‘There may not be any because I’ve never used the house...no, there’s nothing here.’
‘You don’t need to,’ Ella muttered, shaking her head. ‘I have a contraceptive implant in my arm.’
He frowned. ‘But why do you have that?’
‘When Paul and I were together, I thought...well, that I’d need contraception.’ Ella struggled to think back to that period when everything had been shiny and new and untested between her and Paul. As far as she recalled the implant would keep her safe from pregnancy for four years, but try as she did she could not remember exactly when she had had the implant put in.
‘I’ve never had sex without a condom and I’ve been tested... I’m clean,’ Nikolai assured her.
Ella was already thinking about something else. ‘A moment ago you said you’d never used this house. Never?’
‘Never,’ he repeated. ‘It didn’t feel like mine. The day I got the keys I walked over every inch of it and thought what a waste it was that I was never allowed to meet the old guy. There are all these ancient photos of people and I don’t know who they are and I never will know now because there’s nobody left to identify them. Yet some of them must be relatives.’
‘That’s sad,’ she agreed.
He didn’t know why he was talking to her like that because he had been on his own a long time and he liked it that way...didn’t he? Once his sister was gone, he had not had a single living relative that he knew of. Of course, he hadn’t looked, he acknowledged for the first time, and he was well aware that his grandfather had had sisters because they had contacted him. He had simply decided that it would be pointless at this stage in his life to take the connection any further. And why the hell was he even thinking about such a thing? What did Ella do to his wits? Why was he confiding in her when she lay naked and beautiful on a bed in front of him? What kind of black magic was that? He was talking about private things that he never ever shared. Thee mou, it had to be those soft, sympathetic eyes of hers working a dangerous spell.
‘I’ve never needed family,’ he told her flatly.
Ella was wondering if it would be pathetic to slide below the duvet to hide her naked body and she was stiff as a post while she lay there wondering, colour creeping up across her nudity in a mottled flush of awful self-consciousness. It was daylight and the drapes weren’t fully closed and everything was on display and she felt incredibly uncomfortable.
‘Family’s everything to me,’ Ella admitted, finally giving up the fight and diving below the duvet with apology. ‘I can’t imagine life without them.’
‘The duvet won’t hide you from me for long,’ Nikolai warned, the command gilt-edged with the desire clearly burning in his eyes.
He unzipped and dropped his jeans and her eyes rounded at the sight of him because in his haste to check on her earlier he had forgone underwear below the denim. With a sudden laugh, Nikolai pounced and flipped the duvet back off her. ‘Was that look one of awe or horror?’ he demanded.
Ella’s faced burned red. ‘No comment...’
Nikolai kissed her breathless and then nipped a line down the slope of her neck that seemed to hit every pulse point she possessed. She gasped beneath his mouth, gasped again when his wickedly clever fingers found her clitoris and lingered with devastating intent. Startled, she jerked, she moaned, lashes fluttering in dazed dismay as he slid down the bed to part her thighs and pay attention to a part of her she much preferred to ignore.
‘No, Nik—’
‘Is that an embarrassed no? Or an absolutely not?’ Nikolai prompted.
Forbearance became the better part of valour and she closed her eyes, trying not to think about what he was planning to do but reluctant to prevent him when her only excuse was shyness. She wasn’t that shy, was she? And then he did something that sent a current of red-hot tingles racing through her entire body and her hips executed a sensual shimmy and her lips parted on a long, low whimper and whether she was shy or not got lost in the process. The prickling awareness in her pelvis coalesced into a heavy throb at the heart of her that made her all hot and needy. Suddenly she couldn’t worry any more about how she looked or what came next, suddenly she was just in the moment and the moment was so wildly, insanely exciting and primal that she was lost in it. The pulsing heat expanded, sucking in more and more of her and then rising until she couldn’t hold it in any more. She gave a helpless cry, her spine arched and her body flailed as an explosive climax gripped her.
‘You see, the absolutely not would have been a mistake, glikia mou,’ Nikolai pointed out as he drew level with her again, eyes like dark melting chocolate caressing her flushed face.
Dumbly she nodded, heart leaping as he claimed her mouth and his tongue tangled with hers in a frank expression of all-male hunger that made her blood thunder through her veins. He was rearranging her limbs, tipping her back into a new position and, before she could even gather all her nerves again, he was there at her entrance and pushing in. At first it felt so strange to her, his body joining with hers, and the sensation of pressure, of stretching, was surprisingly pleasurable, as if her body had been lying in wait for years to experience that exact sensation and was now pouncing on it with joyful acceptance.
And then Ella jerked as a stinging burn marked his invasion. It didn’t kill the pleasure but it did make her tense and draw in her breath in dismay.
‘Want me to stop?’ Nikolai husked, eyes pure, gleaming caramel seduction.
‘No...don’t you dare!’ Ella warned, impatient on the brink of what she had waited so long to experience.
He eased out of her and drove in again and the burn intensified and then vanished. She blinked, expecting pain because she had always expected pain, but the pain didn’t arrive. ‘It’s OK now,’ she whispered in surprise.
‘It’s got to be better than OK for you the first time,’ Nikolai told her.
‘No expectations here,’ she told him bravely and wrapped her arms round him because she recognised his patience, his care and concern and knew it could have been a much less pleasurable experience with someone else.
Her body sang with his every movement, madly stimulated by excitement. Within the space of a minute and a half she travelled from the aftershocks of satiated pleasure to heart-stopping, racing excitement. She angled up to receive him, hips rocking, body thrumming joyfully to the age-old beat of passion. It was good, it was better than good, it was truly amazing to slot helplessly into that fierce hypnotic climb to pleasure again. A kind of frenzy gripped her muscles and she shook, feeling ecstasy within her grasp and snatching at it. And it ran over and through her, a rolling white-hot wave of convulsive delight and fulfilment that left her drained and limp.
Ella was convinced that she would never move again, and then Nikolai moved when she didn’t want him to and she rolled over and rested her head on his chest instead, her arm wrapping round his narrow waist.
He dropped a kiss on her damp brow. ‘Thank you,’ he rasped breathlessly. ‘That was amazing.’
She wanted to thank him but she was tongue-tied, everything she had thought she knew about herself, everything she had ever believed, thrown into turmoil. And, quite literally, she couldn’t think straight and he felt like the only stable being in an unstable world. A deep sense of peace washed over her in waves of emotional and physical exhaustion.
Nikolai
