“You’ve never stroked yourself, Honey?” He stopped what he was doing. His smoldering touch singed her skin.
“No.” She shook her head firmly.
He continued to assault her with his fingers. “Have you ever wanted to?”
“No!” Her answer was perhaps a bit too vehement, for he laughed. “Really,” she assured him. “I haven’t.”
“You mean it’s never crossed your mind?”
She thought about the morning after she’d slept with him, when she’d studied herself so carefully in the mirror. The thought may have crept into her mind, ever so briefly.
“There’s no shame in it.”
“It’s just not…right,” she said with hesitation.
“Who says it isn’t?”
“I don’t know exactly. Why in the world would it be something one should do?”
“Sexual feelings are inherent to man, Honey. They’re natural. Would it be better if, whenever man had the urge, he went out and found a willing or, heaven forbid, unwilling partner?”
“People shouldn’t have sexual relations with just anyone,” she admitted, and then wondered at herself, for wasn’t that what she had done?
“Masturbation is merely a release of sexual tension. It isn’t a heinous crime.”
“But, why would a person touch himself?”
“Because it feels good.”
She laughed, a tentative, halting sound. “Just because something feels good doesn’t mean we should do it.”
“Why not?”
She stared at him, smiling. “You are a hedonist.”
He answered her smile. “I agree. A hedonist, a voluptuary.”
This must stop. “Do you masturbate?” she asked.
“I have, on occasion.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He smiled his beautiful smile, showing his even white teeth. Her insides quivered. Suddenly she found herself saying, “Would you masturbate for me?” This must stop!
He studied her, his gaze so penetrating, so deep, she nearly felt it under her skin. “On one condition.”
Skeptical, she asked, “What’s that?”
“That you do it for me.”
Her jaw dropped. “I will do no such thing.”
What was happening to her? Why hadn’t she removed herself and walked away? Why had she stayed with him, allowing him to whip her into a sexual frenzy? Every part of her tingled. But this conversation must stop, or—
Or what?
“You can,” he urged, “if you really want to.”
“Well, I don’t want to.” And she didn’t. But she had long since passed the point of stopping whatever game he was playing.
“You would enjoy it, Honey.”
She snorted a laugh to cover her discomfort. “I rather doubt it.”
“Promise me you’ll think about it.”
He had pummeled her with talk of sex, of intimacies, of things no two normal people would ever truly discuss. Perhaps she was as hedonistic as he; at this point, she didn’t care. She was hungry and hot and anxious to watch him please himself.
She got off him, feeling bereft at the separation. “All right, I’ll think about it.” But she knew she would not.
His half-smile still in place, his thick eyelashes at half-mast over his come-to-bed eyes, he sat up and unbuttoned his wet trousers, sliding them down his legs. His huge erection sprang free. She swallowed a breath of aching pleasure and reveled in the lusty cramping of her lower belly.
He gently gripped his fingers around it.
She folded her hands, pinching her fingers against her own flesh.
He moved his hand up and down, exposing the shiny, bulbous head of his penis.
She automatically rocked against the sand.
He closed his eyes; his face bore a look of blatant ecstasy as he pleasured himself, deftly moving his foreskin up and down, over his shaft.
She closed her mouth and swallowed.
He opened his eyes, his gaze pinning hers. “God, but it feels so good, Honey, almost as good as when someone else does it.”
Their gazes were locked. “Do you want to do it?”
Her mouth was dry. “To you?”
“Yes.”
No! She hesitated. “I don’t—”
“It isn’t as if you haven’t touched me before,” he reminded her.
Her pelvis ached. She was swollen, hurting with desire. All of her promises to herself fled. Her inhibitions evaporated like morning mist on a pond.
She moved to his side and replaced his hand with her own, smaller one. The outer skin was velvety soft over his erection. It was incongruous that the shaft could be so hard, and the skin protecting it so soft. She moved it up and down. “I had forgotten how big you are,” she lied, for she would never forget his size, and how it had fit so beautifully inside her.
“And yet I fit inside you,” he recalled, as if reading her mind.
Her vagina throbbed, making pulling, almost sucking motions, as if remembering him being there and wanting him again. The kernel of need began, way down deep, an itch, not quite ready to scratch. An orgasm, willing itself to be satisfied.
She pumped him, alternating between firm thrusts and tender movements. With gentle fingers she twisted him, cupping his sac in her other hand, fondling the rocks inside.
She pushed down her needs, forcing them at bay.
He was so beautiful! Every part of him was perfection, like some sort of Greek statue, but with hair, bone and sinew. His hair-dusted thighs were tight with muscled ridges as hard as stone. His glorious genitals nestled amid a thick, lustrous bush of black hair.
She corrected her comparison; he was oh, so much better than a statue.
There was not one flaw on him; even the nasty bruise he’d received on his chin because of her had faded.
“Taste me,” he ordered, interrupting her erotic perusal.
Hesitating briefly, Honey lowered her mouth and touched the tip of his penis with her tongue. He tasted salty and slick.
He groaned, low and deep in his throat. “If you’re not careful, I’ll come in your mouth.”
Stop this now!
But it was too late. The kernel that had threatened to sprout burst into full flower, and she whipped her skirt up, straddling him again, this time feeling the long, hard length of him enter through the slit in her drawers and find its rhythm within her. She climaxed immediately, tensing as the pleasure raced through her like a wild fire on a tinder dry hillside. She lowered her head and they kissed, tongues entwined. Something more surged through her and she quickly broke the bond.
Beneath her, he shuddered and poured his essence into her.
When he’d finished, he lifted her off and swore. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
Sated now, and feeling regret and remorse and anger at her lack of control, she agreed. “It won’t happen again.”
“I mean, I shouldn’t have come inside you,” he said.
Her desire faded and she remembered that he hadn’t come inside her that first night, either. “Just where had you planned to come? In my hand? In my mouth?”
He gave her a lazy look, his eyes wary. “You don’t want a stranger to get you pregnant before your own wedding, do you?”
Stranger. She stood and brushed sand off her skirt, feeling the essence of him run down the insides of her thighs, draining away like her desire. She was angry with him and she didn’t know exactly why. “Don’t be foolish. I don’t have any intention of allowing you to get me pregnant.”
He studied her, his irksome gaze going deep once again. “Then, you’ve taken preventive measures?”
She swished her skirt again, attempting to shake loose the clinging sand along with her embarrassment. “Of course. I’m not out to trick you. I’m not some pathetic tart who seduces a man and then cries rape when he falls for it, and I’m not trying to get pregnant so you’ll do the honorable thing and marry me. As you have constantly reminded me, I already have a fiancé waiting for me.”
Again, remorse welled up inside her and she cursed Nick Stamos. She cursed him for the sexual trap he had prepared and cursed herself because she had fallen into it.
“Ah, yes, the peerless Apollo.”
She scowled at his sarcasm. “I didn’t seduce you this time; you seduced me.”
He shrugged, yet his eyes were angry. “You could have said no.”
Her little voice had said no. She had not heeded it. “Well, trust me, it will not happen again.” She watched as he stood and buttoned his trousers, his back to her.
She studied his wide shoulders. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you provoking me with all of this…this inappropriate talk?”
He did not face her. “I don’t know.” He turned around. “I suppose you were protected that night at the pier, too?”
“It would have been even more foolish than it was had I not been.”
He looked puzzled, and then he forced a smile. “You are a determined woman. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you before.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she answered.
He gazed out over the blue ocean. “It’s time to return to the Athena.”
They walked over the sand, picked up their shoes and her shawl, and strolled toward the distant harbor.
“How long will it take to get to Crete?” She sensed that whenever it was, it couldn’t be too soon, for each moment she was with him wore down her resolve.
He brushed against her, briefly touching her arm. Her body reacted to his nearness, tingling, aching once again. “Are you in a hurry?”
She brought her chin up defiantly. “Of course I am. The sooner I begin my new life, the better.”
You are not in a hurry. You want this to last forever.
“I have a few more supplies to deliver,” he answered, his words clipped. “We’ll stop at Naxos and Paros, and finally at Santorini, then we’ll sail straight for Crete.”
“Is that how you make your living? Delivering and taking on supplies?” Their afternoon encounter had deteriorated into small talk.
He glanced away. “I pick up odd jobs when I can, but I don’t need much income living on the Athena.”
And she realized he didn’t need much income to support himself and his uncle. A brief, rhetorical question slid across her brain: Why were the homely men rich and the handsome ones poor?
Odder still, why did she assume that her fiancé was homely?
They boarded the Athena and stood by the rail, facing the Mykonos harbor. Brightly painted fishing boats bobbed in the water. “You’re an enigma, Honey, you know that.”
“Why?”
“You are essentially quite a prim and proper young woman, yet you let a stranger make love to you.”
She watched the mustachioed Cosmos work on the sails, a pipe gripped between his teeth, his red wool cap perched jauntily to one side of his head. His hair was thick, black and curly. She noticed that Effie stood with her back to the rail, watching him work, completely focused on the man.
“You’re going to continue to pester me about that, aren’t you?”
“All you have to do is answer me, and I’ll stop,” he promised.
She exhaled sharply. “All right.”
She gazed over the rocks that jutted toward the sky. In the distance, beyond the whitewashed houses, she saw the thatched roof of a windmill. “All my life I’ve been a good girl. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the way I wanted to be. I wanted to marry a missionary. At least when I was nineteen, it sounded like a good idea. But when Mama got sick, I knew that my place was with her and Papa, so I relinquished my dream and nursed her until her death. The bills mounted up, surpassing anything we had any hopes of paying.
“Then, after that, I had to nurse Papa because he was so devastated. And the unpaid bills still kept coming. He mourned for years; he’s still mourning.” She recalled the debilitating sadness that still crept into his eyes when he didn’t know she was watching.
“I did all of this of my own free will. Despite what it might sound like to others, I felt no obligation to do it, I simply wanted to. I loved Mama; she was a sweet, gentle, God-fearing woman. She wasn’t one bit judgmental; even through her illness she kept her loving nature and her trust in God.”
She laughed, hardly a humorous sound. “That was something I couldn’t do. I still wonder why she, of all the people on the earth, had to suffer so. I guess it shook my faith, although I couldn’t admit that to Papa.”
She glanced at Nick, whose eyes were both wary and sad; she wondered if they would always betray him.
“And because you love your father, and your debtors are at the door, you’ll marry Apollo Christophides.”
She wondered how he knew so much. “I’ve always done what I wanted to, Nick. I’m marrying him because I want to, make no mistake about that. And yes, it will give us a measure of relief. I can’t lie about that.”
“Do you love him?”
Another humorless laugh. “I don’t even know him. In fact, I’ve never even seen his face. He could be a troll, for all I know.”
He smiled, his eyes still sad.
She lowered her gaze to the intense, blue water that slapped against the boat. “He’s a wealthy man. He can give me whatever I want.”
Nick shook his head. “You’re not that shallow. In fact, you’re not shallow at all.”
“All right, he’s rich and he’s willing to pay off our debts. It’s what I must do, and I’ll do it.”
She couldn’t look at him; she wouldn’t. For the second time today, she felt shame. Sometimes she didn’t consider the final outcome when she made her plans. She forged ahead, come hell or high water, unconcerned at the upheaval she might cause because of her determination.
“You’re sacrificing your future, you know.”
“I’m doing what I must do, and nothing and no one will talk me out of it.” And no one would.
Nick guessed that what she said was true, but there was more he wanted to know. “Why did you let me make love to you that night at the marina?”
She expelled a heavy sigh and put her face in her hands. “Will you leave me no dignity?”
He pulled her hands away and forced her to look at him. “Tell me, Honey.”
She sighed again and leaned against the railing. “I’ve done everything I was supposed to do for so long, my own needs, which I had gladly put on hold, demanded release. The day I finally decided to do something about it I had so much pressure building up in my body and in my head; I feared only a scream would relieve part of it. I wanted one night, just one magical, wonderful night to remember for the rest of my life. Was that so very wrong?”
Her eyes glistened with tears and her expression wrenched his heart. “But how did you know it would work out? It could have been a disaster. You could have been hurt or worse; you could have been raped and shanghaied.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. She swiped at them with her fingers. “But I wasn’t, was I?” She pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “I think we’ve had this conversation before.”
“In your father’s library. You wouldn’t explain it to me then. You were too intent on getting me out of the house, just as you’d gotten me out of the yard the morning after my visit with your father.”
“I didn’t regret what I did that night. No, I didn’t regret that. But today—” She sniffled again, blew her nose again. “It shouldn’t have happened. It won’t happen again. I may not even know my betrothed, but I will not fall for your erotic tricks again, Nick, please believe that.”
Her eyes were shiny; her honesty and vulnerability touched him more than he wanted to admit. He also had to admit that he had seduced her because he wanted her. It was as simple as that. He wanted her.
And he would want her again, he knew that, too.
Her hair, long and loose down her back, was still damp, a sprinkling of sand woven through it. When they’d been on the beach, she’d seemed like a sea nymph, at one with the ocean. Now, her camisole was wet and her breasts poked against it, her nipples still firm.
He felt more stirrings. “You truly believe it won’t happen again?”
She dropped her gaze, and then met his again. He saw determination in her eyes. “It cannot. It will not.”
“Don’t be too sure.”
He thought he saw a hint of panic, but then it was gone. “Please,” she said. “Please, promise me.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You see, Honey DeHaviland, when it comes to you, I wonder if I’ll ever be satisfied.”
When it comes to you, I wonder if I’ll ever be satisfied. His words echoed and re-echoed in her ears as she entered the stateroom and closed the door behind her.
She dragged herself to the cot and sat down, her knees suddenly weak and her heart beating hard against her ribs. Oh, God, how was she to endure this?
She was no match for him. Every time she looked at him, desire rose within her like water pumped up from a well. And that desire was like a ripe plum, ready to shoot juices everywhere the moment she was pierced.
How would she survive?