off chasing the thief, well, I’m sorry to admit that I half wondered if you hadn’t been working together, and that I’d never see you, or my bag, again.’
He shook his head, his dark eyes glinting with amusement. ‘You honestly believed me capable of behaving in such a despicable manner?’
She cast her eyes downwards. ‘I’m so sorry. I was strung out. I don’t know why else I would have thought such a thing.’
His dark eyes narrowed. His lips turned up on one side. ‘But then, you thought I was some kind of gigolo too.’
‘God, don’t remind me. I’m sorry about that too.’
He leaned an arm up onto the wall beside her and she was struck by the poetry in the slow but sure movement of his muscled limbs. ‘You thought I was going to seduce you.’
‘To be fair, I didn’t know what to think. I was alone and you were very charming. Are very charming. What was a woman on her own to think? But you’ve proved me wrong and I’ve had the most wonderful evening, thank you.’ She put out a hand to shake his.
He stared down at it, a crease tugging dark brows together. ‘Are you disappointed?’
‘What?’
‘That I didn’t try to seduce you?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t... I’m not sure...’
His eyes met hers, and in their dark depths she saw an insecurity and wavering that mirrored her own, an insecurity she would never have expected to see in this man’s, not when he otherwise appeared so confident and assured. An insecurity she instinctively wanted to smooth away and reassure.
‘Because you must know,’ he said, ‘I wanted to kiss you.’
Her mouth went dry. ‘You did?’
‘When the sun was setting before us and it was like we were part of it, rather than just watching, and I could see the look of wonder on your face—in that moment I ached to reach out a hand and touch you.’
‘You did?’ She tossed her head back, trying to inject no more than a casual interest in his revelation. Trying to sound as if they were discussing something academic. ‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Because I was afraid you might run. That it would confirm your worst thoughts about me. So I held back. Let me tell you, removing my hand from your back was one of the hardest things I have ever done.’ His dark eyes trained on hers. ‘Would you have run?’
Her bag suddenly felt heavy in her hands, her limbs felt boneless and it was all she could do to remember to breathe.
‘Would you?’
The air between them seemed to shimmer with expectation. This was no game they were playing. No innocent question and answer session. This felt dangerous.
Reckless.
Athena didn’t do reckless.
Not normally. But tonight was far from normal.
And this time that voice inside her head demanded to quash any resistance and to be heard, and this time, she was only too prepared to listen.
‘No.’ Her answer was a bare whisper, and yet more than a whisper. A confession.
He closed the distance between them and put the pads of his thumb to her cheek, the fingers of his other hand tracing the line of her lips. ‘You are more beautiful than any sunset I have ever witnessed. I have wanted you since the moment we first met.’
His warm breath, scented with the cognac they’d shared, caressed her skin, and like the waves upon the sea his words rippled into her soul. Her cheek leaned into his touch, her lips parting, seeking more, tasting him.
‘If you ask me to kiss you,’ he said, ‘there is no way I could refuse.’
Her heart skipped a beat. And she knew with a woman’s sense that this was bigger than any kiss. The heat pooling in her belly, the pulse beating at her very core told her this wouldn’t stop with a kiss. But he was giving her the choice—stop now or go on.
In the end, it was no choice at all. ‘So kiss me,’ she said.
And he made a sound, guttural and deep, a sound of triumph mixed with need that rumbled straight to her veins and turned her blood to bubbles as he pulled her close and his lips met hers. Warm lips. Surprisingly soft and yet firm. Engaged in a sensual dance with hers. Slow. Gentle. Teasing. Deeper. Repeat.
Her knees turned weak. She reached for him, needing an anchor to steady herself, finding a rock as her hands tangled in the folds of his shirt and found his hard body beneath. Her fingers embraced his sculpted torso and she heard a sound like a whimper and realised it had come from her.
But he was glorious. Muscled and hard beneath her seeking fingers. Thirsty fingers, drinking in the ridges of bone and tight bunches of muscle as his mouth made magic on hers. While his long-fingered hands scooped down the sides of her head, to her shoulders, leaving trails that felt like sparks under her skin and that scorched a path all the way down via peaking nipples, to where an aching heat pulsed between her thighs.
And even as she pressed her body closer to his, closer into his kiss, she knew this was all kinds of reckless, because she knew there was no way this was stopping with a mere kiss.
And she wanted it.
She wanted it all.
SO MUCH MORE than a mere kiss! His scent, his taste and the feel of him combined into one powerful cocktail and she wanted more. She parted her lips and he accepted her invitation, his tongue tasting, testing, before engaging hers in a sensual dance of passion and need. She was already lost in sensation, blood fizzing in her veins, when she felt the brush of his thumb against one sensitive nipple, and she gasped into his mouth with the sheer electricity of it.
He growled, liking her response, his hands growing bolder, sweeping from her shoulders to the cheeks of her behind, squeezing, her muscles clenching and tightening in response as his fingertips ventured dangerously close to her cleft.
‘Theos,’ he said, wrenching his mouth from hers. ‘Stay, and make love with me, Athena.’
She answered him with her mouth and her body, pulling his head back to hers, pressing her full length against his body, her plumping breasts hard against his chest, her hips pushed against his. She encountered the evidence of his own arousal and felt a rush of heat hard on the heels of a bloom of delight.
For so long, it seemed, she’d felt numb. Too long. Ever since she’d heard the news of her father’s death and been sideswiped by the impact it had on her. By the knowledge that now she had lost both her mother and, even if their relationship had been difficult at times, or maybe because of it, her father.
She’d been operating in a vacuum ever since.
Numb. Emotionless.
But Alexios had
