he lifted her up in his arms, she thought that was an excellent opportunity to do...something. Anything. But his mouth was on hers as he moved, and Susannah realized that she’d been lying to herself for a very long time.
She could hardly remember the silly teenager she’d been on the day of her wedding after all that had happened since. She’d known she was sheltered back then, in the same way she’d known that her father was a very high-level banker and that her Dutch mother loathed living in England. But knowing she was sheltered and then dealing with the ramifications of her own naïveté were two very different things, it turned out. And Susannah had been dealing with the consequences of the way she’d been raised—not to mention her parents’ aspirations for their only child—for so long now, and in such a pressure cooker, that it was easy to forget the truth of things.
Such as the fact that when her parents had told her—a dreamy sixteen-year-old girl who’d spent most of her life in a very remote and strict Swiss boarding school with other heiresses to various kingdoms and fortunes—that she was destined to marry the scion of the Betancur family, Susannah hadn’t been upset. She hadn’t cried into her pillow every night the way her roommate did at the prospect of her own marriage, scared of the life spooling out in front of her without her permission or input.
On the contrary, she’d been delighted.
Leonidas was gorgeous, all her school friends had agreed. He was older than them, but much younger than some of her friends’ betrothed, and with all his hair and teeth as far as anyone could tell. And she’d met him, so she knew firsthand that he was merciless and forbidding in ways that had made her feel tingly all over. Moreover, every time they’d interacted—as few and far between as those times might have been over the years, because he was an important man and she was just a girl, as her mother chastised her—he’d always treated her with a great patience even she’d been able to see was at complete odds with the ferocity of his dark gaze.
She forgotten that. He’d disappointed her on her wedding night, then he’d died, and she’d forgotten. She’d lost herself in the scandal and intrigue of the Betancur Corporation and all its attendant family drama, and she’d completely failed to remember that when it came to Leonidas she had always been a very, very silly girl.
Back when she was one, and again now. Clearly.
Say something, she ordered herself.
But then he was laying her down on the bed in the next room, and following her down to the mattress, and Susannah didn’t have it in her to care if she was silly.
She’d been promised a wedding night. Four years ago, she’d expected to hand over her innocence to the man who’d become her husband and instead, she’d been left to years of widow’s weeds and seas of enemies—not all of whom had come at her as opponents.
Susannah couldn’t count the number of men who’d tried to seduce her over the years, many related to Leonidas, but she’d always held firm. She was the Widow Betancur and she mourned. She grieved. That little bit of fiction had protected her when nothing else could.
But Leonidas wasn’t dead. And more than that, as he sprawled out above her on that firm mattress and pressed her into it, all his lean, solid strength making her breathless with a dizzy sort of joy, it made her forget that he had ever disappeared in the first place.
As if this was their wedding night after all.
“This has been four years overdue,” he said, his voice a low growl against her neck, and she could feel him just as she could hear him. There was something in his tone she didn’t like—a certain skepticism, perhaps, that pricked at her—but it was swept away when his mouth fixed to hers again.
And Susannah did nothing to dig her feet into whatever ground she could find. She let Leonidas take her with a fervent joy that might have concerned her if she’d been able to think critically.
She didn’t think. She kissed him instead.
His hands dug into her hair, tugging slightly until he pulled it out of the knot she’d worn the heavy mass of it in. He muttered something she couldn’t quite hear, but she didn’t care because he was kissing her again and again.
When he moved his mouth from hers to trace a trail down the length of her neck, she moaned, and he laughed, just a little bit. When he tugged on her cashmere coat, she lifted herself up so he could pull it from her body. He did the same with her shift dress, tugging it up and over her head. She had the vague impression that he tossed both items aside, but she didn’t care where they landed.
Because she was lying beneath him with nothing on but a bra and panties and her knee-high boots, and the look in his dark eyes was...savage.
It made Susannah shake a little. It made her feel beautiful.
Raw. Aching and alive.
As if, after all this time, she really was more than the shroud she’d been wearing like armor for all these years. As if she wasn’t the little girl he’d married, but the woman she’d longed to be in her head.
“You are the perfect gift,” he said, as if he really couldn’t remember who she was. As if his amnesia game was real and he really believed himself some or other local god, tucked away here in the woods.
But Susannah couldn’t bring herself to worry about that. Because Leonidas was touching her.
He used his mouth and his hands. He found her breasts and cupped them with his palms, then bent his head to tease first one nipple, then the next. Through the soft fabric of her bra, his mouth was so hot, so shocking, that she arched off the bed. To get away from him—or get closer to him—she couldn’t quite tell.
He stripped the bra from her, then repeated himself, but this time there was no fabric between the suction of his mouth and her tender skin. Susannah had never felt anything like it in her life. She felt...open and exposed, and so bright red with too much sensation she might as well have been a beacon.
Her head thrashed against the mattress beneath her. She gripped him wherever she could touch him, grabbing fistfuls of the flowing white garments he wore at his sides, his hips, and not caring at all when her own gasps and moans filled her ears.
Then he moved lower. His tongue teased her navel, and then his big hands wrapped around her hips.
And he didn’t ask. He didn’t even move her panties out of his way. Leonidas merely bent his head and fastened his mouth to the place where she ached the most.
Susannah thought she exploded.
She was surprised to find, between one breath and the next, that she was still in one piece. That every bit of suction he applied between her legs made her feel like she was breaking and fusing back together again—over and over again.
She felt a tug at her hip, heard a faint tearing sound that she only dimly understood was him tearing her panties from her body, and when he bent his head to her once again, everything changed.
It had already been madness. And now it was magic.
Leonidas licked his way into her, teasing her and tasting her. It took her long moments to realize that he was humming, a low sound of intense male approval that she could feel like shock waves crashing through her body. It was like a separate thrill.
She felt his fingers tracing through her heat, and then they were inside her. Long and
