Carole Mortimer - Mediterranean Seduction

When she begged him he only shook his head in stern refusal, dropping kisses on her mouth to still her cries. But Charlotte called his name until finally he submitted to her will and allowed the tip to catch inside her. When he pulled away again she railed at him, not caring what he must think of her as she berated him with words she hardly recognised.

‘What is it you want Charlotte?’ Iannis demanded softly, cruelly repeating the exercise, holding her with a firm hand when she attempted to capture him. ‘You must wait…you must learn control,’ he husked in her ear. ‘You proved yourself ignorant in the ways of love before, and now you must be taught. You will thank me for teaching you restraint…’

‘No. I. Won’t!’ Charlotte managed hoarsely. ‘I don’t have time to learn!’

He laughed, a short and very masculine laugh. ‘We will make time,’ he promised, and, making another tantalising pass, he rested inside her a moment longer.

‘Don’t tease me,’ Charlotte warned in a husky gasp. ‘I can’t bear it, Iannis.’

‘I’m sure you’ll be an admirable student.’

‘Ah—’ She let out a long, ragged sigh as he sank deep within her, taking possession of her completely and stretching her beyond anything she would have imagined possible. The feeling was so far beyond any pleasure she had known that Charlotte couldn’t move, couldn’t participate, couldn’t urge him on as she had intended. Instead she could only lie beneath him motionless, and let him take her with firm, deep strokes until he had worked her all the way up the bed to the wall. She only surfaced briefly when with a harsh, accepting laugh Iannis was forced to drag her back down the bed to begin again.

‘Don’t…don’t stop,’ Charlotte begged weakly, hardly conscious of what was happening to her, only that she had never been suspended so high or for so long on such an incredible plateau of sensation.

‘Don’t worry, agape mou , I have no intention of stopping —not until this night is over,’ he added under his breath.

His last comment drove through the fog in Charlotte’s mind, and, focusing, she saw something hard glittering behind his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t talk,’ Iannis commanded, cutting across her. ‘Just feel.’

Charlotte succumbed to the temptation without a fight. She had been starved too long to refuse. And Iannis made love to her in a way that made her feel strong, confident.

‘I want to ride you,’ she said at last, capturing him between her thighs.

‘Who am I to refuse?’ Iannis murmured, his hard mouth curving in a smile of contentment as he brought her on top of him.

But as their gazes clashed something flared between them, a warning that the battle wasn’t over—it had only just begun.

CHAPTER NINE

‘SHOULDN’T you put some clothes on?’

‘Complaining?’ Iannis demanded, carrying a tray of fruit juice over to the bed.

‘Certainly not,’ Charlotte assured him. ‘Should this be called service with a smile?’ she murmured, gazing up at him.

The more she came to know him, the more confidence she had using colloquial phrases. After all, his command of English was almost as good as her own, Charlotte reflected, drinking in every desirable inch of him as he settled the tray on the bedside table.

‘There’s no point in wearing clothes when I’m coming back to bed,’ he pointed out with unarguable logic.

Surely no man could have such stamina, Charlotte mused. She was barely able to move with exhaustion, but Iannis seemed unaffected by constant lovemaking. Maybe he was one of the mythical gods, fallen from a cloud—her good luck, she thought, holding his gaze as he held the beaker for her to drink. In that moment she would have done anything for him if it meant he would come back to bed.

‘So, what are you waiting for? Come back to me, Iannis. I need you.’

‘Again?’ he murmured, taking the juice away from her.

‘Yes, again. And don’t keep me waiting,’ Charlotte teased, rolling onto her back. Kicking down the covers, she spread her limbs across the silken sheets.

‘What if I said you have exhausted me?’ Iannis murmured, stretching out beside her.

‘I would call you a liar,’ Charlotte countered, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck. ‘And, fortunately for me, you cannot pretend not to be aroused.’

‘Why should I wish to pretend—?’ He broke off, and there was a silence.

The moment’s tension was just that—an instant, a subtle change of vibration in the air between them, which was gone again almost immediately.

‘No reason,’ Charlotte said. ‘Because you know you can’t get away with it,’ she added, smiling provocatively as she moved languorously beside him. ‘Not with an erection like this. And, as you’ve shown no signs of tiring yet, I have every confidence in you. After all, we began last night in the shower…’

‘I do not need reminding,’ Iannis assured her, smiling again as he seized back control and removed her hand.

Charlotte stole a look at her wristwatch on the bedside table. ‘And it’s almost—’

‘Dawn?’ Iannis supplied softly, bringing her back into his arms. Kissing the top of her head, he added, ‘We won’t watch the time, Charlotte, or look at the clock again. Time is an irrelevance for us.’

He remained silent as he brushed some wayward strands of hair from her face, and then he smiled a little and gazed into the middle distance to a point where she couldn’t join him. ‘Or at least we will hold it at bay for a few hours,’ he mused softly. ‘We will not allow it to crack into furious flower, or let reality intrude before we are ready.’

His kisses wiped her mind clean, and he kissed her deeply until all she wanted was to wind her limbs around him and rejoice in his strength. And then he took her again, with one sure stroke, and she was truly lost.

Around midday Iannis left. He was so matter-of-fact about going that Charlotte hardly realised what was happening until it was too late. One minute he was taking a shower, while she dozed contentedly in the blissful aftermath of lovemaking, and the next minute the villa was completely silent and she was alone again.

She tried sleeping the afternoon away—curling up and pretending everything was fine. Of course he had to go—he had work to do. The lobster pots wouldn’t empty themselves. Wasn’t that what she loved about him—his dedication to his work, his contentment with his lot? Was she going to steal that away from him?

Was there anything to steal?

Having seen the cottage Iannis was living in, Charlotte wasn’t sure of anything…including whether he was even a fisherman. It seemed more likely that he chose to get away to relax. Whatever the truth, she couldn’t keep him close just to service her sexual needs.

Why not? Charlotte mused wickedly, pressing her face into the satin pillows to hide her smile.

Because that was just a daydream, her sensible side insisted. Even if Iannis had said that time shouldn’t exist for them, it did—for her, at least.

Frowning, Charlotte racked her brain in an attempt to recover the exact words he had used in relation to time. The way he put it had stirred some vague memory—something about time flowering. ‘ Time cracks into furious flower ’—that was it! She sat upright in bed in shock as it came to her. She knew that poem—Gwendolyn Brooks. Iannis Kiriakos, quoting American poetry? Some fisherman!

Charlotte slipped out of bed. She needed a cold shower. She needed to get her brain in gear. She needed to do it right away— now .

Standing under the icy water, jumping up and down and shivering, Charlotte knew she had asked Iannis none of the right questions. And, worse, she had made assumptions based on nothing more than her own preconceived ideas and prejudices. Her ‘fisherman’ was like a book, waiting to be opened, and she hadn’t tried to get past the first page.