Her breath caught as she felt him grow impossibly bigger inside her, arched her back into the couch involuntarily, thrusting her hips to accommodate more of him, croaked, “It doesn’t seem like you’re…finished.”
“I’m far from it. If you know what you’re inviting.”
“I want to know.”
He swooped down, fused their lips, his carnal possession perfect in its flavor and ferocity. “Remember, this is you giving me license to take you, to do everything to you.”
She clutched him closer still, clenched around him, her lips trembling on a breaker of the urgency that was tossing her into its turbulence. “Yes, everything…take it all, give it to me…”
He reared up, tore open her blouse, then his shirt. Her loosened bra disappeared off her aching breasts, his hair-roughened chest replacing it, inflaming them to agony. He exchanged that torment for his teeth and lips, each nip and pull on her nipples creating a new flood of need in her core, a core he plundered to the same driving rhythm.
This time pleasure wasn’t a sudden annihilating blast, but a building pressure, promising even more destruction.
Then desperation for release overwhelmed her need to have the pleasure mushroom until it buried her, made her wail, “Too much…just g-give me…”
And he gave her, rode her to a crescendo that had her seizing in excruciating ecstasy, wringing every drop of his own climax with its force.
She passed out this time. She knew, because she came to with a jerk. She found Aristedes propped up on his elbow beside her on the floor—where she assumed they’d crashed during that last passionate duel—caressing her with a possessive hand on her breast and a leg between her jellified ones.
The moment she met his gaze, he gathered her and effortlessly rose with her near-swooning mass in his arms.
As he crossed to the bathroom, he nudged her ear with his lips, sending her senses haywire again with his touch, then with his words. “Now that we’ve taken the edge off the hunger, it’s time I devoured you properly.”
Selene crept around the bedroom, gathering her clothes.
The new ones he’d ordered to replace those he’d ruined, that she’d come here wearing. Two days ago.
Every time she’d thought he’d put an end to their explosive encounter, or that she should be the one to do it, he’d dragged her back into delirium. She’d ended up staying the whole weekend.
This was the only time she’d been awake while he slept.
He lay on his back, the magnificent body that had possessed and pleasured her for two long days and nights spread like a replete lion’s, for the first time relaxed and unaware.
Her heartbeats tripped over each other. She wanted to rush back to him, snuggle against all that power and sensuality.
But she couldn’t. This experience had been transfiguring. But now that he wasn’t wringing mindless responses from her, she felt lost.
She didn’t know what to do next. So she had to go.
She had to let him show her where he wanted to go from here.
Aristedes Sarantos showed her, all right.
Not personally, but in national newspapers.
Selene read the headline again.
Sarantos Leaves States After Brief Business Visit.
That was where he wanted to go from here. Away, without even a look back.
Her heart twisted.
Fool. How had she thought this could end any other way? She’d even wanted it to—why? Because of the great sex?
But if it had been only sex, how could it have been so sublime…?
Shut up. He’d just been living up to his reputation as an obsessive overachiever and conqueror.
And he’d alluded to nothing more than gorging himself on the pleasures of the moment. She’d been beyond wishful to think he’d want an encore. That their time together had been about her in any way.
He hadn’t even uttered her name once.
She’d been a two-night, ecstatically willing outlet for whatever turmoil he’d been going through. And she should see him that way, too. It had been her own need for solace that had sparked her uncharacteristic abandon. He was the last man on earth she should have indulged with, making the encounter all the edgier, the riskier, wielding the power to negate her grief for as long as it had lasted. It had also been the safest outlet, letting go with the one man guaranteed to do what he’d done. Disappear after it was over without repercussions.
Now they’d go back to their old status. With one difference. She’d now inherit her father’s role as his adversary.
Whatever madness had passed between them was over.
As if it had never happened.
Two
Eighteen months later…
Déjà vu tightened its grip on Aris’s senses.
Standing in front of the Louvardis mansion brought it all back. That fateful day a year and a half ago.
He couldn’t believe it had been that long. Or only that long. It felt as if it were yesterday, and yet in another life.
Not that it had been a day, but rather a week of blows, ending in those mind-boggling two days and nights with Selene Louvardis.
His body tightened and his breath shortened, the unfailing effect the memory of that weekend had on him. Each time the slightest tendril of recollection strummed his senses, he relived the fever that had possessed him, ending in a surreal sense of fulfillment and peace, and almost total amnesia. He’d woken up remembering nothing about himself or his life, only the tempestuous, delirious time with her.
That was, until he’d realized she’d gone. The same numbness that had assailed him at that discovery spread through him again now.
It had simulated bewilderment, loss, even anger. But he’d at last decided what it was. Relief.
She’d saved him the trouble of finding a resolution to their interlude of temporary insanity. Their plunge into abandoned intimacies had been unforeseen and uncharacteristic, not to mention fraught with consequences. But they’d rushed into it like one would into danger to escape unmanageable pain.
But she’d clearly thought it better to have no morning-after, to have a clean break, resume their leashed hostilities and forget the two days they’d been all-out lovers.
He’d grappled with the need to contest that decision for hours. He’d ended up deciding it was for the best.
Respecting that unspoken treaty of avoidance had kept him away from the States since. He’d been loath to end up face-to-face with her, had feared he’d end up doing something unpredictable again.
But just as it was she who’d kept him away, now it was she—and her brothers—who’d brought him back.