LITMIR.BIZ

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Nicky that Vasilis did not live to be. I feel,’ he swallowed ‘I feel my uncle would want that. And I want so much for you to want it too.’

      There was a choking noise from Christine and immediately Anatole was there, his port glass hastily set down, kneeling on the Aubusson carpet before Christine’s chair, taking her hand. The mist of tears in her eyes was spilling into diamond drops on her lashes.

      ‘Don’t cry, Tia,’ he said softly, lifting a finger to brush away the tears. ‘Don’t weep.’

      His hand lifted the hand he was holding, which was trembling in his grasp, and he lifted it to his lips, smoothing his mouth across her knuckles.

      ‘We can make this work—truly we can. Marry me—make things as right between us as they were wrong before. Make a family for your son with me—for his sake, for my uncle’s sake. For my sake. For your sake.’

      His eyes were burning into hers and she was gazing down into their depths, tears still shimmering. He took the half-empty glass from her trembling hand, then retained that hand, getting to his feet, drawing her with him. Light from the table lamp illumined her and his breath caught. How lovely she was...how beautiful.

      His mouth lowered to hers. He could not stop—could not prevent himself. Desire streamed within him, and the memory of desire, and both fused together—the past into the present. Her lips were honey to his questing mouth, sweet and soft, and he felt arousal spring within him, strong and instant. His kiss deepened and he heard her make a low noise in her throat, as if she could not bear what was happening. As if she could not bear for him to stop.

      His hands slipped from hers, sliding around her slender waist, pulling her gently, strongly, against him. He felt the narrow roundness of her hips against his. Felt his own arousal surge yet more. His blood coursed through him and he deepened his kiss as passion and desire drove him on.

      She was quickening in his arms—he could feel it—and he remembered, with a vividness that was like a flash of searing lightning, how she had always responded when he kissed her like this...how her slender body trembled, strained against him...how her eyes grew dazed as they were dazed now, with a film of desire glazing them as her pupils flared with arousal and the sweet peaks of her breasts strained against the wall of his chest.

      He felt her nipples cresting, arousing him. She was kissing him back now—ardently, hungrily. As if she had not kissed anyone for a long, long time. As if only he could sate her hunger.

      The last of his control broke. He swept her up into his arms. She was as light as a feather, as thistledown, and the soft material of her skirts draped over his thighs as he carried her from the room, up the wide sweep of stairs into the waiting bedroom. He laid her down on the bed, came down beside her.

      How his clothes were shed he did not know—he knew only that her hair had been loosened from its pins and was spilling out upon the pillows, that he was parting the long zip of her dress and peeling it from her body so that her pale, engorged and crested breasts, so tender and so tempting, were exposed to him.

      Memory knifed through him of all the times he had made love to her—to Tia, his lovely Tia—so soft in his arms, so yielding to his desire. And she was his again! His after so, so long. All that was familiar flooded back like a drowning tide, borne aloft by passion and desire, by memory and arousal.

      His palm cupped her breast and he heard her moan again, low in her throat. The dazed look in her distended eyes was dim in the shadows of the night. His mouth lowered to her breast, fastening over her crested nipple, and his tongue worked delicately, delectably, around its sensitive contours.

      The moan came again, more incoherent, and he felt her hands helpless on his back. Her neck was arched against the pillows, her throat exposed to him, and he drew his fingers down the length of it, stroking softly, holding her for himself as he moved his mouth to her other breast, to lave it with the same ministrations.

      But her sweet ripened breasts were not enough. He wanted more. He felt a low, primitive growl, deep in his being.

      He drew her dress from her completely, revealing tiny panties, slipping her free of them. Her thighs slackened and the dark vee between was a darker shadow. He propped himself on one elbow, taking her mouth with his again, feasting on it with slow, arousing sensuality, splaying his free hand on her soft pale flank.

      He smiled down at her in the darkness. ‘Tell me you do not want this. Tell me you do not want me,’ he said to her. His voice was low. Driven. ‘Tell me to go, Tia—tell me now, or do not tell me at all.’

      It was impossible for her to give such an order. Her resistance was gone. How could it persist when his mouth, his hands, his tongue, his lips, his body and all his being were taking her where she should not be going, to what she should not be yielding to?

      And yet she was yielding. Was succumbing hopelessly, helplessly, to what her body was urging her to do. It was taking her over, demolishing, drowning what her head was telling her. Her head was telling her that it was madness, insanity, to do what she was doing. But she could not stop. It was impossible to do so—impossible not to let the muscles of her thighs slacken, not to tighten her fingers over his strong, warm shoulder as delirium possessed her, as her body swept away the long, empty years since Anatole had last made love to her, had last taken her with him to that place only he could take her to. Where he was taking her again...now, oh, now!

      She moaned again, her head starting to thresh, her spine arching, the muscles in her legs tautening. Her body ripened, strained as he readied her for his possession. The possession she yearned for, craved, was desperate for.

      She heard her voice call his name, as if pleading with him. Pleading with him to complete what he had begun, to lift her to that plane of existence where fire and sweetness and unbearable light would fill her, where the rapture that only he could release in her would be.

      He answered her, but she knew not what he said—knew only that his body was moving over hers, the strong, heavy weight of it as familiar as it had ever been, and her arms were snaking around him, enclosing him as her hips lifted to him, yearning for him, craving him, wanting only him, only this.

      He thrust into her, a word breaking from him that she did not know but remembered well. The past and present fused, melded, became one. As if no years separated them. As if there had been no parting.

      His possession filled her and her body enclosed his, embracing his even as her arms wrapped him to her. The strength of his lean, muscled form, the weight of it upon her, was crushing and yet arousing, even as his slow, rhythmic movements were arousing, and her legs wound about his as each thrust of his body pulsed the blood through her heated, straining body.

      She wanted him—oh, dear God, how she wanted him—wanted this—wanted everything—everything he could give her.

      He cried out—a straining roar—and as if it were a match to tinder she felt her body flood with him, with her, and she was lifted up, up, soaring into that other world that existed only at such times, forced through a barrier that was invisible, intangible in mortal life, but which now, in Anatole’s arms, in his passion and embrace and the utter fusion of their bodies, was their sole existence. On and on she soared, crying into the wind as the heat of the sun in that other world burned down upon her.

      Then, like the wind subsiding, she was drawn back down, panting, exhausted. Sated. Her whole body purged and cleansed in that white-hot air. She was shaking, trembling, and he was smoothing her hair, talking to her, withdrawing from her and yet folding her back against him, so that she was not alone, not bereft. She was crushed against him, his limbs enfolding hers, his arms wrapped tight around her, and his breath was warm on her shoulder, his hand curving around her cheek, his voice murmuring. She could feel the shuddering of his chest, the thudding of his heart that was in tune with hers.

      He was saying her name, over and over again. The name he’d always called her. ‘Tia, my Tia. Mine.’

      And she was his. She was, and she always had been—she always would be. Always.

      Sleep rushed over her, as impossible to resist as if it had been slipped

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