Carol Marinelli - One Kiss in... London

‘Where is your ring?’

‘I threw it at him,’ she said. ‘I’m never putting it back on.’ And then he saw a tear slide out of her eye at the hopelessness of it all, for tomorrow, he was quite sure, it would be on. She would do her duty, to everyone but herself.

‘I’ll go back.’ She went to stand but her legs woud not obey and for a moment she sat. ‘Thank you.’ She gave a very wan smile. ‘Thank you for talking to me, thank you for your kind words, and I apologise for suggesting you might gossip …’

‘I am discreet.’

‘Thank you.’ She took a deep breath, as one would when preparing to dive into cold water. ‘I’d better go back.’

‘I meant …’ He should just let her go, it was no business of his, but the thought of her going back to lie in a bed alone, of Constantine crying herself to sleep, of all her wants unfulfilled, moved Nico when usually sob stories did not. ‘You said you were worried a lover may not be …’

Hope flared inside her and he must have seen it, because instantly he quashed it. ‘I will not be your long-time lover, I am no one’s escape …’ He saw her eyes shutter. ‘But I will be with you tonight.’

‘Just tonight?’ She wanted more than that: she wanted weekends in Athens and discreet meetings in hotels and phone calls and all the passion that had been denied. She wanted so much more than one night with him.

‘Only tonight.’ He looked at her, his eyes roamed the body he had been thinking about for hours now, the virgin bride, who would stay that way if not for him. ‘You come to my bed, I will show you what your husband denies you—all you miss out on if you choose to live this lie …’

‘I have no choice.’

‘Always we have choices,’ Nico said, and this was his—to choose not to examine his feelings tonight. His mind was black and here was light. The streets of Xanos had unsettled him, stirred emotions that he sorely wanted gone. He wanted diversion and here it had been delivered to him in the shape of a tear-streaked, beautiful virgin.

He stood and she took his hand and did the same. She stared at the room and it was the wedding night of her dreams—just the wrong man. Then she looked again, because if she was completely honest, dangerously, guiltily honest, Stavros would never have fulfilled that fantasy. Here now before her was the man of dreams, and he could be hers—but only for one night.

LOVE, like marriage, for Nico would never happen.

As she excused herself for a moment, Nico stood and looked out to the window, to the inky ocean and a sky devoid of stars or moon, and he knew he had been right in the decision he had made long ago.

Nico did not believe in love.

He had nothing to base that on—his parents’ marriage had been long and seemingly happy, his aunts uncles and cousins on the mainland were all wed. It had been assumed by his family that Nico would have long ago carried on the family name, yet the idea was alien to him.

In love you lost.

Where that belief came from he did not know, but it was as real and as ingrained as was the fact he rose with the dawn each morning. And Nico lost at nothing—so he chose not to love.

To give your heart, to commit, was unfathomable to Nico.

The only reason, as far as he could see, for marriage was to have children and Nico certainly did not want that. For to love and to lose, where a child was concerned, nothing could be more horrific and surely it was never worth the pain.

So his heart remained closed.

He turned and saw her as she nervously walked into the room, as close to a bride of his own as he would ever get.

And were it somehow possible, were his heart to have chosen one for him, had he dared to even consider it, then surely she would be the one.

He saw her cheeks grow pink under his scrutiny, his eyes taking in the luscious curves, the untouched terrain of her body that for tonight was his to roam. He could feel her nerves, her excitement, the tension in the room that was all a wedding night should be—and surely now he could give in and hold her.

His head was full from the streets, images at the forefront that he wanted shadowed, and her mouth would be a sweet distraction. He crossed the room towards her, traced her naked arms, felt the rise of goose bumps beneath his fingers; and she was not just nervous, he realised, she was literally shaking with fear.

‘Maybe this is not what you want …’

She heard him about to retract, realised he had mistaken her nerves, but it wasn’t just nerves or inexperience that had her shaking, it was the overwhelming feeling of him close. It was the man who was holding her now, because he made her weak and he had not even kissed her. Feelings never encountered were rushing in, and as his mouth lowered to hers, as his full lips met hers, so clumsily she responded, rued her inexperience under such a skilled mouth. His moved so slowly and hers did not know how … and the taste of his tongue as it parted her lips was so sharp and cool, so intimate to feel, that her head moved back in startled surprise.

‘I haven’t …’ She screwed her eyes closed, embarrassed at her lack of skill, because no almost a virgin was she. ‘I’ve never been kissed.’

He looked down at her mouth, at lips that seemed made solely for that and could not believe they were his alone. ‘You haven’t kissed?’

‘Never. I have done nothing.’ She sobbed it out, for there had been no kissing, no touching, no petting, and she was angry for her own naivety, as if some honour had kept Stavros from so much as touching her. And there was shame for her spurned kisses, too, for, though she had tried to push it aside, though she had tried to tell herself otherwise, she had felt rejection over and over from her fiancé. She had clumsily flirted to no avail, had pressed lips and told herself as he had jerked his head back that her touch did not repulse, yet somewhere deep inside she had known that it had. ‘I thought tonight, I hoped tonight things would finally be different …’

‘And it shall be,’ Nico said, and he vowed, he would take care of her, would catch her up with her own body and take her from the age of eighteen to twenty-four in the hours allowed them tonight. He would show her all her body could be and leave her a woman by morning.

‘We will take things slowly,’ he promised. ‘I will show you each and every thing you have been missing. Now, for a first kiss …’ He tried to think himself younger, tried to picture a long-ago night that had never happened, ‘Perhaps we are walking back from the taverna at the market square …’

She smiled as she pictured that thought. ‘My house is just around the corner from there.’

‘Then I am walking you home …’ He could, he actually could picture it. ‘And I stop you.’ He took her wrist. ‘And I turn you to face me.’

He lowered his head and she was breathless in anticipation and then she felt his lips on hers, but more gently this time, a mouth that moved only slowly, a mouth that gave her time to warm, to feel, to accept the press and the gift of soft flesh from another. This mouth did not tighten or jerk away when she pushed a little harder still, and it was sweet but it was wanton, for how could it be not when she was drenched by the manly scent of him?

‘And then …’ Nico said, and she breathed as she moved from her first kiss, ‘when all night you have been wanting, when you have been out for dinner, when you have walked on the beach, but still you are wary, still you know not the motives of the other, when all you want is a taste of the promise to come.’ This, Nico decided, was the kiss he would give her were he young and first dating, were they sandy from walking on the beach. It was all new for him, too—for he had been swept into manhood on a surge of testosterone, had learnt at the altar of older woman, the cruise boats bringing them hungry and desperate for a few hours’ escape from their neglected lives. Loaded with sambuca and a night dancing on tables, they had climbed down to his outstretched hand and then fallen to him. Their kisses had been desperate and frantic, the sex hot and urgent, and it had left him replete for a while, but, like the tide as it turned, he had been left hollow after—till the next time and then the next.