Greek Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress

The warmth of his arm was comforting. Lindy struggled to control the sobs and the tempest of emotion still rising inside her. ‘Afterwards, my mum told me that my dad must’ve fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand and the sofa caught fire. He’d been drinking—my mum was in hospital. I woke up and there was smoke coming under the door and a funny smell,’ she related shakily.

Atreus swore half under his breath in Greek. ‘And yet you went into a burning house to save a cat tonight?’ he breathed, in wrathful incredulity.

Lindy’s mind was still firmly lodged in past events. ‘I tried to go downstairs but I could see something was in flames at the foot. I was terrified, so I started screaming for Dad.’ Her voice cut off, and she twisted and buried her face in the warm living flesh of Atreus’s bronzed shoulder. ‘For a moment I saw him, but until tonight I didn’t remember that I had actually seen him. He was trying to come to me but the fire got him!’ she sobbed brokenly.

Atreus was appalled. A dark frown stamping his features, he wrapped his other arm round her shuddering body and held her close. He was thinking about the selfless way she had rushed to the fire at Chantry House and helped out in every way she could. Not by a word or even a gesture had she hinted at what that intervention must have cost her emotionally. ‘You’re a very brave woman, mali mou.’

‘I’m just ordinary.’ Lindy snatched in a sustaining breath and choked back another sob, fighting with all her might to get a grip on her flailing emotions. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying now about something that happened so long ago.’

‘The fire at Chantry last night brought it all to the surface again. How did you escape when you were a child?’

‘I believe a fireman rescued me, but I don’t remember it. I was incredibly lucky to survive.’ Her voice petered out in shock as she finally registered that the sheet between them had slipped. Her bare breasts were crushed against his hair-roughened masculine torso. ‘I’m so sorry I woke you up.’

‘You didn’t. I couldn’t sleep,’ Atreus admitted, long lean fingers lacing into the tousled tumble of her dark hair to turn her face up.

Smouldering dark golden-brown eyes assailed hers, and then he brought his handsome mouth down and captured her lips with a piercingly sweet eroticism that cut through her defences like a knife. Breathing in little fractured bursts, Lindy drowned in those hungry, drugging kisses, her body quickening and heating in response. There was a frantic driving edge to every sensation: the stingingly tight sensitivity of her nipples, the tugging pull of dissatisfaction at the heart of her.

Atreus closed his hands round the creamy magnificence of her jutting breasts and moulded them with a husky masculine sound of satisfaction. He used his thumbs to chafe the quivering pink tips until, in pursuit of closer contact, he pressed her back against the pillows and put his mouth to her breast instead.

A gasp was dragged from Lindy, who was reeling in sensual shock from the impact of his lovemaking. The tug of his lips and his teeth, and the brush of his tongue on her tormentingly sensitive nipples, made her squirm while desire flared ever higher and stronger inside her. That she had to struggle even to think straight, however, scared her.

‘We hardly know each other!’ she protested.

‘This is the very best way to get to know me, glikia mou,’ Atreus intoned with conviction

‘But I didn’t want to get to know you!’ Lindy objected, guiltily studying the clinging fingers she had knotted into the springy depths of his black hair.

‘You want me and I want you. Why should that be a problem?’

‘Because it is…I don’t do stuff like this.’

‘You don’t have to do anything,’ Atreus declared with single-minded purpose.

‘You’re not my type,’ she told him in desperation.

‘Why didn’t you say so sooner?’ Atreus levered back from her to gaze down at her with shimmering golden eyes full of enquiry.

Lindy crossed concealing arms over her breasts.

‘I love looking at you,’ Atreus confided, stroking an appreciative hand down to the point where her surprisingly small waist segued into the violin curve of her hip. ‘You have the most spectacular shape.’

The intensity of his appraisal convinced her of his sincere approbation and lessened her discomfiture. Without being aware of any prompting to do so, Lindy slowly, shyly parted her arms again, because she was discovering that she really loved the idea of him looking at her and admiring her. Not a single compliment on that score had ever come Lindy’s way. Until that moment her voluptuous curves had been a physical flaw and an embarrassment which she hid to the best of her ability. But, transfixed by the glow of bold appreciation in Atreus’s gaze, she felt like a goddess come to earth to mesmerise mortal man.