she pressed, face hot with a heady combination of surprise, embarrassment and doubt.
‘Serious as a heart attack.’ A long tanned finger stroked a dainty swell crowned by a straining pink nipple and he bent his head to capture it with his mouth. ‘I like your breasts. I could even go as far as saying that I love your breasts,’ he framed, his warm breath fanning her skin as he blew on a straining pink bud.
‘But there’s nothing much there,’ she mumbled almost argumentatively because she had always felt that her lack of endowment in the bosom department was her biggest physical flaw. She was tiny and she was skinny and she didn’t have the curves so many men were said to prefer.
‘More than enough to satisfy me,’ Nikolai growled, long fingers curving to a ripe little mound, gently stroking the responsive flesh, smiling as her back arched, driving her breast into his palm. ‘You’re delicious.’
Some of her tension ebbed. He wanted her, she reminded herself with growing assurance, and being wanted like that, complimented like that, suddenly seemed like the most wonderful thing in the world. He was accepting her, flaws and all, and in the same way she would accept him, she promised herself. She wasn’t going in expecting perfection and eternal love.
The brush of his fingers against a prominent nipple made her hiss and her hips performed a little shimmy all on their own. Her body was warming up at its own pace, warmth gathering in her pelvis, tingles of reaction ensuring that she was fiercely aware of that part of her. He yanked off her knickers with scant ceremony, taking her by surprise. Her eyes flew wide, startled, apprehensive.
Nikolai smiled down at her. ‘It’s all right. We won’t do anything you don’t want to do...’
‘I want to do everything,’ she admitted shakily as he freed her from his weight and slid off the bed. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Condoms,’ he explained, striding into the bathroom. ‘There may not be any because I’ve never used the house...no, there’s nothing here.’
‘You don’t need to,’ Ella muttered, shaking her head. ‘I have a contraceptive implant in my arm.’
He frowned. ‘But why do you have that?’
‘When Paul and I were together, I thought...well, that I’d need contraception.’ Ella struggled to think back to that period when everything had been shiny and new and untested between her and Paul. As far as she recalled the implant would keep her safe from pregnancy for four years, but try as she did she could not remember exactly when she had had the implant put in.
‘I’ve never had sex without a condom and I’ve been tested... I’m clean,’ Nikolai assured her.
Ella was already thinking about something else. ‘A moment ago you said you’d never used this house. Never?’
‘Never,’ he repeated. ‘It didn’t feel like mine. The day I got the keys I walked over every inch of it and thought what a waste it was that I was never allowed to meet the old guy. There are all these ancient photos of people and I don’t know who they are and I never will know now because there’s nobody left to identify them. Yet some of them must be relatives.’
‘That’s sad,’ she agreed.
He didn’t know why he was talking to her like that because he had been on his own a long time and he liked it that way...didn’t he? Once his sister was gone, he had not had a single living relative that he knew of. Of course, he hadn’t looked, he acknowledged for the first time, and he was well aware that his grandfather had had sisters because they had contacted him. He had simply decided that it would be pointless at this stage in his life to take the connection any further. And why the hell was he even thinking about such a thing? What did Ella do to his wits? Why was he confiding in her when she lay naked and beautiful on a bed in front of him? What kind of black magic was that? He was talking about private things that he never ever shared. Thee mou, it had to be those soft, sympathetic eyes of hers working a dangerous spell.
‘I’ve never needed family,’ he told her flatly.
Ella was wondering if it would be pathetic to slide below the duvet to hide her naked body and she was stiff as a post while she lay there wondering, colour creeping up across her nudity in a mottled flush of awful self-consciousness. It was daylight and the drapes weren’t fully closed and everything was on display and she felt incredibly uncomfortable.
‘Family’s everything to me,’ Ella admitted, finally giving up the fight and diving below the duvet with apology. ‘I can’t imagine life without them.’
‘The duvet won’t hide you from me for long,’ Nikolai warned, the command gilt-edged with the desire clearly burning in his eyes.
He unzipped and dropped his jeans and her eyes rounded at the sight of him because in his haste to check on her earlier he had forgone underwear below the denim. With a sudden laugh, Nikolai pounced and flipped the duvet back off her. ‘Was that look one of awe or horror?’ he demanded.
Ella’s faced burned red. ‘No comment...’
Nikolai kissed her breathless and then nipped a line down the slope of her neck that seemed to hit every pulse point she possessed. She gasped beneath his mouth, gasped again when his wickedly clever fingers found her clitoris and lingered with devastating intent. Startled, she jerked, she moaned, lashes fluttering in dazed dismay as he slid down the bed to part her thighs and pay attention to a part of her she much preferred to ignore.
‘No, Nik—’
‘Is that an embarrassed no? Or an absolutely not?’ Nikolai prompted.
Forbearance became the better part of valour and she closed her eyes, trying not to think about what he was planning to do but reluctant to prevent him when her only excuse was shyness. She wasn’t that shy, was she? And then he did something that sent a current of red-hot tingles racing through her entire body and her hips executed a sensual shimmy and her lips parted on a long, low whimper and whether she was shy or not got lost in the process. The prickling awareness in her pelvis coalesced into a heavy throb at the heart of her that made her all hot and needy. Suddenly she couldn’t worry any more about how she looked or what came next, suddenly she was just in the moment and the moment was so wildly, insanely exciting and primal that she was lost in it. The pulsing heat expanded, sucking in more and more of her and then rising until she couldn’t hold it in any more. She gave a helpless cry, her spine arched and her body flailed as an explosive climax gripped her.
‘You see, the absolutely not would have been a mistake, glikia mou,’ Nikolai pointed out as he drew level with her again, eyes like dark melting chocolate caressing her flushed face.
Dumbly she nodded, heart leaping as he claimed her mouth and his tongue tangled with hers in a frank expression of all-male hunger that made her blood thunder through her veins. He was rearranging her limbs, tipping her back into a new position and, before she could even gather all her nerves again, he was there at her entrance and pushing in. At first it felt so strange to her, his body joining with hers, and the sensation of pressure, of stretching, was surprisingly pleasurable, as if her body had been lying in wait for years to experience that exact sensation and was now pouncing on it with joyful acceptance.
And then Ella jerked as a stinging burn marked his invasion. It didn’t kill the pleasure but it did make her tense and draw in her breath in dismay.
‘Want me to stop?’ Nikolai husked, eyes pure, gleaming caramel seduction.
‘No...don’t you dare!’ Ella warned, impatient on the brink of what she had waited so long to experience.
He eased out of her and drove in again and the burn intensified and then vanished. She blinked, expecting pain because she had always expected pain, but the pain didn’t arrive. ‘It’s OK now,’ she whispered in surprise.
‘It’s got to be better than OK for you the first time,’ Nikolai told her.
‘No expectations here,’ she told him bravely and wrapped