"I think we are dangerous together."
He pushed her back onto the bed.
She met his gaze, her own determined. "I want you now, Nikos. No more games."
"This is no game,pethi mou ."
And it felt all too serious when one hand cupped her breast, the thumb brushing over her nipple while his other hand clasped her shoulder, holding her body in place as she tried to arch off the bed at the contact.
She moaned, unbearably aroused by his refusal to let her move. She didn't understand why it should be so, or why he felt the need to keep her still. But it didn't matter. Because it was the way it was and it was so intense she could barely stand it.
Her eyelashes fluttered shut and all she could do was feel. Feel his hard thighs straddling her. Feel his hands both cupping her breasts now, teasing the rigid tips with his thumbs. She didn't try to move as if they had made a silent agreement for her not to do so. Gently he pinched, then pulled the hard nubs until she wanted to scream.
"Please don't stop," she whispered into the dark void behind her eyelids.
She continued to feel. Feel the pleasure-tension spiraling in her. Feel her body suffuse with heat and need that grew so big she felt like it would explode out of her before he ever made her his. The scent of their arousal surrounded her as did his personal fragrance.
She could hear her own panting exhalations and his harsh breathing, both sounds like an internal caress that added to the desire coiling tighter and tighter within her. He shifted and the darkness behind her eyelids grew more acute as if she was in his shadow. Then his mouth was on hers—first devouring, then tenderly teasing and then devouring again.
He played on all of her senses, building her to a fever pitch and then drawing her back again. Repeating the process over and over again, but he was right. It was all much too intense to be called a game.
This man was determined to show her that they fit. That their bodies were perfect complements for each other, or maybe simply that his body could give her more pleasure than any other man would ever be able to.
She had no doubts as she writhed under him.
"Nikos! Please…" But she didn't know what she was pleading for. Completion? Or more of this maddening pleasure?
Nikos' heart contracted at the sound of his name whispered so desperately on Ash's lips. She was so passionate. So responsive. In every way she fit him. Soon she would understand that truth as well.
He laved the sweet hollow in her throat. "You are so perfect for me,pethi mou ," he said gutturally.
Her head was twisting on the pillow, but he knew she was not denying him. She was simply beyond the ability to respond verbally. And he had brought her to this state.
Pride surged through him. She had not been a virgin, as she had said she wasn't, but her responses were too overwhelming for her to have ever known what she felt with him with another man. She had said it was different for her, that she had not known this and he believed her.
In this way, he knew he was her first and for no reason he could logically explain, that was very important to him. He had never considered himself a possessive man when it came to his female companions, but then he had never made love to a woman with the intention of claiming her for a lifetime, either.
He moved back off her thighs and removed the last scrap of cloth standing between her and total nudity. No time to draw it out. No will to do so. It was time to claim her. He made quick work of donning protection.
He was pushing her thighs apart, preparing to enter her when he realized he wished to be claimed as well. He did not want mere compliance about this marriage thing. He wanted Ash to be sure of him. To want more than his body.
For a moment in that bed, the small boy who had withstood the taunts of other children in his small Greek village because he had no father broke through Nikos' adult armor. He needed to know he belonged.
He looked down at Ash. "Do you want me inside you?" He stopped moving…stopped touching…and waited.
Her eyes fluttered open. The deep-blue green of the Mediterranean stared at him, shiny and damp with emotion. "Yes, Nikos, only you…inside me."