Greek Escape

‘That’s not how I live.’

‘You’ve trapped yourself in a cage of irrational rules because that makes you feel safe,’ Acheron countered, striding across the hall with her still cradled in his arms. ‘But I can keep you safe too...’

Only he could still hurt her, just as easily as he could silence her arguments and sweep her literally off her feet, Tabby acknowledged feverishly even as her fingers reached up of their own accord to skate admiringly along the clean, hard line of his jaw. ‘You don’t make me feel safe.’

‘But then you don’t trust anyone,’ Acheron countered with a swift downward glance at her anxious face. ‘Neither do I. Even so, I can promise you that I won’t lie to you.’

‘Not much of a comfort when you could give tips to Machiavelli on how best to get your own way by nefarious means,’ Tabby traded, provoking a surprised laugh from Acheron as he mounted the stairs. She knew decision time had come and gone and she wanted his mouth on hers so badly that it literally hurt even to think about it.

He lowered her to the carpet to open the first door, grabbed her hand as though he was afraid she would run off last minute and virtually dragged her into his bedroom. ‘Now, I finally have you where I want you. Can you believe that this is our wedding night?’

‘But it isn’t...we’re not really married.’ Tabby leant back against his bedroom door, taut with tension because she was sincerely out of her comfort zone and could scarcely breathe for nerves. ‘Let’s not kid ourselves about that. Neither one of us ever had any plans to make this a proper marriage. I may be wearing a wedding ring but it’s meaningless.’

Acheron didn’t know a single woman of his acquaintance who would have reminded him of that fact at that precise moment, or who would have come to his bedroom without a carefully set agenda of ambitious and mercenary acquisition in mind. In the strangest possible way, Tabby was a breath of fresh air in his life, he reflected, uneasy with the thought.

‘I know.’ Like a hunter stalking a wary doe, Acheron approached and closed both of his hands over hers to pull her forward into his arms. ‘But nothing that feels as exciting as this could possibly be meaningless,’ he traded huskily.

‘It’s only hormones.’

‘Says the woman who hasn’t a clue what’s going to be happening in that bed,’ Acheron teased, feathering his mouth hungrily over the soft, silky contours of hers and making her shiver.

‘Of course I know what happens...’ But she still didn’t quite know what she was doing there with him, breaking her rules of self-protection by letting him get that close, risking the vulnerability she always shunned. ‘It’s just sex,’ she told him staunchly.

‘It will be amazing sex,’ Acheron predicted, skimming the straps down on her dress, pressing his hungry mouth to a slight-boned shoulder while pressing her close, letting her feel the hard-packed urgency in his lean body while reminding himself that he would have to go slow.

‘I love your confidence,’ Tabby whispered half under her breath.

‘I thought it annoyed you.’

Tabby stretched up on tiptoe to link her arms round his neck and tug his handsome dark head down to her level. ‘Shut up,’ she told him helplessly, entrapped by dark eyes blazing like a banked golden fire across her face.

Acheron hoisted her off her feet and brought her down at the foot of the bed to flip off her shoes. ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he admitted.

‘If it hurts, it hurts,’ Tabby said prosaically, determined not to surrender to apprehension because, with the single exception of her deep attachment to Amber, she had never felt as much as he made her feel either emotionally or physically. She supposed she was suffering from some kind of idiotic infatuation with him but assumed it would fade as time went on. ‘Is this a one-time thing?’ she asked him abruptly.

Engaged in slipping off her shoes, Acheron glanced back at her, amusement playing attractively about the wilful, passionate set of his mouth. ‘You can’t plan everything in advance, Tabby.’

‘I do,’ she told him tautly. ‘I always need to know exactly where I am and what I’m doing.’

And his mouth claimed hers slow and deep and hungry and the tight knot of anxiety inside her unfurled because, in that moment, her senses locked to his, her body screaming with eagerness for more...more...more, and she couldn’t stay focused the way she usually did. He unzipped the dress and extracted her from its folds with an ease and exactitude that briefly chilled her because she discovered she couldn’t bear to think of him with the other lovers who must have honed his skills.

‘What’s wrong?’ he prompted, more attuned to her than she had expected, instantly picking up on her renewed tension.

Perhaps she was, at heart, a terribly jealous, possessive person, she reasoned in mortification, troubled by her thoughts and wondering how she could possibly know what she was like when she had never enjoyed a deeper relationship with a man. There she perched, shivering a little in spite of the warmth of the room, suddenly conscious that she was clad only in bra and knickers and that her body was far from perfect.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she breathed while he continued to study her troubled face with a frown. ‘All right!’ she exclaimed as if he had repeated the question. ‘I was just thinking that you’re very smooth at stripping clothes off a woman!’

And Acheron burst out laughing, revelling in that honesty, appreciating that she would simply say whatever she thought without considering its impact and instead saying only what he might want to hear. That quality was another rarity in his world. ‘Thank you...I think,’ he teased.

‘And you’re still wearing too many clothes,’ Tabby protested, all too aware of her own half-naked state as she struggled not to recall that she had really tiny breasts and was pretty skinny everywhere else where it was said to matter to a man. After all, regardless of her deficiencies, he wanted her. That was a certainty that buoyed her up as she watched dark golden eyes flare over her with unashamed desire and appreciation.

He laughed and shed his shirt, kicked off his shoes with the complete unselfconsciousness of a male who had never been inhibited in a woman’s presence or constrained by the fear that a woman might not admire what he had to offer. Her throat ran dry as he unveiled the superb expanse of his bronzed torso, exposing the lean, ripped muscles of his six-pack. Poised there, black stubble darkening his handsome jaw, eyes glinting, hair tousled by her fingers with his jeans hanging low on his narrow hips as he unzipped them, he was as gorgeous as a tiger in his prime: glossy and strong and beautifully poised.

She tried and failed to swallow when she saw the tented effect of his boxers, the all too prominent evidence of his readiness outlined by the fine fabric. When his long, elegant hands began to sweep off that final garment she averted her attention and reached back awkwardly to unhook her bra, peeling it off before scrambling below the linen sheet to rip off her knickers in an effort to seem a little more in control than she was.

‘I want you so much, koukla mou,’ Acheron growled, yanking the sheet off her from the foot of the bed so that she sat up again, wide-eyed and thunderously aware of her nakedness. ‘I also want to see you, watch you—’

‘There’s not a lot to see!’ she gasped, her small body crowding back against the banked-up pillows.

Acheron locked a hand round one slender ankle and pulled her very gently down the bed. ‘What I see is beautiful,’ he breathed thickly, his hungry scrutiny skimming from the tangle of blonde curls at the apex of her thighs to the glorious hint of secret pink beneath and the mouth-watering swell of her breasts topped by prominent pale pink nipples. In one movement he was up on the bed by her side.

‘I’m not.’

‘Don’t want to hear it!’ he interrupted, long fingers fisting in the tumble of her golden hair to hold her still as he skated his mouth back and forth over her lips until they parted and his tongue speared inside, delving and exploring with a thoroughness that deprived her of breath and sanity. He could kiss, oh, yes, he could kiss, and then his fingers teased very gently at her straining nipples and he lowered his mouth there, catching a painfully sensitive peak between his lips and plucking it with a tugging intensity that made her nipple throb and arrowed heat straight down into her pelvis.

She trembled, and her spine arched as he pressed her flat on the mattress, dividing his attention now between the distended buds, suckling on her, flicking his tongue back and forth until the tingles of awareness rose like a tide to engulf her. She trembled, insanely aware of the gathering of heat and moisture between her thighs and the intolerable ache building there along with the desperate desire to be touched.

‘You’re very responsive,’ Acheron purred, studying her with heavy-lidded eyes the colour of melted toffee set between the twin fringes of his black lashes. He skimmed a hand down her thigh, stroked her between her legs, and her hips shifted up in supplication. He possessed her swollen mouth again with carnal hunger before he sent a finger delving into her hot, damp heat.

A sound of helpless keening pleasure was wrenched from Tabby. All of a sudden everything she was feeling was centred in that one tormentingly sensitive area of her body. He settled his mouth to her throat and nuzzled a leisurely trail along the side of her neck, awakening nerve endings she had not known she possessed. What she could not understand was that in the space of minutes she had travelled from not being very sure of what she was doing to craving what he was offering with every straining sinew in her body.

‘If at any stage you want me to stop, just say so, koukla mou,’ Acheron husked.

‘Wouldn’t that be very difficult for you?’ she whispered, her hand smoothing down over his muscled chest to discover the thrusting power of his erection.

‘I’m not a teenager. I can control myself,’ Acheron growled, arching up into her hand as she traced the velvet-smooth hardness of his shaft while marvelling at the size of him. In that field, he had more than she had expected, more width, more length, and she didn’t want to think about how on earth he could make them fit as nature had intended. With a slight but perceptible shudder of reaction he relocated her stroking fingers to his muscled abdomen and added, ‘As long as you don’t do too much of that.’

Satisfied that she could affect him as much as he affected her, Tabby lay back only to release a whimper of startled sound as he circled her clitoris with expert fingers, unerringly striking the exact spot and the exact pace that would drive her over the edge fastest. Her heart was racing when he shifted down the bed, slid between her thighs and employed his mouth there instead. She had known about that, of course she had known, and had never thought she could be that intimate with any man but the insane pleasure he gave her drove all such logic from her mind, and she gasped and writhed and cried out. Enthralled by an exquisite torture of sensation that built and built, her body leapt out of her control altogether and jerked spasmodically into an intense climax that left her weak.

In the aftermath, Acheron rose up over her, lean, dark features taut and flushed with hunger, and she could feel the wide, blunt tip of him at the heart of her, pushing, precisely stretching her inner sheath until a sudden sharp pain made her cry out in surprise, and he froze in place.

‘Do you want me to stop?’ Acheron prompted raggedly.

‘No point now.’ Tabby could see he was in no condition to stop, could feel him hard and pulsing and alien inside her. In any case, the pain of his invasion had already faded and the ache of hollow longing he had roused still lingered. She wrapped her arms round him, instinctively urging him on, fingers smoothing across the bronzed satin of his broad back.

‘You’re so tight,’ he rasped, shifting with an athletic lift of his lean hips to surge into her again, deeper, further, harder in a technique that met every physical craving she hadn’t known she had. ‘I’m incredibly turned on.’

The flood of sensation returned as he withdrew and plunged back into her again, ensuring that she felt every inch of his penetration. The intensity of sensation shocked her and the powerful contracting bands in her pelvis turned her into a fizzing firework of wild excitement. He moved faster and she clung, riding out the electrifying storm of passion with a heart that seemed to be thumping in her eardrums. The explosion of raw pleasure that followed stunned her as the inner convulsions of her body clenched her every muscle tight as a fist. He vented a shuddering groan of completion while the waves of delight went on and on and on, coursing through her thoroughly fulfilled body.

In a dazed state of abstraction, Tabby lay in the tumbled bedding afterwards, watching Acheron stride across the room to retrieve something before vanishing into the bathroom, from which she soon heard the sound of running water. The instant their encounter had finished, the very moment he had attained release, he had rolled away from her and made no effort to touch her again. She was painfully aware of how much she would have liked him to hold her close in a caring, affectionate way that acknowledged their new intimacy and it disturbed her that she should feel so hurt by his withdrawal. After all, she wasn’t looking for, or expecting, love or commitment, was she? No, she wasn’t that naive.

She had slept with Acheron because for the very first time she had felt a fierce desire to experience that extra dimension with a man. But his swift departure from the bed had disappointed her, leaving her feeling ridiculously used and rejected. That was silly, she told herself firmly, because when it came to what they had just done he had not taken advantage of her in any way. Indeed, to some degree she was willing to acknowledge that she had taken advantage of him the moment she had estimated that he would undoubtedly possess the erotic skills that were most likely to ensure that she received pleasure from her first experience. That didn’t, however, entitle him to forgiveness for disappointing her in the sensitive aftermath of sex.

Slithering out of bed, Tabby swiftly got dressed, finger-combing her tangled hair back off her damp brow before she approached the bathroom door.

A towel linked round his narrow bronzed hips, Acheron was in the act of stepping out of the shower cubicle.

‘A-star for the sex, F for failure for the follow-up,’ Tabby pronounced with scorn, mentally blocking out the lean, powerful vibrancy of his commanding presence. Yes, Acheron Dimitrakos was gorgeous but in her scheme of things that was unimportant in comparison to the way he treated her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IN RECEIPT OF that attack, Acheron stiffened in astonishment and angled his arrogant dark head back, his black-as-jet eyes gleaming with angry incomprehension even as his attention lingered on how astonishingly lovely Tabby looked fresh from his bed with her long blonde hair in a waving, tousled mass round her shoulders, her small face warm with self-conscious colour and her ripe pink mouth still swollen from his kisses. Even as he fought to think clearly, his reaction to that view and those thoughts was instantaneous and very physical. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The instant you had your satisfaction you leapt out of bed and abandoned me as though I was suffering from some horrid contagious disease,’ Tabby condemned. ‘Not an experience I would be tempted to repeat—you made me feel like a whore!’

‘That’s melodramatic nonsense,’ Acheron fielded with derision, willing back his increasing arousal with every fibre of his self-discipline.

‘No, I don’t think it is. You couldn’t even bear to hold me close for thirty seconds,’ Tabby reminded him doggedly. ‘Well, I think it’s sad that the only way you feel comfortable physically touching anyone is in a sexual way.’

Acheron cursed in Greek. ‘You don’t know me as well as you think you do. But I warned you that I didn’t do cuddling.’

‘You think that excuses you?’ Tabby asked with scornfully unimpressed eyes of violet blue dominating her flushed and furious face. ‘It doesn’t. It simply shows you up as selfish and inconsiderate, and I deserved better.’

‘I don’t fake affection for anyone just because it’s the acceptable thing to do,’ Acheron bit out between clenched teeth. ‘And I have so little practice at it, I would feel foolish and uncomfortable!’

And that was the most strikingly truthful thing he had told her about himself to date, Tabby reckoned, stunned by the raw honesty of that irate reply. Indeed his admission of ignorance and discomfiture squeezed her heart like a clenched fist. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she closed the distance between them, deliberately invading his personal space to stretch her arms round his neck and look up at him.

‘Practise on me,’ she urged quietly. ‘I practised on Amber. I wasn’t a very touchy-feely person either before I got to hold her for the first time.’

Acheron swallowed hard, insanely aware that she was making a platonic approach and quite impervious to the reality that below the towel he was still ragingly erect. He didn’t want to hug her as though she were his friend; he wanted to shag her senseless. But he knew that option wasn’t in the ring at that moment and he closed his arms round her slowly and lifted her to the other side of the big bathroom. ‘You shouldn’t have got dressed again,’ he scolded.

‘I assumed we were done,’ Tabby confided bluntly.

Acheron bent down and lifted the hem of her dress to take it off over her head. Totally disconcerted, Tabby froze there for a split second, her arms crossed defensively across her bare breasts. ‘What are you doing?’

Acheron hooked a finger into her knickers and jerked them down, lifting her again into his arms to trail them off. ‘I may have leapt out of bed but I was thinking about your comfort,’ he breathed as he lowered her down into the warm embrace of the scented water filling the bath. ‘Now lie back and relax.’

Thoroughly disconcerted, Tabby surveyed him in wonderment. ‘You came in here and ran a bath for me?’

‘I hurt you...I thought you’d be sore,’ he breathed huskily as he lit the candles in the candelabra by the sink and doused the lights.

‘It was just one of those things, not your fault.’ But Tabby reddened and sank deeper into the soothingly warm water, resting her head weakly back on the cushioned padding on the rim. In truth she was sore, that part of her so tender she was now uncomfortably aware of her pelvic area. What a pair they were, she thought morosely. He couldn’t do ordinary affection and she couldn’t do sex.

There was a pop as Acheron released a cork from a champagne bottle and sent bubbling golden liquid down into a pair of goblets.

‘Where did that come from? And the candles?’ she pressed weakly.

‘Honeymoon couple, wedding night? The staff had all the trimmings waiting in the bedroom... It would be a shame not to use them,’ Acheron remarked, perching on the side of the bath to offer her a glass of champagne.

‘No, thanks. I never drink,’ she said stiltedly.

Acheron thrust the glass into her hand. ‘Unless you have a drink problem, one glass isn’t going to do any damage.’

Her small fingers tensed round the stem. ‘No, I don’t have a problem but my parents did.’

‘That doesn’t mean you have to avoid it altogether.’

‘I always like to play it safe,’ Tabby confided, taking a small sip of the champagne, tiny bubbles bursting below her nose and moistening her skin.

‘I’m more of a risk-taker. I enjoy excitement,’ Acheron traded wryly.

‘I think I could’ve worked that out for myself.’

Acheron compressed his mouth, his eyes semi-concealed by his black lashes. ‘I didn’t stay in bed with you because I didn’t want you to have unrealistic expectations of our relationship.’

She grasped what he meant immediately and wished she didn’t, a tiny pang of hurt pinching somewhere down deep inside her. He didn’t want her getting the idea that there was anything more complex between them than straightforward sex. ‘I may be inexperienced but I’m not stupid,’ Tabby told him with pride.

‘And I’m not good with words if I gave you that impression,’ Acheron acknowledged grimly. ‘Tabby, I don’t have conversations like this with women. I’ve never met a woman like you.’

‘Are we still talking about me being a virgin?’ Tabby asked in a small voice.

‘I’m accustomed to women who know the score.’

‘I know it too,’ Tabby breathed, skimming a glance across his hard-edged profile, her chest tightening with a sense of constraint. ‘I’m a very practical person.’

Acheron scanned her small, tight face, the set grip of her tiny hands over her raised knees as he read the valiant defensiveness she used as a screen and his stomach hollowed out at the prospect of hurting her. He had never felt that way around a woman before and he didn’t like it at all. She might be fragile but she had made a choice, just as he had done, and they were both adults, he reminded himself impatiently as he straightened again.

At the same moment, Tabby sat up abruptly and set down the champagne flute, water sloshing noisily around her slight body. ‘Oh, my goodness, what am I doing in here? I can’t stay! The baby monitor is in my bedroom.’

‘Melinda will take care of Amber’s needs. Relax,’ Acheron urged.

‘Melinda can’t be expected to work twenty-four hours a day. I told her I’d take care of Amber at night,’ Tabby countered as she rolled onto her knees, concern for Amber overcoming her self-consciousness, and began to stand up. ‘Pass me a towel—’

‘No, you stay where you are,’ Acheron instructed, his hand closing over her shoulder to press her back into the warm water again. ‘I’ll collect the monitor and check on Amber as well.’

Her violet eyes widened. ‘You...will?’

Acheron strode back into the bedroom to retrieve his jeans and wandered back to the doorway, dropping the towel with total unselfconsciousness to pull on the jeans. ‘Why not? You’ve already shown me what to do with her if she’s crying.’

‘I wasn’t expecting you to help,’ Tabby commented. ‘It’s my job, not yours, after all.’

‘Our arrangement isn’t that clear cut. This is a joint venture when it comes to me requiring a wife and you requiring an adoptive father figure,’ Acheron reminded her, turning on his heel.

Stiff with uncertainty, Tabby lay back in the warm water and sipped the champagne while still feeling thoroughly confused by Acheron’s behaviour. She had got him wrong when she condemned him for abandoning her immediately after sex. But then, had the simple act of sex put him into a particularly good mood? Could a man be that basic? In consideration of her needs, he had run her a bath before he went for his shower. Now he was actually off to check on Amber for her as if the child was something more than the extra baggage she had assumed he deemed her to be. At the same time, however, he had also clearly felt the need to spell out the lowering message that the only thing between him and Tabby was sex. As if she didn’t already know that!

Acheron was the ultimate womaniser, steering clear of involvement and commitment. And why shouldn’t he? common sense asked. A young, handsome, wealthy male was in high demand in the world of women and had no need to settle on only one. In addition, Acheron had issues but then who didn’t after such a childhood as they had both undergone? In remembrance, Tabby suppressed a shiver. He had probably learned just as she had that if you kept everyone at arm’s length you didn’t get hurt.

But Tabby had moved on from that self-protective stance when she first opened her heart to friendship with Sonia and then Amber and finally understood how much more warm and satisfying life could be with love and loyalty in it. She knew she had lost her business and her first home because she had chosen to personally care for Sonia and Amber but she had no regrets about the choices she had made.