Modern Romance June 2016 Books 1-4. Maisey Yates

willing to teach you anything you ask, so willing,’ Nikolai savoured in a roughened undertone, still barely able to credit what she had just done. ‘You are insanely sexy, khriso mou. I am a very lucky man.’

      Ella was so pleased that she’d chased the shadows away. His eyes had been haunted because she had asked him to talk about his disturbing childhood, but she had sent his thoughts and his imagination racing in a far more positive direction. There was more she needed to know about Nikolai’s past, but she had learnt enough for the present and she loved him. Loved him so much that she couldn’t bear to see shadows in his lean dark face and listen to him insisting that he wasn’t sensitive or upset when he was.

      And she had learned from what he had told her as well. One person had rejected her but more than one had rejected Nikolai: his mother, his father, his grandfather. Of course he didn’t know how a family operated. Of course he worried about being a father when his own had set such a bad example. But with her love and support his outlook would change so that when he found out about their baby he would feel very differently...wouldn’t he?

       CHAPTER NINE

      ‘SO, WHERE ARE we staying?’ Ella enquired after a car had collected them from Heraklion Airport and begun the drive along the coastal road in the fading light of dusk.

      ‘The house where my grandfather was born.’

      ‘I like a place with family connections,’ Ella admitted. ‘Did you inherit it?’

      ‘Yes, but by the time I did it hadn’t been occupied in years and it needed gutting. It started out as a simple farmhouse, which was gentrified when the family fortunes improved, but my grandfather never used it. I almost had it demolished,’ he confided with a wry smile. ‘And then I stood on the veranda in the sunlight and thought of all the generations who must have enjoyed that same view and I decided to try and retain the character of the place.’

      ‘You see, you do have sentimental attachments,’ Ella told him with an appreciative glance as the car turned off the main road onto a much more narrow one lined with trees.

      ‘I also have a surprise for you,’ Nikolai admitted. ‘But you won’t get it until later.’

      The house was larger than she had expected, a sprawling ranch-style villa with various offshoots and a large inviting veranda. Nikolai gave her a brief tour of the house, which was all cool tiled floors and contemporary furnishings. The beautifully carved staircase had been conserved, as had a turn-of-the-century stained-glass window of saints in the hall, but it remained first and foremost a luxurious and comfortable modern home.

      At the foot of the stairs, Nikolai bent without warning and scooped her up into his arms.

      ‘What on earth?’ Ella gasped.

      ‘I always wanted a woman small enough to carry up the stairs.’

      ‘So why did you only get involved with very tall blondes?’ Ella quipped, unimpressed, thinking about the women she had heard talking about him at the wedding.

      ‘I was running scared,’ Nikolai assured her, deadpan. ‘I knew when I found a little one I’d have to marry her.’

      Involuntarily, Ella laughed because he was so slick with that response. He pressed open the door on a spacious bedroom. A tall geometric vase of glorious flowers adorned a side table and beside it stood an ice bucket and two champagne flutes. He lowered her carefully to the polished wood floor and uncorked the champagne to fill the glasses. Ella put the glass to her lips, bubbles breaking beneath her nose as she pretended to sip as she had done all day while drinks were served and toasts were being made.

      ‘You look fantastic in that dress,’ he told her huskily, sincerity ringing from every syllable and empowering her.

      Ella set her flute down and turned her back to him. ‘Undo my hooks,’ she urged.

      ‘You’re still determined to surprise me,’ he said thickly, deftly dealing with the hooks at her nape and then running down the side zip over the swell of her hips.

      Ella moved back a few steps, loosening her sleeves and slowly working the gown down and off, murderously conscious of the bareness of her breasts because the dress had had built-in support. And she was still shy with him, foolish she knew after the intimacy they had already shared but she was still afraid that he might be disappointed by what she had to offer.

      Nikolai leant back against the ornate black iron footboard on the bed and stared at her. ‘I think I’ve died and gone to heaven, khriso mou.’

      Fiercely resisting the urge to cover her breasts with her hands, Ella stepped out of the gown and settled it over a chair.

      Nikolai simply gloried in the view. She was wearing ridiculously cute lace ankle boots and stockings that stopped mid-thigh. One slender thigh sported a frilly blue garter and cream lace knickers encased her pert little derriere. Breasts with straining soft pink nipples seized his attention and that fast he was on sexual fire.

      Ella loved that Nikolai was staring at her like a man in the grip of a holy vision. He made her feel like a sex goddess. Suddenly it didn’t matter that she had tiny boobs and a rail-thin body. Nikolai looking at her like that was like a shot of power-packed adrenalin in her veins. He peeled off his jacket, wrenched almost clumsily at his shirt. A long delicious slice of bronzed muscular torso appeared.

      ‘And the best thing of all, khriso mou,’ he breathed in a roughened undertone as he reached for her. ‘That ring on your finger says you’re all mine.’

      He fed on her mouth like a hungry wolf and that kiss was rough, uncompromising and absolutely dominant. It also set alight every nerve ending in her quivering body. He pushed her down on the bed and claimed a taut little nipple while long fingers toyed with its twin. It was as if an electrifying piece of elastic ran between her breasts and her pelvis as the heat surged through her. A finger skimmed aside her knickers and skated through her damp folds. As she gasped he groaned.

      ‘You’re so ready for me...’ he savoured, claiming her succulent mouth again with driving hunger.

      He spread her out on the bed like a pagan sacrifice and the burn at the heart of her tingled and seethed even before the stubble on his face grazed her inner thighs. She wanted him so much. She had never wanted anything or anybody so much that it literally hurt to wait. A finger teased her inner sheath and her hips wriggled, her spine arching as he found the tiny bundle of nerves with his expert mouth. And what happened after that, well, she wasn’t quite sure because she was bucking and shifting and moaning and the pleasure kept on building and building until she couldn’t contain it any more and a climax ripped through her lower body like a detonation, flaming through every limb and nerve ending with explosive effect. It was almost as though the world stopped for a moment and she held onto him as though he were a rock in a whirlwind.

      ‘I love what you do to me,’ she whispered breathlessly into a satin-smooth dark-skinned shoulder.

      ‘That was a bit bull-in-a-china-shop,’ Nikolai growled, rolling free and springing off the bed, dark eyes volatile as a hot fire ready to rage out of control. ‘This is our wedding night. It was supposed to be a slow, sweet seduction.’

      ‘Stop talking,’ Ella told him. ‘Being thrown on the bed works for me. Seeing you a little out of control is more real than some plan of slow seduction.’

      ‘Blame yourself. You’ve been wrecking my plans all day,’ Nikolai asserted, swiping the package off the dressing table and returning to the bed. ‘First you blew my mind on the flight and then you flaunted your gorgeous self in boots and stockings and a garter and I was lost...’

      ‘Is that a complaint?’

      ‘No.’ A wicked charismatic grin slashed his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘That was an “any time you want me, I’m yours” speech,’ he teased.

      ‘You