The Marriage Betrayal (The Volakis Vow 1)

Bright green eyes focused on him. ‘Do other women settle for that, “I don’t do exclusivity” malarkey?’

‘With all the options out there, who wants to be tied down? They settle for it,’ Sander asserted.

Tally sighed and shook her head. ‘I won’t,’ she said almost apologetically, her gaze clinging ruefully to his lean, darkly handsome features.

Sander groaned out loud and fell back a step. She could not have missed the pronounced bulge of his erection below his jeans. ‘You have me over a … barrel …’

‘Or, in this case … a bed?’ Tally suggested, struggling to cool the tingling heat at the centre of her body with will power alone but stubbornly unprepared to compromise. ‘It’s your choice.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ Seething frustration filled Sander when she fired back the same reminder he had used with her only minutes earlier. ‘It’s not as though you’re still a virgin, either.’

‘I am not sharing a bed with you while you continue to sleep with other women.’ Tally planted each word like a solid foot settling into newly poured concrete and then she slid her own feet off the bedspread he had placed her on and began to search for her discarded shoes.

‘That’s like blackmail,’ Sander launched at her grittily, something akin to sheer disbelief momentarily clouding his stunning dark eyes as he stared at her. ‘You are so bloody demanding!’

‘You’re a good teacher.’ Tally almost laughed at his expression, but she had no softness in her on the score of fidelity and it would be a long time before she forgot the ruthless expertise of his seduction of her at Westgrave. Then she had got so carried away that she hadn’t known what she was doing, but this time around she was trying to look out for herself and spot the pitfalls in advance. And the pitfalls of getting involved with Sander Volakis, she sensed ruefully, could be huge if she wasn’t careful.

Sander watched her reach the door and it seemed like a battle of wits between them then because he was constitutionally incapable of surrender. His body rigid with the ache of fierce self-control, his eyes fiery, he watched her gather up her bag and emerge from the lounge to depart.

‘I’ll call a taxi,’ Tally told him breezily.

Later he didn’t remember moving, but he must have done because when time mysteriously moved on he had her lush body pinned up against the back of the front door and he was crushing her sultry, satiny, sexy mouth under his and drinking deep of an ardour that perfectly matched his own. It was glorious.

‘Sander …’ she muttered shakily when he allowed her to breathe again.

‘For as long as I want you, there won’t be anyone else,’ he intoned in a raw undertone. ‘But we mightn’t last five minutes …’

Encountering those wrathful dark golden eyes Tally recognised how much giving way to her rules had cost him and knew that he was saving face. She suppressed a smile born of understanding rather than triumph. Something about his explosive streak of volatility fired a tender rush of feeling inside her and she stretched up to press her mouth to his again in an unwittingly soothing gesture.

In the bedroom he pulled off his shirt, lean, hard muscle flexing below his bronzed hair-roughened skin. She was kicking off her shoes again when he peeled her out of her top and he had to pull her into his arms to prevent her from unbalancing and tumbling backwards. He lowered her down onto the bed, scorching dark golden eyes raking over the upward swell of her full breasts with unashamed appreciation. As he unsnapped her jeans and tugged them off Tally was almost dizzy on a sense of her own daring. The longing to be closer to him and pulse of need in her pelvis were too strong for her to fight and she was trying to give in with grace and fight, the shyness that made it such a challenge for her to lie there nude but for a small pair of knickers.

Air was forced from her lungs in a gasp when he stroked the creamy mounds already taut with desire and caught a tender throbbing pink peak between his lips to lash the swollen tip with his tongue. Her fluttering hands closed into his cropped black hair, holding him to her, dropping to his wide strong shoulders when he reared up and reclaimed her reddened mouth with erotic urgency. He stripped off his jeans and his boxers in an impatient surge of activity.

The sense of liquid warmth between her thighs increased when she felt the urgent thrust of his manhood against her hip. Her body was gearing up for the next step, chemical reactions taking place to ensure that any halt would be a savage disappointment. The memory of her first painful experience did not dim her anticipation or the wild rise of her hunger when he scored an explorative fingertip over the damp crotch of her knickers. She felt so sensitive there, embarrassingly aware of what had always been a private part of her body. Pulling her close, Sander hooked a hand into the waistband of her last garment and removed it.

‘I’ll make it wonderful, glikia mou,’ Sander promised as she lay there momentarily tense, uncertainty alight in her expressive green eyes.

Ready to be convinced and mortified that he could read her so easily, Tally veiled her eyes. His hands glided over her in a light exploration, smoothing her skin, caressing every curve and dimple. His leisurely approach ensured that her apprehension ebbed to be replaced by melting warmth and a ready tingling of awareness in the more erogenous zones. He ran his tongue down the valley between her breasts, paused to toy with her swollen nipples and then moved lower, down over the quivering tightness of her stomach to the delicate pink flesh between her trembling thighs.

‘No,’ she told him in strong embarrassment, locking her ankles together to deny him access.

Sander slid up level with her troubled gaze again and ran a reassuring finger along the taut line of her lower lip. ‘I want to give you the maximum possible pleasure,’ he husked. ‘I want to rewrite our history.’

‘You can’t—what happened, happened,’ Tally protested tightly as he parted her ankles with a twist of his knee and his foot and sent skilled fingers gliding across her taut inner thigh.

‘Trust me.’ At the first intimate touch her eyes slid shut and her hands tightened into fists of restraint, for she had an instinctive fear of losing control. He pressed his mouth to the shallow indentation of her navel and her legs eased apart. There was a waiting greedy hum of arousal at the heart of her, a helpless yearning for the unknown.

With his tongue and his fingers he probed and explored the tender flesh, teaching her about nerve endings that she didn’t know she had until they went downright crazy under the onslaught of his expert caresses. As the hot tingle of excitement rose her hips began to squirm into the mattress and then rise in answer to the long fingers pleasuring her tight inner channel. He reached up to tug at her protuberant nipples and the hot gathering tightness in her pelvis just surged unstoppably to a peak and hot splintering pleasure shot through her like lightning. She cried out in shock as the waves of bliss engulfed her, all control wrested from her.

The orgasmic quivers were still travelling through her when Sander hauled her under him and surged with a hungry groan of appreciation into her slick, tight body. In the aftermath of that earth-shattering climax, Tally was still so sensitive that she cried out again—not with pain, but with a pleasure that was almost agonising as Sander flexed his hips and sank into her slow and deep, stretching her to full capacity. Hunger gripped her afresh as he began to move faster. The ripples of pleasure began to build again with the delicious friction and she bucked beneath him in wild excitement. He pushed her legs back to rise higher over her, his lean dark

face fevered and urgent. The intensity of sensation sent spasms of delight through her. Her inner contractions made her tighten round him and he groaned in appreciation just seconds before her excitement hit an unbearable peak and flung her headlong back into the red hot mists of pleasure.

Filled with wonderment at what she had just experienced, Tally was shy and she lay still while the sweet waves of ecstasy slowly receded to leave her earthbound again. It shook her that she had been so ignorant of what her own body was capable of and it scared her as well, for she knew that such physical pleasure could only prove addictive.

Sander had never experienced such intense excitement with a woman. She was even more responsive than he had hoped. He held her close, his heart still pounding from his exertions, his lean, powerful length hot and damp and potent with masculinity. He was already getting aroused again. ‘You were amazing,’ he murmured thickly. ‘I knew we would be pure magic together, glikia mou.’

‘I’ve got so much to learn,’ she muttered in a daze.

‘I know and I’m very much looking forward to expanding your experience.’ A wicked smile lodged on his wide sensual mouth, Sander closed a hand over a full firm breast, rubbing a still tender pink peak between thumb and forefinger.

‘So this isn’t a one-night stand,’ Tally gathered with a little shiver of hunger, heat rising in the pit of her stomach like a hot pool of melting honey.

‘I left those behind when I was a teenager.’ Sander turned her round and brought her fingers down to his throbbing erection, luxuriant black lashes screening his eyes in a sensual expression as he silently showed her how to please him.

A new and startling sense of power assailed Tally while she noted how susceptible he was to her touch, but she also discovered that arousing him aroused her equally and, just minutes later, he flipped her over, pulled her back against him and sank into her again. There was no limit, she discovered, to her pleasure, for once again the world disintegrated around her and her body soared to heights she had not even dreamt of. Afterwards she was more tired than she had ever been in her life.