The Dimitrakos Proposition

Acheron strode forward, planted two hands over hers and hauled her up into the air before she could even guess his intention. He held her there, entrapped. ‘You don’t have a side of the case to argue, moraki mou—’

Enraged by his behaviour, Tabby glowered down at him. ‘If you don’t put me down, I’ll kick you!’ she launched at him furiously.

In response, Acheron banded her closely to his big powerful length, ensuring that her legs were as trapped as her hands. Dark golden eyes fringed by heavy black lashes held hers fast. ‘There will be no kicking, no hitting, no bad language—’

‘Says who?’ Tabby bit out between gritted teeth.

‘Your husband.’ Acheron frowned as though that aspect had only just occurred to him and he was as much amused as irritated by the reality.

It was as if she were a firework and he had lit her up inside. Rage blazed through Tabby. ‘You are not my husband!’

Unholy amusement lit Acheron’s eyes, whipping up the lighter tones she had noticed before and giving him an extraordinary appeal that made her mouth run dry and her tummy perform acrobatics. ‘Then what am I?’

‘A rat with a marriage certificate!’ Tabby snapped at him informatively.

Acheron gave her a look of mock sympathy. ‘Your rat because you’re stuck with me.’

‘Put...me...down!’ Tabby ground out fiercely. ‘Or you’ll regret it!’

‘No, I much prefer this set-up to you shouting at me from across the room.’

‘I was not shouting!’

‘You were shouting,’ Acheron repeated steadily. ‘That is not how I conduct disputes.’

‘I don’t give a monkey’s about how you like to conduct your disputes!’ Tabby fired back.

It was those sparkling eyes, that incredibly succulent and inviting mouth of hers, Acheron mused abstractedly, conscious that she somehow hauled fiercely on every libidinous hormone he possessed and fired him up like a horny teenager. He didn’t understand it, didn’t care, didn’t think he needed to, but without conscious volition he drew that tempting mouth up to his and crushed it under his, and the taste of her was as rich and fragrant and luscious as juicy strawberries on a summer day.

‘No... No,’ Tabby’s dismayed objections, voiced as much to her wayward self as to him, were swallowed up by the hot, hungry pressure of his erotically charged mouth on hers.

Nobody had ever kissed Tabby as he did with all the passion of the volatile nature he kept under wraps, but which she sensed every time she was with him. He demanded and teased and the force of his sensual lips on hers followed by the invasive plunge of his tongue was unbelievably exciting and sexy.

He was very, very sexy, she acknowledged dimly, as if it was an excuse, and as he hoisted her higher to get a better grip on her slight body he let go of her hands and, instead of using them to get free of his hold, she balanced one on a broad shoulder and delved the fingers of the other into the springy, luxuriant depths of his black hair. With a guttural sound low in his throat he brought her down on something soft and yielding and then sealed her fast to the hard, driving length of his powerful frame.

And even as a faint current of alarm blipped somewhere in the back of Tabby’s head she was aware of how much she loved feeling his strong, muscular body over and on hers. In fact, her every skin cell was leaping and bouncing with pent-up energy long before his fingers closed over the slight thrust of her achingly sensitive breast, and she strained up breathless and bound by a new tide of sensation. Indeed, desire had infiltrated her with such powerful effect that she scarcely knew what she was doing any more. Nothing had ever felt more necessary; nothing had ever felt more thrilling than the hot, hungry stimulation of his mouth and his hands. Spasms of excitement were quivering through her in a gathering storm. But then other sounds suddenly cancelled out those physical responses: a stifled gasp linked to the rattle

of china and the sound of hastily receding footsteps.

‘My goodness, what was that?’ Tabby exclaimed, dragging her mouth from beneath his to find that she was lying on a sofa beneath him. Beneath him, her brain repeated, and her body went into panic mode when she collided with smouldering dark golden eyes and pushed at his shoulders, wriggling out from under his weight at frantic, feverish speed.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ Acheron husked, closing long brown fingers over hers.

And it’s just that simple and casual for him, she told herself angrily, furious that she had not contrived to resist him. She perched at the far end of the sofa, smoothing her tumbled blonde hair back from her brow, a slight tremor in her hands and her face so hot with mortification she could have boiled eggs on it. ‘No, let’s not...it would mess up things.’

‘The bed would be more comfortable than the sofa,’ Acheron declared single-mindedly.

‘I’m not talking about where...I’m saying no, we’re not going to do that!’ Tabby slung back at him in frustration, wincing at the nagging bite of separation from his lean, hard body, fighting the ache of longing between her thighs with defiant determination. No way was she planning to be one more in a no doubt long line of easy women for Acheron, a mere female body to scratch an itch for a male unaccustomed to doing without sexual satisfaction.

Acheron sprawled back at the other end of the sofa, long powerful thighs spread so that she noticed, really couldn’t help noticing, that that little tussle with her body had seriously aroused his. Her face burned even hotter and her tummy hollowed just looking at the prominent bulge at his pelvis, reactions to a physical craving she had never experienced before assailing her in an unwelcome wave.

All of a sudden and no thanks to Acheron for the lesson, she was realising why she was still a virgin. No other man had ever attracted her enough to make her drop her guard and yearn for sex. Sex, yes, that was all it would be, straightforward, unvarnished sex, not something a sensible woman would crave, and she was very sensible, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she? It really bothered her that even while thinking along those lines and carefully realigning her defences she was still fully engaged in appreciating the pure male beauty of Acheron’s lean bronzed face and long, powerful body.

‘You want me,’ Acheron breathed a little raggedly. ‘I want you.’

‘Weird, isn’t it...? I mean, we can’t even be civil to each other,’ Tabby pronounced shakily, still as out of breath as he was, recalling that wild entanglement and the fierce need he had sent powering through her and then suppressing the uncomfortable memory before standing up, smoothing down her dress with careful hands.

‘Yet you burn me up, hara mou,’ Acheron breathed huskily, springing upright with easy grace.