CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

K ASSIA SMILED DREAMILY as Damos ushered her into the lift.

‘What a wonderful, wonderful evening!’ she exclaimed.

She meant it—totally. Little fragments of evocative classic songs and melodies from the nineteen-thirties were playing in her head. She hummed aloud now, still smiling. Beside her, Damos gave a low laugh.

She glanced up at him, her eyes and her face aglow. ‘Thank you so much for bringing me. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!’

‘My pleasure,’ he said promptly, and he smiled at her in return.

In her high heels she was very nearly at eye level with him, and it felt strange. At least, she thought wryly, she’d got used to walking in the heels. And dancing too.

Her smile grew dreamier. She’d told Valerie she couldn’t dance and it was true. Certainly she hadn’t been able to compete against the older woman’s professional skill and flair, which had been such that, once the band had struck up after dinner, and the wide doors had been opened to the terrace beyond, the other dancers had given her and her husband all the space they needed to show off their moves.

But the Cardmans had insisted she and Damos take to the floor as well, each of them, as Valerie had promised, taking a dance with them. So Kassia had tentatively danced with Charles, even though she was a good head taller than him, and accepted his instructions.

She had been aware that her attention was on his wife, in Damos’s arms, similarly instructing him. Aware, too, that she did not like to see Damos with another woman...

When the number had ended and another had been struck up it had been a waltz, slow and beguiling. Charles had released her, and Valerie had released Damos. As Damos had turned to Kassia she’d felt a sudden tremor go through her. She’d all but frozen, rooted to the spot as one of his hands clasped hers and the other curved around her waist.

‘Put your free hand on my shoulder,’ he’d said encouragingly, and gingerly...oh, so gingerly... Kassia had done so, gazing helplessly at him.

Her eyes had gone completely wide, and she’d felt every fibre of her body tensing. To be in Damos’s arms like that...

Then the music had swept into its full melody—and Damos had swept her away.

Into heaven. Just...heaven...

The same melody was in her head now, and on her lips, as she gazed dreamily at Damos.

What was happening to her she didn’t know—hadn’t known since he had swept her across the dance floor, turning her around, and around, and around as they glided away. What her feet had been doing she hadn’t the faintest idea—she only knew what her heart rate had done. It had soared like a bird in flight...up, up and away...

She’d felt herself leaning back as they’d turned around the floor, and his hand at her waist had been supportive, and protective, and so much more. So much more than simply the firm clasp of his hand holding hers. So much more than the slight, but oh-so-potent smile he’d bestowed upon her as his eyes had rested on her face, their long lashes half veiling them, but never for a moment concealing what was in them...

She was still floating on air, floating off to heaven...just floating and floating.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Damos was ushering her out. His key card was in his hand and he was sliding it into the lock of the door to his suite. And she was going in...not even thinking to ask about her own room...not thinking at all...

Not realising that Damos was closing the door behind him...turning her towards him...and taking her into his arms...

Her mouth was silk. Her lips satin. His own lips only grazed lightly, so very lightly. He was using all his self-control to keep it like that. His arms were around her waist, hands on the rounded swell of her hips. As he lifted his head from hers he smiled that same half-smile he’d used on her as he’d taken her into his arms to dance with her. His eyes poured into hers.

‘You have absolutely no idea,’ he breathed, ‘how much I have been aching to do that.’

She was looking at him with dilated eyes...eyes that had turned as silvery as her gown. There was wonder in them, and more than wonder. She was looking at him in such a way that there was only one thing to do—only one.

He kissed her again. And this time the lightness could not hold...could not withstand his own desire. Desire that she had inflamed from that first stunned silence as she had walked towards him, her hidden beauty finally revealed to him. Desire that had been building achingly all evening.

Dancing with her had been both bliss and torture—but now the latter was gone and only the former could exist.

And bliss it was.

His hands tightened on her hips and instinctively he drew her closer to him as his kiss deepened. She yielded to both—and it was all he wanted. Her mouth opened to his, and in her throat he heard her give a little helpless moan. It inflamed him more...

Did she realise just how she was arousing him? Well, she would know soon—it would be impossible to deny. And he had no wish to deny it—no intention of doing so. No intention of doing anything at all except what he had been wanting to do all evening.

Her hands had lifted to his shoulders and he could feel, deliciously, the fingers of one hand sneaking around the column of his neck, spearing into his hair as his kiss deepened yet more. And against the wall of his torso he could feel, even more deliciously, her beautiful, shapely breasts...peaking.

Was she aware of that? Well, she would be soon...very, very soon.

He drew back, breathless, his gaze still pouring into hers.

‘Come,’ he said.

His voice was low, husked, and filled with his own desire. He reached to lift her hand away from his nape, clasping her loosely by the wrist as her other hand fell away and he freed her from his own grasp. For one long, lingering moment he let his gaze feast on her as she gazed back at him, eyes wide, pupils dilated, lips parted and bee-stung, her face filled with wonder and bemusement and so much more.

His mouth curved into that half-smile and he led her to his bedroom.

And to his bed.

Her gown fell from her in a pool of silver at her feet. Beneath she was wearing only a satin camisole and wispy briefs. A confection of lace was all that was keeping her sheer stockings on her thighs. She’d heard Damos’s breath catch as he’d slid down the zip at the back of her gown. She could not move—and why should she? For heaven was here, in his gaze upon her.

Desire blazed in his eyes, melting her with its heat. He said something in Greek, too low for her to make out the words. Besides, her blood was singing in her ears, her heart pounding in her breast. Then, abruptly, he was kneeling, and she realised he was unfastening the straps of her heeled sandals. She stepped out of them, her hand automatically going to his shoulder to balance herself. Then his hands were lifting...lifting to where her stockings were fastened. He undid them and one by one...silkily, gorgeously, arousingly...slid them down her limbs, freed her from them. Only then did he get to his feet again.

‘Your turn,’ he said.

And that half-smile that did such things to her was at his lips again.

She reached forward, sliding her hand between his jacket and his shirt, moving it up to his shoulder, easing his jacket from him. He caught it as it fell, tossing it carelessly aside to a nearby chair where it hung loosely. Then he lifted her hands to his tie. Carefully, a little frown of concentration on her face, she pulled at the ends, feeling it come away. Then, while her hands were there, she slipped the top button of his dress shirt. And then the next one. And the next...

Sliding her hands under the fine lawn of the dress shirt to the warm, smooth wall of Damos’s strong chest beneath, she let her hand splay, easing across languorously. She gave a sigh of pleasure...

As if it had been a signal his hand shot up, fastening around her wrist, and then, without Kassia quite understanding how, he was sweeping her up into his arms and lowering her down upon the bed. He was ripping the rest of his clothes from him. Waistcoat, shirt and tie and all the rest joined the jacket.

Instinctively, she shut her eyes. Damos fully clothed could set her pulse soaring—but Damos un clothed...

She felt the mattress give as he came down beside her and heard a low laugh come from him. He leant over her and she opened her eyes again, to look into his. They were looking down at her with a glint in them which was half humour and half something quite, quite different...

‘Oh, Kassia—so shy?’

She gazed up at him wide-eyed. Her heart was beating tumultuously, the blood was singing in her ears, and she was filled with wonder...a dazed, almost disbelieving state of bliss. And yet...

She gave a crooked smile.

‘I... I think I am,’ she answered.

His mouth dropped to hers. Gently, softly. Briefly.

‘Leave it to me,’ he told her, his voice warm.

Kassia did just that...

And Damos took her to paradise.

Took her there with a slow, seductive touch.

He explored her body with lips and palms and the exquisite expertise of the tips of his fingers, which found every most sensitive, erotic point of her body...

Slowly, sensuously, he ensured she felt every moment for its maximum pleasure. He eased from her the silky camisole, exposing the sweet mounds of her breasts, their peaks cresting as he circled them lazily, arousingly...oh, so exquisitely arousingly... He was teasing, and lingering, and then... Oh, how could it feel so good, so exquisitely delicious, as his mouth lowered first to one ripened breast and then the other and his tongue flicked at her straining, hard-crested nipples until she wanted to cry out with it.

Then, still holding one engorged breast beneath the soft kneading of his palm, he lowered his attentions. His mouth glided down from the shallow vee between her breasts to the flat plane of her abdomen, fastening his other hand around one hip. His mouth glided lower...and lower yet...

The hand at her hip moved to the wisp of her panties, easing along their waistband, gliding them from her body, then returned to where his mouth now was...

A moan broke from her, and she felt her thighs slacken of their own volition. He eased his hand between them, returning his mouth to her bared breast. And from breast to vee a flame started, running through every vein in her body. A flame that was in the tips of his exploring fingers as he reached to find the delicate tissues at the heart of her femininity.

A gasp sounded in her throat and her hands moved to close over his shoulders, to splay out across the nape of his neck. At her breast, at her feminine core, his ministrations drew from her such sensual delight, such an intensity of pleasure, such a deliciously, achingly mounting arousal as she had never known was even possible...

She moaned again, thighs slackening yet more, head turning on the pillow. An ache was building in her—a yearning, a craving—and the incredible, unbelievable sensations he was drawing from her were impossible to endure. It was impossible not to want more...and more, yet more...

Her blood was surging, engorging, swelling and ripening, exciting and arousing, quickening and intensifying. Her vision was dimming, blurring... The world was dimming, blurring...

Because nothing existed...

Nothing at all except...

This.

This, this, this...

This moment, this now, this absolute, total now , was sweeping through her, dissolving her, making her molten, liquid, sweeping through her, pouring into every cell of her body, lifting her, lifting her...

Oh, sweet heaven...

Impossible that she should be feeling what she was feeling. Impossible that such pleasure, such bliss, such gorgeous, gorgeous melting, such heat and sweet, sweet fire should be burning through her... Sweeping on and on...endless and consuming...

And then, before she could even become aware of anything else at all except what was possessing her, what she was possessed by, Damos was lifting away from her, lifting away his mouth and his palm and his gliding fingertips. Instead he was lowering himself over her, one hand cradling her beneath her hips, raising her to him as her whole body flamed yet more blazingly. His body fused with hers, filling her, engorging her, melding with her, and around him her body, completed now by his possession, pulsed and melted.

She clung to him, her hands around his shoulders, bowing up towards him as she cried out. He did too—a hoarse tearing of sound—and she knew with the scything knowledge that was in her thighs, tightening against his, to hold him, keep him there, just there, where her body was pulsing against his, drawing him deeper and deeper yet, making her cry out again and again...

She knew that for him, too, it was as it was for her...

Possession and passion...slaking and sating and never, never letting go...not her of him or him of her...

She held him within her, holding him in the cradle of her arms, wrapping his strong, hard body in hers, holding him and holding him even as their bodies cooled and stilled...

She was dazed, breathless, and her heart was hammering yet, pounding within her—echoing, she knew, with a kind of exultation, the pounding of his own heart, beating against hers.

He lifted away from her a little, his torso only, and she felt him drop a shaky hand on her still-flushed cheek, smoothing it softly, gazing down at her with an expression in his eyes that made her breath catch.

‘Kassia—’

Her name—that was all—and it was all she wanted to hear.

A smile curved across her mouth, wide and tender and embracing. ‘I don’t think I’ll be shy next time,’ she said softly, her gaze clinging to his, that smile still playing on her lips.

A crack of laughter broke from him.

‘Dear God, Kassia, if this was you being shy ...’

He swept her over to her side, still in her embrace, so that his own embrace could tighten. Their thighs tangled now, as they slipped from each other, and he was kissing her now—not with passion, for passion was exhausted, but with a kind of sealing of what had been between them...and a promise, too.

Kassia felt again that catching of her breath in wonder and wonderment. It was a promise of all that was yet to come before the night was over...

Damos lay drowsily and contentedly, Kassia tight in his arms, as daylight finally pricked its way into the room, edging around the drawn curtains. Amazement still possessed him. After the first time he’d set eyes on her, crouched in that dusty trench, could he ever have thought to this moment now? To how it would be for him? For her...?

Yet again that strange, powerful emotion swept through him. He did not know what it was—knew only that it possessed him. Filled his being.

Idly, languorously, he smoothed his hand over her hip as she lay cradled against him. He let his mouth softly kiss her shoulder, snuggled into his, as memory of the night that had just passed played in his head.

A night of passion—oh, such passion!

Kassia had made love without inhibition. He smiled reminiscently at his saying to her, ‘If this was you being shy...’ She had given of herself without stint, with an ardent desire that had more than matched his own, that had had her body...her beautiful, slender body...clinging to his in her ecstasy. An ecstasy that had come time and time again...

Perhaps remembering that right now, while she lay cradled against him, was not the wisest thing... The feel of her body tight against his own was having an effect on him that, as full wakefulness came over him, was increasingly impossible to ignore.

His lazy smoothing of her hip moved forward, reached towards the vee of her thighs, and his mouth at her shoulder started to glide, to taste the delicate line of her throat, to tease...to arouse. Even as he himself was aroused...

She stirred in his arms, a little sigh breathing from her, as he nestled the hand at her vee into the contour of her body, trailing his mouth up from her throat to catch at her lips...

His own arousal was growing...intensifying. She was waking too now, half turning in his arms, her mouth moving to his, tasting and teasing, her thighs slackening. Her body was still pressing back against his...knowingly, sensually. He gave a low laugh, luxuriating in her effect on him, and his kiss deepened, no longer teasing and tasting but probing, possessing. And she answered in kind, turning fully now, so that the engorged tips of her already ripening breasts grazed his chest, arousing him yet more.

He gave a growl, sliding his hand around her hip once more to pull her against him, so that the full strength of his arousal was tangible. His thighs moved over hers in possession...his of her...hers of him. Their bodies were fusing yet again, desire crescendoing. He felt her back arch, her thighs strain. Her head was thrown back, the heat of her shuddering climax flushing her skin, her hair a wanton tangle on the pillow as her head threshed from side to side and she cried out with abandon. Then his own moment was upon him, and nothing else in the world existed except Kassia—this amazing, incredible woman who was his...

In a way he had never known she could be.