Modern Romance - The Best of the Year. Miranda Lee
slightly because she found it hard to stand still for long and had to grip the walking stick in a tighter hold.
He closed hands round her forearms to steady her and slowly trailed his hands down to her waist. ‘You can’t help yourself.’
As she looked up at him, her lush full lips tingled and she was conscious of a sensation like prickling heat curling low in her pelvis. He angled his mouth down and kissed her with intoxicating urgency.
‘Oh...’ she said in breathless surprise at the development, her body humming into ready awareness with an enthusiasm that disconcerted her.
He lifted her dress slowly, brazen dark golden eyes locked to hers, daring her to object. Anticipation pierced her, sharp as a lance, liquid heat pooling between her thighs. His gaze not once leaving hers, he found her with his fingers, eased below her lace-edged panties and stroked and that fast she was hotter than the fires of hell, leaning up against him for support, making no objection when he gently lowered her back onto the bed. The stick fell forgotten on the floor.
‘I only just got up,’ she exclaimed, her surprise unconcealed.
‘You should’ve waited here for me, glyka mou,’ Acheron told her sibilantly.
‘I can’t believe you want me again already.’ Tabby studied him with confused and wondering eyes.
‘The instant I look at you I want you,’ Acheron admitted in a slightly raw undertone because there was a lack of control and a weakness in such a truth that deeply disturbed him.
‘Not the very first time you saw me,’ she reminded him stubbornly.
‘You swore at me...not your finest hour, glyka mou,’ he mocked. ‘Now that I know you, it wouldn’t bother me at all or make me stop thinking that you’re the hottest woman on the planet.’
Eyes wide with astonishment, Tabby was transfixed by that statement. ‘You really mean that?’
‘You have to ask? Here I am throwing you down on the bed to ravish and you have to ask how much I want you? I can’t wait to get you horizontal and that’s not OK,’ Acheron groaned, yanking off her panties with scant ceremony and splaying her legs with a voracious hiss of all-male satisfaction, fully appreciating the pink glistening femininity he had exposed. ‘No, don’t spoil the view,’ he censured when, hot-cheeked, she tried to scissor her thighs together again. ‘I like to look and I love to appreciate.’
Tabby forced herself to remember that while he peeled off his trunks, revealing his long, thick erection. Heat rolled through her, moisture gathering at the heart of her along with a soul-deep yearning that should have terrified her. She realised that she was acting on instinct, not even pausing to think about what he had said, skipping the agonising as he had phrased it because what woman wished to be viewed in that light?
‘Thee mou, hot, hot, hot,’ Acheron rasped as he came down on top of her, punctuating every word with a passionate kiss and hands that traced every erogenous zone she possessed until her impatience steadily rose to match his.
Only then did he sink into her hard and fast, muttering something in Greek before he paused to press his lips to her brow. ‘Am I hurting you?’ he grated uneasily.
‘Only if you stop,’ she traded helplessly, her whole body clenching round him as possessively as her arms, hands smoothing over his satin-smooth back, clenching there, nails curving inward as he ground into her, and she cried out in helpless delight. Excitement rose in an unstoppable tide, and she lost the self she knew in it, living from one glorious moment of intense sensation to the next until the great gathering storm became too much to contain and the passion swept her off the heights down into the ecstatic rippling aftermath.
‘Well, there wasn’t much finesse about that,’ Acheron remarked, cradling her up against him in a damp tangle of limbs. ‘My apologies.’
‘No need,’ Tabby countered, pressing her mouth softly to his chest, revelling in the hot, musky smell of his skin and the closeness that he was embracing. ‘It was another ten out of ten.’
‘You’re grading me now?’ he demanded in obvious horror.
‘If you drop down to a five or lower, I’ll warn you,’ Tabby teased, smiling because she felt amazingly light-hearted while she was studiously engaged in not agonising. The minute she forgot his maxim though the real world immediately flooded back and, assailed by those whirling doubts, insecurities and unanswered questions, she became tense again and marvelled that she had so easily suppressed what she had seen.
‘I saw you with Melinda on the beach,’ she told him baldly, putting it right out there without holding back and judging her words and their effect.
Acheron’s big powerful frame stiffened and he tilted her head back to study her troubled face. ‘I’m bringing another nanny in to work with Melinda, who will eventually replace her. I’ve already made the arrangements. I don’t want Amber upset by too sudden a change in staff,’ he volunteered.
Tabby was wildly disconcerted by the announcement but relieved to know that Melinda would soon be moving on, while being impressed and touched that he had also been careful to consider Amber’s need for consistent care. ‘You’re planning to sack Melinda?’
‘She’s on a temporary contract. We can let her go any time we like but I’d prefer to dispense with her services in the usual way. She knows a little too much about our marriage for my comfort.’
Frowning at that admission, Tabby prompted, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Melinda is clearly aware that we were using separate bedrooms at the villa. When we were on the beach she offered to share Amber’s room so that I could take over hers,’ Acheron explained grimly.
Wings of hot pink reddened Tabby’s cheeks. Annoyance and embarrassment that their unconventional sleeping arrangements had evidently attracted the attention of the staff engulfed her. ‘Perhaps she was planning to do a little wandering during the night once you were conveniently close. She was coming on to you, wasn’t she?’
Lean, extravagantly handsome features impassive, stunning dark eyes screened, Acheron nodded. ‘It happens.’
Tabby looked up at him, weak with relief that he had told her the truth without fanfare or fuss. ‘Often?’
Acheron released a rueful chuckle at the innocence of that question. ‘All the time. If I ignore it, it usually dies a natural death but Melinda doesn’t take hints...possibly because she’s already reached the conclusion that ours is not a normal marriage. She could take that information to the press, laying me open to a potential charge that I only married you to circumvent my father’s will.’
Tabby grimaced. ‘We’ll have to work harder at being a more convincing couple. Share a room, spend time together, fake it up to behave more like a honeymoon couple is expected to behave.’
‘But it doesn’t have to be fake now,’ Acheron pointed out with lazy assurance.
But in her heart she would know it was fake, Tabby reflected painfully. He gave her great sex but he wasn’t offering to give her anything more. Maybe that was the only kind of giving he knew—short-term physical stuff with a built-in time limit, she conceded fairly, not wanting to judge him just because he was different. After all, was she any more evolved in the field of relationships? She wanted him so much, wanted his attention as much as Amber did, was willing to do whatever it took to hold that attention. But she was not willing to admit even to herself that he was also stirring up emotions that she was afraid she couldn’t handle.
‘Why did your father write a will that forced you to get married when you didn’t want to?’ Tabby asked quietly, knowing that that was the heart of the matter and the mystery that he had so far avoided explaining.
‘In a nutshell? He wanted me to marry Kasma,’ Acheron told her tersely, his beautiful mouth hardening. ‘And I don’t ever want to talk about that.’
With difficulty, Tabby swallowed an irritated