‘What’s wrong?’ Atreus murmured.
Lindy cursed his sixth sense where she was concerned, his unexpected ability to pick up on what she was feeling. ‘Nothing.’
Although he was unimpressed by that obvious falsehood, Atreus was too hot for her to hold back. He lifted her up to him and plundered her mouth with a need and intensity that made her head spin and her arms wrap round his neck. ‘Dinner will be late tonight,’ he told her thickly.
It took only a clipped word from Atreus to restrain the dogs from following them upstairs. Her heart was pounding when he lowered her down in the bedroom. Unzipped, her skirt shimmied down over her hips. Her sweater was tossed aside. With an earthy, masculine sound of satisfaction, Atreus appraised the succulent swell of her creamy breasts within her bra and lifted her onto the bed, pulling off her shoes in the process.
‘By Friday lunchtime you are all I can think about,’ he said huskily, long fingers briefly framing her face as he claimed another kiss and unclipped the bra to gain full access to her luscious curves.
‘I thought we were going to talk,’ Lindy framed breathlessly, fighting the erotic languor overcoming her and the paralysis of intelligent thought.
Having already shed his jacket and tie, and unbuttoned his shirt, Atreus sank down on the bed beside her with a groan of reluctant amusement. ‘The state you’ve got me in, I’m not fit to talk, mali mou.’
Her fingers splaying across the bronzed hair-roughened contours of his superb torso, Lindy could not even think about what it was that she had believed she’d wanted to talk about as other, more basic promptings took charge of her. The burning and dampness gathering between her thighs ignited an almost unbearable yearning. His lips closed round a distended pink nipple while he skimmed off her panties. The very first touch of his mouth on her torturously tender flesh made her spine swoop off the mattress in a responsive arch. Her heart thundered and her legs trembled when he teased the sensitive bud below her mound. Very quickly she reached a saturation point of arousal, when waiting became an intolerable torment, and a pleading moan of protest parted her lips.
‘You couldn’t possibly want me yet as much as I want you, glikia mou,’ Atreus countered with fierce conviction, strong hands anchoring to her hips to pull her under him.
But as her body braced for his possession he fell back from her with a stifled curse and reached for the protection he had almost forgotten ‘We don’t want any mistakes in the contraception department,’ he told her, with a grim edge to his rich dark drawl. ‘That would wreck everything.’
Even as he drove into her wildly receptive body that edge in his voice lingered in her memory and chilled her. She suppressed her disquiet and told herself he was only being sensible. He sank his hands below her hips and plunged deeper into her. The delirious pleasure his lovemaking always gave her had taken on an unfamiliar driven urgency. Excitement was cascading through her in a dazzling storm of white-hot sparks. He ground into her and she gasped, what remained of her control melted by the flames of excitement. His wildness thrilled her and the ecstatic climax she reached took her body’s capacity for enjoyment to new heights. Even as the exquisite waves of erotic bliss consumed her, she was conscious that she was crying—and shocked by the fact.
‘I must have been good, glikia mou,’ Atreus breathed with irrepressible satisfaction, holding her locked in his arms and kissing her before falling still to stare down into her wide shaken eyes. ‘We share the most unbelievable chemistry. No other woman has ever given me so much pleasure in bed.’
Lindy cherished the rare compliment that made her feel more important than any of her more glamorous predecessors, but her mind was still working back over what he had said only minutes earlier.
‘Why did you say a mistake with contraception would wreck everything?’
Atreus tensed. ‘Because it’s the truth. I don’t want a child with you.’
Inside herself, where he couldn’t see, Lindy, who loved children and who had dreamt in whimsical moments of having his baby, recoiled from that cruel candour. Her dreams were suffering an axe attack. ‘Don’t you like children?’ she asked.
An alarm bell was by now ringing in Atreus’s handsome dark head, and his ebony brows drew together in a frown. She had never admitted it, but he knew how much she liked babies. Her friends sent her photos of their children and she gushed over them. Months ago he had reached the conclusion that the homeless dogs and cats she doted on were most probably substitutes for the babies she would one day have.
‘A couple of paternity battles took the edge off any desire I might have to reproduce,’ Atreus confided, opting for the truth.