CAROL MARINELLI - One Kiss in... London - A Shameful Consequence / Ruthless Tycoon, Innocent Wife / Falling for her Convenient Husband

Had she been there then, Nico decided, had it been her in his youth, he would have kissed her like this. Still softly he kissed her, his hands moving down her arm and to her waist. He held her from his centre as his tongue, slowly this time, slipped in, and this time she accepted it, this time she explored the smooth, moist flesh and relished the taste of him. He fought now to hold her from him, for he wanted to pull her hips into him. But not yet, he told himself, for right now it could be different. They would have all night for this, all night to kiss, because there, in the world they had now created, there would be the promise of more tomorrow.

His tongue was delicious, but it made her greedy for more, she now wanted the press of his mouth as it had once been, she wanted more urgency and her mouth demanded more. Her hands, in reflex, moved from loose limbed by her side up to his shoulders, up past his neck and into his hair. She sucked on the taste of him, and he took her away, to a date they had never had, but seemed now to exist, to hot peppered calamari bought at the taverna and eaten on the beach. So real was her dream she could hear the ocean as he kissed her, her feet surely not in stilettos but resting on sand. After a moment he halted her, his breathing a touch ragged, his words husky when finally they came.

‘Now I have to take you home.’

‘I don’t want to go.’ She did not, not back to her father. She wanted her next date, wanted to find out what Nico would do, how she might tempt him.

‘Now,’ Nico said, ‘I’ve taken you for dinner … twice,’ he added, and gave her a smile, a smile he had never given another, an intimate smile, not for the game they were playing, more for the dream they were sharing. He looked at his bride, who was not his but felt it, then at a dress more complicated than even this skilled lover had encountered. His fingers plucked the row of tiny buttons that ran in a line down her spine and she wanted to tell him they were for show only, but the feel of his fingers, probing, exploring, had her mouth close in pleasure as his lips lowered to her neck and he kissed the sensitive flesh there.

He loved this.

More than ever before, he loved the slow exploration of a woman, her pliant and wanting in his arms as his fingers probed the thick satin, as his other hand cupped her waist and then explored it, and, oh, the triumph of locating a concealed zip.

‘You would stop me,’ Nico said, as there just beneath the hollow of her armpit he found the hidden prize and started to slowly pull down the zipper. ‘You would stop me, or wriggle, or warn me …’ he said, as slowly he slid it down.

‘Why would I stop you?’ Constantine said as his mouth kissed her neck deeper, as she felt the breeze of air on her torso, then the warmth of his hand slipping in. ‘Why would I stop you when it feels so sublime?’

And words should not have such an effect, but so blatantly pleasurable was her response he had to hold her back, for to press her into him now would end the dream in a matter of moments. He wanted her on the bed, he wanted so badly to be inside her, and yet he made himself wait. It was a long, hard wait that was threatened for a moment as he made light work of her strapless bra and a breast dropped heavy into his palm.

His warm hands caressed her, and indescribable was the pleasure—hands that were not hers on her body, moving in ways she would never have thought of, and then when she thought it could not be any better, when his thumb pressed into her aching nipple, when he stroked it till it felt as if he was stroking right inside her, when surely it could not be more pleasurable, the lips on her neck slid down. The lips that were the first ever to kiss her moved wet and warm to a nipple that hurt in anticipation, and the blow of air from his mouth should have cooled, but it produced a heat from a place where heat had never existed and he kissed her breast as expertly, as hungrily and deliciously as he had kissed her mouth. Her fingers pressed and knotted into his hair and she worried how she might stay standing, how she had lived a life without knowing the pleasure of this, how nearly she had lived a life where this pleasure was denied her. He moved away from her breast to her face, and she wanted him back there instead of the cool air on her wet skin.

Then she didn’t want, because she got.

She got what Nico had wanted but had withheld for longer than he could have imagined. With one definite move, looking at her, awaiting her response, he drew her to where she belonged, against him. He pulled her deftly in and he met the giddy height of relief from wanting, because now his aching groin had the support of her warm body; but it did not satisfy, not even for a second, for instantly it demanded more.

He saw her eyes widen as she felt the solid length of his arousal, saw her lips close and a nervous, excited swallow as he pressed in harder again.

And again, till she was pressing now into him.

And they both tasted for the first time real teenage kisses, willing the other on to a sweet forbidden place. He shrugged off his jacket and it was Connie who dealt with his tie and then somehow they were moving to the bed. Nico kicked off his shoes; Connie frantically tore at his shirt buttons till he lay there beside her, his bare feet sliding between her stockinged calves, her naked breasts against his exposed chest. To have skin on skin deepened their kiss, till he suckled on her tongue in a decadent disclosure of what he intended next.

His hand roamed over the curve of her bottom, scooped her hungry body right into his and she wanted her dress fully off, but he would not let her miss this lesson, would not, though he was tempted, deny her what long ago should have been hers.

How could he not want her?

As his fingers slid up beneath her dress, his question was not aimed at Stavros but at the fools who had feared her father, for had he been there, had he lived on this island, had they met before, then this moment would have been his a very long time ago.

She could feel his fingers, inching up the fabric and then sliding between the tender flesh of her inner thigh, and in reflex rather than refusal she clamped her legs together, could not fathom he wanted to touch her there.

‘Just,’ Nico breathed, and kissed as, despite her flesh’s protest, still he moved higher, ‘as a good girl would do.’

‘I don’t want to be good,’ Connie said, as contrarily her legs tightened, yet her mind willed his hand higher.

‘Then relax,’ Nico said, as the vice of her thighs tightened around his hand.

‘I don’t know how to.’

‘But you want me to carry on?’ Nico checked, though he was sure, quite sure of her answer.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Then all you have to do is trust me.’

Absolutely she did.

‘Where are we?’ she whispered. ‘Where have you taken me?’

‘For a drive,’ Nico whispered, ‘and soon you have to be home. We’ve stopped on the hill … and now,’ Nico said, ‘before I take you home I’m going to take you to heaven.’ And she was there in his car, and much younger, and so, too, was Nico. She forced herself to breathe, to not think just for a second of what he was doing, to rest her mouth on his neck and just breathe in his scent. When she parted her legs the necessary fraction, his hand crept higher and she braced herself, for what she did not know; but he was more patient than she dared hope, his hand rested on her panties. He kissed her as she accustomed herself to the weight and the warmth and then as he kissed her hair, her cheek, her closed eyes, her head was too heavy and it sank in the pillow, his hand slid into her panties and expertly explored her.

She was so tender that surely soon she would tell him to stop, especially as probing fingers stretched her, and then she went to halt him again as his thumb pressed harder, but there were tiny, almost imperceptible beats of pleasure as his hand worked on. Tiny pulses that mirrored a rhythm that was rising inside, and she tried to stop, to wriggle away, but her body refused to move from this masterstroke. So she stayed, and she found just how much she had been missing. She came to his hand and did not want ever to go back and then Nico stopped, kissed her breathless, and told the shell of her ear what would be next. How it could have happened in the different world they had created, one where youth was shared at the same time, one where he was nicer, kinder, more trusting, one where he cared intensely for the woman in his arms. He told her how then he might have progressed.