Chapter Six #3
She shifted beneath him then, but that was a mistake—because she could feel sensation explode inside of her, starting down there where he was pressed against her and then expanding outward. To her dismay, she felt her nipples tighten, and she could see that he saw it.
He saw everything. It was a horror.
Except, of course, it didn’t feel like a horror at all.
“I don’t think that’s a word I would use,” she managed to say. Enjoyment was for a quiet afternoon tea. Not what he’d done to her to make her ride him like—
She tried to shove it out of her head.
“Allow me to tell you what happened, then,” he said in a low voice.
Kyriakos was propped up on his forearms, holding himself above her. As he spoke now, he lowered his chest, so that her nipples that were pinched tight brushed against the front of his body every time she took a breath.
It was jarring. It was maddening. It was wonderful, something in her breathed.
“I know what happened,” she managed to say. “I was there.”
“You were certainly there, though whether you understood the situation seems less and less likely by the moment.” His hands were on either side of her head, and then one of his fingers was on the side of her face, tracing some kind of pattern that made her want to bite him.
Or turn her face toward the offending finger, anyway, and perhaps take it in her mouth and—
It was all those movies she’d watched, she thought now. She and Venediktos had watched them together sometimes. And on those nights, the kissing had been even more fun. Sometimes they would even writhe about a little bit, the way they did on screen.
It had always been fun. But it had never been this.
“In the car this very night,” Kyriakos told her, his gaze intense and compelling and very, very serious, “I’m pretty sure I gave you your first orgasm. Do you even know what that is?”
“Of course,” she said, because she’d seen that in the movies, too. The bucking and sighing. “I know what an orgasm is. Everyone knows what an orgasm is.”
“But I can see the way you’re frowning. You don’t think that what happened tonight qualifies, if I had to guess.”
“I thought it had to do with babies, that’s all,” she said. And then, though this was harder to say out loud, because she wanted desperately to protect him even though he was gone—and would not have appreciated his private life being called into question like this, “Venediktos was certain.”
They had decided that the movies were all about making things operatic. And they’d been convinced in their opinions on it, because they certainly knew a thing or two about acting.
But in real life, it was different. Necessarily different. Wasn’t it?
“Venediktos wasn’t wrong,” Kyriakos said after a moment. There was no decrease in intensity. “His orgasm could lead to your pregnancy, if he aimed it in the right place. Not that I think that was a factor here.”
She didn’t like his tone. Possibly he knew this too, because he blew out a breath as he looked down at her.
“My darling wife, I don’t know how to tell you this. But you and my cousin were entirely too sheltered to have been left to your own devices like this.” He sighed. “Either that, or Venediktos really didn’t like girls.”
“Of course he didn’t like girls,” she snapped at him.
“He liked me. I liked him. That was the beginning and the end of it. For God’s sake, he was two years old when I was born.
There was never more than a moment in either one of our lives when we didn’t know that we belonged to each other.
That wasn’t being sheltered. It’s called a betrothal. ”
“And you are entirely certain that he never grew hard like this.”
Kyriakos moved again and she couldn’t help but catch her breath. Then let it out in a rush, because it was like they were back in the car again. It was all of that shocking, overwhelming sensation, swirling all around her and shooting her up high—
She found it terrifying. Exhilarating. It was like her body took over, and she had no idea what to do with it, because there had never been a single moment in her life when she wasn’t ruthlessly in control. Of every single part of herself.
Yet she felt herself shudder beneath him, a long and rolling thing, and she had not authorized that reaction. At all.
“No,” she whispered, because it occurred to her that Kyriakos was waiting for an answer. “We rolled around together, but it was never… It never started… It didn’t feel…”
He made a shushing sort of sound, and leaned down to kiss her on her forehead. And even that made the fire in her climb higher.
“It’s all right,” he said, his voice quieter, and if not less intense—gentler, anyway. “And I apologize. If I’d known you had never done this before, I might have cooled down the temperature in the car.”
Aikaterini went to push against him, but that had the same effect as him moving against her. It was like every time she shifted even slightly, or he did, she was battered by that same wall of sensation.
It was too much. It certainly couldn’t be good for her.
Even though, as she thought that, she did wonder if this was that wildfire pleasure that seemed to consume people on screens, but had never evolved past sweetness for her. Not here in this bed. Not with Venediktos.
This was something completely different.
This wasn’t operatic—it felt like an opera she was starring in, not watching at some remove. It felt like there were arias inside her.
But she focused her gaze on him. “What you’re talking about is different,” she said, glaring at him.
Because that was better than arias. “And if you’re certain that I have not experienced whatever it is that would make me not a virgin, and make my first marriage consummated the way that we thought it was—”
“Aikaterini. I have absolutely no doubt.”
His voice was the sternest she’d heard it yet. His gaze bored into her.
And between them, that iron shaft of his pressed so hard into her that she could feel herself softening into a wild sort of heat—in response? In a bid to save her—but no.
She wasn’t sure she wished to be saved.
He was still speaking in that low, urgent, certain way. “This is not a theory I’m working under any longer. When I tell you that I’m sure, I mean it.” His gaze was too hot, then. “You would know.”
Her brain shorted out at that, but when she came back online a few moments later, she could think of one thing, and one thing only.
It felt desperate.
Critical.
“Fine,” she said, surrendering. Because she could see no other choice before her. Because there was all that heat and softness right there where he was so hard. But she scowled at him, because she wasn’t happy about this at all. “Then show me.”