JACQUELINE BAIRD - Mediterranean Tycoons - Masterful & Married - Marriage At His Convenience / Aristides' Convenient Wife / The Billionaire's Blackmailed Bride

He caught her to him, and their mouths met and fused, and she arched herself blindly against him. With tactile delight she slipped her hands down across his shoulders, and along under his arms, across his taut abdomen, and then they swept around the outside of his thighs and finally to his inner thigh, her slender fingers curving around the hard, pulsing strength of him. She wanted him now…

She heard the sharp intake of his breath as his head tilted back. ‘No, Amber.’ And he closed his hand over hers, pulling it from his body. For a horrible second she thought he meant to deny her. ‘Not yet. I was a brute the last time,’ he rasped. ‘I vowed…’

She could see the muscles of his thighs bunch with tension in the effort of control. But after five years of celibacy Amber didn’t want to talk. So she wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him back down over her.

He kissed her with a wild hunger, his tongue exploring deep in her mouth, his hands caressing every inch of her burning flesh with sensual delight, and she responded with equal passion and helpless moans of pleasure.

She sank back under his hard, hot body, whimpering with need. But Lucas was not to be hurried. He kissed her mouth, her breasts, her thighs, until she jerked helplessly beneath him, her senses swimming with desire. ‘Please, Lucas, don’t make me wait,’ she begged.

And as though he’d been waiting for her plea Lucas moved between her parted thighs. Amber tensed for a second. It had been a long time for her. The hard length of him moved slowly, easing himself deeper and deeper inside her, sometimes to his full length and sometimes with shallow strokes that teased and enhanced the pleasure almost to pain. Amber had never felt such need, such fiery tension, until her inner muscles convulsed around him in a shattering completion. But still he moved, their bodies locked together.

Lucas rolled onto his back and brought her up above him. His hands clasping her hips, he held her against him, but now he could kiss her breasts. Amber cried out at the feel of his mouth on her taut nipples, and shockingly felt the excitement building all over again.

‘Yes, yes,’ Lucas cried, and as he held her fiercely down on him his great body bucked violently beneath her as he reached his climax. At the same time Amber cried his name, and tumbled over into her own headlong fulfilment yet again.

She collapsed on top of him, breathless and mindless, feeling the sweat of passion cooling on her skin. She buried her head on his shoulder. She did not want him to see her, not yet. Not until she had recovered some of her shattered control. She felt his large, warm hand stroke her back gently, and she could almost fool herself it was love… But not quite…

Rolling off him, she lay flat on her back, and swallowed a despairing sigh—from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair in a few moments. Amber knew herself well—no way would she allow any man the intimate liberties she had gloried in with Lucas unless she loved him. The enormity of the realisation made her heartsick.

She loved him, she always had and probably always would. But she had been too badly hurt before to believe he wanted to marry her for any other reason than Spiro’s legacy. Tonight would have to be enough. It was ironic in a way, she thought as a wry smile curved her love-swollen lips. Lucas had called her a gold-digger, but in fact it was Lucas who was now in that position.

‘What are you thinking?’ Lucas propped himself on one elbow, his dark, slumberous eyes boring into hers, his breathing still unsteady. ‘That smile looks decidedly smug.’

It was a question she did not want to answer, not truthfully. The night was young and she intended to make full use of it. She lifted her hands and trailed her fingers through the silky mat of chest hair, caressing his body. As her finger grazed a hard male nipple she felt his magnificent body tremble, and she smiled again. ‘I was wondering how long it takes you to recover these days,’ she murmured throatily, her eyes gleaming with invitation.

Surreptitiously Amber glanced at her wrist-watch—it was the only thing she was wearing. It was close to one o’clock in the morning. She looked down into the face of Lucas Karadines. Somehow he seemed much younger in sleep. His eyes were closed, his long dark lashes brushing his cheeks. He was deeply asleep, not surprising after their second encounter, Amber thought, remembering his seemingly insatiable desire. But she could not sleep—she had to leave. Even now, with her passion for him momentarily quenched, she felt no lessening of desire, but she knew on Lucas’s part it was only lust… He had told her so quite truthfully years ago. Dear heaven! What was it going to take for her to get over him? Death?

On that morbid thought she stifled a sigh and slid out of bed, and by moonlight she managed to find her clothes and get dressed. Slipping her shoes on, she crept quietly towards the door. She turned for one last look at his bronzed body spread out on the bed, and almost went back to join him. Instead she closed the door on the temptation he provided.

She didn’t get far! Finding her jacket on the arm of the sofa, she slipped it on, and, picking up her briefcase, she stepped towards the exit and escape, just when the bedroom door was flung open.

‘Amber.’ Lucas walked into the sitting room, totally unconscious of his nudity. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I am leaving.’

Lucas glared at her for a startled second. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Are you out of your mind? We have just shared mind-blowing sex and now you are sneaking out of my bed in the middle of the night!’

Pushing the tangled mass of her hair behind her ears in a futile attempt to tame it, she glanced up at Lucas. He had the angry, puzzled look of a child who had had his favourite toy snatched from his grasp, and his crude comment on sex simply angered her further. ‘Why, was I supposed to wait until you left first?’ she asked cynically.

If tonight had taught her anything at all, it was that she had to stay away from Lucas. Because, loving him as she did, she had no resistance against him; she was his for the taking. Even now the temptation to close the distance between them and run her hands over his hard, tanned body, to feel once more the wonder of his possession, was almost irresistible. But one thought stopped her. The memory of his leaving her naked on the floor in the apartment they had once shared was something she would not let herself forget. She moved to walk past him, but his hand shot out and he captured her arm in a steely grip.

‘I have no intention of leaving you—’ he glared down at her pale face and bruised, swollen mouth ‘—or of letting you go. You belong to me!’

‘Spiro’s money belongs to you is what you really mean.’

He frowned at her acid comment. ‘If that is what you want to think, so be it. But it does not alter the fact you are marrying me. I had hoped willingly.’ His black eyes raked appreciatively over her. ‘You’re a very beautiful, intelligent woman; any man would be proud to make you his wife.’

A harsh laugh escaped her. ‘Oh, please, Lucas,’ she drawled scathingly, tugging her arm free and stepping back. ‘It’s a bit late for compliments.’ Five years too late, she thought bitterly.

His dark eyes blazed angrily for a second before adopting his more usual expression, coldly remote. ‘If you say so.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘But if not willingly, I am quite prepared to use coercion. The end result will be the same.’

He sounded so uncompromising that Amber flinched. ‘But why?’ she demanded in exasperation, trying not to look at his naked body. ‘I have told you to contact my lawyer. I will put it in writing here and now, if you like. You can have the lot.’ Her temper was frayed, she was tired and beginning to be afraid. There was something about his insistence on marriage that was finally getting through to her. He was deadly serious.