Michelle Reid - Hot Nights with a Greek

The grinding drag of fierce pleasure began to flow through her body. Natasha whimpered helplessly against his mouth. Knotting his fingers into her hair, he muttered tensely, ‘Let go, agape mou .’

And like a fledgling bird being encouraged to fly, Natasha just opened her sensory wings and dropped off the edge of the world into an acutely bright, scintillating dive straight into the frenzied path of an emotional storm. A moment later she felt him shudder as he made the same mind-shredding leap, while urging her on and on until two became one in a wildly delirious, spiralling spin.

It was as if afterwards didn’t exist for Natasha; pure shock dropped her like a rock through a deep, dark hole into an exhausted sleep.

Maybe she did it because she did not want to face what she’d done, Leo mused sombrely as he sat sprawled in a chair by the bed, watching her—watching this woman he’d just bedded like some raving sex maniac while giving himself every excuse he could come up with to help him to justify his behavior.

A virgin.

His conscience gave him a stark, piercing pinch.

And the guilty truth of it was, he could still feel the sense of stinging, hot pleasurable pressure he’d experienced when the barrier gave. A muscle low down in his abdomen gave a tug in direct response to the memory and he lifted the glass of whisky he held and grimly took a large sip.

The prim persona had been no lie.

She even slept the sleep of an innocent, he observed as he ran his eyes over her. No hint of sensual abandon in the modest curve of her body outlined against the white sheet.

Another slug at the whisky and he was studying her face next. Perfect, beautiful, softened by slumber and washed pale by the strain of the day she’d been put through when she should look…

He took another pull of the whisky, and as he lifted the glass to his mouth, her eyelids fluttered upwards and her sleep-darkened blue eyes looked directly at him.

The nagging tug on his loins became a pulsing burn that made him feel like a sinner.

He lowered the glass, and half hiding his eyes, watched her catch her breath, then freeze for a second before he said sombrely, ‘We will get married.’

Natasha almost jolted right out of her skin. ‘Are you mad?’ she gasped, pulling the covering sheet tightly up against her chin. ‘We have a deal—’

‘You were a virgin.’

As she dragged herself into a sitting position her hair tumbled forwards in a shining, loose tangle of waves around her face and she pushed it out of her way impatiently. ‘What the heck difference should that make to anything?’

‘It means everything,’ Leo insisted. ‘Therefore we will be married as soon as I can arrange it. I am honour-bound to offer you this.’

‘Stuff your honour.’ Heaving in a deep breath, Natasha climbed out of the bed on the other side from where he was sitting, trailing the sheet around her as she went. ‘Having just escaped one sleazy marriage by the skin of my teeth, I am not going to fall into another one!’

‘It will not be a sleazy marriage.’

‘Everything about you and your terrible family is sleazy!’ she turned on him angrily. ‘You’re all so obsessed with the value of money, you’ve lost touch with what’s really valuable in life! Well, I haven’t.’ Tossing her chin up, eyes like blue glass on fire with contempt, she drew the sheet around her. ‘We made a deal in which I give you sex for six weeks until I can give you back your precious money. Show a bit of your so-called honour by keeping to that deal!’

With that she turned and strode off to the bathroom, needing to escape—needing some respite from Leo Christakis and his long, sexy body stretched out in that chair by the bed. So he’d pulled a robe on—what difference did that make? She could still see him naked, still visualise every honed muscle and bone, each single inch of his taut, bronzed flesh! And she could still feel the power of his kisses and the weight of him on top of her and the…

‘You were innocent,’ he fed after her.

Was he talking about her sexual innocence or her being innocent of all of the other rotten charges he had laid against her? Did she care? No.

‘Stick to your first impression of me,’ she flung at him over her shoulder. ‘Your instincts were working better then!’

On that scathing slice, she slammed into the bathroom.

Leo grimaced into his glass. His first impression of Natasha Moyles had been deadly accurate, he acknowledged. It was only the stuff with Rico that had fouled up that impression.

He heard the shower running. He visualised her dropping the sheet and walking that smooth, curvy body into his custom-built wet room. The vision pushed him to his feet with the grim intention of giving into his nagging desires and going in there to join her. This war they were having was not over yet and would not be over until he won it.

Then something red caught the corner of his eye and he glanced down at the bed.

‘Theos,’ he breathed as his insides flipped into a near-crippling squirm in recognition.

Proof that he had just taken his first virgin was staring him in the face like a splash of outrage.

Leo flexed his taut shoulders, glanced over at the closed door to the bathroom, then back at the bed. ‘Damn,’ he cursed, trying to visualise what she was going to feel like when she saw the evidence of her lost virginity, and added a few more oaths in much more satisfying Greek.

Instead of going to join her, he discarded his robe to snatch up his trousers and shirt and pulled them back on. He had no idea where Bernice kept the fresh bedlinen, but he was going to have to find out for himself because the hell if he was going to ask…

WRAPPED in a spare bathrobe she’d found hanging behind the door, Natasha tugged in a deep breath, then opened the bathroom door and stepped out. Her heart was thumping. It had taken her ages to build up enough courage to leave the sanctuary of the bathroom and her muscles ached, she was so locked on the defensive, ready for her first glimpse of Leo sprawled in the chair by the bed.

It took a few moments for her to realise that she’d agonised over nothing because he wasn’t even in the room. And the bed had been straightened so perfectly it looked as if it had never been used. Even her clothes had been picked up and neatly draped over the chair he had been sitting in.

Had Bernice come in here and tidied up after them? The very idea pushed a flush of mortified heat into her cheeks. Natasha dragged her eyes away from the bed and began scanning the room for her holdall, while wishing that someone had bothered to tell her that she was going to feel like this—all tense and edgy and horribly uncertain as to what happened after you jumped into bed with a man you hardly knew!

Then the bedroom door flew open and she spun to face it with a jerk. Half expecting to find Bernice or one of the maids walking in, she was really thrown into a wild flutter when it was Leo standing there.

He was dressed and she definitely wasn’t. The way his eyes moved over her turned the flush of mortification into something else.

He swung the door shut behind him, then began striding towards her like some mighty warlord coming to claim his woman for a second round of mind-blowing sex and making her more uptight the closer he came. How could he wear that relaxed smile on his face as if everything in his world was absolutely perfect? Had he never felt awkward or nervous or just plain shy about anything?

Not this man, she concluded with a deep inner quiver when he pulled to a stop right in front of her. He gave off the kind of masculine vitality that made her fingers clutch the collar of the bathrobe close to her throat.