TINA KNEW SHE was acting childishly, just as Kairos had predicted. She knew she was letting her emotions rule her head once again.
But she couldn’t just sit there, with the pity gift he’d probably had his assistant order for her, mocking her. God, she hated herself for the leap in her pulse when he’d kissed her cheek, the hope bubbling in her throat when he’d placed the present in front of her.
She couldn’t face him knowing that sooner or later he was going to find out what a spectacular failure she was; couldn’t pretend anymore that being around him—seeing him day in and day out—wasn’t wearing her down.
She walked away from the dance floor into the interior of the nightclub.
Black marble gleamed at her feet. Slowly, the music and noise from the crowd faded. She reached a door marked VIP lounge and hesitated.
When the six-foot-tall guard let her through without raising a brow, she slipped into the room.
The silence in the room was absolute. It was properly soundproofed. Black leather sectionals lined the entire back wall. Except for soft recessed lighting, the room was all shadows. She opened the refrigerator built discreetly into the wall. More wine and champagne.
It was so tempting to have some more. To bury the sensation of sinking, the bitterness of knowing that Kairos was right about her.
Instead she took out a bottle of water. She picked up one of the remotes. The music system, built into the walls, came on. Alicia Keyes crooned out a love song.
Sighing, she turned to the wall that was completely glass and looked down to the dance floor.
She sensed Kairos’s presence behind her even before she heard him. Her spine felt like it would crack in two at the rigidness she infused into it. For a man who was six foot four and built like a bouncer, he’d always moved with such economy of movement. She chanced a quick look.
He was leaning against the door. Black dress shirt and black trousers—he could have blended into the shadows if didn’t have such an electric presence. Goose bumps rose over her arms, remembered sensations zigzagging over her skin.
It had been foolish to think he wouldn’t follow her. Right now, she was sort of an important asset to his complex machinery. Why had she trapped herself in here with him? Especially in the reckless mood she was in.
Even though they had shared a bedroom for the last month, she had left herself no chance to be alone with him. He worked late most nights, closeted in the study with Theseus and after sixteen-hour days with barely a break for dinner, she had been falling into exhausted sleep.
Now they were enclosed in the dark room—every sound and sight of the outside world cut off, electricity charging the air. His desire was like a scent she couldn’t escape and every cell in her responded to it.
He’d never given her anything as a husband—not a word of praise, not a token gift, not a gesture of affection. But the knowledge of his desire for her, and that it seemed unquenchable, was a powerful aphrodisiac. It filled her with a false feeling of power over him, over this situation between them.
She turned and faced him, the harsh beauty of his face stealing her breath away. “Go back to your...strategies. Christian will drive me back to the house.”
He prowled into the dark room, picked up the bottle she had left on the table and emptied it within seconds. “You’re upset. You’ve been upset from the minute you walked into the nightclub. What happened?”
His concern, shockingly, was genuine. And it would only make her weak. “I won’t run away in the middle of the night, if that’s what you are worried about.”
His growl was soft yet so loud in the soundproofed room. Goose bumps broke out on her skin. “Forget about the damned company for a second, Valentina. Forget about Theseus and Maria and Helena. Forget about our godforsaken pretense of a marriage. I’m asking you to tell me what’s bothering you. Whatever it is, I will solve it for you.”
“I don’t want your help or your damn pity gift, or your concern.”
“It is not a pity gift. I feel any number of things for you, Valentina, but pity is not one of them.”
“I don’t want any more clothes or jewelry or shoes. Giving me those things when I insist that they don’t matter to me anymore only hurts me. Deeply.” She hugged her middle. “I never thought you were a particularly cruel man. Heartless, but not cruel.”
“It is not any of those things.” His breath hissed out. “And I don’t... I don’t like hurting you. I never wanted to. Well, except for that night when I found you on the yacht.”
“What is it then? The gift?”
“A subscription to an American network channel that streams Westerns. All you have to do is plug in the serial number on that card and you can stream an unlimited number of shows and movies.” His mouth pursed at her silence. “I heard you and Theseus discuss them the other day. It would be a good way to pass Saturdays. He loves it when you join him to watch those movies.”
Shock enveloped her, followed by a rush of such powerful joy that she felt dizzy. “I...don’t know what to say.” She felt vulnerable, small. The strength of what she felt for him...she shook from it.
A flash of light illuminated his face. His nostrils flared, his mouth tightened. “I was cruel and harsh toward you that night. All through our marriage, really. I don’t know diplomacy with you. I don’t know how to soften my words. You...you weren’t what I expected. Your days were filled with shopping and parties. You dressed outrageously. You flirted with every man you met—”
“I only did that after we were married,” she shouted into the dark.
“How is that better?” He spoke more and more softly, gritting the words out.
With every step he took toward her, she stepped back. “I flirted to make you jealous. I flirted to get your attention. I flirted with friends who knew why I was doing it and who pitied my pathetic efforts. Because I was married to an uncaring beast.”
He stilled. And if she weren’t so miserable, Valentina could have laughed at the absurdity of it all. Hadn’t he realized such a small thing?
“I didn’t succeed even then, did I? You had no regard for me, I knew—”
He continued as if she hadn’t interrupted him. But any hint of warmth she’d seen earlier was gone. His eyes were chips of the coldest frost. His jaw set into a granite cast.
“You drove me crazy, Valentina. I couldn’t concentrate in meetings for worry of which party you would show up at that night, or with whom you would flirt all evening, or what hijinks you would get up to because I refused to cut the single friend I had. I canceled my trips abroad because I was worried what scandal you’d get into behind my back. I couldn’t sleep when I went to Beijing because I was so worried you’d stay out too long with those useless friends of yours in some damn club with no one to look after you. I wanted a wife—instead you were like a child, who wanted the latest, shiniest, most expensive toy.
“I didn’t know when you would decide you’d had enough of me. When you would ask your bloody brothers to purchase you a new man. When you would decide that you didn’t want me in your bed anymore. When you would decide to welcome another man into your body—”
Her hand flew at his cheek. The sound reverberated in the silence like the crack of thunder.
Valentina gasped, waves of pain radiating up her arm. Still, that pain was nothing compared to the hurt in her chest. His head jerked back but he didn’t even touch his cheek.
Her chest heaved, her breath rattling against the outrage she felt. “I’ve never looked at, much less thought of, another man since the first evening I saw you. Yes, I was shallow, naive, I had no purpose in my life. But what I gave to you, I gave it with conviction, with loyalty. You wanted a robot you could screw at night, a trophy you could display to the world during the day. You don’t know how to give, Kairos. But you don’t know how to receive, either. That first month... God, I was deliriously happy because of the orgasms you doled out. You shouldn’t have married me when you don’t know how to have a simple relationship.”
She made to get away from him but his arm snagged around her waist. She fell into his side, her breasts and belly pressed up against his hard body. Her breath was punched out of her, shallow and serrated. One hard thigh tangled between hers, rubbing at the center of all the ache. Wetness pooled at her sex, soaking into her flimsy thong.
A whimper fell from her mouth as she tried to move back and rubbed up a little more against him. One arm stayed tight around her waist while he lifted her chin with the other.
His silvery eyes glowed with unbanked desire. Both his hands gripped her hips now. Such large hands that his fingers could always easily span her waist. Her breath fell in soft pants, which seemed amplified in the room.
“It’s been more than ten months, now, Valentina. I’ve been going crazy with wanting you.”
Her eyes widened. “I don’t believe you. You...”
“Because I’m so dishonorable that I would bed another woman while my wife is missing? Because one woman is the same as the next for an ambitious, ruthless man like me? Because I didn’t miss you in bed with a longing that eats at me, a hunger that I can’t control?”
“Then why didn’t you come after me?”
“Because I don’t need you, Valentina.”
He growled the words out loud as if he could make them true and yet Tina knew that he meant them. Everything seemed to tilt and shift, the flash of hurt in his eyes when she’d called him a robot, not imagined but real.
For the first time, he felt like a flesh-and-blood man. He was determined to prove to her, and more important, to himself, that he didn’t need her.
Why was he so determined to keep her out, to pretend that he didn’t care? The gift, this night, his care for her when she was exhausted—everything said he did care.
Further thought was extinguished when his mouth fell onto hers with a rapacious hunger. Relief poured through her, twisting with need. She missed his body, the sense of excitement and danger as he toppled her inhibitions one by one. She missed his bruising kisses, his insatiable appetite that drew out her pleasure until she was begging him, even the epithets that flew from his lips during sex.
His tongue plunged into her mouth, sliding and stroking around her own. Power. Passion. Possession. His mouth stamped all of them over hers. His stubble rasped roughly against her jaw, her lips stinging from the torturous pleasure.
Her hands roamed all over him—the broad shoulders, the muscled arms, the defined chest. The thud of his heart filled her with a reckless urgency. Just tonight, she promised herself. Just a few kisses.
His hands sunk into her hair, pulling at it roughly as he tilted her face up. Rough and hard, he kissed her as if he meant to devour her. As if she had finally pushed him over the edge.
She reveled in the pain and the pleasure his grip forced on her. Moans and whimpers, the sounds she made filled the quiet room. Her eyelids fell, her breath was not her own. An explosion of color filled her body as his mouth left hers to trail down her jaw. Featherlight kisses alternated with hard, guttural words from him in Greek.
She tugged at his hair, desperate to be closer. She shuddered as he sank his teeth into the crook of her neck. Her pulse beat fervently against his tongue. He closed his mouth against the tender skin and sucked. Tremors raced across her skin, pooling between her legs. He swept his tongue over the tender hurt. “Look at me, pethi mou. Look at what you drive me to, still. Look at what you turn me into.”
Raw desire glittered in his eyes. Tina gasped as cold glass pressed against her bare buttocks. And in front of her he was a cauldron of desire. Heat blasted up her neck and into her cheeks as she realized he had walked her to the back of the room. Shock and desire made her voice strange, husky. Fingers bunching into his shirt, she fought the sensual haze. “We’re...they can...”
“No one can see you but me, Valentina. No one knows this body except me, ne? Let them be witness to what you drive me to. Let me take you here, in a public place with nothing but a flimsy piece of glass separating us from the crowd. Does this tell you how much control I have? Does that tell you what insanity you drive me to?”
His hands tugged her dress up. Madness filled her body. Rough hands pulled her leg up to wrap it around his hip. She moaned loudly. Her aching sex pressed into his pelvis like that. So close. So hard. Head thrown back into the glass, Tina let herself drown in the sensation.
Nothing else remained anyway. Nothing she was good for. She wanted to gorge on the sensations he created. One callused hand cupped her buttock while one hand roughly pushed her thong out of the way. Gaze holding hers, he simply covered her mound with his palm. All the roughness, all the urgency faded. Soft and exploring, his fingers stroked the lips of her sex.
The intimacy of it in such a public place pushed her arousal to the edge. Her heart pounded, she was past rationality.
Slowly, his fingers separated her folds and dipped inside.
“You’re wet. So ready for me. Always ready for me.”
It was a statement that rang with masculine pride. Her palms flat against the glass, she shivered as he spread the dampness around her opening in mind-numbing circles with a thoroughness that cinched her body into a tight knot.
“Please, Kairos,” she whispered, burying her mouth in his neck. Roughly, she dragged the lapels of his shirt apart, until a button popped. She was ravenous for him. For his skin, For his taste. She licked the strong column of his throat. Tasted the sweat and masculinity of him.
He growled, the sound bursting out of his chest. His hand left her buttock. Valentina moaned in protest. But he only laughed. With deft movements, he undid the knot at the back of her neck.
The silky strings fell over her chest. His silver gaze held hers, a wicked smile curving his sensuous mouth. Slowly, he pulled the strings down.
Down, down, down until the dress flopped at her waist. It bunched around her hips, leaving her breasts and her sex exposed to his devouring gaze.
He looked like a marauder from the dark ages, the stamp of desire on his hard features. His gaze moved to her breasts. They were brown tipped and tight from the cold air kissing their pert tips. His breath fell in hot strokes. Their gazes held. Breath was fire in her throat. Callused fingers cupped their meager weight. Molded and cupped. He drew maddening circles around the aching tips.
And he bent, licking one engorged tip. Again and again. This breast and then that breast. He cupped them and pushed them up, his tongue flicking around and around. “You were right. I was a selfish bastard to have ignored these. To have overlooked what pleasure I could bring you by touching you here. Never again, pethi mou. Never will I neglect these again.” And then, as if to seal his promise, he opened his mouth and closed it over one turgid peak.
Tina shook and shuddered, coming off the wall as he suckled her deep into his mouth. Pleasure forked down from the tips of her breasts to her pelvis in deep, sharp arrows. He pressed his tongue against the tip and began the torturous pleasure all over again. Just when she thought she couldn’t bear it anymore, he started on the other breast.
The tremors coursing through her were constant now. Dampness coated her skin. His mouth still at her breast, he moved his hand down to her sex and penetrated her with a finger while his thumb pressed against her clit. Her head banged against the glass pane, Tina thrust her pelvis into his hand. Release was so close now, a shimmer of heat all over her skin, building and building.
“Open your eyes, agapita,” Kairos whispered huskily. His words vibrated against her skin, pulling that knot in her belly tighter. “I know what brings you over the edge.”
Tina looked down. His mouth was at her breast, his silver eyes darkened to a dark gray that happened only when he was aroused. His fingers didn’t stop their rhythm but it was the heat in his gaze that pushed her. He rubbed his cheek against the wet, glistening nipple. His thumb and forefingers pinched her clit just as he commanded, “Come for me, Valentina.”
Her orgasm broke over her, rolling and rippling through her in a flurry of waves that kept coming and coming. But he didn’t stop. His fingers kept her at that high, riding that swollen, sensitive bundle.
The aftershocks shook her muscles until she flopped her forehead onto his shoulder and arrested his wrist. She felt boneless, as if she were nothing but a conduit for pleasure and sensations. “Stop, please, Kairos. No more.”
His big hand remained between her thighs, soothing the tremors in her muscles. The other pushed back a damp tendril from her forehead. Tenderness. He’d always shown her tenderness in bed. For the span of a few minutes.
The last flutters of her release left her body, leaving an aching void behind. She’d challenged him so boldly that she would resist him. That she would never again fall into his arms. And here she was, her dress bunched up around her waist, against a glass wall while a crowd danced beneath them.
Still, there was a physical ache inside her where she wanted him. Needed him.
His mouth moved from her temple to her cheekbones to her jaw. His mouth was warm and hard, hungrier now. She thrust her tongue into his mouth, determined to pull him into the same sinking well of pleasure. He growled, his chest vibrating with it when she dug her teeth into his lower lip. Hard. And again.
He’d always controlled their sex life—when, where, how—all of it. Enslaved by the pleasure he gave, she’d allowed him to lead, blindly following. But no more.
Her hands automatically locked at his nape, pulling him closer.
His hard chest crushed her sensitive breasts. His hands were filled with her buttocks. Lifting her against the glass, he brought her pelvis closer to his erection.
Moans erupted from their mouths as he rocked into her. Thick and long, his erection pressed against her sensitized clit, sending a quiet flutter of sensation through her again.
“Put your hands up.”
A shiver went through her at the raw lust in the command. Denial whispered at her lips yet no words came out.
A rigid line to his mouth, he gripped her wrists and pulled her arms up. The arch of her spine pushed her breasts toward him. He didn’t let go of her wrists. As if he didn’t trust her. But his other hand, palm down, moved from her forehead to her nose, to her mouth.
When his fingers stilled at her lips, she instantly opened her mouth. She knew what he liked. He had trained her well enough. Though he had never let her take him in her mouth, even when she’d offered. But it wasn’t just that he had taught her what pleased him.
She was addicted to his pleasure. Drunk on the power she felt for the few minutes when he needed her so desperately. When his control balanced on a serrated edge.
And she needed that tonight. She needed him to want her as desperately as she’d needed his touch.
His features hardened when she sucked his finger into her mouth. A shudder went through him at her caress. The raw pleasure etched on his hard, implacable features turned her on as if he had touched her again at her core.
She had lived for those moments. She took each callused finger into her mouth one after the other, knowing that it drove him crazy.
His silvery gaze devouring her, he undid the clasp of his belt buckle. The soft rip of the zipper punctured the sound of her harsh breaths. His trousers fell from his hips with a shy whisper.
She had no will left. Her gaze dipped down to his groin. Heat broke out over her skin again, instant, explosive, like lightning appearing over a dark sky in the blink of an eye. She stared, greedy for the sight of him.
Reaching out boldly, she pushed his shirt up until a patch of his ripped abdomen was visible. Dark skin stretched taut over defined musculature delineated with a line of hair. Even the V at the juncture of his groin was well defined.
His cock—she blushed at thinking the word he’d made her say in the second week of their marriage—thickened and lengthened under her hungry gaze, the soft head already glistening wet.
He hustled her back toward the glass again, his hands kneading her buttocks. His mouth buried in her neck again. Her nipples, hard once again, poked at his chest. His hands were everywhere. Even after he’d given her release, he wouldn’t just take her. No, he built her body into a frenzy all over again.
If he had been a selfish lover, if he’d denied her pleasure even once, maybe she wouldn’t have become such a slave to it. And to him. But no, he pushed her again and again to the edge. To release.
Rough hands pushed her dress all the way down. “I need to be inside you. Now. Valentina.”
The question in his statement jerked her head up. He wouldn’t assume, he wouldn’t take.
“No!” The stillness that came over him had such restrained violence in it that she shivered.
In a fluid move, she sank to her knees.
His curse ripped the heavy silence when she wrapped her fingers around his hardness. Velvet-coated steel, he was so soft and yet so hard at the same time. His thigh muscles tensed like rocks when she braced her hands on them.
“Valentina, you don’t—”
“Will you give up control for a few minutes? Will you let me in?”
She didn’t wait for his answer. Bracing herself for the taste of him, she licked the soft head.
Salty and masculine. She looked up, her mouth open and ready. Tension etched onto every angle of his face. Such raw need and longing written on every hard plane of it that satisfaction pulsed through her.
Tilting her head down, she took him in her mouth this time. Another curse burst through the air. His hips jerked forward until he was filling her mouth.
Instantly, he pulled back. He was losing control. The thought spurred her on like a wild fire in the forest. Bene, she wanted him to lose control.
She repeated the movements of her mouth and hands. He said nothing, made no demands. When she glanced a look up at him, he growled an animalistic sound that sent shivers up and down her spine. But his body spoke for him. His hands had reached into her hair at some point. Every time she clasped him harder, he thrust a little into her mouth. Every time he hit the roof of her mouth, his thighs clenched a little more.
His body betrayed him, his need took over just as hers had done earlier. Using it, Tina sucked him harder, faster, intent on blowing his mind apart.
Her mouth felt hollow, her knees dug into the hard marble, her wrists were beginning to hurt from the repeated action but she didn’t care.
Every discomfort was worth it for now her husband had no control left. His hands in her hair directed her mouth where and how he wanted it. Deeper and faster and harder.
And then suddenly, he pulled out of her mouth. Rough hands grasped her under her shoulders and pulled her up. She swayed, her knees shaky, and he held her fiercely close with one arm while he stroked himself.
His roar of pleasure vibrated around them as he came against her belly.
Tina looked up, a fever of arousal in her muscles at how completely undone he looked. Silence beat down around them, punctured only by his harsh breaths. His head bent against her shoulder, his breath hit her in warm strokes. His powerful body was still shuddering against hers.
She had no idea how long they stood like that. The scent of his release and hers cloyed the air, leaving her no escape from it. When he looked up at her, she closed her eyes. His thumb traced the line of her jaw softly, almost with reverence.
Her eyes flew open when she felt his fingers on her belly. He wiped her tummy with a napkin he produced from somewhere and then gently righted her dress. Heat swamped her cheeks.
His hands shook as he zipped up his trousers and buckled his belt. She tucked her hands to the side but the little tremors wouldn’t subside.
She couldn’t pretend that the whole experience hadn’t shaken her. She truly was naive. Drawing satisfaction by seeing his control shatter, by bringing him to his knees like that, the raw intimacy of his actions...it had only seared him deeper into her psyche.
She looked away from him just as his gaze turned toward her. She walked over to the refrigerator on trembling legs and poured herself a glass of water. She drank the whole thing in one gulp, her mouth parched.
She felt him come to a stop right behind her. Hesitation, so uncharacteristic of him, charged the air. “Valentina—”
“Please, Kairos. Take me home.”
He stared at her for what felt like an eternity before he nodded.