Michelle Reid - Hot Nights with a Greek

‘Leo…’ Impulsive, she seized the moment. ‘I can’t go through with this. I thought I could but I can’t.’ Slipping her hand out from beneath his, she turned to face him, ‘I need you to understand that this…’

Her words dried up when she found herself staring at his white-shirted front. He’d taken off his jacket and his tie had gone, the top couple of buttons on his shirt tugged open to reveal a bronzed V of warm skin and a deeply unsettling hint of curling black chest hair.

The air snagged in her chest, the important words—this will be my first time—lost in the new struggle she had with herself as her senses clamoured inside her like hungry beasts. She wanted him. She did not understand why or how she had become this attracted or so susceptible to him but it was there, dragging down on her stomach muscles and coiling around never before awakened erogenous zones.

‘We have a deal, Natasha,’ his level voice reminded her.

A deal. Pressing her trembling lips together, she nodded. ‘I know and I’m s-sorry but—’ Oh, God. She had to look away from him so she could finish. ‘This is too m-much, too quickly and I…’

‘And you believe I am about show my lack of finesse by jumping all over you and carrying you off to bed?’

‘Yes—n-no.’ His sardonic tone locked a frown to her brow.

‘Then what do you expect will happen next?’

‘Do you have to sound so casual about it?’ she snapped out, taking a step back so her lower spine hit the terrace rail. Discomforted and disturbed by the whole situation, she wrapped her arms across her front. ‘You might prefer to believe that I do this kind of thing on a regular basis, but I don’t.’

‘Ah,’ he drawled. ‘But you think that I do.’

‘No!’ she denied, flashing a glare up at him, then wished she hadn’t when she saw the cynically amused cut to his mouth. ‘I don’t think that.’

‘Good. Thank you,’ he added dryly.

‘I don’t know enough about you to know how you run your private life!’

‘Just as I know little about your private life,’ he pointed out. ‘So we will agree to agree that neither of us is without sexual experience and therefore can be sophisticated enough to acknowledge that we desire each other—with or without the deal we have struck.’

‘But I haven’t,’ she mumbled.

‘Haven’t—what?’ he sighed out.

Too embarrassed to look at him, cheeks flushed, Natasha stared at her feet. ‘Any sexual experience.’

There was one of those short, sharp silences, in which Natasha sucked on her lower lip. Then Leo released another sigh and this one kept on going until it had wrung itself out.

‘Enough, Natasha,’ he censured wearily. ‘I did not come out of the womb a week ago so let’s leave the play-acting behind us from now on.’

‘I’m not play-acting!’ Her head shot up on the force of her insistence. All she saw was the flashing glint of his impatience as he reached out and pulled her towards him. Her own arms unfolded so she could use her hands to push him away again, but by then his mouth was on hers, hot, hard and angrily determined. Her fists flailing uselessly, he drew her into his arms and once again she was feeling the full powerful length of him against her body. Without even knowing it happened she went from fighting to clinging to his shoulders as her parted mouth absorbed the full passionate onslaught of his kiss.

There was no in-between, no pause to decide whether or not she wanted to give in to him, it just happened, making an absolute mockery of her agitation and her protests because Leo was right, and she did want him—badly.

This badly, Natasha extended helplessly as he deepened the kiss with that oh-so-clever stroke of his tongue, and she felt her body responding by stretching and arching in sensuous invitation up against the hardening heat of his.

And she knew she was lost even before he put his hands to her hips and tugged her into even closer contact with what was happening to him. When he suddenly pulled his head back, she released a protesting whimper—it shocked even Natasha at the depth of throaty protest it contained.

He said something terse, his eyes so incredibly dark now they held her hypnotised. ‘You want me,’ he rasped softly. ‘Stop playing games with me.’

Before she could answer or even try to form an answer, he was claiming her mouth again and deepening the whole wildly hot episode with a kiss that sealed his declaration like a brand burned into her skin. Her arms clung and he held her tightly against him—nothing, she realised dizzily, was now going to stop this.

And she didn’t want it to stop. She wanted to lose herself in his power and his fierce sensuality and the heat of the body she was now touching with greedily restless fingers. She felt the thumping pound of his heartbeat and each pleasurable flinch of his taut muscles as her fingers ran over them. His shirt was in her way—he knew it was in her way and, with a growl of frustration, he stepped back from her, caught hold of her hand and led her back inside.

The bed stood out like a glaring statement of intent. He stopped beside it, then turned to look at her, catching her uncertain blue stare and leaning in to kiss it away before stepping back again. If there was a chink of sanity left to be had out of this second break in contact, it was lost again by a man blessed with all the right moves to keep a woman mesmerised by him.

He began removing his shirt, his fingers slowly working buttons free to reveal, inch by tantalising inch, his long, bronzed torso with his black haze of body hair and beautifully formed, rippling muscles, which Natasha’s concentration became solely fixed on. She had never been so absorbed by anything. Sexual tension stung in the air, quickening her frail breathing as he began to pull the shirt free from the waistband of his trousers. When the shirt came off altogether, she felt bathed in the heady thrill of his clean male scent. He was so intensely masculine, so magnificently built—she just couldn’t hold back from reaching out to place her hands on him.

And he let her. He let her explore him as if she was on some magical mystery journey into the unknown, his arms, the glossy skin covering his shoulders, the springy black hair covering his chest. As her hands drifted over him, her tongue snaked out to taste her upper lip, but she knew that really it wanted to taste him.

Leo reached up and gently popped the top button of her jacket and she gasped as if it was some major development, her eyes flicking up to catch his wry smile sent to remind her that this undressing part was a two-way thing. He leant in to kiss her parted lips as he popped the next button, and the whole battle they’d been waging with her jacket took on a power of its own as she just stood there and let him pop buttons between slow, deep, sensuous kisses, until there were no buttons left to pop.

He discarded her jacket in the same way he had discarded it once already that day, without letting up on his slow seduction by making her shiver as he trailed his fingers up her bare arms and over her shoulders, then down the full length of her back, making her arch towards him, making her whisper out a sigh of pleasure, making her eyes drift shut in response. Then he just peeled her stretchy white top up her body and right over her head. Cool air hit her skin and the shock of it made her open her eyes again. He was looking down at her breasts cupped in plain white satin, the fullness of their creamy slopes pushing against the bra’s balcony edge. When the bra clasp sprang open and he trailed that flimsy garment away, her hands leapt up to cover her bared breasts. Leo caught her wrists and pulled them away again, his ebony eyelashes low over the intense glow in his eyes now as he watched her nipples form into pink, tight, tingling peaks.