Constantinou's Mistress (15 page)

An impossibility, he acknowledged to himself without the slightest shred of doubt in his mind. There was no way he could lie in the same bed as this woman without touching her.

He was waiting for her when she finally emerged from the shower, wearing a long T-shirt. He could just discern her outline. He watched as she switched off the torch, placed it on the trunk at the bottom of the sprawling bed and edged her way to its side.

True to his word, he had left her a lot of space.

And, Lucy thought, he appeared to be asleep. She wasn't all that surprised. It wasn't that late but she felt exhausted. The day had been mentally stressful and it had been worse for him because, as owner of the hotel, he had had the full weight of responsibility land on his shoulders. He'd had to check the kitchens, the grounds, the staff, the food supplies, not to mention take on the task of soothing the ruffled feathers of his very expensive guests.

Mentally he must be drained.

She tentatively climbed into the bed, keeping herself as far removed from the gently breathing bulk to the left of her as she possibly could, letting the mosquito netting fall so that they were now in their own little cocoon.

When there was no sound from him she allowed herself the luxury of relaxing. After a few minutes she rolled from her cramped position, curled on the very
edge of the bed, to a more comfortable one, lying half on her stomach.

He had opened the windows, as he had told her he would, and the room was cool even without the benefit of either fan or air-conditioning. And it was as noisy as he had told her it would be. The rain was like the sound of gunfire, battering against the windows and the walls, although the wind seemed less terrifyingly strong.

She could feel her eyelids begin to droop, and as she burrowed herself onto her side, curling into the blanket, the last thing she expected to hear was Nick asking her whether she was all right.

Her eyes flew open, and then he turned towards her and the bodies he had assured her wouldn't touch did exactly that.

Her knee, at right angles to her body, was straight against his thighs. Thighs that were not covered with anything. Lucy squeaked, and as her knee moved a few inches higher she felt something else, something that was similarly unclothed, something hard and erect and masculine and very much awake.

‘I
NEVER
sleep in pyjamas.' It was the truth.

He wanted her. In fact, what he felt was bigger than want, it spilled into the realms of need. It was a force that had been building up inside him, he now realised, for months.

And everything had worked in his favour. He had planned to seduce her and events had seemed to lend his seduction a helping hand from every direction. The island, with its flavour of the exotic, the shimmering heat that slowed people down and gave them time to forget about the everyday pressures of trivial things that formed a wall between them. And then the hurricane. The hurricane, howling outside and gusting against the curtains so that they billowed frantically up. In a crisis, people were drawn to one another like magnets, seeking refuge with one another. What could have been more natural than that they should find one another? The fact that he had arranged for them to be sharing his quarters and his bed had been an act of providence because the old ladies really had not cared for the thought of being isolated on the other side of the hotel.

And she wanted him too. He had felt their attraction crackling like unseen electricity in the air, however much she tried to pretend that it wasn't there.

The problem was that now the stage was set he no longer wanted to seduce. He wanted to be the object of
her
seduction, he wanted her to admit her attraction to
him, he wanted to hear her say it and feel her yield because she could do nothing else.

She had scrambled away from him like a terrified rabbit and he clicked his tongue in irritation at himself.

Lord, but it would be easy to move those crucial few inches that would make her escape impossible.

‘You could have worn…
something
!' Lucy heard the nervous, panicked edge to her voice with dismay and took a few deep, steadying breaths.

‘I could have,' he admitted.

‘Then why didn't you?'

Nick propped himself up on his side, resting on one elbow, with the blankets draped haphazardly over his lower body.

‘Because I wanted to make love to you.'

‘You…
what
?' A warm, sweet sensation filled her body. She wriggled herself up into a sitting position and drew her knees into her body, with her baggy T-shirt pulled over her legs. She had to hug herself tightly to prevent herself from shaking.

The noise of the wind and the rain hurtling around them was like the distant roll of thunder.

‘Don't tell me that you haven't guessed by now that I am attracted to you.'

‘We're here on business!' She clung to that scrap of truth with tenacity. ‘And…and you're
my boss
!'

‘That didn't stop us once before.'

‘That time was…was different!'

‘Yes, and now I want to make love to you without the minor drawback of being under the influence of alcohol.' At least she hadn't tried to take flight as yet, but he knew that if he so much as edged a centimetre closer to her she would. Even if it meant sleeping in the bathroom.

‘You…you
can't
.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because…because I'm not your type! We…we had this conversation before, do you remember? I'm not your type and the only reason you…well…is because there's no one else available…and, well…'

‘You underestimate your powers of attraction.'

She heard the thick sincerity in his voice and drew her breath in sharply.

‘And…and I already have a boyfriend.' Lucy weakly grasped the excuse and held on to it for dear life. He was attracted to her. She had spent so long wrapped up in her own crazy attraction to him that to hear him tell her that should have filled her with elation.

But she knew him too well. He might be attracted to her because they were far away from reality and the circumstances were, again, out of the ordinary, but, whether he admitted it or not, she wasn't his type any more now than she had been eight months ago when he had given her that speech in his office. She had seen his type close up. They were not small, boyishly built women with short hair and flat chests.

She had also seen how casually he discarded his women. After Gina, no woman had the ability to pin him down for longer than a few weeks, and that should be fine but she wasn't cut out for the one-night stand.

That was why she really should hold on to Robert's image. Even if
he
wasn't the one for her then another variation of him would come along sooner or later and, who knew, she might find Mr Right after all?

‘No, you do not.'

‘What do you mean? Of course I do! Robert—'

‘You don't care about him. I doubt you are even at
tracted to him. You forget that I have seen you out together. You're like good friends.'

‘Successful relationships are built around people being good friends!'

‘You're going to fall backwards off this bed any minute. I assure you that I won't lay a finger on you, Lucy…unless, of course, you want me to…'

‘Of course I don't want you to!'

‘Are you so sure?'

There was a charged silence that stretched between them for a long time. Above the deafening sound of the elements raging outside, she seemed to hear the equally deafening sound of her own heart hammering inside her. And, try as she might, the shadows and angles of his torso whipped up a series of images in her head that was making the blood rush through her veins like acid.

‘So if I touch your arm with my finger you are telling me that you won't want me to go further?' he asked with lazy, idle, utterly sexy speculation in his voice. ‘Mm? You're telling me that you won't want to feel my finger trail along your collar-bone? That you won't want my mouth to touch yours? And then to—'

‘I'm not listening!' She flattened her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

She felt the shift of his weight on the mattress and then his hands covered hers and he gently but very firmly pulled her hands down.

‘Coward.'

Lucy opened her eyes and stared at him helplessly. ‘I'm not the sort of girl who has one-night stands…'

‘We've already
had
our one-night stand,' Nick pointed out. He brushed his thumb against her cheek and then stroked his fingers through her short hair. ‘Even after only a few hours in the sun you're already begin
ning to go a golden colour,' he murmured. ‘Would you tan naked on a beach for me, so that your whole body goes gold? No swimsuit lines anywhere?' He felt her tremble and had to restrain himself from plunging in. Instead he traced the outline of her slightly parted mouth, dipping his finger in, and with a little shock of piercing reaction Lucy closed her lips around it, drawing it in with a moan of surrender.

‘Do you want me to leave you alone?' he whispered huskily. ‘Do you want me to get into some boxer shorts and a T-shirt and occupy my half of the bed like a well-behaved gentleman?'

She held his hand and rubbed his damp finger between hers. ‘I want you to…'

‘To what? Get changed? Sleep on the sofa? On the bathroom floor? Make love to you for hours, grab a bit of sleep and then make love to you again?'

Lucy closed her eyes briefly. ‘Yes. Yes, yes,
yes
. Make love to me, Nick. I want you to…'

Her words sang in his ears like a riot of sweet music. God, if she had told him to get dressed he would have had to fumble his way to the bathroom and have a very cold shower before he was fit to get back into the same bed as her.

He kissed her. A tender, deep, leisurely kiss, taking his time to explore the moistness of her mouth with his tongue, pushing her back against the pillows so that his heavy bulk was over her and she was running her fingers wildly down his spine. When he drew back from her mouth she gave a little whimper and arched up to kiss him again, her own mouth urgent with need.

‘Do you remember the last time we made love, Lucy?' Nick whispered into her ear. ‘I seem to recall that it
felt…bloody wonderful…but I can't be sure. What was it like for you? Did you enjoy yourself then?'

‘I enjoyed myself,' she said, meeting his glittering eyes and holding his stare. ‘A lot.'

‘Good.' He smiled slowly and then kissed her neck as he pushed the T-shirt up, steeling himself not to look at her breasts until the item of clothing was safely over her head and dispatched somewhere amidst the tangle of bedclothes.

Only then did he raise himself and pin her hands under his so that she was fully exposed to his roving eyes.

It was dark in the room, but not so dark, now that his eyes had adjusted, that he couldn't make out the swell of her breasts and the dark circles of her nipples.

For a woman who was not big-chested she had the most beautifully proportioned breasts he had ever seen, he decided. They were small but pertly rounded, and just looking at them sent an exquisite shudder of excitement rippling through his big body.

‘Don't just look, Nick,' he heard her groan.

‘What should I do, then, teacher?'

‘Touch.'

‘Like this?' He cupped them with his hands and gently massaged them, then rubbed the rough pads of his thumbs over the sensitised, erect buds until she was squirming under him.

‘What next?'

‘You know what I want!'

‘I want to hear you give me instructions.'

‘Does it turn you on?' she asked smokily, smiling, and he grinned back at her.

‘Everything you say turns me on. You have beautiful breasts.'

‘Then why don't you…?' She blushed furiously in the
dark at the thought of voicing what she wanted him to do with them.

‘This…?' He stopped playing with them for only as long as it took for his mouth to replace his hands, and Lucy gave a deep moan of satisfaction as he devoted himself to exploring her nipples with his mouth and tongue.

Her hands had curled into his hair, and when she looked down it was to see his dark head moving against her chest, sucking at one breast while he caressed the other with his hand. It was a bombardment of sensation. She felt an insane desire to touch herself and was mortified at the shamelessness of the urge, but she needed to be touched down there. She was damp with wanting it and, as if aware of that, he kissed the flat planes of her stomach and then down to where the softness of skin was replaced by the cotton fabric of her underwear.

Instead of removing it, though, she was slightly shocked when he pressed his face there and breathed in deeply, pushing apart her legs and then kissing her most intimate region through the cotton.

It was an electrifyingly erotic gesture and one that made her close her eyes and raise herself instinctively up to meet his mouth.

Her briefs were damp by the time he tugged them down, allowing her the luxury of kicking them off the bed, and then, as he settled himself back between her legs, the actual feel of his tongue moving along the aching crease of her femininity was blindingly overpowering.

He placed his hands under her buttocks so that he could control her movements, and then took his time until Lucy wanted to cry out in sheer frustration.

‘Now,' he said, breaking away when she was fast approaching the point of no return. ‘Your turn.'

Lucy obeyed. It was glorious to finally be doing to this man what she had only ever imagined doing in her wildest dreams. She touched every inch of his muscled body and felt a sense of heady power when he shuddered beneath her. She licked his flat, brown nipples and rubbed her body provocatively over his until he was groaning.

Making love without the constraints that had been hanging over them the last time was a liberating experience. He made her feel reckless and gloriously wanton and she revelled in the feeling.

When, eventually, she slid on top of him he rolled them both over and captured her face with his hand.

‘Next time,' he murmured. ‘This time I need to be the one in control.' And as he thrust into her she felt every muscle and sinew in her body react with a surge of powerful urgency. She grasped his shoulders, then the small of his back, and felt him drive her to the soaring heights of fulfilment.

His manhood spilled into her and it was only when, spent, he rolled to his side and wrapped his arms around her that she realised that not once had he mentioned contraception.

Perhaps he thought that she must be on the Pill. Or maybe he didn't travel with a packet of condoms. More to the point, they had both succumbed to their own primitive urges that had left no room for rational thought.

‘In case you were wondering,' she teased, ‘I'm perfectly safe at the moment.'

‘Safe?' he asked with drowsy bewilderment.

‘My period only stopped a few days ago,' she elaborated, ‘so there was no need for any protection.'

‘Is that an invitation for more?' he teased, kissing her gently. He stroked her side and ran his hands along her thigh, revelling in the feel of her satin-smooth skin.

‘Is it my imagination or does the rain seem to be lessening?'

They both listened intently for a few seconds. ‘I think it's beginning to abate,' Nick said. ‘I'll go and have a look.' He hoisted the mosquito netting over him and strode across to the windows, pulling back the shutters to look outside.

What little natural light there was illuminated his naked body, and on impulse Lucy followed him to where he was standing by the windows.

‘Definitely on the wane,' he said, putting his arm around her, and she nestled against him. It was what she wanted to do but, even so, she felt a twinge of unease that these were stolen pleasures, valuable little windows of contentment that she would have to store up in her head for the inevitable rainy day.

‘The wind's almost gone,' he said thoughtfully. ‘We'll be able to begin picking up the pieces in the morning.' He looked down at her, at the silhouette of her naked body, and felt a rush of passion returning.