think about them,’ she whispered softly…
Chapter Six
‘IF YOU only knew how long I have dreamt of doing this with you…’ Alexei groaned, settling Billie down on the bed and pausing only to shed his jacket and shoes before joining her there.
Billie was mesmerised by his intrinsic poise, for he seemed as at home in her bedroom as in his own. Indeed, lounging back against her pillows, Alexei was a beautiful fantasy that didn’t seem quite real to her. His black hair and sun-darkened olive skin were an eye-catching contrast against the pale bedding. It was a challenge for her to drag her gaze from the exotically high cheekbones, dramatic deep-set dark eyes and arrogant nose that gave such strength and character to his lean, handsome face. The sensual side of her nature had finally run away with her, she acknowledged in a rush of dismay. Did that mean that she was more like her highly sexed mother than she had ever appreciated? That fear tormented her but one kiss had mown down her defences and turned her into a pushover.
‘You don’t believe me,’ Alexei accused.
‘Does it matter?’ Billie wouldn’t look at him. Thoughts of her mother’s chequered love life had cast a sleazy shadow over her. Perhaps Lauren had also thought that she loved the first man in her life. Would Alexei simply think she was cheap and easy if she slept with him? With a past like his, she could hardly expect to stand out from the crowd.
‘With you? Yes,’ he told her bluntly in English for emphasis.
‘I don’t need empty words and promises.’ Billie made a valiant attempt to suppress her insecurity and turned towards him, green eyes darkened to emerald by her yearning and the terrible guilty sense that she was breaking every one of her rules. Yet when she met those heavily lashed golden eyes, it struck her that rules were made to be broken and that, for her, Alexei Drakos would always be an exception. He laced long brown fingers slowly into the tumbling fall of her red hair, smoothing and fanning the vibrant strands across his palm in the lamplight in a move that accentuated the different shades.
‘I never found red hair attractive until I saw yours glowing in the sunlight with all those crazy streaks of copper and gold and bronze,’ he admitted, before he jerked her head back and took a hungry driving kiss that exploded through her wound-up body like a depth charge.
The renewed taste of him was a wake-up call to her slumbering senses. That kiss was insanely stimulating. Indeed the probe of his tongue sent a spasm of fierce sexual need spearing right to the heart of her, releasing a feverish energy that pulsed through her receptive flesh in a sensual wave. Alexei pulled back from her to remove her T-shirt, an action that left her blinking in surprise like an owl suddenly thrust into bright light.
‘You’re always wearing too many clothes, moraki mou. I can’t wait to get them off,’ he confided thickly, one lean hand already engaged in unzipping her skirt so that he could slide it off her as easily as if she were standing up.
Uneasily conscious of her body’s semi-clad state in a serviceable black cotton bra and panties, Billie went stiff and self-conscious. She was hopelessly convinced that he was sure to notice his mistake now when he discovered that—shock! horror!—her garments did not miraculously conceal a designer-thin body with dainty breasts and legs as long as a giraffe’s. She knew that though there was nothing wrong with her figure it was very ordinary, and while she might be undersized in the height department she certainly wasn’t in her bust or hip measurements. Her face was scarlet with self-consciousness.
‘I have a huge sense of anticipation,’ Alexei revealed, reaching for her bra, his attention welded hungrily to the snowy hillocks firmly encased in black cotton.
‘But anticipation often leads to disappointment,’ Billie warned him worriedly, pushing his arms back so that she could start unbuttoning his shirt and occupy her trembling hands. She was desperate to conceal her nerves and her sheer embarrassing ignorance of such intimacies. ‘It’s my turn.’
‘Always the pessimist and so democratic,’ Alexei mocked.
Billie was very well aware that she was dealing with an autocrat, who had learned in the cradle that he had no need to share anything with anyone. Her fingers were clumsy on the buttons of his shirt and to complete her task she daringly yanked the garment free of his belt. Deep down inside her head, a frightened voice was wailing, ‘What on earth are you doing?’ over and over again. Black hair curled over Alexei’s powerful pectoral muscles and arrowed down over his taut abdomen to vanish from view below his waist. He was a hot but sexually intimidating vision and he took her breath away.
With an unhurried hand he unhooked her bra and trailed it off. Billie had to fight a powerful urge to try and cover her breasts with her hands like some shocked maiden from an old comedy film; her skin had never felt so naked or exposed.
‘You’re magnificent,’ he told her in Greek ‘Lush…’
And the taste of that word resonating in the silence made her tremble, while his almost reverent finger brushed the prominent bud of a pouting pink nipple adorning her voluptuous blue-veined flesh. He bent his dark head and closed his mouth to that tantalising peak, rolling the unbearably tender bud between his lips while he used skilled fingers to administer similar pressure to its neglected twin. Pushing her back on the pillows, he cupped and squeezed her plump breasts, stroking them while he suckled ever more strongly. Swiftly he plunged her straight into a storm of new and almost painful sensation. Her nipples throbbed from his attentions and tugged internal strings that seemed to be connected to even more intimate places. Her hips lifted, her thighs pushing together to contain the tension between them. Little animal sounds escaped low in her throat. All of a sudden she was in a place she had never been before and feeling things she had never dreamt she might feel. That it should be Alexei taking her to that place blew her away.
‘You’re so different from the women I’m used to, moraki mou. And differences are always exciting,’ Alexei husked, tugging up her knees and skimming off her panties in one easy movement before dispensing with his trousers and casting them aside.
That statement had unsettled Billie as much as the all-male bulge of arousal defined by his silk boxers. ‘How am I different?’ she pressed in a small voice.
In the midst of an assessing visual sweep of her body, Alexei suddenly smiled down at her with the wicked charisma that was so much his own. He made no attempt to hide the hungry appreciation in his dark golden eyes. ‘Everything about you is one hundred per cent real…the colour of your hair, your breasts. Nothing is fake and nothing has been remodelled.’
Beneath that powerful appraisal, Billie could still only blush and she was so painfully uncertain and shy that that betraying tide of colour even engulfed the pale upper slopes of her breasts. ‘Here I am, flaws and all,’ she said valiantly. ‘I can only assume I take after my father for, let’s face it, I inherited none of my mother’s genes!’
‘Your attributes are much more subtle,’ Alexei interrupted, discarding his boxers.
‘But I really would have loved the blonde hair and long legs,’ Billie confided shakily, using humour to try and hide her vulnerability while trying not to stare fixedly at his manhood, which was of more threatening masculine dimensions than she had expected.
‘Blonde hair and long legs are easily found. I prefer you just as you are,’ Alexei husked, running a forefinger down between her breasts and over her quivering stomach to the triangle of dark red hair at the junction of her legs.
Billie stopped breathing while her heart hammered at a frantic rate. He found the sensitive swollen bud below the curls and gently massaged it, releasing a rolling tide of sweet sensation that stole the breath from her lungs. She could feel her insides dissolving to honey even while a burn of greater need flamed into being. Her slender thighs parting, she shifted against his knowing hand, her hips developing a motion all of their own because she could not contain the intensity of what he was making her feel. As he explored the delicate pink folds of flesh she had exposed and pleasured the hidden opening to her wom
anhood she writhed, out of control and breathless.
‘You’re so tight and wet,’ Alexei growled with raw satisfaction. ‘Are you still a virgin?’
Eyes wide and green and feverish against the hectically flushed oval of her face, she nodded confirmation. ‘Does it matter?’