A Shameful Consequence (3 page)

L
OVE
, like marriage, for Nico would never happen.

As she excused herself for a moment, Nico stood and looked out to the window, to the inky ocean and a sky devoid of stars or moon, and he knew he had been right in the decision he had made long ago.

Nico did not believe in love.

He had nothing to base that on—his parents’ marriage had been long and seemingly happy, his aunts uncles and cousins on the mainland were all wed. It had been assumed by his family that Nico would have long ago carried on the family name, yet the idea was alien to him.

In love you lost.

Where that belief came from he did not know, but it was as real and as ingrained as was the fact he rose with the dawn each morning. And Nico lost at nothing—so he chose not to love.

To give your heart, to commit, was unfathomable to Nico.

The only reason, as far as he could see, for marriage
was to have children and Nico certainly did not want that. For to love and to lose, where a child was concerned, nothing could be more horrific and surely it was never worth the pain.

So his heart remained closed.

He turned and saw her as she nervously walked into the room, as close to a bride of his own as he would ever get.

And were it somehow possible, were his heart to have chosen one for him, had he dared to even consider it, then surely she would be the one.

He saw her cheeks grow pink under his scrutiny, his eyes taking in the luscious curves, the untouched terrain of her body that for tonight was his to roam. He could feel her nerves, her excitement, the tension in the room that was all a wedding night should be—and surely now he could give in and hold her.

His head was full from the streets, images at the forefront that he wanted shadowed, and her mouth would be a sweet distraction. He crossed the room towards her, traced her naked arms, felt the rise of goose bumps beneath his fingers; and she was not just nervous, he realised, she was literally shaking with fear.

‘Maybe this is not what you want …’

She heard him about to retract, realised he had mistaken her nerves, but it wasn’t just nerves or inexperience that had her shaking, it was the overwhelming feeling of him close. It was the man who was holding her now, because he made her weak and he had not even kissed her. Feelings never encountered were rushing in,
and as his mouth lowered to hers, as his full lips met hers, so clumsily she responded, rued her inexperience under such a skilled mouth. His moved so slowly and hers did not know how … and the taste of his tongue as it parted her lips was so sharp and cool, so intimate to feel, that her head moved back in startled surprise.

‘I haven’t …’ She screwed her eyes closed, embarrassed at her lack of skill, because no
almost
a virgin was she. ‘I’ve never been kissed.’

He looked down at her mouth, at lips that seemed made solely for that and could not believe they were his alone. ‘You haven’t kissed?’

‘Never. I have done nothing.’ She sobbed it out, for there had been no kissing, no touching, no petting, and she was angry for her own naivety, as if some honour had kept Stavros from so much as touching her. And there was shame for her spurned kisses, too, for, though she had tried to push it aside, though she had tried to tell herself otherwise, she had felt rejection over and over from her fiancé. She had clumsily flirted to no avail, had pressed lips and told herself as he had jerked his head back that her touch did not repulse, yet somewhere deep inside she had known that it had. ‘I thought tonight, I hoped tonight things would finally be different …’

‘And it shall be,’ Nico said, and he vowed, he would take care of her, would catch her up with her own body and take her from the age of eighteen to twenty-four in the hours allowed them tonight. He would show her all her body could be and leave her a woman by morning.

‘We will take things slowly,’ he promised. ‘I will show you each and every thing you have been missing. Now, for a first kiss …’ He tried to think himself younger, tried to picture a long-ago night that had never happened, ‘Perhaps we are walking back from the taverna at the market square …’

She smiled as she pictured that thought. ‘My house is just around the corner from there.’

‘Then I am walking you home …’ He could, he actually could picture it. ‘And I stop you.’ He took her wrist. ‘And I turn you to face me.’

He lowered his head and she was breathless in anticipation and then she felt his lips on hers, but more gently this time, a mouth that moved only slowly, a mouth that gave her time to warm, to feel, to accept the press and the gift of soft flesh from another. This mouth did not tighten or jerk away when she pushed a little harder still, and it was sweet but it was wanton, for how could it be not when she was drenched by the manly scent of him?

‘And then …’ Nico said, and she breathed as she moved from her first kiss, ‘when all night you have been wanting, when you have been out for dinner, when you have walked on the beach, but still you are wary, still you know not the motives of the other, when all you want is a taste of the promise to come.’ This, Nico decided, was the kiss he would give her were he young and first dating, were they sandy from walking on the beach. It was all new for him, too—for he had been swept into manhood on a surge of testosterone,
had learnt at the altar of older woman, the cruise boats bringing them hungry and desperate for a few hours’ escape from their neglected lives. Loaded with sambuca and a night dancing on tables, they had climbed down to his outstretched hand and then fallen to him. Their kisses had been desperate and frantic, the sex hot and urgent, and it had left him replete for a while, but, like the tide as it turned, he had been left hollow after—till the next time and then the next.

Had she been there then, Nico decided, had it been her in his youth, he would have kissed her like this. Still softly he kissed her, his hands moving down her arm and to her waist. He held her from his centre as his tongue, slowly this time, slipped in, and this time she accepted it, this time she explored the smooth, moist flesh and relished the taste of him. He fought now to hold her from him, for he wanted to pull her hips into him. But not yet, he told himself, for right now it could be different. They would have all night for this, all night to kiss, because there, in the world they had now created, there would be the promise of more tomorrow.

His tongue was delicious, but it made her greedy for more, she now wanted the press of his mouth as it had once been, she wanted more urgency and her mouth demanded more. Her hands, in reflex, moved from loose limbed by her side up to his shoulders, up past his neck and into his hair. She sucked on the taste of him, and he took her away, to a date they had never had, but seemed now to exist, to hot peppered calamari bought at the taverna and eaten on the beach. So real
was her dream she could hear the ocean as he kissed her, her feet surely not in stilettos but resting on sand. After a moment he halted her, his breathing a touch ragged, his words husky when finally they came.

‘Now I have to take you home.’

‘I don’t want to go.’ She did not, not back to her father. She wanted her next date, wanted to find out what Nico would do, how she might tempt him.

‘Now,’ Nico said, ‘I’ve taken you for dinner … twice,’ he added, and gave her a smile, a smile he had never given another, an intimate smile, not for the game they were playing, more for the dream they were sharing. He looked at his bride, who was not his but felt it, then at a dress more complicated than even this skilled lover had encountered. His fingers plucked the row of tiny buttons that ran in a line down her spine and she wanted to tell him they were for show only, but the feel of his fingers, probing, exploring, had her mouth close in pleasure as his lips lowered to her neck and he kissed the sensitive flesh there.

He loved this.

More than ever before, he loved the slow exploration of a woman, her pliant and wanting in his arms as his fingers probed the thick satin, as his other hand cupped her waist and then explored it, and, oh, the triumph of locating a concealed zip.

‘You would stop me,’ Nico said, as there just beneath the hollow of her armpit he found the hidden prize and started to slowly pull down the zipper. ‘You would stop
me, or wriggle, or warn me …’ he said, as slowly he slid it down.

‘Why would I stop you?’ Constantine said as his mouth kissed her neck deeper, as she felt the breeze of air on her torso, then the warmth of his hand slipping in. ‘Why would I stop you when it feels so sublime?’

And words should not have such an effect, but so blatantly pleasurable was her response he had to hold her back, for to press her into him now would end the dream in a matter of moments. He wanted her on the bed, he wanted so badly to be inside her, and yet he made himself wait. It was a long, hard wait that was threatened for a moment as he made light work of her strapless bra and a breast dropped heavy into his palm.

His warm hands caressed her, and indescribable was the pleasure—hands that were not hers on her body, moving in ways she would never have thought of, and then when she thought it could not be any better, when his thumb pressed into her aching nipple, when he stroked it till it felt as if he was stroking right inside her, when surely it could not be more pleasurable, the lips on her neck slid down. The lips that were the first ever to kiss her moved wet and warm to a nipple that hurt in anticipation, and the blow of air from his mouth should have cooled, but it produced a heat from a place where heat had never existed and he kissed her breast as expertly, as hungrily and deliciously as he had kissed her mouth. Her fingers pressed and knotted into his hair and she worried how she might stay standing, how she had lived a life without knowing the pleasure of this,
how nearly she
had
lived a life where this pleasure was denied her. He moved away from her breast to her face, and she wanted him back there instead of the cool air on her wet skin.

Then she didn’t want, because she got.

She got what Nico had wanted but had withheld for longer than he could have imagined. With one definite move, looking at her, awaiting her response, he drew her to where she belonged, against him. He pulled her deftly in and he met the giddy height of relief from wanting, because now his aching groin had the support of her warm body; but it did not satisfy, not even for a second, for instantly it demanded more.

He saw her eyes widen as she felt the solid length of his arousal, saw her lips close and a nervous, excited swallow as he pressed in harder again.

And again, till she was pressing now into him.

And they both tasted for the first time
real
teenage kisses, willing the other on to a sweet forbidden place. He shrugged off his jacket and it was Connie who dealt with his tie and then somehow they were moving to the bed. Nico kicked off his shoes; Connie frantically tore at his shirt buttons till he lay there beside her, his bare feet sliding between her stockinged calves, her naked breasts against his exposed chest. To have skin on skin deepened their kiss, till he suckled on her tongue in a decadent disclosure of what he intended next.

His hand roamed over the curve of her bottom, scooped her hungry body right into his and she wanted her dress fully off, but he would not let her miss this
lesson, would not, though he was tempted, deny her what long ago should have been hers.

How could he not want her?

As his fingers slid up beneath her dress, his question was not aimed at Stavros but at the fools who had feared her father, for had he been there, had he lived on this island, had they met before, then this moment would have been his a very long time ago.

She could feel his fingers, inching up the fabric and then sliding between the tender flesh of her inner thigh, and in reflex rather than refusal she clamped her legs together, could not fathom he wanted to touch her there.

‘Just,’ Nico breathed, and kissed as, despite her flesh’s protest, still he moved higher, ‘as a good girl would do.’

‘I don’t want to be good,’ Connie said, as contrarily her legs tightened, yet her mind willed his hand higher.

‘Then relax,’ Nico said, as the vice of her thighs tightened around his hand.

‘I don’t know how to.’

‘But you want me to carry on?’ Nico checked, though he was sure, quite sure of her answer.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Then all you have to do is trust me.’

Absolutely she did.

‘Where are we?’ she whispered. ‘Where have you taken me?’

‘For a drive,’ Nico whispered, ‘and soon you have to be home. We’ve stopped on the hill … and now,’ Nico said, ‘before I take you home I’m going to take you
to heaven.’ And she was there in his car, and much younger, and so, too, was Nico. She forced herself to breathe, to not think just for a second of what he was doing, to rest her mouth on his neck and just breathe in his scent. When she parted her legs the necessary fraction, his hand crept higher and she braced herself, for what she did not know; but he was more patient than she dared hope, his hand rested on her panties. He kissed her as she accustomed herself to the weight and the warmth and then as he kissed her hair, her cheek, her closed eyes, her head was too heavy and it sank in the pillow, his hand slid into her panties and expertly explored her.

She was so tender that surely soon she would tell him to stop, especially as probing fingers stretched her, and then she went to halt him again as his thumb pressed harder, but there were tiny, almost imperceptible beats of pleasure as his hand worked on. Tiny pulses that mirrored a rhythm that was rising inside, and she tried to stop, to wriggle away, but her body refused to move from this masterstroke. So she stayed, and she found just how much she had been missing. She came to his hand and did not want ever to go back and then Nico stopped, kissed her breathless, and told the shell of her ear what would be next. How it could have happened in the different world they had created, one where youth was shared at the same time, one where he was nicer, kinder, more trusting, one where he cared intensely for the woman in his arms. He told her how then he might have progressed.