time replayed its cruel taunt across her tense body, and the muscles inside her that were already contracting around him.
‘Natasha—’
‘No!’ she cried out. ‘Don’t talk about it!’
He seemed shocked by her agonised outburst. ‘But you—’
‘Please get off me,’ she squeezed out in desperation and pushed at his shoulders with her tightly clenched fists. ‘You’re hurting me.’
‘Because you are new to this…’ His voice had roughened, the hand he used to gently push her hair away from her face trembling against her hot skin.
But he made no attempt to withdraw from her, his big shoulders bunched and glossed with a fine layer of perspiration, forearms braced on either side of her, and his face was so grave now Natasha knew what was coming before he said it.
‘I’m sorry, agape mou…’
‘Just get off!’ She didn’t want his apology. Balling her hands into fists, she pushed at his shoulders, writhing beneath him in an effort to get free, only to flatten out again on a shivering quiver of shock when her inner muscles leapt on his intrusion with an excited clamour that made her eyes widen.
Reading her expression with an ease that pushed a hot flush through her body, ‘You are not hurting any more,’ he husked out, and lowered his head to adorn her face with soft, light, coaxing kisses—her eyes, her nose, her temples, her delicate ear lobes—that made her quiver and squirm and in the end dig fingers into his bunched shoulders and send her mouth on a restless search for his.
‘Oh, kiss me properly!’ she ended up begging.
Her helpless plea was all it took to tip a carefully contained, sexually aroused man over the edge. On a very explicit curse, he moulded her mouth to his. A second later and Natasha was lost—flung into a strange new world filled with sensation, piling in on top of sensation, unaware that the whole wild beauty of it was being carefully built upon by a master lover until she felt the first rippling spasm wash through her. She knew that he felt it, too, because he whispered something hot against her cheek, slid his powerful arms beneath her so he could hold her close, then angled his mouth to hers and began to thrust really deep, increasing the pace while maintaining a ferocious grip on his own thundering needs.
The grinding drag of fierce pleasure began to flow through her body. Natasha whimpered helplessly against his mouth. Knotting his fingers into her hair, he muttered tensely, ‘Let go, agape mou.’
And like a fledgling bird being encouraged to fly, Natasha just opened her sensory wings and dropped off the edge of the world into an acutely bright, scintillating dive straight into the frenzied path of an emotional storm. A moment later she felt him shudder as he made the same mind-shredding leap, while urging her on and on until two became one in a wildly delirious, spiralling spin.
It was as if afterwards didn’t exist for Natasha; pure shock dropped her like a rock through a deep, dark hole into an exhausted sleep.
Maybe she did it because she did not want to face what she’d done, Leo mused sombrely as he sat sprawled in a chair by the bed, watching her—watching this woman he’d just bedded like some raving sex maniac while giving himself every excuse he could come up with to help him to justify his behavior.
A virgin.
His conscience gave him a stark, piercing pinch.
And the guilty truth of it was, he could still feel the sense of stinging, hot pleasurable pressure he’d experienced when the barrier gave. A muscle low down in his abdomen gave a tug in direct response to the memory and he lifted the glass of whisky he held and grimly took a large sip.
The prim persona had been no lie.
She even slept the sleep of an innocent, he observed as he ran his eyes over her. No hint of sensual abandon in the modest curve of her body outlined against the white sheet.
Another slug at the whisky and he was studying her face next. Perfect, beautiful, softened by slumber and washed pale by the strain of the day she’d been put through when she should look…
He took another pull of the whisky, and as he lifted the glass to his mouth, her eyelids fluttered upwards and her sleep-darkened blue eyes looked directly at him.
The nagging tug on his loins became a pulsing burn that made him feel like a sinner.
He lowered the glass, and half hiding his eyes, watched her catch her breath, then freeze for a second before he said sombrely, ‘We will get married.’
Natasha almost jolted right out of her skin. ‘Are you mad?’ she gasped, pulling the covering sheet tightly up against her chin. ‘We have a deal—’
‘You were a virgin.’
As she dragged herself into a sitting position her hair tumbled forwards in a shining, loose tangle of waves around her face and she pushed it out of her way impatiently. ‘What the heck difference should that make to anything?’
‘It means everything,’ Leo insisted. ‘Therefore we will be married as soon as I can arrange it. I am honour-bound to offer you this.’
‘Stuff your honour.’ Heaving in a deep breath, Natasha climbed out of the bed on the other side from where he was sitting, trailing the sheet around her as she went. ‘Having just escaped one sleazy marriage by the skin of my teeth, I am not going to fall into another one!’
‘It will not be a sleazy marriage.’
‘Everything about you and your terrible family is sleazy!’ she turned on him angrily. ‘You’re all so obsessed with the value of money, you’ve lost touch with what’s really valuable in life! Well, I haven’t.’ Tossing her chin up, eyes like blue glass on fire with contempt, she drew the sheet around her. ‘We made a deal in which I give you sex for six weeks until I can give you back your precious money. Show a bit of your so-called honour by keeping to that deal!’
With that she turned and strode off to the bathroom, needing to escape—needing some respite from Leo Christakis and his long, sexy body stretched out in that chair by the bed. So he’d pulled a robe on—what difference did that make? She could still see him naked, still visualise every honed muscle and bone, each single inch of his taut, bronzed flesh! And she could still feel the power of his kisses and the weight of him on top of her and the…
‘You were innocent,’ he fed after her.
Was he talking about her sexual innocence or her being innocent of all of the other rotten charges he had laid against her? Did she care? No.
‘Stick to your first impression of me,’ she flung at him over her shoulder. ‘Your instincts were working better then!’
On that scathing slice, she slammed into the bathroom.
Leo grimaced into his glass. His first impression of Natasha Moyles had been deadly accurate, he acknowledged. It was only the stuff with Rico that had fouled up that impression.
He heard the shower running. He visualised her dropping the sheet and walking that smooth, curvy body into his custom-built wet room. The vision pushed him to his feet with the grim intention of giving into his nagging desires and going in there to join her. This
