CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Her eyes were the sea, a tantalizing blue that would drown a man who wasn’t careful.
Athan wanted to drown. He wanted to glut himself in her, and only this line he’d drawn in the sand helped him hold on to his tenuous grasp of control. His body ached for it, throbbed with built-up desire. He could hear his own heart in his ears, beating wildly, even as he kept himself still and in control on the outside.
She might want him, this, but the woman had ironclad control. He would not be at all shocked to watch her walk away. Or to be forced to walk away himself.
Again.
Painful, impossible, and yet he kept putting himself in that same position. Like he wanted to punish himself, over and over again. “You must be sure.”
“I’m not sure of anything,” she said, and he thought perhaps it was the most truthful she’d ever been with him, which somehow felt like a gift. One to be careful with.
“But I am tired of fighting for everything,” she continued, and her hand lifted, rested on his chest. She stared at it there for a moment, before lifting her gaze to his. “I am tired of scraping by. I am tired . And for once, I deserve a reward, no matter how much I might come to regret it.”
She moved closer, tilted her head back. He read determination in her expression. Maybe some wariness, but not confusion, not conflict.
“Ah, omorfiá mou , you will regret nothing,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist, pulling her close so he could feel the contours of her soft body against his. “Pleasure given and taken requires no regrets.” Then he claimed her mouth for his own. Only his.
She tasted of a sweetness he could not identify, so unique it was to her. Haunting, obsessive. Three times now, he had earned a taste of her and there was no end to the ways it wound through him like a drug.
It would not end with a taste here. Not tonight. He broke the kiss, but only long enough to lead her up the stairs, quickly. To his room. It was dim inside and that wouldn’t do. He released her hand and moved to turn on the lights in the room.
There was a flicker of uncertainty in her then, but he returned to her, nudged the straps off her dress, then reached around her to push down the zipper. He took his time, enjoying the feel of warm, soft skin against his hands. Though his blood pounded in his ears, in his sex, he would not hurry this.
She was a delicacy, and he had no idea how often he’d be able to enjoy it, so he would take his time. He would savor every moment, every inch.
Every soft sigh, every huffed out breath, every sharp inhale. As he slowly peeled the dress away from her. She held his gaze the entire time, all uncertainty gone. A fire in her eyes, but complete stillness in her body. It did something to him he did not fully recognize. Unleashed a kind of desperation he’d never felt.
He felt like a gladiator in the ring, ready to take on anything. If death were an end, it would be worth the journey getting there.
And still he took his time, baring her to him. Pale and soft. Sweet and sharp, wrapped up with all that control . She was impossibly strong, forged in too much adversity. Too much taking care of others.
Tonight, he would take care of her. This pale goddess in front of him. He reached out to trace the strap of her bra, a confection of lace and frills that surprised him considering her no-nonsense demeanor.
Before he could do any more than that, she reached out, pushed the suit jacket off his shoulders. He shrugged it off, watching in fascination as the only sign of any sort of nerves or heightened feeling was there in her eyes. Not in her steady hands, her serene expression. Just in the stormy blue.
Once his jacket was gone, she stepped ever so slightly closer and reached for his collar. For just the quickest moment, her fingers trembled, but she stilled herself. She undid the first button, her concentration on her fingers as she moved down the column of buttons.
Her shoulders were back, all determination to see it through. And since she was, he let her push the shirt off his shoulders. He simply watched as she decided what she wanted.
Her fingers trailed down his chest, his abdomen, taking their time. Torturing him, and she knew it too if the little curve of her mouth was anything to go by. She undid the belt with deft fingers, though she took her time.
When her eyes lifted to his, it was a lightning strike through his body. A rumbling thunderclap that threatened to change the very landscape around them.
And still they only stood, eyeing each other, stillness on the outside, storms internally.
“Are you going to make me do all the work?” she asked, her voice thready.
“That depends,” Athan returned, watching the beautiful pink of heat and desire chase across her skin. “Do you want to do all the work?”
She didn’t reply right away, as if taking it into consideration and weighing the pros and cons. “No, I don’t.” Always so careful. Always so measured.
He wanted to rip that all away from her—the weights and responsibility that had built that inside her. He wanted to tear it to pieces, give her nothing but wild abandonment and not a second thought.
“Then allow me,” he said, or maybe growled, and he let it go. That tenuous grasp on control, everything that held him back. Because she had unleashed this.
Everything imploded then. He grabbed her, kissed her, devoured her without worrying about anything but how much more he wanted. With more speed than agility, he rid her of the rest of her garments, walking her back toward the bed.
He began to pull the pins from her hair, let them drop. He didn’t watch the bouncing curls as he had that first night after the wedding. He cared not how elegant her hair might be tonight. He only wanted his hands in it.
Soft and silky and smelling of some kind of spring fruit. New and faint but intoxicating all the same. He buried his nose there, his hands tangled, his body its own torture chamber of restrained need, throbbing desire.
He needed her underneath him. He needed his mouth on her. He needed . He lifted her onto the mattress so that he could see her, sprawled out naked in his bed.
His bed.
He had dared not imagine this . Her spread out on his bed, as if marking it as hers. A concerning revelation that he might never be able to forget her there, naked and fascinating. So strong and yet she wanted him. Him.
He could have stood here forever, simply drinking her in, but he was afraid it was altering something inside of him. He needed to touch, to taste, to make her his.
Because there was only her as he moved over her, and everything he finally wanted to experience with her. The way her skin felt under his hands, the way her sigh sounded and felt against his ear. The taste of her, deep and potent and true.
He splayed his fingers wide, moved his hands over her abdomen, her thighs, encouraging them apart.
His name on her lips, not with disdain or that infuriating cool detachment. Hoarse and desperate and wanting. Wanting him .
He followed the path of his hands, tracing open-mouthed kisses down her body, while she moved, urging him on. Her breath in staccato gusts. Her movements wild and desperate.
For him. For this. For them.
He moved her legs wider, settled between them for a taste. But when she stilled, so did he.
“You only have to tell me to stop, Lynna.” He waited, bracing himself for the inevitable guillotine. It was too much, too fast. He should have—
“No, don’t stop,” she said. Maybe her voice was breathless, but the words were clear. An order.
One of the few he would gladly obey.
* * *
Lynna felt like a top, spinning out of control. And Athan and this weren’t at all like she’d expected. She’d known there would be pleasure, the sparkling fireworks of their kisses, his touch, his voice had showed her that in a million ways—it was why she was even here .
But it was different naked. Brighter and hotter and more all-encompassing than even those kisses that had given her some reprieve from all her thoughts, anxieties and heavy responsibilities.
This was like…she wasn’t even herself. She was just skin and nerve endings. Need and desire in a throbbing, desperate storm.
It didn’t matter that she’d never done this, that Athan was touching the most intimate parts of her, that she could feel him hot and hard against her own skin. It only mattered that she find the peak of everything her body was building to.
His whiskers were a scrape on the inside of her thigh. His hands on her hips a firebrand as he moved her just how he wanted. And then his mouth, his tongue, inside her, lighting fires she’d never dreamed possible.
Until it all tightened into one spot that exploded, shuddering through her like an earthquake. Like finally . Echoing, echoing, turning her body lax, languid, sated.
What had she been doing with her life? Why had she thought sex could be a waste of time when even just this in this moment was all-encompassing and everything?
Nothing else mattered. Nothing else rated. Just this pleasure, this heat, just him . His mouth, his hands, his body now ranging over hers.
The dark, dangerous intent in her eyes, so potent, so desperately just out of reach, she felt no nerves, no concerns. There was nothing inside of her but anticipation as he rolled the condom on himself.
And when he was on top of her once more, nudging inside of her, impossibly large, she could only look at his face. A face she’d known for so long. A face she’d once had vague girlish fantasies about, a face she’d once hated, but it had always been too handsome. Too him .
He whispered something to her in Greek, something she probably could have parsed if her brain was functioning beyond the moment. But he was filling her, and it was too much and not enough all at once, but there was a freedom in that. In the everything of it all.
His hand clamped at her waist, the impossibly hard length of him deep inside her body. It was too much intimacy and not enough. The way each movement reverberated through her like a drum. And it built, higher and higher, a soaring, joyous climb to new heights.
With his voice in her ear, his body on hers, a perfect symphony of utter freedom and joy. Until it all crashed, a throbbing, potent delight.
He pushed against her, hard and firm, staying there on a guttural, conquering sound as the ebbs and flows of her own release stretched out, settled in. Winded and relaxed, she trailed her hand down the hard plane of his back.
She had never once believed a person was anything more than exaggerating stories of sex that made it seem otherworldly and worth sacrificing or risking for.
Now she knew different.
Athan’s warmth slid off of her. In the dim light of the room, she watched as he removed himself to an en suite bathroom.
She felt…sleepy. With absolutely no desire to rush into thinking or action. She just wanted to lie here and absorb every last pulse of pleasure until there was nothing left.
But when he returned, still beautifully naked and too handsome to be fair to anyone, the tiniest inkling that she needed to act began to stir.
But before she could, he returned to the bed, tucked her into his body, the blanket tight around them, his arms tight around her. And it was…nice. This quiet moment, after all the storms had receded. Calm and nice and for a few fleeting seconds, the responsibilities that lay heavy on her shoulders were still gone.
But she began to be aware of them again. “I should go back to my room,” she said, though she didn’t move. Because shoulds had always governed her, but it didn’t mean she wanted .
“Why?” he demanded, his face buried in her hair like he could simply inhale her whole.
She had a million reasons, but she could really only seem to verbalize one with him so close, with the bed so warm and comfortable around her, weakening her resolve. “It seems reckless.”
His gaze moved over her face, as if taking in every last centimeter. Then his mouth quirked in that lazy way of his, a contrast to the seriousness in his eyes. “Then be a little reckless, Lynna.”