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slow, wondering relief. In his time away from her, Nik seemed to have shaken free of his anger and his bitterness and his desire to wound. 'I did try to tell you that nothing happ—'
'No...' Nik pressed a cool forefinger against her eagerly parted lips. 'Leave it all in the past, where it belongs.' Her eyes shadowed. 'But—'
'No more bad memories.' Brushing back the smooth hair falling across her cheekbone as she frowned, he murmured grimly, 'We were just kids, and kids do stupid things when they get in too deep too young.'
For a split second she wanted to protest that she hadn't done anything stupid, had indeed done nothing to deserve the condemnation she had suffered, but she sensed that it was neither the time nor the place to press that argument again. Nik had moved on, and in the short term so must she, unless she was prepared to risk the promise of a new and better understanding. As she lifted her head again, she collided with smouldering dark golden eyes. Instantly she was divorced from everything but her intense awareness of him. His lean, lithe powerful physique, the proud tilt of his well-groomed dark head, the strong cheekbones which stamped his bronzed features with such strength and character and the wicked sensuality of his beautiful mouth.
'I want you, yineka mou,’ Nik admitted with a boldness that shook her, his brilliant gaze roaming over her shapely figure with explicit hunger.
Just as suddenly, the atmosphere crackled with electric energy.
Olympia felt her face burn and her skin dampen. All sound around them was distanced, just as if the world had stopped. No longer did she hear the soft rush of playing water, the distant hum of voices in the hot still air. Her heartbeat thudded as she snatched in a stark breath. Embarrassment seized her as she became conscious of the heaviness of her breasts and the tormenting throb of her swollen nipples.
His hands on her tense shoulders, Nik drew her closer, a world of intimate knowledge in his stunning eyes. She trembled, the power of every sense heightened, an almost choking excitement currenting through her. But she found it unbearable to be held and not touched.
'It may hurt to wait, but anticipation makes the pleasure all the keener,' Nik muttered thickly, linking his fingers tautly to hers and urging her back into the sunlight.
Later she didn't recall that walk back to the limo, only that it left her with legs that felt as weak as cotton wool. Damianos mentioned something about lunch and Nik vented a ragged laugh. She looked at her watch, but she couldn't interest herself enough to focus and think. Nothing mattered but the burn of Nik's jaguar eyes on her, the possessive hold of his hand, a proximity which was as much a torture to her as a necessity,
She leant towards him in the back of the limo. His fabulous bone structure taut below his golden skin, he held her back. 'Not enough time,' he spelt out with roughened urgency, I don't want to be interrupted.'
Olympia snatched in a wavering breath as the limousine sped away. The silence sizzled. She was trembling. She skimmed a fascinated glance down at their still linked hands and felt as if her heart was expanding inside her constricted chest. A wealth of emotion was welling up within her. Fierce longing mingled with even fiercer hope.
For the first time in a month she truly understood herself. She didn't question from where her feelings had come, or even how, she simply accepted the reality of their existence. She loved Nik Cozakis. Not with the uncritical adulation of her youth but with the deep desperation of a woman, who knew the pitfalls and the probable hurt that lay ahead. Love wasn't on the agenda in their marriage deal.
The limousine pulled up in front of a palatial building built of ancient weathered stone. Nik tugged her out into the sunlight. With an inclination of his imperious dark head he acknowledged the respectful greeting of an older man standing on the steps and swept her straight through the imposing entrance into a dim interior. On his impatient passage to the stairs she glimpsed a mate dark antique furniture and a vast Persian rug lying on worn flagstones. From the stairs, she saw upturned curious faces studying them across the vast reception hall, and finally realised that they were in a very grand and no doubt very exclusive hotel.
She coloured. 'People are staring at us;—'
The shift of one broad shoulder signifying his supreme unninterest in the curiosity of strangers, Nik strode across the magnificent landing. A maid waiting there bobbed the equivalent of a curtsy and hastened to throw wide the double doors of a beautifully furnished reception room.
'This is really lovely—' Olympia began, just a tiny bit taken aback by the indecent speed with which they had arrived within reach of a bedroom and striving to play it cool. But Nik swung her back to him, cupped her cheekbones with hard, impatient hands and drove his lips down on hers with an explosive hunger that blew her away. She clung to his suit jacket to stay upright, whimpering low in her throat in startled response as his tongue stabbed sensually deep into the tender interior of her mouth.
'Theos mou... I need to be inside you,' Nik groaned in frustration as she lay against him, struggling to get air back into her lungs, her whole body weak with aftershocks and the kind of anticipation that reduced all self-discipline to rubble.
He gathered her up into his arms and strode with purpose into the bedroom. Lowering her back on to her feet, he pulled down the zip on her dress and brushed it from her shoulders so that it slid into a heap round her ankles. He scanned her scantily clad figure with heavily lidded golden eyes that made her entire skin surface burn and tingle and slowly settled her back on to the foot of the big bed.
Struggling to concentrate, Olympia muttered anxiously. 'Shouldn't we have checked in at Reception?'
Nik frowned. 'Why?'
'Because that's what people usually do...isn't it?’
‘Not when they own the hotel.'
'Oh...' Olympia watched him discard his superb tailored suit with the same sort of pent-up excitement she might have felt at the highest point of a roller coaster ride. Her heart was hammering so hard it was literally a challenge to breathe Her tongue couldn't form words. Her body trembled, awake and eager and utterly outside her control.
Across the room, she encountered dark golden eyes that made her head spin. She was weak with a wanting so powerful it hurt, but still she attempted to be sensible. 'We... we should talk first,' she whispered unevenly.
'At this particular moment?' Nik demanded in frank disbelief. 'No chance!'
Hot-faced, she surveyed him, her heartbeat pounding ;I insane rate in her own eardrums, her swollen lips parted, her mouth dry as a bone.
'This past week has felt like six months,' Nik imparted, Greek accent thick as molasses as he stripped off his boxer shorts and strode back to her, naked and glorious.
‘I feel like I'm going to die of excitement,' Olympia mumbled in honest shame, shattered by the strength of the craving he could rouse in her. With his eyes, with his words, with the hard, sleek urgent masculinity of his magnificent physique. He was pure, packaged sexual enticement at that moment, and she was enthralled.
As he came down to her, Nik treated her to a primal smile of promise. 'Not yet, pethi mou...but soon.' Already she ached for him, feverishly aware of the hot pulse between her thighs. She held herself very still as he skimmed the straps of her bra out of his path and eased away the embroidered cups to expose her full breasts and their prominent pink peaks.
Venting a groan of satisfaction, Nik captured a sensitive bud between his lips and laved it with the tip of his tongue. With a gasp of reaction, she arched her hips off the bed.
Raising his head, Nik pushed his hands beneath her hips and removed her briefs. He let his tongue delve into the sucked-in hollow of her navel while his skilled fingers went on to explore the straining length of one taut thigh. She jerked, almost out of her mind with excitement. Then without warning found herself wondering if it was always like this for him with a woman, indeed, if he was the same with other women, and she tensed, coldness touching the fire burning through her.
She looked up at him, lifted an unsteady ha
nd to stroke her fingers through the black hair she had already tousled and let her fingertips trail back down over one high, proud cheekbone to the firm curve of his chiselled mouth. For a split second, eyes as dark as jet assailed hers. Nik ravished her mouth with his again. It drove her mind blank, shut out everything but the all-consuming power of sensation and her own needy response. Casting aside her bra, he directed his attention back to the tender flesh he had already sensitised. She squirmed and gasped out loud, the heat building in the pit of her stomach sending a message of fire to the very heart of her.
'Theos...if I had touched you in the car, I would have had you,' Nik swore with a ragged laugh. 'Sometimes you turn me on so fast and hard, I feel like an animal.'
'I want you too...' she confided unsteadily, desperate need digging talon claws of impatience into her.
He touched her then, where she so needed to be touched. He discovered the swollen damp welcome that already awaited him and with a hungry growl he shifted and pushed her thighs back with determined hands.
She saw the wildness in him as he came down over her. It was a savage hunger for possession that melted her skin to her bones. His cheekbones were taut and flushed, his brilliant eyes blazing. She lay there pliant and exposed, exulting in his forceful maleness with every fibre of her being.
'I am burning for this,' Nik intoned quietly, with feeling fervour.
He entered her with a single driving thrust that wrenched a keening moan of shaken response from her. Buried deep inside her, he gazed down at her with burning satisfaction and rasped, 'You feel like hot silk. This...being with you again...is all I've thought about since I left you.'
She couldn't speak. The intimacy of his bold possession brought a wave of delight that was blindingly intense. Every inch of her quivering body was leaping with crazy excitement, and with his every virile stroke the level of her craving for him increased. Heart banging, pulses pounding, she clung to him. Wild sensation overwhelmed her with hot, drowning pleasure. Then a shooting starburst of explosive heat consumed the last of her awareness and left her freefalling from mindless ecstasy back to the real world again.
