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‘I know I can’t ask for more, I know that is impossible, but please. Let me have what little I can.’
Lykos felt the whispered words against his skin, sinking deep into his body, his soul.
‘You deserve more thana little, Marit, you deserveeverything.’
‘I don’t want what you think I deserve. I want you.’
The simple words stripped a layer from the walls he’d placed between himself and his princess. He searched her eyes, looking for doubt, looking for uncertainty, but all he saw was naked pleading and she should never have had to beg.
‘No more,’ he whispered to himself.
‘What?’
‘I will fight you no more,’ he said, just before he lowered his head and swept his lips across hers.
The feel of his lips against hers swept all her concerns away: fear that he would reject her, that he didn’t want her. It was too close to how everyone else treated her, but Lykos was different. This Lykos, his lips claiming hers, was everything. Marit knew what she was asking for, despite her practical innocence. But to enter a loveless marriage without ever knowing the intimate touch of affection would be a tragedy to someone who felt so much.
When Lykos touched her she feltalive. Alive in a way she’d only felt when she was playing the piano. It was as if she were the musical instrument that sang beneath his deft fingers, strings vibrating and trembling, a tone so pure, so true and clear, that it was a siren’s call, weaving a spell that affected them both equally.
His tongue swept across her lips, teasing her until she opened for him and,oh...
As Lykos took possession of the kiss all rational thought stopped and Marit succumbed to pure sensation. His tongue danced with hers, pulling a crescendo from deep within her, rushing towards some seemingly impossible conclusion. His hands cradled her face and she leaned into the gentle cage, wanting to feel him against her skin everywhere. Her heart fluttered in her throat as if wanting to escape her body and fly to his.
Her hands slipped beneath his jacket to the breadth of his shoulders, his skin hot beneath her palms through the soft cotton of his shirt. She clung to him, to the muscles rippling beneath her touch, and realised just how much he was holding himself back. And she didn’t want him to hold back. She wanted him as Lykos. Unleashed, powerful, demanding and challenging. Everything that people around her thought she was unworthy of, or too delicate for.
She pushed his jacket from his shoulders, neither caring where it fell, and her hands swept down, over biceps and elbows to a waist corded with muscle, and pulled the shirt free of his belt. They’d done this before, the echo of déjà vu pulsing between them, making Lykos pull back from the kiss and study her once again.
Marit felt the loss keenly and almost followed him back as he leaned from the reach of her lips, but he soothed the loss by sweeping his hand from her cheek to rest it against the thunderous beating of her heart. The gentle pressure was reassuring and comforting in a way that was nothing to do with the sensual play between them and spoke of something deeper, something lasting, no matter how little time they had to share together.
‘Latriea mou,’he whispered, the lyricism of his words building a rhythm in her soul that she’d never forget. He shook his head, his eyes raking over her as if disbelieving of what he saw and, for the first time, Marit didn’t doubt that it washer. That he was cherishing, relishing and wondering purely ather. It was an intoxicating feeling, one she could quickly become addicted to if she were not careful.
‘Are you sure that this is what you want,agápi mou?’
She nodded but, seeing the pleading look in his eyes, put her intent to words. ‘Absolutely.’
‘If you change your mind, if you want to stop for any reason—’ Marit was already shaking her head, but again he gave her a look that warned her,wantedher, to take this seriously. That he cared more for her needs than any discomfort of his own meant too much to her. She didn’t know what to do with that, so she closed the distance between them and drew his bottom lip between her teeth and nipped him gently, quickly soothing the sting with a sweep of her tongue.
Shock and surprise were evident on his face for about two seconds before desire lit his eyes like fireworks and he plundered her mouth with his own. Marit lost her breath and her mind to the kiss. For what felt like hours she drowned in exquisite sensation. The way his tongue teased and taunted, his lips bringing moans of want and cries of need from her mouth, his hands leaving her face to mould a body that rose to his touch, as if she were a marionette and he held her strings—the connection between them invisible but too tangible not to be real. Marit felt as if she’d been living a half-life until his touch.
Frustration began to unspool within her, twisting and turning from her core, making her hot and unsettled. She wanted their clothes gone, she wanted him against her, her body’s primal reaction to him instinctive and urgent. This time she drew the kiss to an end, shifting her thighs together and the heat of impatience stinging her cheeks. She didn’t know how to ask for what she wanted. Sheheardit, a whole string quartet played in her mind of what she wanted Lykos to do to her, to dowithher. But the words...
She felt his eyes rake over her assessingly and then at the same time they both said, ‘Bedroom.’
Marit couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up, cutting through the frustration and building something softer, sweeter, but no less needy between them. As if he’d come to a decision, Lykos nodded to himself in that way of his and swept her up into his arms, marching them up the staircase of his townhouse towards the floor where she had got dressed earlier that evening. But instead of turning into the guest suite Lykos pressed forward and they entered his room, his footsteps slowing, his eyes only for her as he shifted his hold so that she could stand on her own two feet again, but still within the circle of his hold.
Once again, his hand rose to cup her jaw. His eyes flashed silver in the dark room. Two large sash windows displayed a magnificent London skyline, but Marit wouldn’t look away for the world.
‘Kardiá mou, Marit...’ He seemed as unable as she was to be without touch or contact for long—as if they knew how little time they had to share and couldn’t, wouldn’t, waste a moment of it. ‘I wish you could see what I see,’ he said between the kisses he pressed to her lips, her throat, her collarbone, following the pattern his fingers traced across her skin.
Her hands clung to his waist, pulling him to her, relishing the feel of the power and length of him against her body and finally, when he leaned back, she had enough room to sneak her hands between them. Quick fingers made light work of the buttons on his shirt and she spread his shirt apart and slipped it from his shoulders, all the while unable to remove her gaze from his chest. Her palms itched to feel the swirls of dark hair covering the clearly defined muscles that spoke not of hours in the gym but pure raw masculinity and power.
She could feel the weight of his gaze as he watched her taking him in, the depth of his curiosity, but, drawn back to him by that invisible string, she pressed kisses to his chest and thought she heard him groan, felt it in her core. Downward her kisses went, but when she reached the snap on his trousers he gently pulled her away, turning her in his arms so that she faced the windows and a large standing mirror in the corner of the room.
‘It’s my turn,’ he whispered as he kissed just beneath her ear, sending a shiver of sparks over her body and pebbling nipples already teased and needy. Her breath stuttered in her chest as he swept her hair over one shoulder, his fingers finding the barely visible zip at the back of the dress and slowly, ever so slowly, drew the tab downwards. In the mirror she could see that his eyes followed the path of the zip and his hands, relished the slight flush beneath the tan of his skin, the way his lips had parted slightly as if so utterly consumed by what he was seeing he’d given up all self-awareness. Marit took all that in and more.
The way her own eyes hungrily devoured him, the way her body responded to his, standing taller, prouder, empowered by his need. That his arousal and desire would feed her own was something she never could have expected or imagined. She bit her lip and in the mirror saw wantonness and need. She saw not the loss of innocence but the gain of something wondrous and her heart sank the moment she realised that she couldn’t keep this, couldn’t keephim.
Without a title, he would never have a place in her future and in that second she knew she would never have the chance to feel loved for ever. The only thing that kept her standing was the knowledge that she would take this moment with her, and it made her bold when she might not have been otherwise, made her determined when she might have conceded power. Lykos met her gaze in the mirror and she could feel the question hanging in the air, before she shrugged the dress from her shoulders and bared herself to him.
