TABITHA HADN’T HAD a drop of the champagne the rest of the Basinases had consumed in vast quantities but she felt as drunk as if she’d downed a whole magnum of it.
The vows they’d exchanged...
Somehow they’d contained far more meaning than she’d expected.
In truth, she’d expected the ceremony to feel like a farce but it hadn’t. She’d meant every word she’d said and, from the look in Giannis’s eyes when he’d spoken his vows, he’d meant it too.
Afterwards, they stayed on the terrace and shared a feast with his family.
Her family.
They didn’t say it in words but they didn’t need to. The Basinas family accepted her as one of their own. Their acceptance filled her heart to the brim.
For hours they talked, laughed, ate and drank. Toasts were made, blessings given for their marriage and the safe delivery of their child and childhood escapades revealed, all the while Giannis’s small nieces and nephews ran around chasing each other and playing pranks on any family member they could.
This was the family life Tabitha had dreamed of when she’d been a child, the family life her father had wanted for her. When the full moon rose high in the night sky she looked up at it and wondered if he was up there too, looking down at her. If he was, she knew he would have a smile the size of that moon on his face.
But it wasn’t just his family. It was Giannis too. She hadn’t seen him so at ease since the night of the ball, not just with his family but with her too. Every time she looked at him his eyes would pulse and a knowing smile tug at his lips.
Anticipation laced her veins but there was dread mingled with it too.
For all the unexpected joy she’d found in their ceremony and small celebration, she just could not shift the image of Anastasia from her head.
How could she share Giannis’s bed knowing he’d shared it with the love of his life before her?
Eventually it was time to call it a night. The small children were rounded up, all protesting wildly that they didn’t want to go home, that they weren’t tired, even while their little faces stretched with the yawns they couldn’t fight.
And then the front door closed and they were alone.
After all that boisterous noise the silence was stark.
She gazed at her husband, the only sound her rapidly accelerating heartbeats.
He locked the door then slowly stepped towards her. ‘You enjoyed yourself?’
‘Very much.’ She attempted a smile. ‘I never knew you were such a troublemaker as a child.’ His sisters had recounted many of his escapades with glee.
He stood before her and caught a lock of her hair in his hands. ‘Did I ever tell you why I hosted the ball?’
‘Wasn’t it to find a wife?’
He brought the lock to his face and inhaled. Shivers cascaded up her spine. ‘That was part of it. The ball itself came about because of a debt owed from my school days. When I was fifteen I broke into the headmaster’s office and superglued all his furniture to the floor and all his stationery and books to his desk and shelves.’
‘Why?’ she whispered in fascination.
‘One of the other boys dared me to. In those days I could never resist a challenge. The headmaster knew it was me but couldn’t prove it. I was on my final warning. If Alessio hadn’t given me an alibi, I would have been expelled.’
‘You hosted a ball as repayment for an alibi twenty years ago?’
‘A man must always pay his debts, matia mou. Without that alibi, my life might have taken a very different path.’
Giannis had always been a risk-taker. Being the only boy of five children probably had something to do with it. His sisters had always been good. Apart from Niki but, seeing as she’d looked up to him as her role model, that probably explained her own mischievous behaviour.
He’d delighted in driving his sisters to distraction, especially Katarina, the only one older than him and thus the bossiest, by climbing the tallest trees and buildings, stealing the gardener’s ride-on mower for illicit joyrides, and then progressing to their father’s car and stealing cigarettes, defiantly smoking them one after the other until he’d made himself sick. Anything they said he shouldn’t do, he’d made it his business to do.
That had included marrying Anastasia, he now realised.
His sisters had all hated her on sight. They had never said it in words but the Basinases were a close-knit bunch and he’d been able to read his sisters’ feelings all too well.
Their disapproval had only added to Anastasia’s allure.
Skimming his fingers down the swan of Tabitha’s elegant neck, revelling in the way her lips parted and her breathing shallowed, he ruefully considered what his reaction would have been if they’d disapproved of her.
Tabitha had an unidentifiable something that was far greater than mere allure, something that sang to all his senses, a conductor tuning them into harmony. The desire ringing from the cornflower eyes was more intoxicating than the strongest of spirits.
She could have no greater appeal. Not to him.
It was not humanly possible for him to desire her more than he did.
The past week spent attempting to master that desire had been torturous but, he felt sure, successful.
The spell she wove on him was nothing but an illusion and now he would prove it.
He would make love to her and when it was over the earth would still be on its axis.
Trailing his fingers down her arm, he took her hand in his and tugged it gently. ‘Time for us to go to bed, Kyría Basinas.’
Fingers entwined, they climbed the stairs in silence to the room that now belonged to them both, sexual chemistry thick in the air surrounding them.
But, when they reached the door, she hesitated at the threshold.
He brought her hand to his lips and stared into the eyes brimming with uncertainty. ‘Is something the matter, matia mou?’
She stilled, teeth sinking into her bottom lip, her stare now filled with something he didn’t recognise. ‘Did you share this room with Anastasia?’
Taken aback at both the question and her first ever mention of his dead wife, it took a few seconds for him to realise why she was asking it.
‘Anastasia hated Santorini. She loved the city life. She didn’t spend one night here. No woman has shared this bed with me.’
While it sank in that Tabitha had insecurities about his first wife, and what the implications of that could mean, something happened that distracted his thoughts entirely.
Right before his eyes, Tabitha grew in stature and a light came into her eyes that didn’t just shine from them but infused the whole of her in a warm glow.
Before he could register the change, she put a hand to his chest then stepped forward and rested her cheek on it and breathed deeply.
She was inhaling his scent...
Then she tipped her head back and gave him a smile of such knowing radiance, every cell in his body tightened.
Gently she pushed him across the threshold and kicked the door shut behind them with her heel. And then she slid her arms around his neck and pulled his head down so she could kiss him.
Heat licked through his veins, his physical awareness—always there, always a part of him around her—flickering at the first brush of her lips to his. When her tongue darted into his mouth and she pressed herself tightly against him, the flickering turned to full arousal.
Hunger exploded in him and he wrapped his arms tightly around her. His hands delved into the silky tresses, fingers coiling in it as he devoured her...and she devoured him.
Tabitha was the one to steer them to the bed, to push him onto it, the one to break the kiss, to run her lips over his cheeks and down his neck as he had done to her, scorching his flesh with every mark from her mouth and tongue. It was her fingers that worked their way down the buttons of his shirt and then pushed it apart, pulled it down his arms and threw it onto the floor. It was her hands pushing at his chest until he was laid flat on his back, breathing deeply, wondering where this vixen had suddenly appeared from.
She put her mouth to his ear and bit the lobe gently. ‘Don’t move,’ she whispered before reaching out an arm to turn on his bedside light.
He had no intention of moving anywhere.
Giannis had anticipated this night in detail, over and over, imagining her breasts in his mouth, his fingers caressing her, inside her, his mouth tasting her, exploring every inch of her so thoroughly that every part of her was as familiar as his own reflection was to him.
But never had he anticipated that she would be the one making the moves. Taking control.
Every inch of his body throbbed with anticipation, heat thick through his loins and veins.
She jumped off the bed with all the grace of a dancer, bounded to the main light switch by the door and hit it. Immediately the light in the room went from full illumination to dusky, casting them both in shadow.
Tabitha stared at the man she’d committed her life to, drinking in his devilish beauty, then bent over to remove her sandals. When they were off, she pinched the skirt of her dress in her fingers and brought it up and over her head.
The suck of air he took only added to the heady thrills zipping through her veins.
Their wedding might not have been the one of her dreams but she felt as if she’d slipped into another Giannis-filled dream. The relief at being told no other woman had shared this room with him had been dizzying, unleashing an enormous wave of emotion she could never find the words to explain. That wave had filled her entirely and suddenly she had found herself emboldened to act on her desires, and emboldened to express in a language they both understood everything she felt for him in that moment.
She wanted him, this beautiful Greek man who could sear her skin with nothing more than a look. She wanted him so much that there were times she could hardly breathe for her longing.
Hooking her arms behind her to undo her lacy bra, she pulled the straps down her arms and threw it onto her discarded dress.
The seductive appreciation in his hooded eyes sent arrows of bittersweet longing shooting from her breasts to her pelvis and gave her the courage needed to remove the last item of clothing and stand before him naked.
Giannis swallowed. His greedy eyes devoured every detail.
The incredible womanly body he’d relived every inch of every night since they’d conceived their child was there before him. The differences the pregnancy was making were there too, subtle but to his eyes obvious.
They only made her more beautiful.
The full breasts were larger, the hips a little wider...the stomach a little rounder.
He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was but his throat had closed.
He couldn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
She must have read his thoughts for she smiled then walked slowly back to the bed, climbed onto it and straddled him.
Impossibly, his arousal grew, the ache in it a pain he was unable to relieve.
Gazing down at him, she placed her hands on his chest and let her fingers drift over it.
He reached out an arm to touch her silky skin but she stopped him and shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she whispered.
And then she leaned forward and kissed him deeply. Her breasts brushed lightly against his chest, a tease of sensation he craved so much more of. When he tried to wrap his arms around her she shrugged him off and nipped his bottom lip. ‘Not yet,’ she repeated sternly.
She bestowed him with one more kiss on his mouth and then her lips trailed down his neck again. But this time she didn’t stop.
This time she continued her oral exploration, tongue and mouth kissing and licking every inch of his chest, his nipples, down to his abdomen, her fingers working on his trousers, which she pulled down with his underwear and threw unceremoniously onto the floor.
This time she was the one to feast her eyes on him, lashes sweeping, a look of wonder on her face as she gazed at his jutting erection.
She put a hand to it.
He gritted his teeth as it throbbed at her touch.
And then she leant down to cover it with her mouth.
A loud, unbidden groan escaped his throat and he had to fist the sheets and grit his teeth even tighter to fight back the orgasm already threatening release.
‘Tabitha...’
He could speak no more.
All he was capable of doing was raising his head to gaze dazedly down at the honey-blonde hair over his lap and submit to the pleasure she was giving him.
It was possibly the clumsiest but most incredible experience of his life.
He’d never known sensation like it.
She was doing this because she wanted to give him pleasure.
From the soft sounds she was making, she was enjoying it too.
The tension he fought against releasing was building inside him, every part of him thick with it, enveloping the whole of his body, the conductor of his senses harmonising them to a perfect pitch.
Suddenly he could take no more.
He wanted to come. Badly. More than he’d ever needed to come before. But he wanted to be inside her and watch as she came too.
He gathered her hair in his hands and gently raised her head. ‘Come here,’ he commanded thickly.
Eyes dark with desire met his and then her hands were patting over his chest as she moved gracefully back up to straddle him again. But this time she positioned herself exactly where he ached for her to be.
Her lips found his mouth at the same moment she sank fully onto him, taking him whole inside her hot, wet heat.
His groan came from deep within him.
Theos...
Giannis screwed his eyes closed and fought back the release his tortured body burned for.
She’d stilled. Her pubis was ground against him, his erection fully sheathed inside her, but she made no effort to move.
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.
The expression on her face almost made him come there and then.
Cupping her cheeks with his hands, he gazed at the flushed face in wonderment. ‘Do whatever you want, matia mou.’
Her eyes closed briefly and then she carefully raised herself back so her hands rested on his chest and she was gazing down at him with that heady, glazed look.
‘That’s it,’ he urged. ‘You set the pace.’
She rode him slowly to start with, her fingers digging into his chest, lips parted, eyes fixed on his face, adjusting her position until she found the one that had her moaning and her movements increasing.
It was the most erotic experience he had ever known.
Holding her hip with one hand to steady her, he reached his other up and cupped one of the breasts swaying so gently.
Her breathing deepened.
He brushed a thumb over the tip and watched her eyes widen and dilate in response, taking as much enjoyment and pleasure from watching Tabitha’s expressive face as he did from the incredible sensations raging through him.
How he held on, he didn’t know. It was an elemental torture he’d never known existed, pleasure and pain entwined together, and when she threw her head back with a cry and ground down on him one final time, the tight thickening pulled him as deep inside her as it was possible to go and pushed him over the edge.
His orgasm burst through him with a force that had him shouting out her name, pulsations of indescribable pleasure crashing through every part of him.
* * *
Tabitha, her face burrowed in Giannis’s neck, his arms wrapped tightly around her, slowly came floating back down to earth.
She could feel the beat of his heart on her breasts crushed against his chest. She could hear the deep raggedness of his breaths.
He was still inside her.
She didn’t want to move.
She didn’t want to break the spell.
His arms loosened as his fingers wound through her hair.
‘Where the hell did that come from?’ he asked with a choked laugh.
She nuzzled into his neck and gave a short giggle. ‘I have no idea.’
But of course she knew. It had been a release from her fears of the ghost of Anastasia, something for just Tabitha and Giannis, an embrace of the start of the rest of their lives together.
She wanted to hold on to this closeness she felt at that exact moment and bottle it for ever.
She felt so much. Too much, she feared, although it was a thought to be dealt with another time, when she wasn’t still feeling the thrills of their love-making vibrate through her skin.
Moving her face from the heaven that was the crook of Giannis’s neck, she rested her chin on his chest. ‘We can have a good marriage, can’t we?’ she asked in a small voice.
He was silent for a moment before he shifted from beneath her and rolled her over so he was the one lying on top of her.
His face hovered over hers, his hands smoothing her hair from her forehead.
He kissed the tip of her nose.
‘I meant my vows,’ he said seriously.
‘So did I,’ she whispered.
‘I know you did. There has been much distrust between us and many misconceptions but we can make this marriage work. If we use our vows and the rings we wear on our fingers as lines in the sand, we can put the doubts and distrust behind us.’
Warmth filled her heart. With a soft sigh she put her hand on the nape of his neck and gazed into the eyes staring at her with such sincerity. ‘I want to make it work.’
His lips brushed against hers. ‘You already are.’