgotten how it called to him. How the island and the water spoke to him. How it had soothed his soul and nurtured him through his darkest hours.
It was actually Theo’s house but Ari had holed up here after Talia’s death. Choosing here, choosing Mykonos, had been easy. Talia had never been to the island, to the house. They’d talked about it many times but things had always cropped up and it had never eventuated. Fortuitous, as it turned out, because Ari had been able to exist here without memories confronting him at every turn.
He’d done that for a year. A year until Theo’s patience with Ari’s isolation had worn thin and he’d dragged his brother back to Athens, back to the bosom of the family, and put him to work.
And now he was bringing a woman here. A woman other than his wife. He took a moment to reflect on what a huge step that was. So big, he almost hadn’t taken it. Had fought the words on the tip of his tongue, his mind grappling with the warring elements of insane need for Kelsey and guilt about letting someone into his life.
But even through the disquiet, it hadn’t felt wrong . It still didn’t. Which was confusing because surely it should?
Surely this feeling that it was right wasn’t rational?
God… Ari didn’t know. All he knew was that he wanted to share Mykonos with Kelsey, and this push-pull he felt over whatever the hell it was they were doing was exhausting.
The faint tinkle of the doorbell broke into Ari’s reverie and he hurried inside, determined to put all his doubt and angst away and just enjoy himself. It had been three long years since he’d enjoyed himself; surely he was allowed one day?
The cool mosaic tiles were a relief to his bare feet as he strode past whitewashed walls to the front door, anticipation quickening his step. He felt stupidly breathless as he pulled it open to find Kelsey beaming at him in a halter neck sundress, her bikini straps on display, her face almost obscured by a big floppy hat and dark sunglasses.
‘ Kalimera ,’ she said in a light musical tone, offering him a paper umbrella, and Ari’s lungs felt too big for his chest.
He took the umbrella with one hand and grabbed her around the waist with the other, tugging her close. She swept the hat off her head, her hair tumbling loose around her shoulders, and Ari kissed her deep and hungry as he kicked the door shut.
‘C’mon,’ he whispered, pulling himself away with difficulty, but if he didn’t let her go he was going to drag her down to the tiles and they had all day to be uncivilised. ‘Come see the terrace.’
Ari was not disappointed by Kelsey’s reaction. ‘Oh. My. God.’
Her head swept from side to side to take in the full one-eighty-degree view. Dumping her hat and bright orange tote bag on the mosaic-topped table, Kelsey made her way around the elegant curves of the swimming pool to the railing.
Wrapping her fingers around it, she sighed. ‘This is… stunning.’
Ari came to a halt behind her, the front of his thighs aligning with the back of hers, his hands sliding onto her shoulders. Her head tucked in perfectly under his chin. She fit against him just right. They fit just right.
‘You like?’
‘It’s beautiful.’ She relaxed into his frame. ‘How amazing would it be to actually live here?’
‘You’d like that?’
Her hair tickled his throat as she nodded. ‘Hell yeah. Who wouldn’t? This is my dream.’
‘To live here?’ he teased.
‘No. Well… yes,’ she said with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘I’m a realist though, so I’ll settle for this cottage in a little seaside town a few hours north of where I live. It’s not much more than a shack really and the roof leaks, but Mum and I go there every holiday and we love it. Waking up to the sound of waves on the beach, seeing the ocean through the windows…’
She sighed and the wistful note in her voice wrapped fingers around Ari’s heart.
‘That’s my dream. A sea change. That’s why I’ve been cruising for seven years, saving all my money.’
‘It sounds nice.’
‘It is.’ She gave another deprecating laugh. ‘My mother says I must have been a mermaid in a previous life. I think she might be right.’
‘Oh, really?’ Ari reached for the knot of her halter neck and pulled it loose. ‘Care to get in the pool and prove it?’
Her dress slid down to her waist to reveal two plain black triangles straining to hold her breasts in place. Ari’s breath hitched. Póso panémorfa. She had gorgeous tits. He reached for the knot of her bikini top next.
‘I need to be topless to prove I’m a mermaid?’
She was obviously amused but just as obviously turned on, a fact he could hardly miss from his vantage point as the two tight points of her nipples tented the triangles of fabric.
‘Mermaids don’t wear bikinis.’
‘Ariel does.’
He smiled. ‘Ariel wears shells.’
As he pulled on the bow at her nape, the straps slipped from his fingers and the triangles peeled away from the ripe mounds of her breasts. Her nipples stood taut and proud and Ari groaned at the sight.
‘ Eísai san theá, ’ he muttered, trekking his lips down her neck as his hands slid around and cupped her breasts.
She moaned and arched as his fingers brushed her nipples and Ari’s cock went as hard as the whitewashed stone of the house.
‘Anyone can see us,’ she said on a half gasp.
It was true, there were houses all around, both beside and behind, jutting out to make the most of the views. And the people in those houses could , if they were so inclined, see him fondling her breasts. But Ari was in thrall.
He wasn’t generally an exhibitionist but he couldn’t stop touching her, looking at her, stripped to the waist, her head thrown back, her nipples tipped golden beneath the glorious Greek sunshine.
‘Nobody knows us,’ he whispered. Which wasn’t strictly true. Ari did know people on Mykonos. Or he had , anyway. And they’d all be working in the bars by now.
Still, she pulled away, slipping out from where his body had caged her against the railing, scooting behind him, leaving him a mass of jangling nerve endings. It was worth it, though, to find her naked but for her bikini bottoms when he turned.
Smiling at him, she pulled the hip ties simultaneously and the fabric fell away. His breath left his lungs on a hot hiss of air. She was gorgeous. Everything round and soft and perfect.
He’d spent a lot of the last few years convinced he was cursed by bad luck. But, right at this moment, he felt like his stars were changing.
‘Well?’ She shoved a hand on her hip and cocked an eyebrow. ‘Are you joining me or not?’
Then she turned and dived into the pool.
A wet spray to his face revived him and it took Ari no time at all to shuck his clothes and dive into the clear, cool water. She was just about at the end as Ari struck out after her, the water cool as silk on his skin.
She was staring at the view, her forearms resting flat on the infinity edge, when he caught her up. Despite being in the deep end, he could still stand flat-footed and she sighed as he pressed all his hardness against her softness and licked at water droplets on her neck.
‘God,’ she whispered, ‘this view.’
The view was incredible. The sapphire of the Aegean, the majestic lines of the Hellenic Spirit , the random, higgledy-piggledy placement of the whitewashed houses around them, the famous Mykonos windmills in the distance.
But nothing beat the sight of her. The ends of her wet hair dripping a trail of droplets down the slope of her breasts to the tips of her nipples. The line of her neck. The ridge of her collarbone.
Nothing beat the feel of her either. Her body was smooth and soft against his and the cool press of her ass cheeks against the rampant heat of his cock was seriously addictive.
‘You like it.’
‘Yes.’
Ari slid his hands to her breasts, kneading and squeezing. ‘What about this?’
‘Mmm,’ she said on a low, breathy moan as she arched into his hands.
‘And this.’ One hand headed south, his fingers sliding between her legs. She wasn’t cool there. She was hot. Hot and a different kind of wet. Slick and slippery.
Wet for him.
She gasped as he found her clitoris. ‘God, yes.’ Reaching behind her as she had this morning, she anchored her fingers in his hair. ‘I like that a lot.’
Ari’s heart pounded in his chest, the water almost vibrating around him in time to the beat. ‘Spread your legs.’
He’d expected her to part them out sideways but she curled her legs up behind her – behind him – her heels grounding in the backs of his thighs, splaying herself wide and locking them together tight.
She gasped and he groaned as his finger slid into her tight, wet heat. ‘ Christe ,’ he muttered, his voice as rough and heavy as the air chugging in and out of his lungs, his cock heavy, straining for action. He sunk another finger inside her, feeling her clamp tight around him.
‘ Aaarrriii .’
The way she moaned his name like that, all low and sonorous like he’d connected to something deep, something beyond physical, kicked him hard in the chest.
‘What?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Tell me what you want.’
‘You. Inside me.’
His cock voted for that too but… ‘No condom.’ His thumb slid to the hard pearl of her clitoris, her body bucking against his as he teased lightly over the top. ‘And I’m not getting out to get one.’
He wasn’t leaving this position until she’d screamed his name so damn loud the gods heard her on Mount Olympus.
‘I don’t care,’ she said, panting and bucking against him as he continued to tease her nipple, her clit and her g-spot.
Ari frowned. ‘Don’t care?’ His fingers stilled.
This elicited a frustrated little growl at the back of her throat but, undeterred, she took over, seeking her own pleasure, riding his fingers as she fisted her hand in his hair.
‘Don’t care… about a condom.’ Her breathing was laboured as she flexed her hips back and forth. ‘I just need you in me. Now .’
Her guttural admission hit Ari right between the legs. His cock, jammed tight between the cleft of her buttocks, bucked, his ass contracted and his pulse pounded through his chest in anticipation.
Christe, he wanted that.
Wanted to feel her tight, wet heat surrounding him, wanted to feel every nuance of her orgasm as she came on him, milking his dick from root to tip.
‘ Ari! ’ She gasped his name with such frustrated impatience it was almost his undoing. ‘I have a contraceptive implant, no diseases and I’m your first sexual partner in three years.’
A strangled little whimper gurgled from her mouth as she ground against his hand and her fingers clenched and unclenched in his hair. ‘I think we’re covered.’
Her voice was all high and breathy like she was almost there, like all he’d need to do was brush his thumb over her clit. Or slide his cock deep inside her – his taut, aching, bare cock.
‘Please…’
Ari’s heart slammed in his chest. He wanted to be inside her as badly as she needed him to be there and nothing, not even Zeus himself, could have stopped Ari from giving Kelsey what she wanted. What he wanted.
What they needed .
With her legs locking him in tight, there wasn’t much room to manoeuvre, so he released her breast and slid his hand between their bodies. Grasping his cock, he angled it, ploughing it through the seam of her sex and notching himself at her entrance.
She bucked violently at the stimulus and moaned, ‘Yessssss,’ long and low.
And it was like a siren song in his blood, clamping a fist around his balls and shooting a flaming arrow right up the furrow of his spine as he anchored his hands on her hips, pushed through the balls of his feet and thrust. She cried out – a noise somehow sated and feral – and he grunted as she swallowed him up.
Gamoto.
She was tight and hot and wet and already quivering around him, and he felt in- fucking- vincible. Like Poseidon rising from the sea.
And also like he was… home.
Being locked together as they were didn’t allow for a lot of thrusting, but she didn’t need it, just the slightest flex of his pelvis pushed her over the edge. ‘ Yes .’ Kelsey’s moans and pants filled his head. ‘God, Ari… I’m coming.’
Yes, she was. Coming on his dick in long, urgent squeezes that plucked at the piano-wire tension of muscles buried deep at the root of his cock, her heels grinding like a drill bit into the backs of his thighs. He had to mentally recite the Greek tax laws to hold on to his load.
Finally she was spent, her heels unlocking, her legs returning to their natural position, her body heavy as her forehead slumped onto her arms still resting against the infinity edge of the pool. Her arms and his cock inside her were the only things stopping her from sliding boneless into the water.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, lifting her head, ‘I couldn’t wait.’
Her head wobbled precariously like her neck was made out of marshmallow, and Ari slid his hand onto her throat, his thumb notching under the angle of her jaw for support. She swallowed and he felt the muscles undulate beneath his palm as surely as he felt the thick beat of her carotid against his fingers.
‘It’s okay,’ he crooned quietly near her ear. ‘Watch.’ He nuzzled her earlobe. ‘Watch the world while I fuck you.’
It was what it felt like right now, that they had the world at their feet. And he was a God .
Ari withdrew almost all the way out before thrusting all the way in again and it felt so damn good , her tight flesh massaging his length. It sucked his breath away. He did it again and Kelsey moaned, and her head rocked and Ari’s fingers firmed around her throat for more support.
‘Yes,’ she panted. ‘Yes.’
Ari withdrew and thrust again and she said, ‘Beautiful. It’s so beautiful, Ari.’
‘No.’ Ari shook his head as he picked up the rhythm, squashing her breasts against the side of the pool, the water swirling around them like a whirlpool. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he muttered. ‘You’re a goddess.’
He thrust deeper – harder – as his orgasm rippled up from the root of his cock, hotter than the Mykonos sun. His fingers found her clit, flying over the top, making her buck, making her moan and cry out, ‘Ari, Ari, Ari ,’ her throat moving convulsively as the tight, hot sheath of her gloved him, milking his climax straight out of his balls.
Diamonds of sunshine spilled around him. Diamonds in the sea and the air and the pool. Diamonds in her hair.
A kaleidoscope of pleasure as he joined her in the rapture.