The Petrakos Bride. Lynne Graham

Although that truth struck her as the most extraordinary thing since time began, she believed him absolutely, and it made her feel incredibly happy and blessed. The hunger etched in every angle of his lean, extravagantly handsome face thrilled her. It unlocked something inside her, blurred all ability to reason, and she acted on instinct when she stretched up and found his beautifully shaped mouth again for herself.

      He raised her up and removed her shirt without her even having been aware that it had been unbuttoned. Before she could take fright he locked his urgent mouth to hers again, and unhooked her bra. Unremarked, the garment fell away. An almost inaudible moan was wrenched from low in her throat as the swollen buds of her distended nipples were grazed by the hair-roughened expanse of his hard, muscular chest. With a groan of satisfaction he curved his hands to the voluptuous creamy curves of her breasts.

      ‘I love your body, glikia mou,’ he growled against her reddened lips.

      While she sucked in a panting breath, assailed by a sense of disbelief that such intimacy could possibly be taking place, he cupped the ripe, honey-soft swells and kneaded the lush rose-pink nipples already pouting for his attention. She quivered and gasped in helpless response, her breath rasping in her throat. A pulse of sweet, seductive pleasure began to beat at the heart of her. Such consuming sensuality had never touched her before, and she had no resistance whatsoever.

      Giannis looked down into her lovely face with intense appreciation. He liked her lack of guile and affectation. She made sex so simple he was enthralled. Her bemusement, her unhidden surprise at what she was feeling, made him suspect that she might not be anything like as experienced as his usual partners. Unexpectedly he found that conviction the hottest turn-on he’d had in years. He kicked out the little voice at the back of his mind that suggested he should be more circumspect. He had not felt so fiercely aroused since he was a teenager. And she had come to him freely. What harm could there possibly be in taking his pleasure?

      ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he told her huskily, easing her narrow skirt down below her hips, then casting it aside.

      So are you, she longed to tell him, and her face warmed. She trembled, lost in her wondering admiration of him and yet incredibly shy as well. But he brushed her hand away when she made a sudden fumbling attempt to cover the brazen bareness of her breasts. Lest she had any thought of repeating that attempt, he lowered his tousled black head to skilfully entrap a pouting rosy crest between his lips. With a whisk of his tongue he teased the tormented peak to a rigid point of aching need.

      Maddie didn’t know what had hit her. Her spine arched up off the bed. Her hips discovered a sinuous beat in tune with the swollen dampness between her legs. He sat up to discard his shirt, and in the midst of the exercise he kissed her fiercely. She was electrified by the erotic feel of his erection against her lower thigh. The barrier of his clothes could not conceal his bold masculine arousal.

      ‘Feel what you have done to me,’ he rasped, taking her hand and curving her fingers to the blatant bulge of his manhood. ‘I ache for you…’

      Surprise and excitement engulfed her as he pushed against her hand with an earthy need that shocked her. But it was a shock that she found insidiously attractive. ‘Giannis…’

      He reacted to the sound of his name on her lips by reaching for her again with a savage impatience that thrilled her. ‘I can’t resist you,’ he groaned, pinning her half beneath him to plunder the luscious fullness of her mouth while he scooped up her knees and dexterously skimmed off her panties.

      Maddie tensed, suddenly feeling wildly and dangerously naked and vulnerable. What was she doing? What on earth was she doing? A little voice screamed at the back of her head. She might have adored Giannis Petrakos on sight when she was fourteen—but did that mean that the first chance she got she went the whole way with him? Threw away the whole rule book and slept with him?

      Long fingers flirted with the feathery Titian curls that covered her feminine mound and she froze, all thought and debate instantly suspended. Her entire body clenched taut with seething anticipation.

      ‘Take it easy, pedhi mou,’ Giannis urged raggedly, struggling to rein back a hunger that he still found unnervingly strong. But he had a stronger need to live up to the expectant wondering look he had seen in her gaze the day before.

      He found the tantalising triangle between her thighs and she shivered helplessly, crazily aware of the tenderness of that secret place. So hot, so damp, so tense she almost physically hurt with longing. Her intense response made her jerk and squirm as he explored the swollen pink folds and stroked the tiny hidden bud, releasing a storm of sensation that made her cry out and gasp. An erotic flood of feeling sent her out of control and took her to the edge of a desperation she had not known existed.

      ‘I can’t stand it…’ she framed, twisting her head back and forth on the pillow, barely knowing what she was saying while she was entrapped in this world of sensual torment.

      Hotter than he had ever been for the ultimate completion, Giannis needed no second invitation. He slid with hard, fluid grace between her slender thighs. With an urgent groan of satisfaction his bold shaft forged a passage into her tight, honeyed channel. At the same instant as he plunged through the fragile barrier of her resisting flesh a startled whimper of pain was dragged from her. Bemused by that slight obstruction, he stilled, uncertain and incredulous, to stare down into her darkened green eyes in question.

      ‘Theos mou…Madeleine—this cannot be.’

      For an instant the real world intruded, and she recoiled from the thoughts threatening at the back of her mind. A dark pulse of voluptuous yearning was still pounding through her unbearably tense body. The simmering heat created by his passionate invasion was firing up again now that the initial discomfort had ebbed. He felt astonishing. She shut her eyes tight, told herself it was far too late to be worrying, and wrapped her arms round him in silent encouragement.

      A shudder racked his lithe, powerful body and then he gave way, withdrawing from her only to surge back into her again in even more powerful possession. Excitement electrified her in a seductive wave, and she tilted up to him in sinuous welcome. Control fell away, shattered by the tight coil of pressure in her pelvis that made her crave him like a drug. He slammed back into her, hot and hard. She cried out in delight. Once begun, the delirious pleasure surged higher and higher, and time lost all meaning until finally she reached an explosive physical crescendo. Glorious waves of ecstasy racked her trembling body in ultimate release and she sank into a shell-shocked reverie.

      Giannis stroked the vibrant coppery hair back from her smooth white brow. He pressed his mouth there very softly, and then wondered what he was playing at—because he had never been into all that fake, lovey-dovey cuddling stuff. Stung by that awareness, he lifted his handsome dark head again as if he had been burnt. The instant she shifted away from him, however, he automatically pinned her back beneath a hair-roughened powerful thigh. He wanted more of her. More and more and more, he acknowledged in a sensual daze of anticipation.

      He had never had sex that amazing. Something that had become a rather boring routine, like a morning shower, had suddenly become full of exciting erotic possibilities again. She was a magnificent discovery. With subtle movements he shifted her across the mattress and covertly kicked aside the sheet so that he could examine it. There was a bloodstain on the linen. She had been a virgin. A one hundred per-cent-genuine virgin.

      On one level he was sincerely shocked that he had taken advantage of so inexperienced a girl. On another, he’d hit a total erotic high and felt very smug about the fact that she had surrendered her innocence to him. Not much given to pointless regrets, Giannis suppressed the rare guilt factor and revelled in the erotic high instead. He had found her, he had awakened her…she was all his. He decided not to comment. Why make a big deal of it if she didn’t?

      The phone by the bed lit up and vibrated. Giannis answered it. It was Nemos, reminding him that the jet was on standby for his flight to Berlin.

      Listening to the swift exchange in Greek, Maddie was depth-charged out of her stasis and fully and fatally restored to awareness again. Consternation gripped her. She was genuinely appalled and confused by what she had