Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest. Cathy Williams

that at least they weren’t going to have an argument because he refused to listen to her. She didn’t want to argue with him. She wanted to enjoy him. It was perverse and made no sense but she wasn’t going to question it. She had jumped off the side of the cliff and was free-falling, but in a wonderful way, and she wasn’t going to alter its brief course.

      ‘Good,’ she told him firmly. She pressed herself against him, loving the feel of his hard masculine body against her soft feminine one. And she obviously wasn’t the only one with a responsive body. She reached down and circled his arousal with her hand and gently massaged it, then she pressed it against her own moist arousal and moaned softly as his eyes darkened and his breathing became jerky.

      Theo, not foreseeing the end of the conversation just yet and pretty convinced that he could swing her round to accepting his help if not his money, found himself unable to do anything but respond to what his body was doing. Although he made love with the finesse of a master, there had always been a part of him that could stand outside what was happening and remain detached, some little part of his brain that could take control of the proceedings at any given moment should the need arise. The same part of his brain which should easily have been able to resist her exploring hand and terminate the conversation when it had reached a satisfactory conclusion for him. Not so now. He was powerless to do anything but touch and feel as the motion of her hand got quicker until he felt himself on the verge of doing the unthinkable and ejaculating like a teenager unable to control himself.

      He grasped her hand and groaned.

      ‘You witch.’ He laughed softly and spun her so that she was on top of him. ‘Like it like this?’ He pulled her face towards his and kissed her and, while he kissed her, she manoeuvred herself so that he was deep inside her, filling her with such intense pleasure that she felt breathless.

      She moved on him and arched her body up so that her breasts dangled provocatively in his face, their ripe nipples teasing his mouth until he found one and sucked hard on it as she increased her tempo.

      Sophie had never done anything like this before. Her sexual experiences were severely limited and she had certainly never been roused to levels of such utter abandonment. She looked down at him, at his fiercely handsome face, and shuddered as she watched him suckle on her.

      Their bodies were slick with perspiration and the aroma of sex filled the air like musky sweet incense. Sophie barely noticed the sound of the central heating firing up as power was restored. She was lost, every part of her absorbed with the sensations her body was experiencing.

      Their climax left her spent and oddly emotional. She sagged on top of him before rolling off but, when she went to draw the covers over her ravished body, he stilled her hand.

      ‘No way. I want to lie here and look at you naked.’ He reached out and gently feathered a touch across her breast, circling her nipple, which was still darkened from the attentions paid to it.

      And, he thought, he wanted to establish that all questions about Robert had been answered. For her own sake, he thought piously, he had to make sure that she wouldn’t enter into a relationship with the wrong man for the wrong reasons. Her eventual fate meant nothing to him but he was, he decided, not without conscience.

      ‘Would you like to tell me that no man has ever made you feel like I just did?’ Theo asked lazily.

      ‘I most certainly would not.’ No man had. Thank God he wasn’t a mind-reader. ‘And we have to get up. We can’t stay here all day.’

      ‘Why not? Are you expecting visitors?’

      ‘No, but…’

      ‘Mm. I know. It’s wildly decadent, isn’t it?’ he murmured, amused. ‘Lying here in bed during the day…Admittedly we’ll have to get dressed some time and get ourselves something to eat…Unless, of course, you have stuff in your kitchen, in which case we can just stroll out there as we are and eat…Now that would be wildly decadent…’

      ‘You’re teasing.’ Sophie blushed because the thought of doing that did seem very debauched indeed, which said a great deal, she thought ruefully, about her wildly exciting life. While twenty-somethings all over the country spent their free time strolling around kitchens with their lovers in the nude, here she was, as buttoned up as a fifty-year-old spinster.

      Curiosity, as sharp as a blade, slashed through her. Did he do this often? Take time out during the day to make love? Lie in bed with a woman, only getting up to eat? What women? How many had there been? Why was there no woman around now?

      Sophie fought down the urge to ask him any of those things. Something inside her recognised that her burgeoning curiosity could blossom into a dangerous need to get to know him and getting to know him was not part of her plan. As it was, she already knew too much about him. Not in the detail but in the general—the fact that he could be as amusing and witty as he could be arrogant, that his arrogance, even, had a certain compelling charm, that his intelligence outstripped that of any man she had ever known, possibly even her father, whom she had always considered head and shoulders above the rest of the human race as far as brain power went.

      ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ she said abruptly, slipping her legs off the side of the bed.

      ‘I’ll come.’ Holding on to her was like trying to hold water in the palm of his hand. Right now, Theo could feel her beginning to slip through his fingers and he wasn’t going to let it happen. Touching her, making love with her, had left him wanting more. He also needed to find out what the position was with Robert, whom he saw as not so much a threat as an unnecessary irritation.

      ‘I can bathe myself,’ Sophie was telling him, trying to maintain an appropriate distance and hating the little swirl of excitement that sparked through her as she contemplated the luxury of being bathed by this big powerful man.

      She could feel little goosebumps on her arms as the warmth of the bed and their shared space was replaced by the coldness of the flat into which heat was only now slowly beginning to creep.

      ‘Sit.’

      Theo dwarfed the tiny bathroom. Sophie could barely look at his towering frame. Suddenly, she felt very vulnerable, sitting as commanded on the toilet seat while he ran a bath, testing the water and pouring in bath salts, one hundred per cent comfortable with his nakedness. Her new role as decadent woman of the world obviously was confined to the bedroom. Once out of the bedroom, she seemed to revert to her usual self, anxiously wondering whether she had done the right thing.

      ‘Stop it right now,’ Theo said, without looking at her.

      ‘Stop what?’

      ‘Chewing your lip, folding your arms across your breasts, thinking about what happened between us like a dog worrying a bone.’ He turned around to face her, all man. He walked towards her and gently prised her arms from their predictably folded position so that he could look at her breasts in unashamed appreciation. She had glorious breasts. He could stand for hours and feast his eyes on the sight. He knelt down in front of her and cupped them with his hands, feeling their weight and hearing the alteration in her breathing as she responded. Amazingly, he could take her again. Instead, he steadied himself and dragged his eyes from the tightening peaks of her nipples.

      ‘Hop in.’

      Sophie could feel his eyes burning through her as she walked to the bath and stepped into the water, which was just the right temperature.

      ‘So much better in a bigger bath,’ Theo murmured. ‘I could get in with you…’

      ‘And do you?’ Sophie asked. ‘Get into baths with women?’

      ‘No, not as a general rule.’ He got the bath sponge and began washing her neck, then, as she leaned forward, her back. It was a dreamy experience. Sophie closed her eyes and sat up so that her breasts were exposed and he could rub the soapy sponge over them. ‘Now stand up.’

      Sophie obeyed, eyes still dreamily half closed. The sensation of being rubbed all over with warm soapy water was intensely exquisite. And he took his time, frequently squeezing the