The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер

understood though.

      She felt her first spark of self-consciousness when she suddenly remembered that she was nothing like the long slender blondes he was used to looking at like this. She had curves. She had a waist and hips and full real breasts, not fakes. As if he was thinking along similar lines an odd twist of a smile curved his lips as his gaze flickered down to that other difference she was suddenly acutely aware of, the triangle of ebony curls nestling at the juncture with her thighs.

      Then he bent down and kissed her navel; it was so shockingly unexpected, her muscles jerked violently in response. One of his hands stretched out, grabbing hold of her hand as it went instinctively to push him away from her, long fingers closing around her fingers as he repeated the kiss with a slow and sensual glide of his tongue lower and lower.

      ‘Nikos, no,’ she groaned out.

      He ignored her protest and was so ruthless about his intentions that she surrendered to the silky waves of pleasure he was making her feel, her eyelids folding downwards as he traced each moist, hot, swollen part of her. Within seconds he was carrying her way beyond sense, drugging her with the newness of one sensation laid on top of another. The way he used his tongue to pleasure her, the way he continued to clasp her hand. The way her limbs had gone boneless and restless, the way there was a slow languorous drag of her breathing. He knew exactly what he was doing to her as he moved up her body to the flat of her stomach, the curve of her ribs, the tight tender peaks of her breasts and finally, with a hungry moulding of his lips, to her mouth.

      And with a single lithe move he arrived on top of her, his narrow hips pressing between her trembling thighs and at last she experienced the sense-spinning intimacy of his bold erection sliding into her like hot smooth silk.

      ‘Madre di Dio,’ she breathed, ‘non posso più,’ as she shot right over the pleasure threshold.

      And still he held one of her hands captive, still he ravaged her mouth. She was wild, she was scared, she could not keep her legs still. Her free hand was clawing at his bronzed damp flesh, the breath leaving her in short tense little bursts. Pleasure was lighting her up from the inside, bright hot shimmering pleasure she had no control over as it built and built. And he was hot—burning, murmuring things to her she could not understand, though some instinct inside her recognised that he was urging her on and on.

      ‘Non posso più,’ she whispered a second time.

      ‘Sì, you can stand it,’ he responded thickly. ‘Hold on to me, Mia. There’s a lot more to come.’

      And he was right, there was so much more of it and on so many levels she just couldn’t keep up. Her dizzy world went misty, she was held enthralled by how acutely she could feel every centimetre of him as he slowly filled her up.

      He was hot and trembling, so lost in the sheer power of what he was generating between them he forgot just what kind of creature it was he was holding in his arms. He was only aware of the desire, the hunger, the passion, raging through both of them. He felt it, fed it and eventually surrendered to it, and with a heavy groan drove home with a final deep stabbing thrust.

      Mia had forgotten to expect it. So the sharp spasm of pain locked her muscles in shock. She could not breathe, she could not think. Nikos had frozen on top of her, his eyes like black caverns blazing down into her stark staring blue eyes already swimming with tears.

      He started cursing and she started sobbing, hitting out at him with her tightly clenched fists. He eased back a little, cursing all over again, his eyes closing as her tense muscles unwittingly clung to him sending waves of pleasure rippling his powerful frame.

      ‘It’s OK.’ He tried to look for sanity, his hands gently capturing her two clenched fists. ‘It’s OK, agape mou,’ he repeated, though he knew nothing had ever been less OK, because he was already hungrily moulding her lips to his. He managed to hold the pressure back. He managed to control his rampant needy senses long enough to give her chance to adjust.

      And she felt wonderful, narrow and tight and so deliciously hot. His breathing was hectic, hers was the same, the two of them fighting for breath in panting urgency around the clinging darting heat of the tongue. He felt her clenched fists relax their tension, then her taut slender body slowly ease from its crucifying arch. Their hearts were beating like crazy hammers, sending tremor after tremor rippling across their flesh. Slowly, carefully, he released her fingers and groaned in relief when she instantly ran them into his hair. He fed his hands beneath her to support her and with the flickering passion of his tongue against her tongue, he just lost it altogether and let his hips surge forward, thrusting him deep.

      It was as if a whole tidal wave of pleasure rushed through her, hot as lava and sweet as melting honey. Caught in its thrall Mia raised her hips to take him in farther and sent a thick moaning cry into his mouth. Dragging her pulsing lips free she whispered, ‘Again,’ and felt him draw back, then thrust again. It was the sweet—sweet—sweetest torment. ‘Oh, again,’ she gasped out.

      Feeling drunk on her greedy pleasure, Nikos caught her mouth and ravished its soft swollen fullness and set the deep and fluid motion of loving with a rampant erotic thoroughness that emptied his head of all else but her and this and what he could feel was building between them. Never in his long sexual experience had he ever felt anything so intensely as this. She moved with him with an innate sensuality born of instinct. She clung to him with her arms and her legs. When the final madness began to accelerate them towards their climaxes, he could feel that she was with him every blindingly glorious step of the way.

      And it went on and on, like time never ending. Mouths separate now, Mia felt every single sense she possessed sing to a pleasure that just grew and grew.

      ‘Nikos,’ she whispered, floating up her heavy eyelids to look at him. Her eyes clung to his eyes where the sheer power of his feelings burned, naked and exposed. The first jolt of blinding pleasure brought forth a sharp cry from her throat, followed by another one, and he plunged deeper, catching her up to him in his strong arms and holding her, the rasping race of his breathing something she only understood when he joined her in the exquisite pleasure of hot drowning release.

      Afterwards was almost as good as the climax to this first loving Mia had ever experienced. The slow sensual reactionary quivers that brought her downwards slowly, the awareness of his hot skin against hers. The size and weight of him, the strength and the power of his wonderful masculine magnificence crushing her down into the bed.

      And the way he still held her, close, so close. ‘Bello—bello,’ she breathed on a fragile wisp of a murmur.

      Easing her of his weight, Nikos slid onto his side, taking her with him. Content to remain lost in the hazy aftermath of sweet pleasure, it was all she could do to curl against the man who had just made her first experience so wildly beautiful and gloriously passionate.

      While Mia floated, Nikos felt as if he’d just come down to earth with a thud after enjoying one of the most exciting releases of his life. Payback, he named it, staring over the top of her tumbled raven locks into the stark face of what he had just done.

      He had just broken his own cardinal rule and taken an innocent, and what’s more she was a Balfour innocent. He could already hear the wedding bells ringing, could feel the noose closing around his throat. As the chilling face of reality spread its icy fingers out across his flesh he sensed her drifting into sleep. She was curled lovingly against him, warm and soft and so damn trusting with her cheek resting against the unsteady thump of his heartbeat and her fingers gently stroking the whorls of damp dark hair on his chest.

      But she didn’t know him. Even Oscar, who knew him better than anyone, did not know who the real Nikos Theakis was. It was safer not to know him, safer to keep himself crushed so deep inside he would never rear his head. If that meant he had to crush the more human emotions at the same time, then that was the way it had to be.

      People looked at him and saw the smooth billionaire entrepreneur, ruthlessly focused on his career. They saw the cool sophisticated male who turned out for elite functions like the one they’d attended this evening, or the good-looking guy with a trail of beautiful