Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
N OTHING COULD HAVE undone him more in that moment. Nothing had ever undone him more. The naked want he saw in her eyes, the yearning. No one had ever looked at him like that. Not Mina, or any of the other women he’d spent time with.
She had kept his secret—the Christmas gift—at first to protect him and then later to protect herself, and he didn’t know what was worse. No one had tried to protect him before. Not his brother, or his ex-fiancée. An ex-fiancée who had not even recognised him when they’d collided in the club. But Helena had. The moment she’d seen him at the top of the aisle, she’d known who he was. She always had.
It’s always been you.
Deep down, he’d known that. He’d felt it but never wanted to look too hard or too closely at it because he hadn’t wanted to lose her too. But her desires were written in her eyes and he wanted, so damn much, to give in to all of them.
‘The world just watched you marry my brother,’ he said, still desperately clinging to the last remaining barrier between them.
Helena nodded, agreement and understanding shining in the depths of the tears that hadn’t yet fallen.
‘We can’t...’ he tried again. Tried to convince himself. Tried to lie. When all he wanted to do was take her into his arms. ‘It would ruin us both if it were found out.’
Helena bit her lip, her gaze dropping to the floor as she nodded in a way that twisted his gut. She turned to leave and the sudden wrench in his heart nearly killed him. It sliced clean through every and any objection that he could make, any fear for the future or of the past. He couldn’t let her go. He just couldn’t.
Leo caught her wrist and pulled her back to him and when she crashed against his chest he held her there, caged within his embrace, half terrified that she’d escape.
His entire body tensed against the shock of her against him, so close that he could feel the beat of her heart against his chest. Neither of them moved, barely breathed even, until she sighed and relaxed against him and he felt a victory like he’d never known.
Her head came to just beneath his chin, and he felt the puff of her breath against his neck. Goosebumps unfurled across his skin at the proximity of her lips to his skin, arousal coming for him hard and fast. His pulse raged in his chest and for a moment all he could hear was the sound of blood rushing through his veins.
His entire being wanted to hold, cling, delve, grip, any part of her he could claim. Possession, not sexual, but primal. He wanted her to be his in every way and it shocked him. Shocked him that he could feel something so animalistic when what he held in his arms was so fragile and precious.
She shifted in his hold and for a horrifying moment he thought she wanted to pull away, but when she settled herself against him more securely, when she seemed to relish the press of her body against his as much as he did, his breath eased.
Tentatively, she leaned into him and pressed her lips against his neck and, Christós , he’d never felt anything so pure and so wrenching at the same time. The constant tug, back and forth, suddenly stopped the moment he felt her lips pressed against the column of his neck. Arousal shot through him like an arrow, but he held himself back, fiercely curious to see what Helena wanted to do, content and excited to let her lead.
Her hand came up between them and splayed the shirt open at his neck, releasing a button to give her more skin to caress. His fingers gripped her hip reflexively and she pressed herself against him in response.
When she kissed the top of his chest, her tongue swept out and he nearly jumped out of his skin in desperation to join with her, to meet her, to give her even just a taste of what she was doing to him. But he couldn’t move. He was under her spell and helpless to stop her sensual explorations.
‘Helena...’ he tried, his voice coming out on a croak and momentarily unsure as to whether her name was a plea or a prayer on his tongue. Until he realised. It was a plea. It would always be a plea—because he would never need permission to worship her.
She leaned back, still holding on to him by his shirt, her lips not even remotely as swollen as he wanted to make them, the flush on her cheeks nowhere near what it would be when they were done. Her large sapphire gaze, open, vulnerable and showing all of her wants, was utterly irresistible.
‘Please, Helena,’ he all but begged. ‘Stop me now.’
Helena dropped her gaze to his chest, her brow just slightly furrowed.
‘Is that what you want?’ she asked, refusing to meet his gaze.
‘Not for the entire world,’ he answered with raw honesty.
He watched her response, the slow close of her eyes, the breath caught in a chest pressed against his so that he could feel the slightest movement, the heady fragrance of crushed peonies beneath their feet and the soft scent of her reaching up to bewitch him.
‘Then no,’ she said, opening her eyes and locking her gaze with his. ‘I won’t stop you. Do what you will.’
Need clashed with the last vestiges of his control, thrashing against the leash of his restraint.
‘And what is your will?’ he demanded, his voice harsh, but broken by the strength of his want. Needing to hear her desires, needing her to be in this as much as he was.
‘My will is that you take me, own me and make me yours so that I will be ruined for any other man to come.’
He searched her eyes, her face for any sign of fear or insincerity, but there was none. She meant what she said. And it was a command that he would follow to his last breath.
‘As you wish,’ he replied, before claiming her mouth with his. As his tongue thrust between lips opened on a gasp, meeting the push of hers, his fingers flexed and fisted, the silk of her printed dress sliding over skin he needed to touch as much as he needed oxygen.
She moaned into his mouth and his chest nearly burst with need. His hands came up to cup her face and he angled her beneath him, taking full advantage of his height, bearing down on her with all the need and passion he was so desperate to share. Her hands came to his wrists, not to stop him but to keep him there, as she opened herself to him in utter and complete surrender.
‘Don’t hold back,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘Please don’t hold back,’ she begged.
Helena’s body was on fire, everything burning for him, from him. She didn’t think her heart would ever recover, her pulse, her breath would be ruined for ever by the sheer power of her need for him.
He pulled back from a kiss that was so overwhelming she had to steady herself against his chest. The incessant pulse between her legs, the ache low in her core, the dampness on the silk of her panties, Helena swore he knew it all.
He held her gaze as his hands dropped to her thighs, fisting the silk of her dress in his hands, inch by inch, the sensual glide against her ankles, her calf muscles, her knees and upward to her thighs. She pressed her legs together as he pulled the silk higher and higher, towards her hips, and shivered not from the cool sea air that hit her damp sensitive flesh but from the promise in the dark swirling depths of his eyes.
His fingers gripped the flesh of her backside and slipped beneath the bunched dress, the silk falling over his hands as if hiding the deliciously wicked things he was about to do from the world behind a veil of civility. His palm rounded the curve of her bottom, his thumb playing with the string of her silk thong, pulling it taut against her clitoris, and fire exploded across her skin and ignited a deep need in her soul.
Her head fell back and her mouth opened on a cry as his other hand slipped beneath the front of her panties, one long finger gliding down the centre of her slick folds, slowly back and forth, the palm of his other hand still pressed against her, while his gaze still held hers captive, as if demanding that he see every single expression that he wrought from her.
A sob fell from her lips and desire sparkled like gold shards in his eyes.
‘Again,’ he commanded.
She frowned, momentarily unsure and distracted by the play of his hands.
‘I want to hear the sounds you make,’ he whispered harshly into her ear, as if he were as affected by her pleasure as she was.
She didn’t know why it was something she struggled with, keeping her arousal silent, quiet as if it were her own.
‘Or do you need me to help you with that?’ he asked, his gaze ferocious with anticipation, a slash of red across each of his cheeks. ‘Oh, Helena,’ he said, before he slipped his finger deep into her, melting her entire body in a single stroke. Her head fell back but she was anchored between his hands. ‘You have no idea what the sound of you does to me,’ he said, and the thought of it, the want to do that to him, for him...
He added another finger and brushed her clitoris with his thumb and she saw stars. His palm pressed against the curve of her bottom, his fingers a caress, a grip, before pressing between her cheeks, the startlingly wicked play sending a shudder across her entire body.
Gasps fell from her lips unbidden, and victory shone in his gaze. Her breath shuddered in and out in time with the movement of his hands, and in her mind’s eye she saw them: Leo wringing pleasure from her, holding her in her most intimate, sacred femininity, herself near mindless under his ministrations.
Her breaths came quicker and quicker, the closer he pushed her towards her orgasm. She both feared it and wanted it more than life itself, because never before had she felt such a crescendo of sensation that her body vibrated with it. He was her anchor in the storm that came for her. He was the one that held her, even as he caused that very same storm—and even, she could barely believe it, as he promised more was still yet to come.
Her breath caught as she was hurled towards the precipice, no longer caring what sounds she made, gasps and cries of pleasure, need and want, carried away on the sea air. She was no longer Helena, but want, desire, a need that couldn’t be stopped, a force that couldn’t be dimmed. And when her orgasm crashed over her she fell against Leo, utterly spent and overcome.
She was vaguely aware that Leo picked her up as if she were delicate and precious and, slowly, he walked them down to the main deck, past the luxurious living area and back towards the master cabin she had yet to see.
He paused on the threshold, as they both took in the suite that had been prepared for a honeymoon. More peony petals littered the floor, candles in hurricane lamps glittered and flickered from the breeze coming through the open window, displaying dusk at its most beautiful. Sea salt played on the air and she knew in that moment she would always associate that smell with Leo. The breeze pulled and pushed at long net curtains that hung from the ceiling, encasing a king-sized bed in filmy romanticism.
And she realised with sudden, stark clarity that this was all they could have together, it was all they would ever get. Leo tightened his hold on her as if he’d had the same thought. She reached up to him then, and this time it was she who wanted to anchor him, to this moment, to what they’d given in to so selfishly. If they could have one thing, just one, it would be this.
‘Stay with me?’ she asked.
‘For as long as I can,’ he promised, truth in his words, refusing to shy away from the constraints that were shaping the rest of their lives.
Leo placed Helena gently on the bed, shocked at having discovered that she was the greatest fantasy he’d never known he’d had. How on earth had he got so lucky and so unfortunate at the same time, as the seconds they had left slipped through the cradle of his fingers?
Ruthlessly shoving that thought aside, he slowly began to undo the remaining buttons on his shirt, his gaze never once leaving her. He took in every detail, every line of Helena’s body, the way her breath moved her chest, the way that the silk dress hung off her shoulder, exposing a stretch of unmarred, perfect skin he wanted to lave with his tongue.
As he shucked the shirt from his shoulders, Helena came to kneel on the bed, drawing the silky dress from her body and throwing it aside. She was glorious in her thong and nothing else, her eyes on his, hot, urgent and expectant, the restlessness of her arousal all he wanted to ever see her dressed in.
‘You’re magnificent,’ he said. ‘And I am undone,’ he finished in Greek.
The yearning in her gaze softened and somehow that hit him harder than anything else that they’d shared up until now. He felt his heart trip, a warning sign he could not pay heed to.
He crossed to the bed, flicking open the clasp on his trousers, toeing out of his shoes and there, barefoot and barely dressed, Helena looked at him as if she were starving, and damn if it didn’t make him feel like a god.
Kneeling at the edge of the bed, Helena reached for him, her hands landing on the waistband of his trousers, gently batting away his hands, her fingers exploring with no shame or embarrassment, simply pure desire that humbled him.
Slowly, she drew the zip down, each tooth grating on his exposed, raw and as yet unsatiated desires. Her gaze was on her hands, but he wanted to see her eyes. He reached down and lifted her chin with his forefinger. The sapphire blue of her gaze was clouded with untamed passion.
‘You don’t have to do that, agápi mou ,’ he said, looking down into features that drew his heart into a quicker rhythm, but when her lips pulled into a line of wicked intent, it stopped altogether.
‘I know,’ she replied, and slipped the trousers and his boxers from his hips and helped him out of them before tossing them to the side.
Her hands returned to his hips, to gently caress the hard length of his arousal. His cock bucked against her hand as she wrapped her fingers around the length of him. Malákas , he was too ready for this. He was about to pull back, when she guided the head of his penis into her mouth and all thoughts disappeared from his mind in a heartbeat.
It was heaven and hell combined. The soft, wet heat of her mouth encompassed him and this time he did pray to every conceivable god in the known universe. He felt such intense pleasure—heightened only by the knowledge that being with her, joining with her would be even more incredible.
Her tongue swiped the head of his penis and he couldn’t hold back the growl of pleasure that burst from his chest. Her hands cupped his backside, and she took him so far into her mouth he was unable to prevent the thrust of his hips—a primal response born of a need so powerful he no longer was sure he could control it.
But when she mewled her own desire-drenched response he could have cried out to the heavens. She was going to be the death of him, but it was a death he would welcome with every ounce of his being.
Her cool fingers against his skin were a contrast to the heat of her mouth, darkness and light, fire and ice—everything about them clashed and contrasted, but all he wanted was her. He gently pulled himself back, unable to resist the lure of finally joining with her, and he reached into the nightstand, where he was sure he would find a condom.
Helena’s eyes were glazed with heady desire, clearing only a little when she saw what was in his hands.
‘I’m...’ she started, before clearing her throat and trying again. ‘I’m on contraception.’ She bit her lip, the first sign of hesitation he’d seen in her since they’d first kissed. ‘I don’t want anything between us,’ she confessed.
His heart jerked again. And he took a moment. This was a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. He’d never shared himself like that with another woman. Never. But Helena’s request floored him. He wanted to give it proper thought, needed to, because the raging urge of his desire was scaring him enough.
‘I can show you my test results,’ he offered eventually, seeing the sincerity and want in Helena’s face. ‘All negative. If you’re in any way—’
‘I trust you.’
Her words ricocheted through his heart and into his soul. It was the most precious gift he’d ever been given.
Helena was nervous right until the moment she saw her words land on him. As if they’d settled into his skin, his body, and formed a cord between them, tying them together. A part of her wanted to deny it as much as welcome it—because of what it meant. Of what it would mean for tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. Because they didn’t have those days. Not really. They only had this.
As if he’d understood her chain of thought, he came to her, gathered her into his arms and kissed her with a passion that would deny tomorrow—deny the future if he could. He kissed her all the way back until she lay on the bed, surrounded by him, encased in his arms, embraced by his hands and imprisoned not by his body but by his passion. She relished it, because it was not a cage of oppression but bonds of safety and security. She knew that, whatever they shared, he would take care of her, protect her, put her first. He would see her and know her, the deepest truth of her, and that was all she needed, she assured herself, before he nestled between her legs and slowly, exquisitely, entered her, inch by delicious inch.
Her head tipped further back into the mattress as the way he filled her undulated across her entire body. Her hips rose to welcome him further, her chest pressed against his, her fingers wrapped around the forearms braced either side of her head as they joined in a way that made her question where he ended and she began. Her breath filled her chest and she was full...full of him, of her, of them, of joy and passion and fear and future loss, but, above all, love. And love was what pushed her over the edge into the second orgasm that swept her away into bliss.
Helena opened her eyes as the sun stretched its first rays across the line of the sea and cursed herself for having fallen asleep. They only had so much time together and she hadn’t wanted to waste a single moment.
She turned in the bed to find Leo on his side, looking down at her, his gaze soft for just a moment before he hid it behind something much more enticing. His hand reached across her stomach, wrapped around her side and pulled her across the bed so that she was nestled into his side. She laughed, unable to help herself, relishing this side of his autocratic nature, relishing his possessiveness.
While it had been unspoken, while they’d not said it out loud, she knew that this was all they would have. This was all it could ever be. Leo wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, risk the reputation of the company that he had given so much to, that had cost him so much. And really, ensuring Incendia’s survival would take all her focus. And if she hid behind these excuses of their day-to-day responsibilities, rather than facing the painful truth that Leo just might not want more than this time, she allowed herself dishonesty. Because if this was the reward, she would take it with both hands. And it would be enough, she told herself. It had to be.
Shoving her thoughts aside, she looked up at the man staring back at her. The close cut of his beard was just a little softer than yesterday, the lure of it so great that she reached up to run the palm of her hand across his jaw.
He indulged her touch, letting her hand drift down the long, thick column of his neck, over the broad curve of his shoulder and across muscular traps and delts that she delighted in. He let her explore his body that morning, her fingers pressing and smoothing over every inch of him, as if she could commit this to memory and live on it for the rest of her life.
He let her lead their erotic dance, as she rolled him onto his back to straddle his hips, finding just the right pace, the right pressure point. She felt as if he might have looked on her with something like awe, but was unwilling and unable to hold on to that thought as yet another orgasm rocked them both into such sweet oblivion.
He gathered her in his arms and took her into the large en suite bathroom. White marble veined with grey and green, gold fittings and a dark wood so rich it hummed with warmth made it feel even more luxurious. He turned on the shower, hand beneath the water until he was happy with the temperature, and when he was, he drew her beneath the spray.
With as much care and attention as he’d shown in their bed, he soaped his hands and ran the suds gently across her skin. Never had anyone shown her such care and consideration. This was touch—not for pleasure, but still pleasureful. It was intimacy, not carnal but still erotic. He didn’t say a word the entire time, his dark hair slicked with water, skin slippery with soap, hands roaming all over her body. He was as focused on her as she had been on him earlier, and yet somehow his actions, this, nearly brought a tear to her eye.
In that moment she was the centre of his world and she knew it.
And even if it was just for now, she’d take it.