“I haven’t finished yet.” She moved close enough to lightly press herself against the thin fabric of his T-shirt. With a shock, he felt her erect nipples and looked down into seductive blue eyes. “I now know how incredible your body makes mine feel, and I want more. Lots more. I’m only talking about sex, Andreas. Hot, steamy, unrelenting sex until we’ve had enough of each other, really worked this thing out of our systems. No strings, no promises, no commitments.”
“No love?”
“No love.” Kizzy smiled up at him. “We don’t believe in that, do we?”
A slow, incredulous, answering smile began to spread across Andreas’s face too as she peppered small, delicate kisses along his jaw, lightly teasing the corner of his mouth with the tip of her tongue.
“Heaven help me, Kizzy, what have I done to you?”
He took her small waist firmly between his hands and looked down into the swirling dark blue of her eyes to see if part of the innocent girl he had first met was still in there. But all he could see was a fire, a burning, amethyst flame of desire that was drawing him closer and closer with its spell.
“You’ve brought the woman out in me, Andreas. For the first time in my life I feel truly alive, as if I could do anything I wanted in the world. It’s a wonderful feeling and I want to enjoy it while it lasts.” Her eyes flickered uncertainly over his face. “So what do you say?”
“I’m speechless,” he replied with a shrug and noticed immediately how her face suddenly dropped, as if believing she had just made a big mistake, as if sensing she was about to be rejected.
He’d seen that look many times before, just before dumping some overattentive lover who had become tedious and emotionally demanding. He’d always tried to do it in a gentle, sympathetic way, but breaking up a relationship was something he seemed incapable of handling delicately. The trouble was, once things had gotten to that stage he was so thoroughly sick of the situation that he became desperate to get it over and done with as quickly and ruthlessly as possible.
Perhaps he should take note and learn from his own experience to nip things in the bud much sooner in the future—to avoid such unpleasantness. He had to be sure, to be quite certain, what was expected of him.
“No strings, no promises, and no commitments—just sex?”
“Yes.”
“It’s as simple and uncomplicated as that?” Andreas rolled his thumbs over the bony part of her hips. “There has to be a catch.”
“Just one.” Kizzy drew herself up by standing on her bare tiptoes and playfully nipped his chin. “I need feeding at least three times a day.”
Chapter Ten
Andreas stroked Kizzy’s dark hair as she slept blissfully in the master bedroom, in his bed, tucked warmly into his body. He thought back to the afternoon before when she had given him her virginity. He was now regretting not having prolonged the experience of their first time together—it was a special moment they could never recapture, but he vowed there and then to make the most of every single second they had together.
He listened to the beating of his own heart for the first time in years as her breath feathered over his chest and a ripple of delirious pleasure zinged through him.
They had spent the previous star-spangled evening eating with their fingers, drinking, and swapping silly jokes into the early hours of the morning. It had been one of the most enjoyable nights he could ever remember and he had laughed, yes laughed, until his belly ached at some of the wild things Kizzy had come out with.
She was irreverent and insubordinate, fresh and intriguing. He’d sat opposite her tiny feet, propped up on the table and grubby from walking around barefoot, and listened as she chattered about nonsense into the night. She had delighted him in a way that he had never thought possible. The still, heady warmth of the night had been fragmented only by the whisper of the ocean and the gasps and cries of their urgent sex.
The hum of his worked muscles and a low nag at the very back of his mind were both trying to issue him with a timely warning. But he chose to ignore it and allowed his head to sink luxuriously back into the depths of the deep, cool pillows.
He breathed in extravagantly and reveled in the moment once more.
This small, rude, velvety, adorable creature was fun, but he resisted the urge to wake her up even though he was missing their playful, waking banter.
He was busy making plans.
So she insisted on having a boring old job? He could deal with that, but how he was going to let her out of his bed long enough to go to it was a problem he’d have to work around somehow. And he’d also have to make sure there weren’t any male colleagues around her, he thought with an uncomfortable burst of possessiveness.
He rubbed quietly at his brow. No, cheating wasn’t a possibility he was prepared to even consider—she was his woman now, but the nagging worry would not go away.
Would she be tempted? She had thanked him for taking her virginity, as if it was something she couldn’t wait to be rid of—maybe this was just the beginning for her, the start of some pioneering sexual adventure that didn’t necessarily involve him any further.
Hell, he was getting carried away in his own head! He was becoming insanely jealous at the mere idea of Kizzy’s having another man in her life, and that wasn’t the deal they’d made. Not in the long term, anyway.
Andreas rubbed the back of his neck. Somehow she’d gotten under his skin.
His mind went blank for a moment as he tried to untangle his thoughts, and his eyes were beginning to hurt. He needed to get back on planet Lazarides quickly. He needed to keep Kizzy under his control—to protect her from opportunists and those who might hurt her; she seemed so naïve about people.
But before he could do that he needed to get a grip on himself.
When Andreas emerged from the shower ten minutes later, Kizzy was gone, just a crumpled pillow where her head had been. A sense of loss hit him, which was ridiculous as she had every right to get out of bed and wander off if she wanted to. There was no reason she should stay within a few feet every moment of the day.
But a persistent little voice in his head informed him that he wanted her to do exactly that.
Where had she gone?
He wrestled on his robe and shoved his way through the bedroom door, marching much more quickly than necessary down the silent corridor.
…
Kizzy jumped with fright as Andreas’s grimly set face appeared through the door, the force of his shoulder causing it to slam roughly into the stone wall.