Constantinou's Mistress (2 page)

‘I…I didn't go back to your house after the service. I'm sorry. I couldn't face…'

‘Hordes of sympathisers? Seems almost obscene to have so many people gathered together at such a time, does it not? Chatting, catching up on old times with relatives they have not laid eyes on for years, making sure to keep their expressions suitably mournful.'

The cynicism in his voice made her flinch and she reminded herself that grief worked in different ways. Not everyone wore their feelings on their sleeve and Nick Constantinou would never be one of those who bared their soul and wept in front of an audience. That didn't mean that his grief was any less profound.

‘It's a difficult time,' Lucy said evasively. ‘Look…'

‘Don't go.' He reached out and captured her wrist in his hand and a searing heat flooded her body. ‘Not yet.'

‘Would you like another glass of water?' she said desperately. Her hand lay passively in his grip but she was acutely and painfully aware of the pressure of his palm against her flesh. ‘You should drink as much water as you can,' she babbled on helplessly while her eyes fluttered with nervous fascination across his dark, shadowed face.

‘Stay. Talk to me. Tell me what you did after you left the church. Where did you go?'

‘I…well, I went to the supermarket. I meant to get back home but the supermarket was packed and it took me much longer than I thought to get around it. Almost an hour and a half! This is so dreary, so dull…'

‘I find your voice soothing.'

‘Right…' Now he was absent-mindedly stroking the inside of her wrist with his thumb and sending hundreds of electric currents running up and down her arm. She could feel her brain struggling to impose order on what was happening but his black eyes were mesmerising. ‘Well…' She gave a high-pitched, unsteady little laugh. ‘If you really want to know, I left the supermarket, dropped the stuff off at my flat and then decided that I couldn't face staying there, so I drove to a restaurant and had something to eat…'

‘On your own?'

‘On my own.'

‘I thought women never went to restaurants on their own. Gina would never have dreamt of doing that.' He gave a short, hard laugh. Oh, no, Gina would never have done that, not in a month of Sundays. She had never cared for her own company. She had always needed an
audience, preferably of the male variety, someone for whom she could toss her hair and flash her eyes, someone to lean across to, making sure that her bountiful breasts hinted at pleasures only she could dispense.

‘Well, it doesn't bother me,' Lucy said with an edge of defensiveness in her voice. ‘I know you probably think that's very sad, a woman of twenty-three eating in a restaurant on her own on a Friday night, but I've never been the sort who needs constant companionship.' It occurred to her that the mere fact that she felt compelled to defend herself made her sound sad. She didn't sound at all like the liberated young thing she wanted to show him that she was.

‘I don't think it is sad at all.'

‘Anyway, I should have gone back home after that but I fancied a drive. I don't often get the chance. I take the tube in to work and tonight I thought I'd drive and I ended up driving here. At the time it seemed a good idea to come in and finish off some work. I don't know why. I don't know what I was thinking. I just wasn't very tired.'

‘I am very glad you weren't.' He released her wrist but only to trail one long finger along her arm.

What was going on? Nick didn't know. He looked at her and his body started to react. A tense silence closed around them and he felt as though time had carried them away to a little world where reality was something that no longer existed.

All that existed were his confused thoughts and this woman sitting alongside him on a sofa in his office. And he wanted her there, a warm, living, breathing person.

She had dressed in suitably sober clothing for the funeral. A dark skirt, a deep-burgundy long-sleeved top. Her jacket and coat she had discarded. He had noticed
her at the funeral and the black coat had swathed her and made her look like a fragile waif with those huge brown eyes and small, delicate face. Small, delicate face with a perfectly shaped mouth, one he now found himself touching with the tips of his fingers.

Lucy gripped his fingers with one shaky hand and lowered them to her lap. She had to get out of there and very quickly. ‘Look, I know you've just been through the most awful experience you may ever have to go through in your life, but…what you need is sleep, Nick.'

‘No, that is not what I need,' he murmured back, drowsily running his eyes over her face and then along her body. She always dressed for work smartly, in suits with crisp shirts underneath boxy jackets. Never before had he felt himself yearning to touch what was so purposefully concealed, but then, he thought to himself, he had always been a married man. Married to the notion of fidelity, too damned stubborn and proud to admit failure even when their ship had been sinking and he'd been able to feel his feet wavering unsteadily on their collapsing foundations.

Now, though…the burgundy top which clung to Lucy's small frame compelled him to look at the swell of her breasts, and he could see by the way she was breathing that what he was doing was turning her on. He was sure of it. She dropped his hand and clasped her arms across her chest. Didn't she know that that gesture only aroused his imagination, made him want to prise those arms away and touch what she was protecting?

Lord, he must be going mad!

He passed his hand over his brow and then raked his fingers through his hair.

‘Have
you
ever thought about getting married?' he asked.

Lucy, caught unawares, stared at him for a few silent seconds. ‘Of course. Don't all women? Dream of settling down and living happily ever after with Mr Right?' Stop talking, she told herself fiercely. Just get a grip and leave! But her feet were blocks of lead.

‘Happily ever after?' His laugh was brutally cynical. ‘Let me know what that feels like if you ever find it.'

He sure as hell hadn't. He had barely found the happy bit, never mind the ever after.

Lucy, watching the harsh twist of his mouth, felt a rush of sympathy for the man lying on the sofa. The ruthlessly self-assured boss she had spent months working for, the man who could walk into any crowded room and reduce the occupants to silence simply by his sheer presence, was strangely and touchingly defenceless now.

His cynicism was so understandable. For him, there would be no fairy-tale ending to his fairy-tale marriage.

Impulsively, Lucy reached out and took one of his big hands in hers.

He pushed himself further up the sofa so that he was now semi-sitting, his head resting against the wood-panelled wall behind him.

‘God, I feel as though I've run a marathon uphill all the way.'

‘You must be exhausted,' she agreed. ‘You look it.' Then she did the unthinkable, did it without even stopping to think. She reached out and traced her finger across one of his hard cheekbones.

Nothing, to Nick, had ever felt sweeter. Could that finger taste as sweet as it had felt just then? He softly held it and closed his eyes, circling it with his lips. Then he was kissing all her fingertips, his eyes still closed. The humming that had been going on in his head ever since he had started on the whisky hours earlier had
disappeared, replaced by a different sort of noise. The roll of thunder.

He pulled her towards him, holding his hand behind the nape of her neck, and blindly sought her mouth. His lips met hers with a heat that drove the breath out of his throat and he framed her face with both his hands, pulling her towards him.

‘Nick…you don't need this…' The utterance made her see clearly what she didn't want to see. That, although
he
might not need it,
she
did. Against every thread of ingrained common sense, the utter foolishness of the feelings she had been harbouring towards him for months pushed their way through to seize control of her mind.

‘I need…' What
did
he need? Solace? Forgetfulness? Another chance to live the past two years all over again without repeating the mistakes that had hardened his soul? ‘I need comfort,' he heard himself say, and this time when their mouths met it was with gentleness. He ran his tongue over her lips and then inside, feeling the mingle of moisture that tasted of honey.

This is madness, Lucy thought. He wasn't thinking straight. He wasn't even thinking. He said he wanted comfort and comfort from any source would do the trick—and not even comfort of the kind her body was compelling her to give him.

‘You need to get some sleep,' she muttered into his mouth. ‘Why don't you let me drop…drop you home…?'

Nick didn't answer. He pulled her until she was half lying on him and ran his fingers through her short hair.

‘Did you ever have long hair?' he murmured, his eyes half-closed. ‘I can't imagine you with long hair somehow.'

‘I have to go.'

‘Short hair suits you.' His hand slipped beneath the stretchy top and her breath caught in her throat. She made an unsteady effort to push herself away but every nerve in her body was burning with a wild, suffocating need. It was as if her feelings had been locked away in a bottle and now the lid had been taken off and every pent-up drop of forbidden yearning was sweeping out in a frenzy of abandonment.

‘Like a gazelle,' he said huskily, bringing his hand up until it covered one of her small, perfectly formed breasts.

Lucy gave a little squeak of shock and he pushed his fingers into the lacy bra so that he could feel the sensitive bud of a nipple.

‘No, we can't do this…'

‘I need you, Lucy, to make me warm…'

‘No, you don't.'

‘Let me see you.'

‘Nick…'

‘Take off the jumper. Let me see you.'

Her senses were swimming in confusion but she couldn't tear her fixated eyes away from his face. With a soft shudder of horrified compulsion that was mingled with searing compassion, she felt herself slowly work the jumper up and over her head until she was leaning over him with only her bra on, nothing to hide the rapid rise and fall of her chest. Her erratic breathing matched his and with a groan he pulled down the straps of her bra. Small, dainty breasts pointed up at him with their big, rosy peaks. Breasts that were sweetly aroused. He could tell by the tight, hard bud crowning the centre of the perfectly defined pink discs. Her mouth was half-parted in fascination and the urge to lose himself in the
slim, flawless body nervously displaying itself for his greedy gaze was overpowering.

He dipped his head and bent forward and began to suckle at the nipple, only vaguely aware of her own hiss of indrawn breath and the satisfied arching of her body. Then her hands curled into his hair and she cupped his face while he continued to suck the extended tip of her nipple, only breaking off to smother the breast with wet kisses before moving on to explore the splendid feast of the other.

His erection was almost painful, and as he continued to give her breast his undivided attention he guided her hand to his trousers, keeping it there while he fumbled with his zipper.

 

This couldn't be happening! Watching him, feeling him, as he nuzzled against her breasts, nipped and sucked at her nipples, was mind-blowing enough, but as her hands closed snugly around his swollen shaft she felt a ripple of uncontrollable need rush through her.

She pulled back, but only so that she could stand up and wriggle feverishly out of her cloying skirt and out of the tights and underwear that she barely had the patience to rid herself of.

She needed to feel his hard body alongside hers on the sofa but he was not having it, not yet. He cupped the bare flesh of her bottom with his hands and pulled her towards him so that he could blow softly on the soft, fine triangle of hair that led down to the crease of her closed thighs.

Lucy released a shuddering moan and flung her head back, parting her legs as he began to explore her most intimate region, flicking into folds of her womanhood, turning her into a raging flame.

She gripped the back of his head with unsteady hands and rotated her hips slightly against him. When she was on the brink of exploding he pulled back and yanked her down on top of him. She felt the thrust of him against her own throbbing arousal and the smooth fabric of his trousers against her legs.

There was something headily sensual about the fact that she was totally naked while he still had on his shirt, rumpled though it was, and his trousers. She felt a thrilling, unexpected surge of power and climbed onto him, eyes open wide so that she could see the sheer beauty of his face while she gyrated rhythmically against him.

With a sexual command she'd never known she possessed, she undid the buttons of his shirt and pulled it open so that she could feast her hungry eyes on his muscle-packed chest with its small, flat brown nipples, perfect targets for stroking thumbs.

He looked at her with blazing desire and rested his big hands on her hips, orchestrating her movements and watching the bounce of her small breasts hungrily.

Lord, if he could he would stretch this moment out like a piece of elastic, but he couldn't. Raw, animal passion was surging through him like a potent drug and as she moved faster on him he felt the first ripples of his climax, then he couldn't contain himself any longer. His massive body responded to her in the only way possible just as she stiffened in her own shuddering orgasm.

Nick pulled her down to him, enjoying the feel of her warm, spent body.

He must have been more damned frustrated than he had ever imagined, because making love had never felt better. Even now, the thought of those breasts squashed against his chest was enough to induce thoughts of making love to her again and again. He kissed the top of her
head and closed his eyes. Sleep was beginning to descend on him. Sweet, irresistible sleep. And he could sleep now because he no longer had that wretched anger burning inside of him.