Latin Lovers: Greek Tycoons: Aristides' Convenient Wife / Bought: One Island, One Bride / The Lazaridis Marriage

She sighed when he broke the kiss, and groaned as he bit the soft lobe of her ear, his warm breath curling around the inner whorls.

‘Do you still want me to put you down?’ His deep, husky voice resonated through every cell in her body.

Helen stared dazedly into the smouldering blackness of his deep set eyes, and the temptation of total capitulation to the unknown pleasure he was offering urged her to say no. His hand at her nape stroked down to splay over her bare shoulder blades holding her close to the muscular wall of his chest, her breasts inexplicably tightening at the contact. His mouth covered hers again and he was kissing her as she had never been kissed before, deeply, erotically. She shuddered and clung to him, the flames of desire burning ever higher, and when he finally lifted his head she was helpless against the storm of heated sensations roaring like wildfire through her.

He lifted his head and drawled thickly, ‘Well, Helen, must I put you down?’

The ‘no’ of surrender hovered on the tip of her tongue. His hand slipped down and drew her into the hard heat of his lower body. Crushed against him, she felt the rigid length of his masculine arousal against her churning stomach, and in a moment of clarity she realised what she was inviting.

‘Yes. You—you…’ She panicked, and, lost for adequate words, she shoved her hands against his chest and began to struggle like a deranged idiot. ‘You animal.’

Something deadly flickered in the depths of his eyes, then it was successfully masked. ‘All right, I heard you,’ he drawled mockingly and lowered her to the floor.

CHAPTER SIX

HOT AND FLUSTERED, Helen staggered back a few steps and frantically tried to assimilate what Leon had just said and done and why. He had told her she was hopeless at kissing, she wanted to yell at him, her body strumming with the opposing emotions of fury and a frustration she had never experienced before.

He had said their marriage was one of convenience… but whose? She asked the question she should have asked herself the minute he’d suggested marriage. Certainly not hers. She had left her home and come to live in a foreign country to accommodate him and his lifestyle, and if he thought for one second she was going to accommodate him in bed as well he was in for a rude awakening.

She grasped the bath sheet tightly around her. ‘What do you think you are playing at?’ Her eyes blazed a brilliant violet up to his. ‘Ours is a marriage of convenience and don’t you forget it.’

‘A convenient marriage, yes, but also a legal marriage, and as such you must know it is usual to consummate the union.’ His dark cynical gaze held hers and she stared back in appalled amazement. ‘If anyone is playing around here it is you.’

‘Me?’ she screeched. She could not believe the turn of events. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

He shook his dark head dismissively. ‘Oh, come on, Helen,’ he drawled as he lessened the space between them. ‘Who do you think you are kidding? I am no fool. Your earthy little moans, the soft flush of arousal colouring your skin are a complete give-away,’ he declared throatily, and reached out to brush a strand of hair over her shoulder, not the least fazed by her angry outburst. ‘You want this just as much as me. In some cases I believe a bit of game-playing can spice up a jaded sex life, but in our case it is not necessary, I can assure you.’

Helen stilled, her eyes widening in confusion on his ruggedly attractive face. She could not believe what she was hearing. His strong hands curved over her shoulders and he stared down at her, his firm lips curling in a knowing, sensual smile, all confident, virile male.

‘I will make it great for you, believe me.’

It was his colossal conceit that finally got through to her and from being confused she was instantaneously contemptuous. ‘No, you arrogant jerk.’ She hissed like a spitting cat and shoved him hard in the chest, catching him unawares and ducking free from his hands.

His face darkened, all traces of humour vanishing from his granite-like features. ‘It is a bit late for outraged virtue,’ he drawled derisively, his dark eyes narrowing on her flushed furious face. ‘You can’t pretend you are an innocent, Helen. You are an adult woman, with a woman’s needs. True, Nicholas might have curtailed your love life a little, but I saw the very convenient arrangement you had with Mick the security guard. And as for the outfit you wore today, it simply screamed sex. So no more games.’

He thought Mick was her sexual partner, and her fairy styled dress was sexy. She almost laughed out loud. The man must live on another planet. She shook her head in amazement at his misconceptions. ‘I am not—’ was as far as she got.

‘Oh, yes, you are.’ He looped an arm around her waist and deftly swept the towel from her body.

For the first time in her adult life she was totally naked in front of a man, and the shock held her rigid. Protectively she closed her eyes against the flush of embarrassment colouring her skin and instinctively she leant away from him. But that was a mistake.

‘Exquisite. Helen of Troy could not have been more beautiful.’ She heard his deep-throated murmur and her eyes slowly opened.

‘All my fantasies in one perfect little package,’ he husked, his incredibly dark eyes lifting briefly to hers and she was paralysed by the intensity of his gaze as he subjected her to a slow, raking appraisal.

For what seemed an age he just looked at her. Then his hand lifted and the pad of one finger traced the upper curves of her breasts and the valley between with a tactile sensuality that stopped her heart. She drew in a much-needed ragged breath. How could such a slight touch be so seductive? she wondered desperately. But in a second her desperation turned into helpless capitulation as he urged her closer. Her body leapt in response at the brush of his naked thighs against her own, her legs suddenly losing the power or will to support her as she swayed against him.

Her breasts felt oddly swollen, and a heady sensation seemed to thicken and slow the blood flowing through her veins. His long fingers splayed to cage the fullness of one breast in the palm of his hand and slowly, very slowly, trailed to the burgeoning rosy tip to nip ever so gently.

He murmured something in Greek but she barely heard as he delivered the same erotic delights to her other breast. A stomach curling thread of exquisite sensation pulled from her breasts to the juncture of her thighs and obliterated any lingering will to resist from her mind. She moaned low in her throat as a sensory pleasure she had never felt in her life before totally beguiled her.

His mouth replaced his fingers, and from new sensations of wondrous pleasure she was transported into the realms of aching need as she felt the flick of his tongue on her breast, his lips curling over the rigid peaks to suckle and savour each in turn. She gave an audible gasp, her back arching involuntarily as he gathered her closer still, trailing a line of fire from her breasts to her lush mouth.

‘Ah, Helen, you are beautiful and responsive, everything a man could want,’ he whispered softly against her lips, taking possession of her mouth with a deep kiss, his tongue probing with a skilful eroticism that was nothing less than a deliberate seduction of all her senses.

She closed her eyes, her hands of their own volition stroking over his broad shoulders and wrapping around his neck in complete surrender to the magic of his mouth. As if it was a signal he had been waiting for he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed.

Her lashes lifted, her huge violet eyes met the smouldering intent in his, and for a brief confusing moment she wondered what was happening to her. He laid her on the bed, and shrugged off his robe, and her wonder changed to awe.

His body loomed over her, outlined in the glow of the bedside light. Naked, he was magnificent. Tall and golden, his broad chest shadowed with black body hair that arrowed down the centre of the hard muscles of his abdomen to widen and frame the proud strength of his fully aroused sex. Helen gazed almost with fear but mostly in helpless fascination, and when she lifted her eyes to his face she saw the slow, sensual burn in his smile as he lay down at her side.

‘You look as though you have never seen a naked man before, and yet we both know you have.’ He chuckled and leaning over her he caught her hands in one of his and placed them above her head. ‘But it is still a hell of a turn-on,’ he husked, his dark gaze roaming leisurely over her naked body, his free hand stroking down over her shoulder to cup her breast.

She didn’t know what he was talking about and suddenly fear overtook her fascination. ‘You mustn’t,’ she breathed, like someone waking from a dream. ‘You can’t,’ she cried, but her cry turned to whimpering moan as he lowered his head and sucked a taut nipple into the heat of his mouth again, while his long fingers toyed with the other.

He lifted his dark head. ‘I can and I must. I promised you it would be great, ma petite.’ He squeezed her breast and rolled the rigid tip between finger and thumb, tugging ever so slightly until a helpless groan escaped her.

‘And for that I must take you slowly.’ His dark head bent and his skilful mouth tormented and teased one breast and then the other before returning once more to take her mouth in a kiss that was a deliberate sensual onslaught designed to drive her mindless with pleasure, while his hands continued to caress her aching breasts.

‘You like me playing with your breasts,’ he taunted softly, raising his head, his dark eyes skimming down her writhing body. ‘I wonder how much more your perfect little body enjoys.’ His fingers traced the fine scar low on her belly. ‘Appendix?’ he prompted.

Helen tensed; should she tell him? But even as she pondered her answer his dark eyes lifted to hers.

‘Ah, Helen.’ The hand holding her wrists stroked down her arm and a thousand little nerves quivered at his touch. ‘No need to be embarrassed; so much perfection needs an endearing blemish.’ And he flicked her lips with his tongue, a glimmer of humour in his teasing caress.

Then with slow deliberation he kissed and licked his way down her throat, his strong hands forming and caressing her hot little body with a teasing tactile skill that made her burn. He nudged apart her legs and settled between her thighs, his dark head trailing lower to taste her aching breasts yet again, and down over her navel until his lips traced the slim white scar. The slightly rough scrape of his jaw against her soft skin was electrifying and she gasped and writhed beneath him, hungry for more.

Deep in her mind the thought of resistance flickered and died as she felt the heat of his mouth glide lower, his fingers touch the curls at the apex of her thighs. Her pelvis arched instinctively and she was lost, lost to everything except the incredible urge to lose herself in the drugging excitement, the hunger consuming her.

But Leon refused to be hurried. His hand traced her inner thigh and down her trembling legs, but avoided the one place where she ached for him.

Helen’s hands were now free to lash out at him, but she no longer had any desire to, utterly captive to the wildly exciting pleasure he aroused in her. She reached for his broad shoulders, her fingers delighting in the sleek, smooth feel of his skin. And when he lifted his head to take her mouth again she welcomed his kiss, her tongue twining with his in a greedy, untutored passion.

The clear male scent of him filled her nostrils. The expert touch of his mouth and hands, and the breathtaking eroticism with which he continued to explore her body, incited a fevered response in her she could never have imagined herself capable of. Hesitantly she drew her fingers down the indentation of his spine to his firm buttocks, then up over his belly to his chest. Her fingers curled in his body hair, audaciously scraping the pebble-like male nipples. She heard him groan and bit lightly where her fingers had been, felt his great body jerk, and, fascinated by the discovery she could affect him, she greedily raked her hands and nails over the hard sleek muscle and sinew of his magnificent body.

For Helen place, time and reality ceased to exist. She was totally consumed by the man and the torturous pleasure he aroused in her to the exclusion of all else. She moaned when his long fingers finally parted the velvet lips of her sex and found her hot, wet and wanting. The subtle mastery of his fingers stroking and exploring the moist centre of her femininity made her groan out loud as she experienced for the first time in her life the incredible tightening sensation, the intense build up of physical pleasure that the most intimate touch of a man could arouse.

‘You want me?’ Leon demanded, teasing her swelling bud with his fingertip. He needed to hear her say the word although he knew the answer with every tremor, every moan that escaped her lush mouth as he skilfully deepened the rhythmic pressure until she writhed beneath him like a wild thing.

With a shaking hand he donned protection. He was rock-hard with the need to be inside her, and he stroked her again and saw her violet eyes purple with desire. She was amazing, her perfect little body a firehouse of passion, and he didn’t think he could hold out a second longer. ‘Say the word, Helen.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she moaned.

Only then did he lift her and in one fluid movement thrust into her. She was small and tight and as he surged inside her he felt the unexpected resistance and heard her cry of pain. With every muscle and sinew in his body straining with a super human effort of control, Leon managed to still inside her. He covered her mouth with his, absorbing her cry, kissing her long and deep.

Helen went from frenzied to frozen in a second. Her body arched in an instinctive attempt to throw him off, and she tried to bite his tongue, her only thought to escape.

‘Stop it, Helen, don’t fight me,’ Leon husked against her lips. ‘Trust me.’ His hands flexed and gentled on her hips, and he withdrew ever so slightly and advanced again a little more.