was her world, and this man was the only thing in it. His huge hard body crushed hers to the seat beneath her, but her arms were free and she explored and spread them under his jacket to feel the latent strength of his broad shoulders.
His mouth left hers to blaze a trail of hot kisses along her jaw and down her throat, where he nipped gently and then sucked, making her squirm as an arrow of pure lust shot to her groin, making her wet.
As if he’d read her mind, she felt his hand encircle her ankle and start to travel up her leg. He breathed into her mouth, ‘Remember what I said the other day?’
Words couldn’t impinge upon her mind in this drenching of desire. Lucy couldn’t function. She was finding it hard to open her eyes, finding it hard to breathe as she looked up and drowned in dark green oceans. She didn’t recognise the man above her. The expression on his face was so raw and elemental. All she knew was that he looked exactly how she felt. Her breasts were tight and aching, tips chafing against the confining bra and dress. And slowly, so slowly, his hand was climbing with relentless precision, until its heat was wrapped around her upper thigh, where her sheer stockings ended. His fingers spread wide to encompass as much as he could touch. Any second now they’d be on her bare skin. She stopped breathing in earnest.
‘Please …’ Was that voice hers? Who was she anyway? She was suffering from temporary amnesia. Somewhere distant, where a bell was ringing, she felt something wanting to intrude, but more than that she wanted this. It felt so right and so necessary. Too right to question.
‘Please … Ari …’
With a muffled groan of something that sounded Greek and almost painful, he lowered his head, took her mouth again. Their tongues connected feverishly just as his hand hovered and tantalised at the tender place of her soft inner thigh, on the edge of her silk pants. Lucy tore her mouth away and arched herself towards him, gripping his shoulders. She could feel the heavy stabbing weight of his erection against her leg and she moved experimentally, exulting in his answering growl of unmistakable torture.
And then he was there, fingers pushing aside the barrier of her pants to slide into hot slickness, where she ached most. She sucked in a breath, shocked eyes opening wide. She looked up and his fingers began to move, finding the secret spot and pressing it, flicking it. Blood roared into Lucy’s head, drowning out everything but the clamour for satisfaction which was coming towards her like the mirage of an oasis in the desert.
And then suddenly, as quickly as this insanity had taken over, it was gone. Aristotle was taking away his hand, moving back, his features harsh and unbearably tight. Cold seeped into Lucy as she realised where she was. She was supine on the back seat of a car, her legs spread, and her boss had just been—
Oh God.
She also realised what Aristotle had realised way before her: they had stopped, obviously at their destination, and the driver was patiently knocking on the privacy window. They hadn’t heard him because—
Oh God.
More shame and mortification and self-disgust than she could ever remember feeling coursed through Lucy in a tidal wave of heat so intense she felt feverish. She scrambled to sit up, hands shaking as she pulled her dress down to cover her thighs.
A large brown hand came over hers, and she had to stop herself flinching back.
‘OK?’
The huskily asked question surprised her. It was almost as if he really cared. But she couldn’t look at him, just nodded jerkily, a curtain of hair hiding her face from view. She could give thanks for once that it was down. She didn’t think she could ever look at him ever again. In the split seconds they had as they gathered themselves and she heard Aristotle—Ari—speak to the driver, Lucy tried to assimilate what had just happened.
The fact that she’d all but drowned in an instantaneous pool of lust in his arms was evident enough. She’d deal with that in a darkened room on her own later. But it was the fact that it had happened without hesitation, with not even a flicker of rejection or desire to draw back. Was it simply because after weeks of denying this to herself, weeks of this desire building and building, the merest touch had sent her up in flames and she’d been unable to draw up even the flimsiest of defences? She’d turned into a complete wanton.
When Aristotle climbed out of the car, and Lucy readied herself to step out too, she realised that any vulnerability she’d felt before had paled into pathetic insignificance. The truth swirled sickeningly in her breast. She truly was her mother’s daughter, and that knowledge jeered her for all her efforts to deny it for so long.
There was no going back now, not after that little performance, and she quaked when she saw the huge looming shape materialise on the other side of the door. That everything she feared most lay outside that door right now was obvious, and also the fact that she’d just kissed goodbye to any pretence of a defence she might dream up to excuse her behaviour. The door opened abruptly and Lucy was compelled to step out, taking the hand that was offered and forcing down the frisson of electricity at even that innocuous touch. She felt as though the entire world had changed, and suddenly her place in it.
It was while they were standing alone for a moment, in the luxurious salon of the palatial Parnassus villa on the outskirts of Athens, that Lucy felt Aristotle turn towards her. She closed her eyes momentarily and pleaded silently, Please don’t look at me ... please don’t say anything. But since when were her prayers answered? She opened her eyes and gritted her jaw.
Aristotle looked down at Lucy and felt completely out of his depth. He still couldn’t quite believe what had happened in the back of his car. He’d never, ever been so consumed with lust like that—that he’d laid a woman down in the back seat and all but made love to her there and then. When he thought of it now, of how close he’d been to unzipping his fly—his hand clenched around his drink and he had to force it to unclench.
Lucy hadn’t looked at him since she’d stepped out of the car and he couldn’t blame her. What was it he’d said? That he wouldn’t be a lecherous boss? And then within seconds of getting into an enclosed space … But she’d been so responsive, dammit. Like his most potent dream, his hottest fantasy. She’d been hot, willing, passionate … wet for him. His body tightened again. She’d shown him the woman she was hiding under all that primness.
It was hard to equate the woman who’d paled at seeing her bra strap hanging out of a bag earlier to the woman who’d almost come apart in his arms less than a couple of hours ago.
‘Lucy?’
He could see her grit her jaw, and it was only then that he noticed the faint pink mark on her neck. Shock coursed through him—and self-disgust. He’d given her a love bite? The last time he’d given a woman a love bite it had been a girl, and in a boarding school in England, probably at the age of thirteen. All of a sudden Aristotle felt anger for what this woman was reducing him to.
He took her arm and tried to ignore the way her skin felt, tried to ignore the way he wanted to caress it, tried to ignore the way she looked almost green.
‘Lucy, look at me.’
With the utmost reluctance Lucy turned her head and looked up, willing her reaction far down. She even pasted a smile on her face. ‘Yes?’
Aristotle looked angry. ‘Lucy …’ He sighed with exasperation and ran his other hand through his hair, leaving it to flop back in such sexy disarray that Lucy felt her knees tremble.
