The Secret Wife

In the act of clamping a guilty hand to the offending organ, Rosie discovered that Constantine had got there first. A warm palm curved against the pouting swell of her breast and she trembled at that light yet possessive touch, her eyes involuntarily closing on a tide of sexual awareness so powerful that her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. ‘Don’t!’ she gasped strickenly.

But he slowly slid the straps of her dress all the way down her arms and simultaneously pressed his mouth to the precise spot where a pulse was flickering wildly at the base of her throat. A faint moan escaped Rosie as he simply lifted her out of her dress and settled her back on the bed again.

‘I’ll be very gentle,’ Constantine promised thickly, with emphasis.

Her lashes flew up to encounter molten gold enquiry. One look and her bones felt as if they were melting beneath her skin. He came down beside her, lithe and dark and naked, and her heart gave a reactive lurch as she ran wondering, curious eyes over his impressive, powerful length. Her startled eyes widened at the bold, hard thrust of his manhood and she ran out of breath all at once, hot colour and alarm seizing her in a twin attack as, curiosity more than satisfied, she made an entirely instinctive move to escape again.

Constantine rolled over so fast to prevent that that she found herself trapped under him instead, a position that made her even more overpoweringly aware of what she had decided she ought to avoid. ‘Theos...’ he grated as he stared down into her anxious, evasive eyes. ‘I wish I had smashed Maurice’s face in... what the hell did he do to you in bed?’

‘Nothing!’

‘I am not going to hurt you...’ Constantine ran a caressing finger along the tense compression of her soft, full mouth, brilliant golden eyes shimmering over her, mesmerically sentencing her to stillness. ‘I bet he’s never heard of foreplay... Even if it takes me all night to prove it, I swear you will enjoy every moment with me, pethi mou.’ With the tip of his finger he pressed apart her lips and gently probed the moist cavern within while she stared up at him, lost in those compelling eyes of his, and her lips curved round that finger, laving it with her tongue.

Constantine smiled. Rosie’s heart flipped. He withdrew his finger, dropped his dark head and traced the fullness of her lower lip with the teasing tip of his tongue. She wanted him to kiss her. It was an instantaneous need and she shifted beneath him, all of a quiver with helpless impatience, her body taut with sudden screaming tension. Her hands flew up of their own volition and her fingers sank into his black hair to try and drag him down to her by force.

With a husky laugh, Constantine resisted her urging and instead let his tongue dip between her readily parted lips. ‘Foreplay,’ he whispered provocatively.

But, in the grip of hunger, Rosie wasn’t that easily quelled. She reached up until she found his sensual mouth for herself, forcing the pace by wrenching him down to her, not satisfied until he kissed her long and hard and then learning that she still wasn’t satisfied. But he was ahead of her then, shifting down her trembling length and letting knowing fingers glance over her swelling breasts and linger like the kiss of fire on the straining thrust of her taut nipples.

All the breath left her lungs in a strangled moan of tortured pleasure. Gazing down at her, Constantine made a husky soothing sound deep in his throat. It was incredibly sexy. He bent his head, long fingers pressing the pouting mounds together, and licked the rosy peaks gently and then more rapidly until her back arched on a long, sighing gasp. As he toyed with those achingly sensitive buds, Rosie whimpered and jerked, flames of tormented excitement building in an uncontrollable surge. Her hands skimmed with wild indecision over every part of him she could reach, tangling in his hair, smoothing over his blunt cheekbones, clutching at the smooth, muscular expanse of his shoulders.

Constantine rolled over, carrying her with him so that she was lying on top of him, and plundered her soft mouth with a force of passion that splintered through her squirming body at storm force. Meshing a hand into her mane of hair, he tugged her head up to look at her with burning golden eyes. ‘Would you like five minutes to cool down?’ he asked thickly.

‘Cool down?’ Rosie echoed breathlessly as if he were talking in a foreign language, the throbbing tips of her breasts grazed by the rough black curls on his chest, making her eyes slide shut again on a silent shiver of utterly boneless pleasure. She moved so that she could rub herself against him again and moaned.

A thick flood of Greek was wrenched from Constantine, his long, hard frame shuddering beneath hers in enforced response. Hard hands closed round her hips and dragged her up his extended length, parting her thighs so that she straddled him. ‘I need to cool down...no, I need—’ And he closed his mouth hungrily over a rosy nipple, jolting her with such a shock of intense sensation that she cried out, her head falling back.

He splayed long fingers over the ripe curve of her behind to settle her exactly where h

e wanted her and rock her back and forth over the velvet-smooth thrust of his arousal with an earthy groan of satisfaction. Rosie moaned in shivering, startled reaction to that new source of excitement, out of control and irretrievably lost in the violent surge of pleasure he was giving her. She burned and ached and craved more with a hunger that threatened to tear her apart.

‘Please...’ she gasped.

Constantine flipped her back onto the mattress and kissed her again, his tongue delving in electrifying imitation of an infinitely more invasive possession. At the same time he ran a knowing hand down the straining slender expanse of her inner thigh, making every tiny muscle in her entire body jerk, and fleetingly skimmed the moist, throbbing centre of her.

‘You feel like hot satin,’ he groaned against her swollen mouth.

Touched where she had never been touched before, Rosie was incapable of a vocal response. Her whole being was centred on the tormenting exploration of those skilful fingers. She wanted to thrash about and he wouldn’t let her. Her heart slammed like a hammer against her breastbone as she sobbed for breath, driving to such a wild pitch of excitement that she was convinced she was being deliberately tortured.

And then, at the height of that teeth-clenching, agonising pleasure, Constantine pulled her under him and plunged into her with the ravishing force of an invading army. Rosie let out a yelp of pain that would have woken the dead and then sank her teeth vengefully into a hard, muscular shoulder. He cursed and flinched into sudden stillness. As the level of agony subsided to a dulled but still perceptible throb, Rosie unclenched her teeth and looked up at him accusingly.

‘Theos...’ Constantine rasped, black eyes expressively awash with guilty, angry bewilderment as he snatched in a ragged breath. ‘I’m sorry... you excited me so much, I lost control.’

Incredibly touched by the look of bemusement in those magnetic dark eyes, Rosie’s tension gave. ‘I—’

His dark, tousled head swooped down, the tender, seductive caress of his mouth feathering against hers in silken persuasion of the cruellest kind. ‘But you feel like heaven on earth,’ he confided with a sinuous, slow and infinitesimal shift of his hips that sent a rise of reawakened pleasure travelling through her startled body. ‘Trust me, pethi mou...’

Rosie melted like frost in sunlight, heat surging back in a stabbing little surge of excitement. The next time he moved she was waiting for that feeling and a second after that she was shocked to realise that she was desperately craving more of that astonishingly sensual sensation which sent every pulse racing.

‘OK?’ Constantine husked.

OK? It was more than OK, it was... it was glorious and so deeply intimate that she felt possessed. Squeezing her eyes shut, Rosie felt the excitement rocket almost terrifyingly fast until all she could do was gasp and cling in abandoned surrender to the hungry, diving stroke of him inside her. And then, before she could even grasp what was happening to her, the heat mushroomed and stars exploded in a multicoloured frenzy behind her eyelids. As he shuddered above her in the grip of his own climax, the tidal wave of extraordinary pleasure still rocking her was mindless in its intensity.

She didn’t want Constantine to move and disturb the incredible sense of peace and happiness filling her. And he was inextricably bound up with those feelings, she registered in confusion, instinctively loving the heat and weight of him and the achingly familiar scent of his damp skin.

He lifted his dark head and stared down at her with stunning intensity. Rosie was held fast by that scrutiny and the raw tension now tautening his muscles but his black eyes were utterly unreadable. His mouth twisted. ‘You felt like a virgin.’ He vented a harsh, almost bitter laugh. ‘Or how I imagine a virgin would feel! Christo, what would I know about that?’

Releasing her from his weight with startling abruptness, Constantine sprang off the bed. ‘I need a shower.’