A Greek Escape(35)

‘And now you’re looking and feeling thoroughly chastened,’ he remarked laughingly, catching her hand in his while his fervid gaze played with dark intensity over her small fine features, coming to rest on the pouting fullness of her mouth.

‘You’re very perceptive,’ she breathed, hardly able to speak because of the wild responses leaping through her from his dangerous and electrifying nearness. ‘And for a man without ambition you certainly believe in getting what you want.’

‘You’d better believe it,’ he asserted softly.

Even in a whisper his voice conveyed a determination of purpose that none of the self-important types she had known had ever possessed, and it sent little skeins of excitement unravelling through Kayla’s insides.

‘As for my lack of ambition… As I said, you’d be surprised. But what might not surprise you right now is to know that my most burning ambition is to feel you lying beneath me and to taste those sweet lips again, agape mou. To make love to you slowly and thoroughly until you’re crying out for my length inside you. And I think at this moment you want the same thing—regardless of how unfulfilled or goalless you think I am.’

She wanted to protest but it would have been pointless, Kayla realised. She was already melting the moment his mouth came down over hers. She responded to it hungrily—greedily—her arms going around his neck, pulling him down to her as if she could never have enough.

Their kissing was hot and impassioned—a passion demanding only to be fed as, mouths fused, they sank together onto the sun-warmed grass. And Leonidas did as he’d wanted to do since he had arrived at Philomena’s house that morning: tugged firmly on the ties of Kayla’s blouse.

He gave a sigh of satisfaction when it fell open, revealing the pale lace and satin of her bra.

Slipping a finger inside, he revelled in the warmth of her soft skin before he pulled down the lace, releasing one modest-sized breast from its restraining cup.

Small, he measured, moulding the soft pale mound to his work-roughened palm, yet perfectly in proportion to the rest of her and more than satisfyingly sensitive, he realised as he caressed the pale pink areola into burgeoning arousal.

She moaned softly from the excitement of what he was doing to her. She arched her back, aching for his mouth over the swollen nipple, and almost hit the roof when he suddenly dipped his head and granted her wish.

There was no one and nothing around them. Nothing except the wash of the waves on the beach below them and the wind that was teasing her hair into the finest strands of spun gold, inviting him to touch it, caress it, lose himself in the perfume that was all woman, all her own.

His lips were burning kisses over her breasts, her throat, the tender line of her jaw, finding and capturing her mouth again with the dominant pressure of his.

‘Leon…’

She breathed his name into his mouth, saying it as no one had said it in a long, long time. No one called him Leon these days. Only Philomena…

Far away from this idyll, back in London, in Athens and on the corporate world stage, he was known only as Leonidas. Leonidas Vassalio. Hard-headed businessman. Decisive. Practical. Ruthless…

The reminder almost dragged him back to his senses, but not quite.

Her hands had ripped open his shirt, and he gave a deep guttural groan at their caressing warmth over his bared chest, but they were travelling downwards—down and down—in a quest to drive him wild, break his control.

He sucked in his breath, every nerve flexing like tautened wire, until finally, when she touched that most intimate part of him, even through his clothes, he was lost.

He wanted to stop this madness. Come clean about who he was. Because how could he justifiably do this with her if he didn’t?

But as if sensing his reticent moment she was begging him not to stop, and her whimpers of need were all it took to bring about his final undoing.

If he told her who he was now he would be inviting her anger, and he couldn’t face that, he realised in meagre justification. Couldn’t ruin the mood and her artless belief in him no matter how much he knew he should.

It took little effort to remove her shorts, with her lace-edged briefs following them to where he’d cast them aside.

She was beautiful. A natural blonde, he noted with a soft smile of satisfaction as her legs parted before him and she lifted her body in a sobbing invitation for him to claim his prize.

It would be so easy, Leonidas thought, to remove his own clothes and take all that she was offering, assuage the fire that was burning in his groin. Just one thrust could take him to paradise…