Carol Marinelli - One Kiss in... London

‘The next time we dated …’ he whispered, ‘I would want more from you. All week it would have been driving me crazy, trying to picture …’

He knelt up on the bed and pulled the dress down past her waist and removed it, and she made a small token gesture of modesty, gripped the fabric and then loosened it, because his gaze made her warm and utterly devoid of shame. All that was left was shoes and panties, and he dealt with the former, kissed her toes and then her soles till her feet curled around his hungry mouth. He found a sliver of flesh that was surely linked by a thread to where his fingers had just been because her hips rose from the pillow and he slid in between her calves. Nico had to pause and breathe a moment as he gazed at the pleasure that beckoned and the treasure that lay beneath the satin panties that were soaked from his earlier caress. He would wet her more with his mouth, Nico decided, would have her ripe and moist so as not to hurt her, except his virgin bride had different ideas.

‘I would have, too.’ Constantine said, and she saw him frown just a little as he tried to piece together a conversation when his mind was certainly elsewhere. ‘I would have been thinking about you, too—wanting to see you.’ Her hands moved up and slid down his open shirt, and she saw the shoulders she had leant on, the arms that had held her, the rise and fall of his chest and the lick of his lips as still he looked where no one had, as her body beckoned his mouth there, so badly she did want to see him. ‘Let me see you.’

Nico stood and undressed and Constantine watched—excited, curious and, when she saw him, filled with trepidation, but her mind quietened that, for he was too beautiful to fear.

‘And then?’ Constantine asked, because she wanted what came next.

‘And then …’ Nico said, as he knelt back on the bed between her thighs and looked down at her waiting body, and for a moment tried to think of what next to tell her, what the next instalment of their story might be. Then he found it, and no imagination was required, for it was all right here.

‘He waited,’ Nico said. ‘Till the night he took his bride to bed.’ He paused for a moment, felt as if he had dated her, had lived his life here, that this moment, the future, truly was theirs. He looked down at her nervous, brave, but somehow trusting, and he felt like he would have had—had he loved her.

His hands slid down her panties and she moved her hand to hide herself, but there beneath such a tender gaze there was nothing Connie wanted to hide from.

He turned, annoyed with himself, for his jacket was on the floor, but she halted him as he went to climb from the bed.

‘I went on the Pill for my wedding.’

Foolish girl to say that. Later he would warn her to trust no one with that knowledge but him. But he did not want to think of others and later he wanted to stay in a place where this was their night.

And selfishly, too, he wanted.

Wanted her in a way he had never before, a way that made him disregard his own strict rules, but only for her.

‘Will it hurt?’ Connie asked, but did not require an answer, because she knew there and then that whatever the pain it would not compare to the pain of tomorrow when Nico was gone.

‘A little, perhaps.’ His mouth was on her ear and then on her mouth and he kissed her in a way that she wanted, a fierce, deep kiss, his arms wrapped around her. She could feel the roughness of his thighs between hers; but his kiss was so urgent it claimed most of her attention. It was a kiss she had to race to keep up with, a kiss that bruised her mouth and scratched at her face, and she would not have had it any other way for even a moment.

His kiss was so hard it took away her breath and demanded her mind, so much so she could not fear those first explorative probes, and then his kiss stopped and she felt a sear of pain as he entered and, even stretched by his fingers, still it hurt more that she had thought it would. Her breath clamped in her throat as she bit down a sob, and then he moved when she prayed that he wouldn’t and then he moved back and then in deeper again, and then it hurt, but not as much, and then his mouth was there at her ear and then she wasn’t hurting. His words soothed, his endearments real, said as if he were her husband, and then when he moved faster within, Connie moved, too, forgot forever that once she’d been hurting and rose and wrapped around him.

She welcomed him in deeper. The last rapid thrusts from Nico, a signal her body heeded, and with him she went to a place that would live forever in her heart. The sound of his release met her scream and she wanted to stay there, with Nico, in the place they had created. But the pulse of her body slowed and slowly she remembered to breathe again, and a little later, when surely she should go back to her room, surely it would be dangerous to fall asleep, she let her body rest when he rolled into her. She would sleep a while in his arms and be with Nico on her wedding night.

He could hear the clock chime five times and for once fought the instinct to instantly awaken. He wanted to pull her warm body towards him, to make slow predawn love, not face the morning and the thoughts that last night had plagued him.

Nico reached for her body and then fought to resist: there was something too intimate about making love in the morning. In the long run he had found it better to leave things at last night, and this morning he chose to uphold his finding, because if had her again, he might then persuade her, might encourage her to stand up to her family, at what cost to her, though?

He looked over to where she slept deeply beside him.

How could he tear her from everything she knew, even if she didn’t like it, with promises he knew he could not keep?

So instead when he moved it was to wake her.

‘You should go back.’

It was a cruel awakening.

She wanted to stay in her dream, her wedding night, with this gorgeous man beside her. She did not want to go back, but she knew that she had to so she climbed out of the bed, pulled on her clothes and the dress he had so lovingly taken off. She wanted him to halt her.

Wanted him to tell her that she didn’t need to go back, but she knew that it wasn’t his place to, that she could only make that decision by herself.

‘Thank you.’ It was a strange way to end such a passionate night, but when Connie thought how it could have been, how wretched she had felt on the stairs last night, how without him she might never have known such bliss, her words were indeed heartfelt.

‘Constantine …’ As she walked out of the door he called out and she froze for a moment, the silence in the air shifting, because if she turned around she would be back in his bed and somehow they both knew it.

It was not for him to save her.

‘It’s Connie.’ She opened the door and forced herself to walk out, to walk the agonising steps to her suite. In her bedroom she showered and put on the beautiful lace nightdress she had chosen for her wedding night, and climbed into the cold empty bed.

This would be her life if she stayed with the lie for even a day, Connie knew it. She was more grateful than Nico could ever know for their night. It had been so much more than sex—it had shown her how life should be.

Could be, Connie thought with a shiver of fear, but that would mean hurting so many people.

HE WOKE before he jumped.

Had trained himself to open his eyes as soon as the lurch in his chest appeared, rather than have the beauty in his bed feel the jerk of his body beside her.

It was that or sleep every night alone, and Nico had no intention of doing that.

He hadn’t had the dream in ages, but when Constantine had left and he had drifted back to sleep he had almost anticipated it—for yesterday something had stirred within him. The walk last night through the streets of Xanos had felt like a return to his familiar dream.